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Photo by Simone Becchetti via Stocksy
I found biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher at just the right time in my life: I was 23 years old and had just been dumped.
And not just dumped, but blindsided and broken by "my first love." That kind of heartbreak that can only happen when you're young, inexperienced, and grossly stubborn. If classic novels, rock music, and the best scenes in High Fidelity taught me anything, it's that the first break-up is the big one. In trying to avoid cutting off my ear and overdosing on Hank Williams songs, I found Dr. Fisher and her extensive scientific research on "the brain in love." I was looking for some logic to desensitize my emotions; I was sick of drinking myself stupid every night and thought that reading might be a better idea. Fisher spun me back into reality.
Dr. Fisher is a research professor in the anthropology department at Rutgers University, the chief scientific advisor and consultant for Match.com (since 2005), and America's leading researcher on the human brain and cross-cultural patterns of romantic love, mate choice, marriage, divorce, adultery, and brain differences. On top of all that, she has published five best-selling books on her research (with a sixth coming in February 2016) and maintains that romantic love is a universal phenomenon with mechanisms that have been established over evolution. Now in her late 60s, the New York native continues to study the thing she claims is the thing we all want most in this world: love.
Photo by Asa Mathat via Flickr user PopTech
Fisher first gained international fame when she and her colleagues put 49 people into a brain scanner (fMRI) to study the brain circuitry involved in romantic love. Fisher and her neurological experts concluded that romantic love is basic drive, like hunger or thirst, that operates below all cognitive thinking and feeling; she equated the concept with cocaine. You get addicted to a person, defying logic and risking a lot to get more of them. This made her a big hit in America, getting the one thing we all uncomfortably feel down to a literal science. Lately, she has turned her research to how we find love in the modern world. Through her annual Singles in America studies with Match.com—as well as through her own research—she has conducted studies of thousands of single and coupled Americans trying to figure out how our biology, evolution, and neurological systems play a part in how we date and find love in the context of today's changing gender and economic roles. Right now, she is working on her latest hypothesis which she calls "fast sex/slow love."
"I am extremely optimistic for some very large reasons," she tells me over the phone from her friend's home in New York. (Her house is be remodeled.) "We are shedding the last 10,000 years of our agrarian background and moving forward to a lifestyle that was actually much more similar to our hunting-and-gathering past."
What she means by this is that economic equality between women and men has changed the way we now look at relationships. In our once hunting-and-gathering society, women came home with 60-80% of what would be eaten, and they were considered just as economically and sexually powerful as men. They left bad relationships when they wanted to, because unlike in the agrarian culture and in the industrial revolution (which found women in the home and out of the work force, stuck at the mercy of their husbands), no one was stuck.
"The belief that a woman's only place is in the home is pretty much gone, and I'm all for it," says Fisher. "I think this is a great hope for humanity."
If you don't have regular intercourse, then most people see this as a barrier to intimacy.
"These days people are terrified of divorce," she continues. "A recent study cited that 67% of people who live together are afraid to get married because of the possibility of divorce and its economic, social, psychological implications and personal consequences. I think now we are marrying later for a reason. I think what we are doing now—with hookup culture, friends with benefits, and living together before marriage—is [wanting] to know everything about another human being before we tie the knot." Fisher believes that even though this culture of promiscuity is viewed as reckless, it is in fact cautious. "We've got a long period of early adulthood to experiment, or what I call 'commitment lite', to see what works for us by hanging out, sleeping together, and getting to know someone before committing to them entirely. By the time we marry, we should have picked quite correctly."
Fisher also says that we have abolished a general value in virginity. "Over 30 percent of people told me they would not date a virgin," she says, and it makes sense in her theory of fast sex and slow love. (The actual statistic, from her 2013 Match.com study, is much higher: around 42 percent. And women are much less likely to date a virgin than men.) "If you don't have regular intercourse, then most people see this as a barrier to intimacy. They need time and experience to get to know that person through sex and perfect their sex life together before committing long term."
Though she has spent much research dismantling myths about women in love (especially in her 1999 book The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing The World), she firmly believes that men have yet to undergo the same analysis when it comes to the ways they interact in love. The last 50 years have been devoted to understanding how women actually behave in relationships, yet when it comes to men, we stick to same stereotypical notions that men are commitment-phobic, adulterers, hyper-sexual, and insensitive.
"I have data to show [that] is not true," Fisher laughs. "In my studies, questioning 25,000 American people, I have found that men fall in love more often. They fall in love sooner; when they meet someone they are in love with, they want to introduce her to friends and family sooner; they want to move in sooner." She says this goes for both gay and straight men in love.
Furthermore, when I ask her about how sexual orientation or things like gender fluidity affect the brain in love or dating patterns, she is quick to answer. "Scientists have put LGBT people into the brain scanner and found that their brain circuitry is exactly the same. I study romantic love, and those parts of the brain are not connected with who you love but how you love, and they won't change," she says. Fisher also notes that she has started studying trans people taking hormones to understand how testosterone and estrogen doses affect the brain and the way these things play out in common gender traits. Men transitioning to women and taking estrogen may experience more vivid colors or emotional sensitivity, while biological women taking testosterone "see better in the light or feel more skeptical and assertive" in their daily lives.
But despite her optimism about the ways we now find love, she has one fear: drugs. Namely, FDA-approved anti-depressants (SSRIs).
"Over 100 million people in America are taking anti-depressants," she says. "As you boost the serotonin system, you are dampening the dopamine system, which of course is connected to romantic love. I get emails from people around the world saying stuff like, 'My sister has been on Prozac for 20 years and has never had a date.' It doesn't shock me. We know these drugs harm the sex drive.
Men fall in love more often. They fall in love sooner.
"I can really see, down the road, that on dating services people will have to disclose the kinds of medication they take," Fisher continues. "'Hi, my name is Nancy. I take drugs that drive up my serotonin and affect my natural dopamine.'"
This Friday, a documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Christian Frei called Sleepless in New York will be available to the general public. At its core is Fisher and her theories about rejection in romantic love; the documentary follows three New Yorkers who have recently been dumped.
"I have never seen a film capture that amount of pain and rethink how to show true rejection and loss," says Fisher. "That's much more interesting to me. The happiness is no big deal—it's great. But when you have been rejected, that is when people stalk, get clinical depression, kill somebody else, or kill themselves...they just lose it." |
Even as pot shops rake in millions in Colorado, and the possibility grows of the drug becoming legal in as many as a dozen other states, a handful of Americans are serving life sentences for selling marijuana.
At least 25 people have been condemned to live out their days behind bars because they were involved in the marijuana trade, according to The Human Solution, a pot advocacy group. Some played relatively small roles in larger distribution rings and got life sentences in part because they refused to plead guilty and testify against associates. Others held positions of power in major trafficking organizations.
James Romans, a divorced 42-year-old father of three from Indiana, says he belongs in the former category. But last year, a federal judge ruled differently, sentencing him to life based on evidence suggesting that he helped run a multimillion dollar operation.
Whatever his role, the case raises questions about the fairness of punishing marijuana offenders with the criminal justice system’s harshest penalty short of death.
“It doesn’t seem to me in this day and age, when states are debating whether marijuana should be legal, that people who traffic in it should be spending their lives behind bars,” said David Zlotnick, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and an expert on drug sentencing laws at Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island. “If we’re not sure whether this drug should even be an illegal narcotic, why are we sending people to jail for life for it?”
As Romans tells his story, he was working low-wage construction jobs in suburban Indianapolis in 2004, struggling to support his kids and “dibbling and dabbling” in pot dealing, when one of his childhood friends offered him a chance to join a big-time marijuana ring. Romans claims he worked as a middleman, relaying money from about 15 lower-level dealers to the friend, Eric Pieper, whom Romans now says was the boss.
“I knew there could always be consequences,” Romans said on the phone Tuesday night from McCreary federal prison in Kentucky. Still, he never imagined his role would lead to anything “major,” he said.
And it didn’t -- not at first. After police arrested him in a sting in 2010, a state court found him guilty of dealing 27 pounds of pot and ordered him to participate in a “work release” program in prison. During his year in the program, Romans was allowed to leave the prison each day to drive a delivery truck for a retail company that sold fur coats.
But with his release date only two weeks away, federal agents picked him up and flew him to a jail in Sherman, Texas, where he waited for a new trial to begin. Investigators said they had uncovered evidence that showed he had been dealing pot not by the pound, but by the ton. The feds had opened a new case, arguing he'd been a major player in a trafficking organization responsible for transporting more than 10,000 kilos of marijuana into the U.S. from Mexico.
Under the federal government’s sentencing guidelines, which the United States adopted in 1987 at the height of the country’s drug war, the sale of more than 10,000 kilos of marijuana qualifies as a very high-level offense. If a judge concludes that the defendant possessed guns “in furtherance” of the crime, operated a house where the drugs were stashed, or helped run a trafficking organization, the level of the offense goes up even higher.
The prosecutors in Romans’ case were able to use testimony from his fellow dealers and his ex-wife to argue that Romans had done all three of those things. Romans maintains his innocence in accordance with these charges, and says the other dealers lied in exchange for reduced sentences. But the judge didn't believe him. According to the sentencing guidelines, he was now subject to a life sentence.
All hope wasn't yet lost for Romans. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case, United States v. Booker, that judges do not have to comply with the sentencing guidelines. And as the country’s views on drugs, and, in particular, marijuana, have begun to shift in recent years, many judges in drug cases have chosen to mete out sentences that are lighter than what the guidelines recommend.
Romans' sentencing hearing took place in February 2013, two years after his transfer to the Texas jail. Standing before Judge Marcia Crone, Romans’ court-appointed lawyer, James Whalen, made a last-ditch plea for leniency.
“I -- I have been doing this long enough and I have had clients receive life sentences,” he said in a halting cadence captured in the court transcript. “And the one thing they've always -- the common denominator in all those life sentence cases is they murdered somebody.”
“Well, you can get life for not murdering people,” retorted Crone.
“I know you can,” said Whalen. “But to me this is not that case, Your Honor.”
Crone wasn’t impressed by Whalen’s argument. “I think a life sentence is appropriate in this instance,” she said.
Crone specifically noted that she didn’t support the recent efforts made by states around the country to loosen restrictions around pot. “I don't agree with it, and the federal government hasn't changed the marijuana laws,” she said. “I think it's misguided, the places that have. So I don't agree with that. And I'm not going to look at trends.”
Romans entered prison in April of last year. A few weeks after his arrival, his parents and sister suddenly stopped getting calls from him. They later found out that a group of inmates had rioted, prompting the guards to lock everyone in their cells for a two-week stretch.
Several months after that, according to Romans' sister, Elizabeth Bishop, Romans returned from lunch to find guards in his cell and blood spattered all over the walls and the beds. “Somebody attempted to murder his cellmate,” his sister explained.
Romans has never been convicted of a violent crime, and Bishop, for her part, insists he’s as gentle as can be, despite the evidence that he had guns and ran the smuggling ring. “Scared of a spider” was how she put it.
And yet he's sentenced to spend the rest of his life under the same roof as men like Ricky Mungia, a Texan who went on a shooting spree with some white and Latino friends in 1994, hunting down black men in the streets of Lubbock and shooting them from a car with a short-barreled shotgun.
According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, it costs an average of $30,000 a year to keep someone confined in a high-security lockup, and as a person ages and requires more medical care, the cost increases. “We’re talking 40, 50, 60 thousand dollars a year to keep someone in a cell until they die, when they could be working and paying into their insurance,” Zlotnick said. “It’s insane.”
Last August, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo advising prosecutors to avoid asking judges to give harsh sentences to low-level drug defendants. Drug-reform advocates hailed the memo as an important step toward scaling back the drug war, but it’s unclear whether it could help someone convicted of a high-level offense, like Romans.
Romans still says he was just a middleman, and has filed an appeal. On Tuesday night, he used the last of his monthly allotment of 300 phone minutes to talk to The Huffington Post. Asked how he felt when he learned he would be getting life, he said, “I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it.”
“They gave me a life sentence for marijuana,” he said. He seemed truly surprised by his predicament.
After a few more minutes the phone went silent. |
Shen’s anger and ambivalence about Trump’s call speak to broader anxiety in China right now about what to make of the U.S. president-elect and the trajectory of relations between the two countries. When I asked Shen whether he was concerned about a Trump presidency destabilizing international affairs, he told me disorder was already upon us. When I asked him whether he thought America, under Trump, would remain the most powerful nation on the planet, he answered without hesitation: “No.” An edited and condensed transcript of our conversation follows.
Uri Friedman: You’ve studied U.S.-China relations for a long time. What was your initial impression of Trump’s Taiwan call?
Shen Dingli: I think the president-elect is still a private citizen. Any American private citizen has the right to say anything that goes against the U.S. government, [including] policy on China. The U.S. government can only make the government itself observe the line.
Friedman: Why do you make the distinction between a private citizen and the president? In just a couple months, Trump is going to be president.
Shen: Any bullshitter can say bullshit things. So I don’t care what he says. But if [and when] he is president, I really care.
Taiwan is a part of China, so the U.S. should not touch [it]. Like how the Hawaii independence movement, the Texas independence movement, [should be considered] U.S. internal affairs that China should not touch.
Friedman: What is your sense of how the Chinese government is processing Trump’s call to Taiwan so far?
Shen: [Chinese leaders] are downplaying it, [suggesting that] he has been played by Taiwan. The Washington Post is saying no, he played Taiwan. China has been hurt by Trump, but the Chinese government wants to protect Trump by saying no, he did not place the call, he is just inexperienced, so why do we care?
Friedman: Why do you think the Chinese government wants to protect Trump?
Shen: Because what can you do? Can you really cut off the official relationship with the U.S.? No, you cannot. You [may] hurt yourself more than America. So the Chinese government does not want to hurt China by hurting Trump. But I don’t care. I’m not the government.
Friedman: In the days after the U.S. election, you cheered Trump’s victory. People might be surprised to hear that, since Trump bashed China during the campaign and talked about imposing a 45-percent tariff on Chinese imports, which could risk a trade war. What made you say that at the time?
Shen: Trump does not care about human rights; he traded with China [as a businessman]. Democrats care more about human rights—sometimes, they place values above trade. The Republicans, oftentimes, care more about trade. For trade, Obama created the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] that excludes China, that makes China less able to export competently. Trump would abolish the TPP, which would give China some breathing space. |
This is the one hundred and twenty second episode of Shatter The Vain. I’m Brad Chmielewski and this is a podcast all about the mobile MOBA Vainglory created by Super Evil Megacorp.
Coming off of TwitchCon there was a ton of great announcements for Vainglory, including the new hero Gwen and the re-colored special edition Celeste & Petal skin. All this should be coming in update 1.23, which should be dropping any day now and I can’t wait for this update. Joining me on this episode to go over all the fun stuff coming down the pipeline is Gary of My Video Games News.
The two of us also chat about the new Vainglory content creator program, as well as a few tips and tricks for new players who might have started playing recently. Although there are a lot of similarities between DOTA2, League Of Legends and Vainglory, there are still a few differences that are always good to know when you first start playing.
All that and more on episode 122 of Shatter The Vain! If you’re typically an audio listener to the podcast, be sure to check out the video version on the Shatter The Vain YouTube channel.
If you’re looking for more ways to support the show, besides just listening then check out Shatter The Vain on Patreon. I’d love the opportunity to do more episodes like this in the future along with the usual episodes you’ve come to love. If you aren’t able to be a Patreon backer of the show right now, no problem and thanks for listening.
Having issues listening to the audio? Try the MP3 (74.3 MB) or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher. |
It's not just Microsoft that enjoyed a record-breaking holiday season. Sony on Tuesday announced that it sold more than 5.7 million PlayStation 4 systems during the holiday season, bringing the platforms' new sales tally to 35.9 million units globally as of January 3, 2016. This is up from 30.2 million at the end of November.
The holiday season is defined by Sony as November 22, 2015 through January 2, 2016 for North America, Latin America, and Europe. In Japan and Asia, it's November 23, 2015 through January 3, 2016.
PS4 game sales were also strong during the holiday season, with more than 35 million copies sold at brick-and-mortar stores and through the PlayStation Store. Sales numbers for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita games were not divulged, nor did Sony name a top-selling PS4 holiday game.
Sony also today announced that PlayStation Plus subscriptions rose by 60 percent compared to the same period last year, though no specific figures were shared.
"We are absolutely delighted that so many customers have selected PS4 as the best place to play throughout this holiday season and that the PS4 community is growing more than ever," Sony Computer Entertainment president and CEO Andrew House said in a statement. "We remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver innovative entertainment experiences."
House went on to say that Sony aims to deliver an "unprecedented games portfolio" to the PS4 in 2016. He called out titles like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, a new Hot Shots Golf, and The Last Guardian in the press release. Other big exclusives or timed exclusives for PS4 in 2016 include Street Fighter V, No Man's Sky, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Gran Turismo Sport. 2016 also marks the release of PlayStation VR.
In December, PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida said the PS4 is getting an "unprecedented rush" of big games in 2016. "It's the year PS4 users, and those who are on the fence on whether to buy it will absolutely think, 'It's good to have a PS4.' Please look forward to it," he said at the time.
For its part, Microsoft is also claiming that 2016 will be a huge year for Xbox games. Microsoft has not announced any new Xbox One sales numbers (and doesn't plan to), while executive Phil Spencer previously said Sony's lead is so large that Microsoft may never be able to catch up. |
MLB Hall of Fame catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez stands with Texas Rangers manager Jeff Banister (28) in the dugout before a spring training game against the Chicago Cubs at the Rangers' training facility on Sunday, March 5, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
SURPRISE, Ariz. -- New Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez, making a one-day visit as a special instructor to the Rangers camp, cast a vote for wider inclusion in the Hall of Fame. Rodriguez, who was the subject of unsubstantiated steroid-use rumors after his career , said he would be in favor of players such as Barry Bonds being included in future classes.
"I think these are things baseball needs to put in the past," Rodriguez said when asked about players from the Steroid Era. "It's time to think about the game of baseball. There are others who should be in the Hall of Fame, as well. They had great careers. Why not?"
Rodriguez recently received a private tour of the Hall of Fame after meeting with officials about logistics for the July 30 induction ceremonies. He also signed the spot where his plaque -- which he won't see until the induction -- will be placed. While there, Rodriguez spent extra time lingering on the plaques commemorating fellow Puerto Rican native Roberto Clemente, catcher Johnny Bench and former Rangers teammate Nolan Ryan.
"Signing that wall kind of made it real," he said. "Until then, I was still telling my wife 'I don't believe this.' "
MORE PUDGE |
Stardate 1355.09This morning was a buzz of activity as everyone made final preparations for departure.
Lala has now stepped from her role as acting captain. It’s now my turn to take over the command. Oh boy, I am still nervous. I have been coached on what proper commands to give to Yami and Mea to go into or out of warp. Things should be just fine, fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, Haruna is filling in for Tearju Sensei as communication officer. She’s actually talking to Yui Kotegawa back on Earth. We wanted to make sure that she would be familiar with our house, especially where the Devilukes lived. Kami help us if the whole house burns down because Yui-San accidentally flipped a switch she wasn’t supposed to flip.
Meanwhile, Tearju-Sensei and Yami were prepping the Warp core, making sure it could handle a long journey. Surprisingly, Mikan has taken an interest in how the Warp core works, and she’s been tailing after the two blond women as they went on an inspection around the core.
Zastin and his crew finally arrived after a brief trip back to Earth they wanted to make sure my Dad knew about the trip. Honestly, I wonder how he could survive the road to Comiket happens.
They came back from in their own ship, which the docked in the shuttle bay. Their vessel, along with the lunatique would both serve as transport shuttles to and from our starship, the Astroboy. Since both ships were both capable of some transwarp capabilities they also served as life boats should anything happen the the main ship. With luck, we may never have to explore these capabilities.
As soon as they arrived, Momo greeted them with some special uniforms. At first they looked like ordinary shirts from the local department store, but upon closer inspection, it was revealed that they were nothing I had ever encountered. They were made of materials so supple to the touch that she you put them on, they almost feel like nothing at all. You feel naked in them, as I found out when I put mine on. I had to add a black t-shirt underneath to reduce the discomfort. My uniform was yellow, bringing out out the hexagonal weaving in the fabric. Meanwhile, Zastin and his crew all got Red shirts to signify their role as security officers.
The girls, meanwhile had a different design: sleeveless with a short skirt that flew up when they made any sudden movement. Most of them, like me, are wearing normal clothing underneath, but some like Mikan chose to remain sleeveless.
Most of the girls are wearing blue, but Yami and Mea are wearing yellow, like me, and Haruna is wearing a Red uniform. Ryouko-Sensei, Run-chan and Kyouko-chan all wore special white uniforms, as they are the medical personal on this ship.
I’m still a little shocked by Kyouko’s being here. It’s so nice to see her after so long.
Preparations are nearly complete. We will be starting our departure procedures in a few hours. Stand by. |
Researchers have found an intriguing resemblance between the human cells and neutron stars, some of the the smallest and densest stars known to exist.
When I was a kid and I learned about cells and planets, I had a strange idea: what if our planets are just cells inside a gargantuan organism, which itself lives on a planet which itself is a cell… and so on. Well, we’re still a while away from confirming my childhood, but cells and stars might have more in common than you’d think — at least some stars.
In 2014, UC Santa Barbara soft condensed-matter physicist Greg Huber and colleagues explored the geometry of a cellular organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). They found a distinctive shape, something like a multi-story parking garage. They dubbed them Terasaki ramps after their discoverer, Mark Terasaki, a cell biologist at the University of Connecticut. They found that this shape was virtually unique, reserved for thes specific organelles inside the human body — or so they thought. At one point, they stumbled upon the work of nuclear physicist Charles Horowitz at Indiana University, who was studying neutron stars. Using computer models, he concluded that deep inside neutron stars, similar shapes emerged. Huber was shocked.
“I called Chuck and asked if he was aware that we had seen these structures in cells and had come up with a model for them,” said Huber, the deputy director of UCSB’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). “It was news to him, so I realized then that there could be some fruitful interaction.”
Crossing an interdisciplinary border is not easy, especially when it comes to two fields which are so different from one another. But, as it usually happens with these collaborations, the results were outstanding. Astrophysicists have their own terminology for the class of shapes they see in their high-performance computer simulations of neutron stars: nuclear pasta. The surprisingly suitable name has subcategories such as tubes (spaghetti) and parallel sheets (lasagna) connected by helical shapes that resemble Terasaki ramps.
“They see a variety of shapes that we see in the cell,” Huber explained. “We see a tubular network; we see parallel sheets. We see sheets connected to each other through topological defects we call Terasaki ramps. So the parallels are pretty deep.”
However, once you start to look deep enough, differences also start emerging. The relevant physical parameters (temperature and pressure for example) are widely different at cellular and stellar scales.
“For neutron stars, the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force create what is fundamentally a quantum-mechanical problem,” Huber explained. “In the interior of cells, the forces that hold together membranes are fundamentally entropic and have to do with the minimization of the overall free energy of the system. At first glance, these couldn’t be more different.”
Still, the similarities are riveting for both biologists and astrophysicists. Is there some intrinsic phenomenon which shapes both things this way, some way of preserving energy or distributing matter, or is it all a grand, cosmic coincidence? Horowitz believes they’re on to something here.
“Seeing very similar shapes in such strikingly different systems suggests that the energy of a system may depend on its shape in a simple and universal way,” he said.
Huber noted that these similarities are still rather mysterious.
“Our paper is not the end of something,” he said. “It’s really the beginning of looking at these two models.”
Journal Reference: “Parking-garage” structures in nuclear astrophysics and cellular biophysics Phys. Rev. C 94, 055801 – Published 1 November 2016, journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.94.055801
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For those who didn’t know, CN Australia is going to hold an event next week (March 10th to 12th) featuring Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio, Hynden Walch and Olivia Olson.
So, what is this event all about? This.
Like I said in a previous post, they’re going to show a new episode in this event before CN US. This new episode is going to air in June.
Please, if you’re going to this event, post everything on your blog or the AT Reddit, especially the Q&A, even if it has some pointless questions and answers, like shipping. We need some juicy infos during the hiatus.
As for the new episode: Record or take some pictures. if recording isn’t allowed, then do a short recap or something. Remember, post using the tag #adventure time spoilers or #at spoilers.
Here’s the link to the event: http://contest.cartoonnetwork.com.au/2016/12_AdventureTimeLive/ |
The Claim And Criticisms
In October 2016, molecular geneticist Jan Vijg published a paper claiming that the human lifespan was limited to 115 years. This kindled a vigorous controversy among scientists, and on June 28 of this year, five groups of scientists published formal rebuttals to the claim.
Vijg’s work analyzed demographic data from the 20th century, taken all over the world, and demonstrated that peak age plateaued at about 115 years starting in the mid-1990s. Based on their results, the authors concluded that the natural human age limit is 115 years old and that there is the probability of less than 1 in 10,000 of living to be more than 125 years old.
You could probably guess, not everyone in the scientific community agrees. Most criticisms arise from the way the Vijg team handled their data, and their process for drawing conclusions. First, the Vijg team tested their data to prove whether or not the plateau they felt they observed after 1995 was in fact present. In other words, they generated a hypothesis and then tested it using the same dataset, which is typically unacceptable, as it causes inaccurate results due to severe overfitting, a fit based on error or noise, not a real relationship.
Second, the team’s actual data set was very small because in each year they counted only the oldest person who died. They then subjected this inordinately small sample to standard linear regression techniques, which was not appropriate based both on the small sample size, and the additional fact that the individuals being counted were outliers who should have been subject to extreme event analysis. In fact, the decline suggested in the 2016 conclusions appears to be suggested by a single death in the data set. |
Share. With Justice League now out, here are our picks for the best Caped Crusaders in cinema. With Justice League now out, here are our picks for the best Caped Crusaders in cinema.
By Matt Fowler With Justice League now in theaters ( our review here ), it's time to light up the Bat-Signal, call all the Dark Knights to action, and figure out who the best movie Batman truly is.
Whether they appeared only once as the Caped Crusader or starred in a full-fledged trilogy, these stars all hold the honor of donning the cape and cowl of Gotham's one true protector. Whether it was an animated release, a colorful tongue-in-cheek romp, or a grounded and gritty take on the vengeful vigilante, the following actors breathed life, for better or worse, into Bruce Wayne and his cranky costumed alter ego. (And a note: We're not including the Batmen from the old movie serials here because movie serials aren't really movies.)
In Justice League, Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman call together a team of super-powered heroes to face off against Ciarán Hinds' Steppenwolf. This new iteration of Batman has yet to be featured in his own standalone film, and when that movie comes around there's a good chance Affleck won't be in it, but how does the Bat-fleck of now stack up against Batmen of the past? Check out our Best Movie Batman rankings below...
Actors Who Almost Played Batman 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image ESC 01 13 Many have tried out, but few have earned the coveted role of Batman. Here are some of the more notable actors who almost donned the cape and cowl. Advertisement 01 13 Many have tried out, but few have earned the coveted role of Batman. Here are some of the more notable actors who almost donned the cape and cowl. Actors Who Almost Played Batman Warner Bros. Download Image Captions ESC
8 George Clooney
Fans were excited when George Clooney was announced as Val Kilmer's replacement for Joel Schumacher's follow up to Batman Forever. Clooney was super hot from NBC's ER and had proven himself to be a capable action hero in From Dusk Till Dawn. Little did we know that Batman & Robin would wind up being the worst Batman installment of the '80/'90s run (and of any decade, really) and that Clooney himself would actually be bad as Batman in it. It's one thing to be the best part of an awful movie, but Clooney was no saving grace. Years later, he'll still readily apologize for "ruining Batman" - though he wasn't solely responsible. A lot of effort went into making Batman & Robin a cartoonish, nippled mess.
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7 Val Kilmer
Strong-jawed Val Kilmer was director Joel Schumacher's first Batman, for a mixed bag of a film, Batman Forever , that was a half dark and half over-the-top stab at making the franchise more kid-friendly. With Kilmer's stint came the (modern) franchise's first attempt at making Batman be more than just a side character/afterthought in his own movie. Unfortunately that meant that Kilmer's Bruce Wayne had to, essentially, forget why he was Batman. Yes, Batman's arc in the movie involved him being plagued by a dream that he'd eventually come to recognize as the buried memory of the night he decided to become a vigilante who dressed up like a bat.
6 Will Arnett
♪"Darkness! No Parents!"
As a breakout character from The LEGO Movie, Will Arnett's hilarious tragedy-obsessed action hero-bro eventually got his own spinoff movie. Cleverly expanding on some of the character's most famous themes, the film tackled both Bruce Wayne's deep-rooted desire to push away friends and family for their own protection and Batman's almost symbiotic relationship with arch-nemesis The Joker. Arnett's comedic delivery and a funny script combined to create a memorable character-focused animated adventure.
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5 Ben Affleck
The already-mega famous Ben Affleck came into the costume as part of DC and Warner Bros.' attempt to jump-start a huge cinematic universe with the second movie of a franchise. After the Tim Burton films and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, the feeling was that you could now easily skip over Batman's origins (though we did get that flashback to Crime Alley) and just have him exist as an already established character with little build up. And for the most part that worked, mostly thanks to Affleck's brooding, sarcastic take on Bruce and Batman's understandable resentment of Superman.
4 Michael Keaton
When established comedic actor Michael Keaton was cast as Batman for Tim Burton's seminally dark, gothic cinematic take on the character, fans were in an uproar. Well, as big of an uproar as there could be back before the internet. Later on though, after two films, fans could hardly imagine anyone else playing the character when the news came that Keaton was leaving the franchise. That says a lot for the actor on this list who probably did the most with the least. Keaton was able to create a vital and memorable Batman despite sometimes feeling like a supporting character in movies that shined huge spotlights on the villains and their respective origin stories.
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3 Adam West
Adam West was best known for playing Batman on TV, sure, but the 1966 Batman movie that sprang from the series, featuring West's Batman and Burt Ward's Robin (and some Bat-Shark Repellent spray) squaring off against all their major adversaries - Catwoman, Riddler, Joker, and Penguin - is an essential camp classic. For an entire generation, West, and the good-hearted, campy nature of the '60s show, was the quintessential take on Batman. This was the tone and style that Joel Schumacher tried, and failed, to evoke with his two films (particularly with Batman & Robin). Only the beloved West and his delightfully dry delivery could pull this off.
2 Christian Bale
The most complete Batman movie journey (even though you may have issues with the way the story ended or with Batman's "SWEAR TO ME! voice) can be found within Christopher Nolan's compelling and grounded Dark Knight trilogy, featuring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman. In almost a direct response to the previous franchise's inability to properly focus on Batman himself, the Nolan films took a deep dive into Bruce's origins and motivations, even spending an entire movie on his transformation into the Caped Crusader. Bale himself may arguably have been a better Bruce Wayne than a Batman, but his tormented take on the character's self-loathing and guilt, along with a strong desire to actually stop being a hero once he felt like Gotham was in good hands, made for an iconic performance.
History of the Justice League on TV 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image ESC 01 13 You’ve probably seen a Justice League television series or two, but have you seen them all? We doubt it, but let’s find out! Join us as we take you on a guided history of the Justice League on TV… Advertisement 01 13 You’ve probably seen a Justice League television series or two, but have you seen them all? We doubt it, but let’s find out! Join us as we take you on a guided history of the Justice League on TV… History of the Justice League on TV Download Image Captions ESC
1 Kevin Conroy
Kevin Conroy, through just his groovy and gravely voice acting alone, worked to create one of the most iconic and long-standing representations of Batman to date. Batman: The Animated Series ran for over 80 episodes in the mid-90s and stands, for many, as a near-perfect representation of the Dark Knight and his foes. The series gave us two movies, one of which, Mask of the Phantasm, got a theatrical release, and led to Conroy voicing the character on other shows within the DC animated universe - up through, even, 2010's Batman: The Brave and the Bold (in a guest capacity). Conroy also voiced Batman in three of the four Arkham games, once again proving the fact that for most fans he was, and still is, the definitive voice of the character.
Who is your favorite movie Batman? Let's discuss in the comments! |
MAKE SURE TO READ THE UPDATES IN APPENDICIES B AND C
Hi everyone,
We are about to make some significant changes to how long-distance travel in various forms works in EVE, with the aim of significantly increasing minimum travel times between two arbitrary distant points, most particularly in regards to jump drive and portal based movement. The overarching reason for this is that the current ease of movement has shrunk the practical dimensions of New Eden considerably, to the detriment of the game experience.
Why this?/Why now?
Nullsec is stagnant and needs a change. This is the first of many steps in our plan.
Big fights are cool, but they’re crowding out more accessible and more frequent smaller ones.
These changes have positive implications for people not involved in sovereignty warfare, for example making use of capitals in lowsec less risky.
We expect the impact of these changes to be emergent, and as a consequence are unpredictable and will take a while to develop on TQ. This plays into our longer-term plans, as you’ll see in a second!
How do these changes fit into the Nullsec plan?
As we’ve previously discussed at Fanfest, in our recent forum post, and in the premiere episode of The o7 Show, a group of developers here at CCP has been working on Nullsec and associated game systems with the goal of releasing a series of changes to shake up the status quo and improve the overall state of Nullsec. We are planning to deploy changes over several phases, which will each provide specific improvements individually while also fitting into one greater whole.
Phase One contains the long-distance travel changes, as well as some other associated changes planned in Phoebe in November. These changes are not intended to be a silver bullet to fix all of Nullsec’s issues in one fell blow. Instead, they represent a significant improvement to specific areas of concern for Nullsec (and Lowsec) while also setting the stage for the later changes.
Phase Two is focused on medium-term changes to the ways that organizations capture and hold Nullsec space and infrastructure. We are working with the CSM as we firm up our plans for this phase and as we develop internal prototypes. It is during this phase that we expect to make greater progress towards smaller and more diverse Nullsec holdings. It is too early to go into great detail about what these changes will contain, but currently most of our conceptual prototyping has loosely fallen into categories that could be described as “occupancy-based” systems and more “freeform” systems that decentralize sov to focus more on control of the individual pieces of infrastructure. As we continue this investigation we will be working closely with the CSM and following all appropriate player feedback.
Phase Three is the stage that CCP Seagull discussed in the EVE Keynote at Fanfest this year. This stage is intended to build upon the changes that we are planning for starbases/structures and corps/alliances in 2015, changes that will open up new possibilities for more dynamic warfare and more granular control of territory. This phase is also intended to lead quite deliberately into the future through our vision for player-built stargates.
By splitting the task of improving Nullsec into manageable chunks, we are ensuring that we get you the best changes as quickly as possible rather than holding back needed updates. We’re happy to be getting the first significant chunk of these changes out to you all later this year.
What is changing?
We are going to allow capital ships to use gates in lowsec/nullsec, and we are aiming to make gate-to-gate travel take less time than jump travel over distances of more than ~20 LY. We've run simulations for capital ships travelling between arbitrary pairs of systems, and settled on the target movement speed of no less than 3 minutes per lightyear for travel over 20 LY. This should allow us to bring about the main change we want to see – less sustained use of jump travel – while still preserving its value for short bursts of movement.
How is this going to be achieved?
The primary change is the addition of a new mechanic, called "jump fatigue".
Jump fatigue is tracked for each character, persisting between play sessions and over downtimes as appropriate.
Every time you use any jump drive, jump bridge or jump portal (hereafter all treated as "a jump"; note that this does NOT include stargate travel!), you will accumulate jump fatigue. If your fatigue is below 1 before a jump, your fatigue will be 1 + (light years travelled) after the jump. For subsequent jumps, the fatigue is multiplied after each jump by 1 + (light years travelled). This stays on the character as mentioned earlier, and decays at a rate of 0.1 per minute.
After a jump is complete but before your fatigue is increased, you gain a jump cooldown timer. The length of this timer is a number of minutes equal to your jump fatigue (before being increased by that jump!), and you are unable to make another jump of any kind until this timer expires. Note importantly that, because fatigue decays at a slower rate than a cooldown timer, you will retain fatigue for a length of time after your cooldown timer expires. Additionally, there is a minimum jump cooldown of 1 + (light years travelled) minutes. (See Appendix A for examples.)
The status of both your fatigue and your cooldown timer will be displayed in the timer bar in the upper left corner of the screen:
In addition:
Almost all jump-capable ships will have their range reduced to 5 LY after skills; this is both necessary to allow us to not penalize short-distance travel in a cleaner way, and also as a goal in and of itself to constrain the distance covered in single hops. . (Note that jump portal range on a ship is always the same as its own jump drive range.)
As above, capital ships will be able to use stargates, but will for the time being they will still be barred from entering Highsec (that is a larger discussion that we would like to revisit in future).
What else?
You will only be able to move your medical clone to the station you are currently docked at. This prevents obvious movement workarounds with suicide-cloning. (If your clone contract is revoked by the station owner, we are keeping the current behavior that it is moved to your home system as defined in the character sheet.)
Hitpoints and resistances on various sovereignty-related structures will be revisited, to balance out the reduced ability to use Supercarriers against them. Stay tuned for a follow-up blog on this.
We will be releasing a collection of other smaller changes in Phoebe that will be of interest to many of the same people who are affected by these travel changes. These include a rebalance of starbase weapons, a rebalance of stealth bombers and heavy interdictors, enabling of lowsec doomsdays, and changes to interdictor bubble mechanics. More information to come.
What's not changing?
Starbase jump bridges already have a 5 LY range, so they don't need range adjustments.
We are hoping to leave skills as they are for the initial release; we will likely readjust them in the near future, but we want to see how behavior settles down first.
Jump clones are being left alone for the time being. We are likely to want to revisit them once the initial changes shake out, the use of ship caches becomes clear and so on, but they serve a diverse enough set of purposes (null-null movement, null-highsec movement, implant swapping etc.) that we don’t want to make major changes too quickly.
What's being special-cased?
Jump Freighters and Rorquals will gain a role bonus: 90% reduction to effective range jumped for the purposes of all these calculations, but will otherwise get all the described changes. This means that, for all the math we’re doing on this feature, whenever we use the range jumped as a variable we first multiply it by 0.1 . We will still likely want to revisit the logistical power of these ships in future, but for now we want to bring them into the new system without nerfing them too hard.
Black Ops ships will have their range unchanged, but will otherwise get all the described changes. This also keeps the range of their jump portals unchanged. We don’t feel that Black Ops range needs adjustment right now.
What are the anticipated consequences?
In the short term, we would anticipate a reduction in the degree to which the average non-trivial capital fight escalates, and the number of parties involved. This seems likely to increase the frequency of capitals being deployed in small-scale engagements, in both lowsec and nullsec.
Over the medium term, we see the potential for more substantial changes in the nullsec status quo as the various competing parties work to adjust their internal objectives to the new situation; it seems plausible that the general reduction in travel capabilities will lead to more localism, but we don't want to make any firm predictions in this area. We're confident that these changes improve the overall system of lowsec and nullsec gameplay and take them in better directions, but any set of changes that would allow us to accurately predict their consequences would by their nature be too simple to be interesting for very long.
What's next?
We will be actively participating in the comments thread of this blog and listening elsewhere around the internet.
These changes will be appearing on the Singularity test server in the next couple of weeks.
We anticipate shipping them in Phoebe, which comes out in November.
We are expecting to make follow-up adjustments in Rhea, in December.
The medium-term shake-out of these changes will be very impactful on sovereignty-system changes we are anticipating making next year, so we are expecting to revisit all this again as the work on those changes progresses.
Greyscale, on behalf of the Nullsec Working Group (Scarpia, Fozzie, Ytterbium, Rise, Bettik, Delegate Zero, Masterplan and Nullarbor)
**Update:** As mentioned above, we're taking feedback and responding in the thread, so look for those blue bars. Greyscale has also created a short FAQ that will be updated as needed as the first reply to the thread.
Appendix A – Examples
Little Bobby Tables is sitting in his Archon in UJY-HE in at the top of Deklein, just after the Oceanus release. He wants to travel to Atioth, at the bottom of Geminate, which is around 50 LY as the space-crow flies. He consults a popular jump planning service, which gives him a route of four jumps and 53 LY. He’s travel fit and has max skills, so his jump range is 14.625 LY and he’s expecting to be limited primarily by the session change timer. The journey takes him around two minutes.
A month or so later, he’s back in UJY-HE, and Phoebe has just shipped. His Archon’s jump range is now 5 LY. He consults his jump planner, and finds that his route is now 12 jumps and 54 LY. He hasn’t jumped anywhere since the release, so he has no jump fatigue.
His first jump, of 4.85 LY, takes him to U-TJ7Y. Because he has no fatigue before the jump, he gains a minimum-length jump cooldown timer: 1 minute, plus 4.85 minutes for the distance travelled, for a total of 5.85 minutes, or 5 minutes 51 seconds. He also gains a jump fatigue value of 5.85.
He waits for just under six minutes. In this time his jump fatigue decays down to 5.27 . He then makes his next jump – 3.57 LY to LEK-N5 . He gets a 5 minute 16 second jump cooldown timer, because his fatigue was 5.27 when he jumped, and his minimum timer would be 4 minutes 34 seconds based on range travelled. He then gets a fatigue increase after the jump. Because he travelled 3.57 LY, his fatigue is multiplied by 4.57, taking it up to 24.06.
He waits out his timer, which also reduces his fatigue to 23.53 . After his cooldown timer expires, he makes his third jump, to RO0-AF, a distance of 4.19 LY. He gains a jump cooldown timer of 23 minutes 32 seconds, and his fatigue is multiplied by 5.19, up to 122.14.
After waiting for 23.5 minutes at the convenient local station, his fatigue is down to 119.79 . He jumps again, to 2R-CRW – 4.9 LY. At this point his cooldown timer is 2 hours 2 minutes 8 seconds, and his fatigue is 706.74 . At this point his total distance travelled is 17.51 LY, leaving him with 37.04 LY to go. He looks at his map, and finds a 40-route jump through nullsec to get to the same destination, and figuring two minutes per system, his warp travel time for the whole journey is a bit over half the cooldown for his next jump. He decides to fly there directly rather than trying to jump any further.
The next week, he finds he needs to take his Ark from HED-GP to 373Z-7, at the bottom of Stain. It’s been long enough that his fatigue has entirely decayed, so he’s starting fresh again. He plots the route, and sets off.
First jump takes him to 5-N2EY, 4.73 LY. Because his jump freighter counts distances as being 10% of their actual distance, he incurs a minimum timer of 1.47 minutes, or 88 seconds. His fatigue similarly becomes 1.47, dropping to 1.32 while he waits out the delay.
He jumps again when his timer expires, to 4NBN-9, a 4.88 LY jump. His timer after this would be 79 seconds, but because this is a longer jump his minimum is 89 seconds (1.488*60). His fatigue is multiplied by 1.488, taking it to 1.97, and then dropping back to 1.82 as he waits out the timer.
This continues until he reaches 373Z-7, with a total journey time of around 7.5 minutes, and a jump distance of 22.3 LY.
Appendix B - Frequently Asked Questions
Can supercapital ships use gates after this change?
Yes.
Does this make it too difficult for new pilots to get out into 0.0?
Yes, it probably does. Following further discussion after publishing this dev blog, we have come up with the following additional feature:
For players less than thirty days old, once per player corporation joined, or
For all players greater than thirty days old, once per year:
You may push a button in your corp interface (while a member of a player corp and docked) that:
Moves your medical clone to a station designated by your corporation, and
Then moves you to the (new) station containing your medical clone
The exact method of corporations designating the target station is still being ironed out, but it will involve at the very least being able to designate a default station for all corp members and will likely be allowed for any station with a corp office, regardless of system sec status. This seems to us like it solves the "I want to recruit people to Nullsec" concern, and also gives non-Nullsec recruiters an easier way to get genuinely new players to the right location quickly and easily.
Is the balance for Black Ops final?
No. Please give feedback!
Very large fatigue values will take a loooong time to decay, is this too much?
Possibly yes, we'll have a look at this.
Does a titan providing a bridge gain fatigue when people jump through it?
No. Only if the titan itself jumps.
Is the ability to push your fatigue up to really high numbers a good idea?
Probably not, no. We're looking at just capping fatigue at 1 month.
Appendix C - Updates
Conclusions we have reached through this exercise:
The ease of nullsec logistics permitted by jump freighters, and to a lesser extent jump bridge networks, is not aligned with where we would like nullsec industry to be.
It is however, pretty well aligned with where nullsec industry is right now. As we improve the status quo for industry in nullsec, we will want to reevaluate this balance along with the impact potential changes would have on logistical work for other areas of the game.
We're pretty happy with the impact of the proposed changes on the movement of non-covert combat ships, as it relates to both jump drives and jump bridges for all ranges.
We're not overly concerned about the battle rorqual; if it starts being used in a widespread fashion we will nerf it, but we're not expecting this to happen.
We're also not overly concerned yet about High Grade Ascendency equipped capital fleets, since such capital movement would be very vulnerable to disruption and because it relies on very rare items. If this becomes a widespread usage pattern we will likely take action, and we'll be keeping a close eye on everything surrounding capital movement after Phoebe.
Black ops are working in a generally OK manner on TQ right now, and we want to minimize harm to their use with these changes.
We don't like repeating decimals.
Therefore, changes we are making to the previously-announced plan:
Jump freighter max range will be bumped up to 10LY, and they will keep the 90% fatigue-distance reduction. This represents a slight range reduction compared to TQ so some cynos will need to be repositioned, but otherwise leaves them largely alone. Note that, because ranges multiply together for fatigue purposes, one 10LY jump is substantially less fatiguing (multiply by 11) than two 5LY jumps (multiply by 36). Rorquals will stay at 5LY/90%.
All ships designated as having a "hauling" role in ISIS (i.e. the following ship groups: Industrial, Blockade Runner, Deep Space Transport, Industrial Command Ship, Freighter) will similarly get a 90% reduction to distance counted for the purpose of fatigue generation. Obviously they can't jump themselves, but this does apply to the use of bridges or portals.
We are adding some additional code to allow us to put a bonus on jump portals that reduces fatigue generation for all ships jumping through that portal. This will be applied to Covert Jump Portals, with a value of around 50% (subject to further tuning). This means that all ships using a black ops portal will generate less fatigue.
We're going to bump the max range of black ops ships up slightly to 8LY, and likewise give them a ~50% fatigue bonus.
Finally, we're slightly nerfing the skill Jump Drive Calibration from 25%/level to 20%/level, and tuning base ranges accordingly. This allows us to give most capital ships a base range of 2.5LY, rather than 2.2r LY, and still hit our max range targets. More work on these skills will probably be done in future, this is just minimum changes necessary to get these changes on TQ so we can see how they play out in practice and establish how comparatively valuable their different bonuses are.
For more details on these updates, please see this forum thread. |
Gunther Oettinger said that European businesses need to be able to compete at the forefront of developments relating to the fourth industrial revolution, industry 4.0, which is being driven by advancements in technology and that hubs have a role to play in achieving that.
Oettinger said he wants at least one "world class digital innovation hub" to be established in "every region in Europe", similar to the existing catapult centres in the UK and Fraunhofer research institute in Germany.
"We need to facilitate access to digital technologies for any industry in Europe: our ambition should be to empower any business, wherever it is located in Europe, and especially SMEs, to master its digital transition," the commissioner said. "Every industry, large or small, high-tech or non-tech, must have a good understanding of the digital opportunities and easy access to knowledge and testing facilities in latest digital technologies."
"Regions and local authorities have a key role to play in this effort, with digital research and competence centres leading the way," he said. "These centres should be at the heart of digital innovation hubs in every region of Europe. They should be specialising to rapidly provide world class expertise and digital skills for their local and regional economy. They should connect with other centres to share knowledge and complement their expertise."
Oettinger said European businesses must adopt digital technologies or risk losing out to rivals based elsewhere in the world. It said only 14% of SMEs in Europe use the internet as a sales channel, and just 1.7% of all European businesses use "advanced digital technologies like robotics, data analytics or cloud computing … to innovate in products and processes".
"The digital revolution in industry is happening fast and the pace of change keeps accelerating. This means that you can fall behind quickly if you do not act fast," Oettinger said. "If we want to realise the potential of digital technologies across the economy, industry in all sectors and everywhere in Europe needs to adopt them as quickly as possible. Our economies in Europe are closely connected, and our industry has built strong cross-border value chains. This is why digitisation of our industry needs to be comprehensive across Europe."
Oettinger said the Commission was to ensure that new "open and interoperable [digital] platforms" are developed in Europe that businesses can use to "make its products, processes or services ready for the digital age".
He said that the Commission is keen to look into developing a new "European platform initiative in digital manufacturing" in collaboration with industry, and said new public private partnerships were needed to support "research and innovation on the next generation of digital platforms".
"My ambition is to upscale developments of European platforms from 2015 onwards with the launch of at least five large-scale platform projects per year until 2018," Oettinger said.
The commissioner also outlined plans to tackle the "digital skills gap" and to "ensure that existing and new regulation is fit for purpose in the digital world".
"New digital business models are challenging existing regulatory systems worldwide, requiring a new way of policy-making," Oettinger said. "Our current regulatory environment can create unforeseen hurdles to digitalisation and uncertainty for digital businesses. This includes for example the liability of systems as they become more autonomous, safety and security with the increasing interaction between smart devices such as robots and humans, and the protection of massive amounts of data generated by digital manufacturing."
"The availability and use of big data is crucial for maintaining the EU's competitiveness. Currently there is a lack of clarity about who owns these industrial data, and about how they may and may not be used. This reduces incentives to develop data-analytics services. It also puts industrial IPR(intellectual property rights) and know-how at risk," he said.
Oettinger called on "key players" to offer suggestions "on how to transform our current legislation on the regulatory framework for platforms, liability, safety, IPR and data protection to make it fit for purpose in the digital world". The Commission is due to publish a new strategy for a digital single market next month. |
After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.
The deal, worth over $13 billion (10 billion euros) came about after the recent performance at the Pirate Bay trial gave strong indications that the judgment would go against Warner Bros. For the Hollywood movie studio, it seems that acquiring The Pirate Bay was the only option left.
In the press release, both groups gave a positive outlook to the deal. “The Pirate Bay team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Warner Bros’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Jim Kjeyzer, Chief Executive Officer of Warner Bros.”
Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was similarly forward looking saying “Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new hip culture. By joining forces with Warner Bros, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners.”
A press conference will be held later today to discuss the finer aspects of the acquisition. The conference will be broadcasted live on the Internet and details for access to the webcast are included in the press release.
How the Pirate Bay’s users will deal with this deal is the only wild-card. Will it be another Exeem, or will it blossom into something powerful and progressive. Only time will tell. |
I’m pleased to introduce a beginning of guest posts on Buffoonery Workshops with a very apt article by the New York Film Academy.
As you know, or if this is the first time coming to my site, I am an actor, writer, and overall creative person. My visual artistic family taught me how to embrace my right brain, but also introduced me to the business side when they opened their own shop. Unfortunately, many actors learn their craft but miss out on that ever so crucial element of the business side.
Enjoy reading what Glenn Kalison has to say with regards to being an actor and a business person.
“Good looks and developed talent can only get you so far.”
“The actor, who actively manages his or her career, including working as one among many on a production set, is more likely to achieve success and manage earnings wisely.”
By Glenn Kalison, Chair of the Acting Department, New York Film Academy
Acting is an art, and most accomplished actors speak of their “craft” as one of creative expression. That is no less true today than 20, 50, 100 and 1000 years ago. But the most successful actors and other types of performers also think of themselves as a business. This is because an actor ultimately must have a valuable and high-quality product, must deliver to a client’s expectation, and must manage cash inflow such that there is a profit when the show is over.
To a performer who is just starting out, this might seem like a distant need. But in fact anyone who plans to earn their living in movies, television or on the stage should consider their business objectives while attending a school for acting. The following tips are among those we teach at the Acting & Film School at the New York Film Academy. It includes advice that can carry you from the earliest stages of your career through to retirement (if you ever in fact do plan to retire – many actors don’t):
Train. This goes beyond the obvious, that you be skilled as an actor, able to harness natural talent with knowledge. What it means is that you have a resume that includes quality training, perhaps in a variety of settings and over time, that will tell a producer, director and casting agent that you are a professional. Needless to say, the competition for just about any job is fierce. A production will choose the actors who demonstrate a commitment to excellence.
Know your niche(s). Actress Jane Lynch (Best in Show, Glee) talks about her earlier years as an actress, where she picked up work here and there but didn’t land leading romantic roles. She happened into comedic roles, however, just at a point where she had aged out of the ingénue category anyway. Her niche (some would call it a brand) is as the hyper-efficient, take-no-prisoners, tough-as-nails female character actor. Finding one’s niche or brand, no matter how narrow or broad, allows the actor to focus on developing skills and chasing work where his or her talents can be put to good use. Your niche represents your best shot at breaking into the business, so own it.
Collaborate. If you are in a film or television production, just keep in mind it’s not all about you. The audio engineers make sure your key lines are heard in the emotion and inflection you intended. The lighting engineers get those lights to do you many favors. Everyone, every single person involved in a production, makes it a success. Collaboration means you need to respect the multiple functions and responsibilities represented on a set. In order to accomplish this, the more time and experience you can garner on an actual film set the better. Consider yourself less a star and more a teammate.
Don’t work from a point of desperation. Everyone has to eat and everyone needs a roof over his head. If you live in LA, everyone drives so you’ll need a car. But you will do much better at working in career-building roles when you finesse circumstances that allow you to take care of financial needs even while you are available to audition for and work in the roles you love. Those circumstances mean working a day job (that you don’t despise) with flexible hours and living modestly until you can afford more. After living modestly for months and years on end, your first big job will come with the happy shock of bigger money.
Beware of “Hollywood Accounting.” Sadly, there is a long history of film, television and video production studios and distributors inflating overhead costs to wipe out profits. This is how blockbuster films (My Big Greek Wedding, Rain Man, Forrest Gump, Batman, Coming to America) will show a loss, even after raking in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. As an example of how this affects filmmaking, Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, never received a dime from that movie’s wild success because the film showed a net loss; reportedly, he will not sell rights to the novel sequel as a result. If you sign a contract that includes a percentage of profits, don’t get too excited over it. Work with qualified managers and lawyers who can ensure you are adequately compensated up front.
Does considering one’s art a commercial enterprise ruin it? We certainly hope not. Most people who are successful at working in the industry reconcile themselves with the business end. Consider it a necessary evil, or simply understand the pragmatism of it: a lot of money can be made in entertainment, and you might have a shot at getting a piece of it. But just like any other business, you have to provide a worthy product, negotiate your price and hold onto your earnings once you have them.
Writer biography:
Glenn Kalison received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California at Irvine and has since worked as an actor on films that include Clutter (with Carol Kane and Natasha Lyonne), The Good Shepherd (with Matt Damon and John Turturro) and Mystery Team (with Aubry Plaza and Donald Glover), a Sundance Film Festival hit; and on television productions that include Law and Order, Law and Order: SVU, Law and Order: CI, Smash, Lights Out, As the World Turns among others; and many off-Broadway and regional stage productions. He is the Chair of the Acting Department at the New York Film Academy. |
While the Philippine Supreme Court temporarily stopped the hero's burial for the late president Ferdinand Marcos, these Filipino-Americans are hoping the deposed dictator will never be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Various Filipino organizations in New York are coming together for a worldwide protest on September 7 to convince President Rodrigo Duterte to change his mind about the planned hero's burial for Marcos.
“We want President Duterte to hear from us, Filipinos in the Philippines and Filipino overseas that burying a dictator, Martial Law enactor…How can he be called a hero?," said Loida Nicolas Lewis, of US Pinoys for Good Governance.
"Therefore it is an insult for all of us right-thinking people to those who have died and who are in Libingan ng mga Bayani,” she added.
Duterte said Marcos, a former president and a soldier, must be accorded a hero's burial because "it is the law.” But these Filipinos point out that a military regulation states that those who have been dishonorably discharged from service or personnel convicted of an offense are not qualified for interment.
“Marcos who was a dictator, he had many people killed, who stole our sovereign wealth, there should be no burial of him in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, or Hero's burial because Marcos is not a hero,” said Lewis.
Among those planning to speak at the September 7 protest are survivors of Martial Law.
Linda Oalican of Damayan said more than 50,000 people who were critical of the Marcoses ended up in jail, while some even ended up dead.
“It's an established fact na pag-nagsalita ka noon, you will be arrested, most probably walang judicial process, you will be imprisoned and kung hindi ka sinuswerte, mawawala ka na lang so we don't want that to ever happen again [If you're not lucky, you'll go missing],” she said.
“Pero yung kawalan mo ng Kalayaan, yung kawalan ng karapatan magsalita, pinaka importante yun ang mga tao hindi pwede maging bansa kung walang boses [Losing our freedom means losing our voice as a nation],” added Ninotchka Rosca, a Martial Law survivor.
Lewis says the September 7 global protest will be held in front of Philippine embassies and consulates worldwide at 12 noon their local time.
Read more on Balitang America. |
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On June 7, members and allies of Alliance Against Displacement occupied the B.C. Housing office in Vancouver to demand the Liberal government address the city's homelessness crisis.
There are at least an estimated 116,000 people in B.C. in housing crisis, according to Social Housing B.C. Of those an estimated 11,000 are visibly homeless, 40,000 are "hidden homeless" and 65,000 are at risk of homelessness.
Alliance Against Displacement is demanding B.C. commit to building 10,000 social housing units yearly and provide "secure and decent homes" for those living in or at risk of homelessness.
The group is also calling on the B.C. government to cancel the injunction to forcibly evict the some 100 campers in Victoria's SuperIn Tent City on Victoria's courthouse lawn and stated it "should declare a state of emergency about growing homelessness."
Record-high homelessness count leads to occupation
On Tuesday morning, Alliance Against Displacement organized a news conference on the corner of Hastings and Gore to address Vancouver's record-high homelessness count, Ivan Drury, an organizer with Alliance Against Displacement, told rabble in an email.
"When the media arrived, rather than hold a news conference, we crossed the street and began an occupation of B.C. Housing's Downtown Eastside storefront office," Drury explained.
Approximately 15 people began hanging banners displaying the group's demands in windows across the front of the building. Most people were residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, supported by Alliance Against Displacement activists.
Occupiers witnessed the B.C. Housing office's day-to-day operation where, Drury said, about six people came in to seek help from the housing officials. "Every one of them said they are currently homeless and sleeping on the street. And every one was turned away," Drury told rabble.
The B.C. Housing office officials told the homeless people that they would face a three-year wait for an SRO hotel room owned by B.C. Housing. While some of the homeless people took phone numbers for shelters, many refused them and said they were all full anyways, Drury explained.
At around 1:30 pm, police arrived and told the occupiers their banners were a fire hazard, demanding they be removed. The occupiers refused, which led police to call the fire department. Five firefighters repeated the order to remove the banners and called their superintendent to make a decision about whether to force the occupiers to comply.
While the firefighters waited on direction, 50 members of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) arrived chanting outside the B.C. Housing office. The firetruck left and did not return.
Samona, a member of VANDU, spoke outside the occupation, asking "how many of you live in shitty hotels?" to which about half of the VANDU crowd booed. She continued, asking the crowd "how many of you live on the street?" and "how many of you live in social housing that feels more like a jail than a home?"
The VANDU members continued to chant "homes not jails" to demand "real homes, not institutional ones, and not prison cells," Drury told rabble.
The occupiers left when the B.C. Housing office closed for the day. Drury said that "the actions will continue as the homelessness crisis continues to heat up."
Homelessness and housing crisis in B.C.
Between 10,500 and 18,000 people are currently homeless in B.C with 1,127 new people becoming homeless in Vancouver this year alone. Vancouver recorded the highest number of homeless people this year in a decade.
In April Megaphone Magazine, Vancouver and Victoria's street magazine, released a report on homeless deaths in B.C., which showed a 70 per cent increase from the previous year in the number of homeless deaths.
Recent research suggests that 40,000 people are "hidden homeless," meaning these individuals do not have homes, but sleep with family, friends, in cars, or in other temporary locations.
After the homeless and the "hidden homeless" come those at risk of homelessness, who spend over 30 per cent of their income on rent. Census data from 2006 indicates that over 66,000 people in B.C. are at risk of homelessness.
Alliance Against Displacement considers the B.C. provincial government's $50 million budget for housing to be insufficient. In a recent press release, the group notes that the budget, which is for the entire province, does not require the units built to be reserved for homeless people or those at risk of homelessness.
B.C. Liberal housing minister Rich Coleman has notoriously called housing activists "whiners" and stated "There are over 2,000 units being built in the City [of Vancouver] in the last five or seven years."
CCPA economist Marc Lee told the National Observer that he thinks the B.C. Liberals are "not interested in really addressing affordable housing."
The federal government's budget of about $75 million this year could build 375 units, if it was all spent on building new housing, according to the Alliance. At best, the federal budget "would house half of those who were made homeless in 2015, but would not scratch the surface of the homelessness crisis."
B.C. Housing did not return request for comment before publication time.
Sophia Reuss is a Montreal-based writer, editor, and is a recent graduate of McGill University. She's interested in how online media and journalism facilitate public accessibility and conversation. Sophia also writes and edits for the Alternatives International Journal.
Photo: Alliance Against Displacement's Facebook page, taken with permission by Ivan Drury. |
Patrick Lefevere has talked up Tom Boonen ahead of the 2014 campaign, claiming that his Classics rider is far from finished. The Omega Pharma-QuickStep rider had a year to forget in 2013, consistently failing to hit top form due to persistent health and injury problems. Related Articles Tom Boonen wants to return to Tour de France
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It was a season which contrasted sharply to 2012 in which the 33-year-old won E3 Harelbeke, Gent-Wevelgem, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.
“Tom still has a great value for the team. Team owner Bakala spoke at the training camp to the squad and he told the team that Tom remains the figurehead - no one stood up to protest,” Lefevere told Gazet van Antwerpen.
"Quite a few people say that Boonen is finished. This is nonsense. He was rarely sharper, full of enthusiasm and has had brilliant tests.
"And what is most important is that his head is good. I expect a great season from him."
Despite the loss of Boonen for most of the season Omega Pharma-QuickStep enjoyed a successful season with 57 wins on the road. The signing of Rigoberto Uran from Team Sky has bolstered the team’s ambitions in the Grand Tours but the excitement has been slightly off-set by the loss of Sylvain Chavanel.
The Frenchman had been a consistent winner for the team since moving from Cofidis but according to Lefevere he could no longer afford to keep the future IAM Cycling rider.
"The sponsors wanted someone who could play a significant role during the Tour and that was Rigoberto Uran. As a result, there was no budgetary room for Chavanel." |
The Ravens just announced that they have placed cornerback Domonique Foxworth on season-ending injured reserve. To take his place on the roster, they will re-sign outside linebacker Prescott Burgess.
Foxworth has been struggling to come back from knee surgery. He tore his right anterior cruciate ligament on the eve of training camp last year. After struggling against the Tennessee Titans in Week Two, Foxworth was inactive for the Ravens' 37-7 victory over the St. Louis Rams last Sunday.
“It hurts like hell,” Foxworth said Sunday when asked about being inactive. “I’ve been fighting through it, and I’ve been good enough not to hurt the team. But I think last week, the pain in my knee hurt me, and my lackluster performance hurt them. So I wasn’t surprised at what happened this week. So I’m just going to keep working and try to get back.”
The decision will lead to questions on whether Foxworth, the former University of Maryland standout, has played his last game with the Ravens. He'll be entering the final year of his contract next season.
This will be Burgess' third stint with the Ravens. He was drafted by them in in the sixth round in 2007. He'll provide some linebacker depth with Dannell Ellerbe out with a hamstring injury. |
The Chinese man who has been caged in a tiny stone cell for 30 YEARS by his own parents
Dong Hai has been caged inside stone shelter in China's Fujian province
Five square metre space has been his home since the age of sixteen
His parents use a gap in the stone wall to pass through cans of food
They spray water into the cage to clean their son who has no physical contact
Hai hasn't set foot outside the cage in thirty years
A man who displayed signs of mental health problems as a teenager has been locked up by his parents for 30 years.
Dong Hai,46, was caged in a five square metre stone shelter in his parent's back yard when they grew frightened that he could hurt someone.
Dong Watou and his wife Xiao Hong from Longhai, southeast China's Fujian Province said they had appealed to hospitals for help when their only son grew distressed and they feared for his mental health.
Caged: Xiao Hong uses a hole in the stone wall to wash her son Dong Hai inside the stone cage with a cloth
Trapped: Dong Hai crouches in the darkened corner of his stone cell, where his parents keep him locked away from the world Desperation: The Chinese couple looked for help and tried to get their son treatment when he displayed symptoms of mental health problems, but they were turned away by local hospitals
They visited hospitals in the province but were turned away. The couple spent all their savings on medical treatment in a year and had to stop their son's treatment. As time goes on the couple, who are now nearly 70 years old, say their greatest fear is what will happen to Hai when they die. RELATED ARTICLES Previous
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Sadistic father beat his newborn daughter, held a pillow... Share this article Share The couple's house is no different from others in the village, except the stone shelter in the yard.
Hai hasn't stepped outside the bare hut for the past 30 years Food is passed to him through a hole in the wall and each day Hai's father uses a scoop, which is tied on top of a long bamboo pole, to shovel out excrement. |
Day in the Life at Rdio: Ryan Sims
Meet Ryan Sims, Head of Design at Rdio.
You may have heard his talks at Build, Webvisions, Future of Web Design, or most famously, his series of “Design Eye for the … Guy” SXSW talks that started in 2005. He’s been making beautiful work for the web for 11 or 12 years now, so if you follow web design, you’ve probably come across him. Lately he’s been working as the head of design for music streaming service Rdio, setting the tone for the visual language of the product and product marketing and making sure that there’s a cohesive vision throughout all devices and platforms.
What you might not know about Ryan is that he grew up in Missouri as the son of a preacher, and that he feels that he honed one of his biggest strengths in those early days.
“I grew up in a small town in the midwest. Life’s just different there — there’s a different pace, a different energy. People are kinder. They smile at you on the streets. My dad was a preacher so I grew up in a very conservative house. I was taught the 10 commandments, and to treat other people as you want to be treated. My dad’s role in our town was to tend to this community of people who were always bumping into one another and having disputes, etc. Because of that, problem solving and empathy were instilled in me very early on. On the product side, being able to think about what users want and how the product is perceived is a great use of that empathy.”
Join us as we walk through a day in the life of Ryan Sims.
9:00 AM
What’s it like having the Rdio offices in the Mission?
“Living and working in the same neighborhood is pretty fantastic. Walking to work is something very few people get to experience and it’s a wonderful way to start and end each work day.”
What’s it like working in the Bay Area in this time of explosive tech growth?
“There is a wonderful buzz in San Francisco — the magnetism this place has in attracting talent is pretty spectacular. It’s a special time and that certainly attracts its fair share of pros and cons, but I’ve never felt more connected to the industry. Conversations with your peers, mentors and heroes are typically just an email away. The environment to succeed is quite literally around every corner here. Any designer that lives here and has even the slightest desire to learn and grow will do well. You won’t find that in very many cities.”
10:00 AM
What’s the Mission startup scene like?
“With only a handful of buildings that are taller than a few stories high, the Mission is composed primarily of residences and small businesses. And even though you won’t see larger companies like Twitter or Square here, the Mission is home to a lot of wonderful, smaller startups (DoubleDutch, DIY, Asana, WillCall, Get Satisfaction), many of whom we share a building with.”
11:00 AM
What’s the main challenge at Rdio currently?
“At this stage of the company, we get to focus on engagement: giving users the ability to discover their next favorite album, and making that path to discovery enjoyable. Whether it’s personalization or lean-back listening, the features we design next are complex in lots of really interesting ways.”
Can you tell us a little bit about the challenge of balancing visual design and UI as a web product designer. How do you stand out from other music products?
“Music is magical. Discovering and consuming it should be a joy. One thing we’ve tried to do with Rdio is bring the music to the foreground by pushing everything else to the back. If Rdio is the canvas, the music is the paint. And we are trying to compose spectacular landscapes. Being a company that values design at every level and having such a design-driven product, we can take some pretty big design risks where others might be more cautious and conservative. This is one hell of an opportunity and it’s something every one of our designers has a good grasp of and takes very seriously.”
What would be your absolute dream feature to create for Rdio?
“Whatever feature answers the question, ‘What do I play next?’ in perpetuity. Is that a feed of content tailored specifically for your tastes? Is that a shared listening experience? We are cooking up some exciting things — the next couple years are going to yield some big breakthroughs in the way that we find, discover and share music in a truly mobile, cord-cut world.”
12:00 PM
2:00 PM
What makes an ideal Rdio designer?
“I tend to gravitate towards people who are humble, hardworking, and chill.” That goes for design style as well as personality. “I’m not really looking for trendy stuff — I like a taste that’s a little bit more elegant and classic. A good sense of space, layout, proportion, and really subtle uses of color can have a big impact on a layout or on a design.”
Here’s a little bit about four members of the design team.
Any words of advice for aspiring designers?
“Get your hands on as many products as possible. I’m a firm believer in using things, and valuing the time spent on using them as a learning opportunity. Every time I go through a product — whether it’s the new version of an app I use daily or one I’ve never used before — I just love getting my hands on it and figuring out why it works well, what it does differently. Make it a goal to seek out and appreciate good design, because the more you immerse yourself in it, the more it becomes part of you.”
4:00 PM
How is the work/life balance at Rdio?
“Everyone here loves the product and works really hard on it until it’s time to go home, and then they go home. Finding that right balance between work and having a life outside of Rdio is of great importance to me.”
6:00 PM
What are you learning from this job?
“Rdio is the largest startup I’ve ever worked at. It’s also the first time I’ve been in charge of managing a team of designers. So, I’m learning a lot about what it takes to be a good leader and mentor, how to build a team that complements each other as well as the product, and various other administrative challenges that are all brand new to me. It’s a much different role than being an individual contributor and I’m lucky to have such a wonderful team around me to grow alongside of.”
If you want to be a designer at a startup that truly values design like Rdio, consider applying to Bridge! Keep in touch here to be invited to apply early to Bridge 5 before applications open September 15.
Special thanks to Laura Brunow Miner for editorial and Helena Price for photography. |
The Israeli military says it struck targets in the Gaza Strip in response to projectiles fired at Israel.
The military says that a projectile exploded Thursday in southern Israel, in addition to two earlier ones launched from Gaza which fell short and landed in the Palestinian territory.
The military says a tank and aircraft struck two military posts in Gaza. The military says it holds Hamas responsible for any fire emanating from the Gaza Strip.
The border violence comes a day after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded the decision, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the U.S. shift "a declaration of withdrawal from the role it has played in the peace process."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called for Palestinians to launch a new uprising against Israel in the wake of Mr. Trump's declaration, which marked a dramatic break with decades of U.S. policy on Jerusalem and counters long-standing international assurances to the Palestinians that the fate of the city will be determined in negotiations. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as a future capital.
The border between Israel and Gaza has been largely quiet since a 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. Violence has occasionally flared since then.
A Palestinian protester throws back a teargas canister that was fired by Israeli soldiers during clashes on the Israeli border with Gaza, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017. Khalil Hamra/AP
Earlier Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians were protesting in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip against Mr. Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The demonstrators burned posters of Mr. Trump and of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as American and Israeli flags. Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters were reported at several locations.
CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports that Israeli vehicles attempted to repel people during a protest in Bethlehem, in the West Bank. Tear gas was fired over and over again. Some Palestinian men were armed with slingshots, firing rocks towards armed Israelis.
Rallies took place in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, in addition to Bethlehem. A demonstration was also being held outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.
Palestinians have called a general strike on Thursday and are preparing for more mass protests on Friday.
Palestinian officials said dozens of protesters were lightly wounded in a number of demonstrations in the West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent said dozens of people have been wounded, mostly from tear gas inhalation. It said six people were wounded by rubber bullets and one person from live fire. The Israeli military denies that live fire was used.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the injuries are all minor. |
SCRIBA, N.Y. - The outlook for Central New York nuclear plants has slipped from prosperous to perilous. Experts say two of the region's four nukes - FitzPatrick in Oswego County and Ginna in Wayne County -- are at risk of shutting down prematurely if the financial picture does not improve in the years ahead.
Syracuse.com ran a story about the problem Sunday, citing analysis by Wall Street firms and other experts. In case you missed it, here's a recap of the five biggest problems facing Upstate nuclear power in general, and FitzPatrick and Ginna in particular:
1. The wholesale price of electricity has fallen by half since 2008, mostly thanks to cheap natural gas that can be burned in generators. Unlike utility-owned nuclear plants, which can turn to regulators for rate increases when times get tough, nukes in New York state depend on competitive market prices for their revenues.
2. Power prices Upstate are extra low. There is twice as much generating capacity as demand for electricity in Central New York, and too few transmission lines to move power to higher-priced Downstate areas. By contrast, two nuclear reactors in the lucrative Downstate market - Indian Point Units 2 and 3 - face political opposition but make plenty of money.
3. Nuclear plants are heavily staffed, capital-intensive organizations with high fixed costs to operate. If electric prices stay low for the next few years, as predicted, they may fall below what some nuclear plants need to cover their costs.
4. Three of the four Upstate nuclear plants are among the oldest in the country, putting them at increased risk of costly repairs. Example: FitzPatrick's owner, Entergy Corp., is evaluating whether to proceed with a "substantial investment'' to replace the reactor's condenser tubes.
5. Both FitzPatrick and Ginna are single-reactor facilities. Stand-alone units are more expensive to operate than nuclear plants with more than one reactor, such as Nine Mile Point Units 1 and 2. Exelon Corp. owns Nine Mile Point station and Ginna.
Could a sale or joint venture someday unite FitzPatrick with the Nine Mile Point reactors to improve efficiency? Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, offered no specifics but said options such as selling FitzPatrick or partnering with Exelon are on the table.
What will happen next? Energy prices are always difficult to predict with certainty, but the real wild card in all of this is politics, many observers say.
Oswego County and its state legislators are generally supportive of the nuclear industry, which provides high-paying jobs and millions in property taxes. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others are fighting Entergy's efforts to extend the operating license of Indian Point, the company's most profitable asset.
If chart below doesn't work on your computer/device, try this one.
Contact Tim Knauss at [email protected] or 315-470-3023 or on Twitter @TimKnauss. |
You see them as soon as you pull off Route 85 and onto local roads. The orange paws are everywhere: painted on roads, covering driveways, and plastered on local businesses. The passion of Clemson Tiger Nation is undeniable and perfectly embodied by their fiery (and uniquely named) coach, Dabo Swinney, who has led the Tigers on a rapid ascent over the past several years. If you catch a game, be sure to be there before kickoff—the Clemson players touching Howard’s Rock and the Run Down the Hill onto the field has been dubbed “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football.” Outside of football, Clemson offers plenty of outdoor activities: Play a round at Walker Golf Course, generally regarded as one of the top college golf courses in the nation (the par-three 17th hole is shaped like, you guessed it, a tiger paw). Fill your day with water sports at Lake Hartwell, or stroll through the beautiful South Carolina Botanical Garden. Be sure to grab a beer at the famed ESSO Club, whose name comes from its origins as a gas station and grocery store and is known as one of the best college sports bars in America. |
With so many people insisting that the Las Vegas massacre confirms what they've always thought about gun control, it is refreshing to hear from someone who changed her mind on the subject after considering the evidence. "My colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States," Leah Libresco, a statistician who used to work for the data journalism site, writes in The Washington Post. "We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence."
Regarding the much-touted gun control laws of Britain and Australia, Libresco found that "neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun-related crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans." Looking into bans on so-called assault weapons, she concluded that the category is an arbitrary construct with little practical significance.
What about the silencers that Hillary Clinton thinks could have raised the death toll in Las Vegas if they had been used there? "In real life," Libresco writes, "silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don't make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer."
Libresco notes that "two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides," and "almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them." But she argues that "older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help." She also recommends targeted measures aimed at protecting women from domestic violence and preventing deadly disputes among young men.
"A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible," Libresco concludes. "We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves."
Libresco says she still does not endorse gun ownership, "but I can't endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them." The distinction seems to be lost on politicians like Clinton, who define good policy as whatever the NRA doesn't want. |
“Water is the driving force in nature.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
On November 9, 2013 the First Quarter Moon occurred in Aquarius (Fixed-Air), squaring the Sun in Scorpio (Fixed-Water). This day produced a catastrophic Typhoon barreling in from the vast Pacific, and devastating the Philippines. We send Healing Energy and Love to this area, as they recover from massive devastation and loss of life.
The Typhoon occurred at the First Quarter Moon, the midpoint between the Solar Eclipse in Scorpio on November 3 and Full Moon in Taurus on November 17. The Full Moon in Taurus will be in close proximity to The Pleiades.
The Pleiades is quite prominent in both hemispheres in the night sky; it is a beautiful Star Cluster located in the constellation of Taurus, and is composed of several prominent stars, sometimes called the Seven Sisters. There is much myth and lore from many cultures, surrounding this particular celestial configuration.
In Astrology, the Pleiades are known as fixed stars; various fixed stars have been used in charts since ancient times, in addition to the Sun, Moon and planets. Many associations of the fixed stars originate from the ancient worlds of China, and Saudi Arabia.
Known as “Rainy Stars”. They were also connected with traditions of the Flood found among widely separated nations.
Another interpretation:
The Pleiades causes bereavement, mourning, sorrows and tragedies. [The Living Stars, Dr. Eric Morse, p.39.]
In Esoteric literature the Pleiades are said to be very much connected to Earth and Humanity through telepathic communication, and much of this literature implies benevolent associations. It is an interesting juxtaposition to the Ancient’s perception of cruel and malevolent energy emanating from this Star Cluster.
There has been, and will be much celestial activity between the Solar Eclipse and Full Moon: we have the Sun and Saturn traveling through Scorpio (Fixed-Water), and Jupiter station Retrograde in Cancer (Cardinal-Water) on November 6, Neptune in Pisces (Mutable-Water) Station Direct on November 13, and Mercury in Scorpio (Fixed-Water) Station Direct on November 10, and the wounded healer Chiron also moving through Pisces; with so much celestial energy in the Water Element, this provided ample opportunity for a massive storm associated with the sea.
We can read the stars, and interpret the energies, but the more important question: What is the meaning of events such as these, and the subsequent massive loss of life and devastation?
How do we glean meaning from an event that appears so random and meaningless?
Do events such as these bring forth our humanity, as we empathize with the pain of those enduring so much loss and devastation?
The Sabian Symbol for the SOLAR ECIPSE on November 3, is quite significant in relation to Typhoon Haiyan:
(SCORPIO 11) A DROWNING MAN IS BEING RESCUED
[Keynote: The deep concern of the social group for the safety of individuals.] “A man risks his life to save another: this is love, based on a sense of responsibility produced by a vivid sense of interrelatedness.”
(Rudhyar)
Donating to the relief efforts will help, however, taking a moment from our busy lives and opening our hearts and CONSCIOUSLY sending Love and Healing Energy (Visualize the colors Green and Pink) to the people of the Philippines will help tremendously.
The Sabian Symbol for the SUN at the Taurus Full Moon on November 17 2013:
(SCORPIO 26) AMERICAN INDIANS MAKING CAMP AFTER MOVING INTO A NEW TERRITORY
[Keynote: The ability to adjust swiftly to a new situation by tuning in to its requirements.]
(Rudhyar)
——————————————————————————————————————-
The Sabian Symbol for the MOON at the Taurus Full Moon on November 17 2013:
(TAURUS 26) A SPANISH GALLANT SERENADES HIS BELOVED
[Keynote: The ritualization of individual desires.]
(Rudhyar)
As already mentioned above, we have many planets traveling through the Element of Water at this Full Moon; the Sun, Mercury, Saturn and the North Node in Scorpio, Jupiter in Cancer and Neptune in Pisces.
Although confusion will abound during the initial rescue efforts, Mars traveling through Virgo (Mutable-Earth), will offer a great deal of energy coordinating relief efforts, as Virgo is a Master of analysis and logistics. The Asteroid Goddess Pallas Athena, our strategist, has also just entered Virgo and will reinforce the efforts of Mars.
The Moon in Taurus (Fixed-Earth), will carry through and hold the energy of Mars to get the job done, Taurus is the Master of acquiring Resources, and this Moon will provide THE PEOPLE with what they need.
And Venus travels through Capricorn, close to Pluto, the God of Death and Destruction. Her conjunction with Pluto activates the ongoing, intensely transformational Uranus/Pluto square. Here with Venus, we must believe in the Power of Love and know that no one of us ever truly dies, but are transformed and continue our journey in a way, that we in this world, do not yet fully understand; we have Faith and in our Hearts know this to be true.
No one is ever truly lost ― Love is the continuum.
BE LOVE
BE PRESENT
PAY ATTENTION
In Love & Light,
jody
Help for Typhoon Haiyan victims |
Cook County commissioners today approved a new, more expensive contract to have the bodies of poor people buried in the same south suburban cemetery that was criticized for stacking remains and leaving about a dozen caskets sitting in a chapel for days.
Homewood Memorial Gardens Cemetery will charge the county $474 per body to conduct indigent burials under the deal, which runs till October 2014, compared to $289 each under the former pact.
The new contract comes despite the fact county officials have had Homewood Memorial Gardens in their crosshairs for nearly two years. Sheriff Tom Dart slammed the “appalling” conditions of the indigent burials there in early 2011, when he said the bodies of as many as 26 babies had been buried in a single casket along with unidentified limbs and bones.
In April, sheriff’s investigators supervised the burial of 11 caskets found in the back room of a chapel on the grounds.
But Homewood will get another deal with the county because it was the lowest bidder to meet contract specifications, new Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cina told commissioners.
The cemetery has made improvements, including setting aside a special area for the remains of fetuses, Cina said.
“In the board meeting, it was brought up there was a history of some, perhaps, incidents with this cemetery, but those have been addressed,” Cina said.
“I was out there at 7 a.m. last Friday, doing a tour and looking at the facility myself,” Cina added. “I found the area we now have under contract for where our indigent, unidentified and fetal remains are going to go to be a very nice place where I would be happy to have my family buried.”
Homewood Memorial Gardens can make up to $711,000 under the terms of the deal, though Cina said he doesn’t expect the county will come close to needing that many burials.
The new contract replaces the former contract with Homewood Memorial Gardens, which would have run through February. It will be more expensive for each burial because of new standards prohibiting the stacking of bodies atop one another and establishing specific distances between burial plots.
An Indiana cemetery submitted a plan that would have cost about 40 percent less, but a provision states the burials must take place in Cook County.
Commissioner John Fritchey, D-Chicago, one of three members of the board to vote against the new Homewood contract, urged his colleagues to slow down.
“Whether or not it is prudent for a number of reasons to have the cemetery located in Cook County is something that should be subject to debate by this board,” Fritchey said.
But in the end, 11 commissioners voted in favor of a new deal for Homewood.
[email protected]
Twitter: @_johnbyrne |
No doubt you’ve heard by now of the social media campaign recently launched by BuzzFeed to see Taylor Swift top this year’s Triple J Hottest 100 poll. While news of the campaign, which is slowly gaining traction on Twitter and Instagram, elicited plenty of chuckles, the question on the minds of many is if Swift actually has a chance.
Opinion seems to be divided of the matter. While BuzzFeed write that they’ve been informed by a Triple J representative that only songs that have been played on the station during 2014 would be eligible for the official shortlist, there is a precedent for songs that have received no airplay charting in the Hottest 100.
As The Music notes, Alanis Morissette managed to place three times in the 1995 Hottest 100 despite receiving no airplay, according to J Play. Meanwhile, Green Day’s Good Riddance and U2’s Elevation also managed to place despite not receiving airplay during their years of eligibility.
Furthermore, Triple J station manager Chris Scaddan reportedly told News Corp that the Swift action is completely within the rules of the annual poll, which is frequently cited as the largest public vote in Australia besides the federal election. “We supply a list of over 2000 songs that have been played on Triple J in 2014,” Scaddan said.
“People are welcome to add songs manually to their voting shortlist and those votes count exactly the same as anything voted from the Triple J list,” he added, though his comments seemingly contradict what Triple J representatives have told BuzzFeed.
Rather unsurprisingly, betting agencies have already opened the odds for ‘Shake It Off’ to top the Hottest 100. Presumably bookmakers would first want to clarify whether or not a bet actually has some chance of success before opening odds, or this would effectively be a bet on a scratched horse.
Meanwhile, Tone Deaf has reached out to Triple J to clarify whether or not Taylor Swift would be eligible to place in the official Hottest 100 shortlist. According to a Triple J representative, “We don’t comment on voting campaigns whilst Hottest 100 voting is open. It draws attention to them and may influence the results of the poll.”
However, this begs the question, if Swift is not even eligible to place in the Hottest 100, since none of her music was played during 2014, why would the station avoid drawing attention to a campaign that is effectively null and void? Furthermore, a comment from Triple J would seemingly only influence poll results if Swift was eligible. |
There are two and only two choices:
Choice 1: You stop eating, wearing, and otherwise using all nonhuman animals;
Choice 2: You continue to participate directly in exploiting nonhuman animals.
There is no third choice. You are either vegan or you are participating directly in animal exploitation.
“But wait!” the welfarists cry, “Even if you are a vegan, animals will be killed in the harvesting of crops. You can’t be perfect so it’s okay to not be vegan as long as you try to reduce suffering.”
Here’s Farm Sanctuary’s Bruce Friedrich, a longtime supporter of welfare reform, claiming that vegans still exploit animals and that we can’t be perfect:
(Click to enlarge.)
That is complete nonsense. We can see this easily in the human context.
Even if we drive safely, people will be killed in automobile accidents. Does that mean that there is not a qualitative difference between deliberately murdering people and driving safely even if some number of humans will be killed in accidents? Of course not. The welfarist position applied in the human context would commit us to saying that because we can’t avoid unintended car accidents, it’s okay to commit murder as long as we try to reduce suffering in the process. No one would accept such a position.
If we were all vegans and embraced the moral personhood of nonhumans, we would undoubtedly devise better ways of avoiding even incidental and unintended deaths of animals in the crop production process. But there is a very significant difference between X being murdered and X dying in a traffic accident. We all recognize that but the welfarists seem to have trouble applying that in the animal context.
And that is deeply speciesist.
The welfarists always talk about our going vegan as a matter of being on a “journey.”
The moment you buy into the welfarist idea that it’s morally acceptable to not be vegan as long as you are on a “journey,” you’ve bought into speciesism.
We would never say talk about “journeys” and “baby steps” where fundamental human rights were involved. We would never say, for example, that if someone is a racist, we ought to encourage that person to take “baby steps” and just be a more “gentle” racist because that person is on a “journey.” With respect to fundamental human rights, we are clear. When it comes to the victimization of nonhuman animals, it’s all a matter of “journeys,” “baby steps,” and moral relativism.
And that is deeply speciesist.
Of course the world is not going to go vegan overnight. But those of us who believe in animal rights have an obligation to make crystal clear that veganism is a moral imperative–that we have an obligation to go vegan and nothing less will satisfy our moral obligation to animals. Those who hear and who care may choose to do less (i.e. they may choose to eat “cage-free” eggs, or “crate-free” pork, or reduce their intake of meat, etc.). But that should be their choice and never what we promote as an advocacy matter.
The world will never go vegan as long as “animal people” don’t promote it as a moral baseline. And if each of us who is now vegan persuaded only one other person to go vegan in the next year, and that repeated itself for a dozen years or so, the world would be vegan.
That isn’t going to happen, but if we all made that our goal, we would at least achieve progress. The “happy exploitation” movement that now exists is only pushing things backward.
**********
If you are not vegan, please go vegan. Veganism is about nonviolence. First and foremost, it’s about nonviolence to other sentient beings. But it’s also about nonviolence to the earth and nonviolence to yourself.
If animals matter morally, veganism is not an option — it is a necessity. Anything that claims to be an animal rights movement must make clear that veganism is a moral imperative.
The World is Vegan! If you want it.
Learn more about veganism at www.HowDoIGoVegan.com.
Gary L. Francione
Board of Governors Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University
Anna Charlton
Adjunct Professor of Law, Rutgers University
©2015 Gary L. Francione & Anna Charlton |
HP has updated its most powerful dual-processor Z8 workstation line with the latest components. The new systems contain up to two Intel Skylake-SP Xeon CPUs with up to 56 cores in total, up to 3 TB of DDR4 RAM, terabytes of storage as well as up to 9 PCIe slots along with optional TB3 and 10 GbE support via add-in cards. The HP Z8 workstation will be the pinnacle of HP’s computers for personal and professional use and its price in high-end configurations will surpass even the top-of-the-range gaming PCs.
Historically, most high-end workstations relied on server platforms to support more than one CPU and thus offer higher performance than any consumer desktop. The emergence of dual-core and then multi-core CPUs a little more a decade ago changed the workstation market quite quickly and significantly. In a world with quad-core CPUs, 4-way workstations did not make a lot of sense for 99% of the users and therefore they quickly became extinct. Moreover, by now, even 2-way workstations became rare. Today, the vast majority of workstations use one multi-core CPU that provides enough compute horsepower for professional workloads, whereas GPU-based accelerators are used for tasks like simulations. Nonetheless, there are still users who need maximum x86 performance and who therefore require 2-way workstations — and the HP Z8 is aimed precisely at such users. While the Intel Xeon Scalable processors with extreme core count were developed primarily with servers in mind, the Z8 is a system that people put on their desks and therefore it has a number of specific requirements regarding noise levels, features, security, compatibility with components and so on.
One of the key components of all PCs is its microprocessor. When it comes to the HP Z8, it is based on up to two Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 with 28 cores and 205 W TDP each, which means that the system has to remove 410 W of thermal energy only from CPUs, and this requirement had a significant impact on the design of the whole system. The company did not want to use a liquid cooling system, so it had to design an air cooling solution capable of cooling down two extremely hot CPUs as well as up to 24 DDR4-2666 memory modules. Each processor has its own radiator equipped with a high-pressure air fan (which speed is regulated by BIOS in accordance with system temperature monitored by numerous sensors). In addition, the system has multiple airflow vents on the front and on the top as well as one fan that exhausts hot air on the back. According to HP, such a chassis architecture ensures that the second CPU does not re-use warm air from the first one, but since they are located in close proximity, one will always affect another with its heat. Finally, the system has additional fans that cool down other components and produce more airflow within the chassis.
Speaking of other components, the HP Z8 supports plenty of them — whatever one might want. First off, the system has four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots for graphics cards or SSDs (up to AMD Radeon Pro, NVIDIA Quadro P100 or GP100, up to 4 TB HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro, etc.) three PCIe 3.0 x8 (two are non-hot swap) slots for SSDs and two PCIe 3.0 x4 slots. In addition to PCIe-based storage, the Z8 also features four 2.5”/3.5” bays for SATA/SAS SSDs or HDDs as well as two external 5.25” bays that can also accommodate drive form-factor storage devices using appropriate adapters. Those who need it, HP may also install an SD card reader as well as a slim DVD or Blu-ray ODD.
When it comes to connectivity, the HP Z8 has all the bases covered. By default, the system supports two GbE connectors (powered by Intel controllers), an 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module (Intel Wireless-AC 8265 controller), two USB 3.1 Type-C ports and two USB 3.1 Type-A ports on the front, four USB 3.1 Type-A ports on the back, multi-channel audio connectors (a Realtek HD ALC221 controller) on the back, a TRRS audio connector on the front and so on. Meanwhile, owners can optionally order to install two 10 GbE controllers, a Thunderbolt 3-supporting add-in-card and a variety of custom components for various industries and workloads (an external audio solution for a 5.25” bay, for example).
Since many businesses and enterprises require robust security for all of their machines, the HP takes everything seriously and ships the Z8 with a whole set of security features that it calls HP SureStart. The system features secure authentication, full volume encryption, TPM 2.0, has a Kensington lock and so on.
All the CPUs, GPUs, SSDs and other components require a lot of power and HP Z8 has plenty of it. The manufacturer offers 1125 W, 1450 W or 1700 W internal PSUs with up to 90 % efficiency. The PSU is located in a compartment behind the motherboard, so chances are that HP uses proprietary units.
General Specifications of the HP Z8 2017 HP Z8 G4 CPU Family Intel Xeon Scalable processor Models Xeon Platinum 8180 (2.5GHz/3.8GHz, 38.5MB cache, 28 cores)
Xeon Platinum 8160 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 33 MB cache, 24 cores)
Xeon Gold 6152 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 30.25 MB cache, 22 cores)
Xeon Gold 6154 (3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 18 cores)
Xeon Gold 6148 (2.4 GHz/3.7 GHz, 27.5 MB cache, 20 cores)
Xeon Gold 6142 (2.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 22 MB cache, 16 cores)
Xeon Gold 6136 (3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 12 cores)
Xeon Gold 6140 (2.3 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 18 cores)
Xeon Gold 6134 (3.2 GHz/3.7 GHz, 24.75 MB cache, 8 cores)
Xeon Gold 6132 (2.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 14 cores)
Xeon Gold 6130 (2.1 GHz/3.7 GHz, 22 MB cache, 16 cores)
Xeon Gold 6128 (3.4 GHz/3.7 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 6 cores)
Xeon Gold 5120 (2.2 GHz/3.2 GHz, 19.25 MB cache, 14 cores)
Xeon Gold 5118 (2.3 GHz/3.2 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 12 cores)
Xeon Gold 5122 (3.6 GHz/3.7 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 4 cores)
Xeon Silver 4116 (2.1 GHz/3 GHz, 16.5 MB cache, 12 cores)
Xeon Silver 4114 (2.2 GHz/3 GHz, 13.75 MB cache, 10 cores)
Xeon Silver 4112 (2.6 GHz/3 GHz, 8.25 MB cache, 4 cores)
Xeon Silver 4108 (1.8 GHz/3 GHz, 11 MB cache, 8 cores)
Xeon Bronze 3106 (1.7 GHz, 11 MB cache, 8 cores)
Xeon Bronze 3104 (1.7 GHz, 8.25 MB cache, 6 cores) Graphics Entry NVIDIA Quadro P400 (2 GB GDDR5)
NVIDIA Quadro P600 (2 GB GDDR5)
AMD FirePro W2100 (2 GB DDR3) Mid-Range NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (4 GB GDDR5)
NVIDIA Quadro P2000 (5 GB GDDR5)
AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 (4 GB GDDR5)
AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100 (4 GB GDDR5) High-End NVIDIA Quadro P4000 (8 GB GDDR5)
AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 Graphics (8 GB GDDR5) Ultra High-End NVIDIA Quadro P5000 (16 GB GDDR5X)
NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (24 GB GDDR5X)
AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 Graphics (16 GB HBM2)
NVIDIA Quadro GP100 (16 GB HBM2) RAM 24 DDR4 DIMMs, up to 1.5 TB of DDR4-2666
(3TB options in H1 2018, when M CPUs are available) Storage Bays 4 × 2.5"/3.5", 2 × 5.25", 1 × slim 5.25" for ODDs Options 300 GB SAS (15000 rpm)
500 GB up to 2 TB SATA (7200 rpm)
500 GB SATA SED (7200 rpm)
1 TB up to 4 TB 7200 rpm SATA Enterprise
256 GB up to 2 TB SATA SSD
256 GB up to 512 GB SATA SED Opal 2 SSD
240 GB up to 480 GB SATA Enterprise SSD
256 GB up to 1 TB HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe SSD M.2
256 GB up to 512 GB HP Z Turbo Drive PCIe SED SSD M.2
256 GB up to 4 TB HP Z Turbo Drive Quad Pro PCIe SSD
HP Slim DVD-ROM
HP Slim Blu-ray Writer
HP Slim DVD-Writer Networking GbE Integrated Intel I219-LM PCIe GbE
Integrated Intel X722 PCIe GbE
Intel I350-T2 dual-port GbE NIC
Intel I350-T4 dual-port GbE NIC
Intel I210-T1 PCIe GbE 10 GbE Intel X550-T2 dual-port GbE NIC
Intel X710-DA2 dual-port GbE NIC
Intel 10 GbE SFP+ SR transceiver
HP dual-port 10GBase-T NIC Wireless Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 Combo, non-vPro PCIe 3.0
Expansion Slots x4 2 x8 3 x16 4 Notes 1 PCIe x8 has rear bulkhead access and 2 PCIe x8 are internal access only. Slot 1: Transforms to PCIe x8 when 2nd CPU is installed.
Slots 3 and 6: are available only when 2nd processor is installed.
PCIe x16 - Available only when 2nd processor is installed USB 3.1 2 × Type-A, 2 × Type-C 3.0 4 × Type-A 2.0 unknown Thunderbolt Optional Thunderbolt 3 add-in-card Card Reader 4-in-1 card reader PSUs 1125 W, 1450 W, 1700 W Other I/O Audio connectors, Realtek HD ALC221 controller Input Devices HP Wireless Business Slim Keyboard and Mouse Combo
HP USB Business Slim Keyboard
USB Premium wired keyboard
USB Smart Card (CCID) keyboard
3Dconnexion CADMouse
HP USB Optical Mouse
HP PS/2 Mouse
HP USB Hardened Mouse Dimensions 8.5 × 21.7 × 17.5 in
21.59 × 55.12 × 44.45 cm Weight Starting at 49.4 lb
Starting at 22.4 kg Operating System Windows 10 Pro for Workstations
HP Installer Kit for Linux
HP Red Hat Enterprise Linux Price Starting at $2,439
Now, time to talk about availability and pricing. HP intends to ship the HP Z8 workstations in October. An entry-level model with one CPU, a basic GPU and storage will cost $2,439. Meanwhile, once the system is equipped with two Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs, NVIDIA Quadro P100/GP100 graphics, multiple PCIe SSDs, 3 TB of DDR4 memory, several 12 TB HDDs and various advanced I/O capabilities (TB3, 10 GbE, etc.), its price will easily hit tens of thousands of dollars.
It's normally at this point that a vendor such as HP states that the high-end models are likely to be sold under B2B contracts, where per-unit costs are not as severe. One OEM has told us that only 5% of sales of their high-end workstations come through direct sales for onlike pricing.
Related Reading |
It was just before 11 a.m. Thursday, but at a number of Asian restaurants in State College, the lunch rush never happened.
Instead, doors were locked, employees were questioned and some people were taken away by authorities.
Local, state and federal law enforcement detained at least 13 people in what U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson said is an investigation of undocumented workers.
Bill Ebken, of the Frame Factory, works right in the middle of three of the restaurants known to be targeted — Hundred Degrees Hot Pot, My Thai and Fuji and Jade Garden, all off Westerly Parkway. He said he noticed something happening around 10:45-11 a.m., when cars began pulling up in front of the shopping center in areas marked for no parking. He quickly realized that they were law enforcement vehicles, about 25 of them, from various agencies.
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Ebken said he looked into the window at Hundred Degrees Hot Pot and saw employees being interviewed by officers.
“It’s disturbing,” Ebken said. “It’s a little scary to see all the policemen.”
It was not just police.
Investigators said the activity is part of a “targeted federal investigation,” but declined further comment. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security truck parked behind the State College Police Department. Officers from the state Attorney General’s Office joined them. A large van blocked visibility to the department’s sally port, the secured gateway where people in custody are brought in by police.
The limited access was a recurring theme Thursday as media sought information about the operation.
Officials referred all calls and inquiries to Nicole Navas at Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division for comment. Police were not allowed to release information, but the borough’s administration also was muffled, having been told not to talk to the media.
Calls to State College Municipal Building, to speak with Mayor Elizabeth Goreham or Borough Council members, were likewise redirected to Homeland Security, which answered all questions with a short statement.
“In order not to compromise this ongoing criminal investigation, no additional details are available at his time,” Navas said in an email. “Residents should not be alarmed of any public safety concerns.”
A later inquiry received a similar response: Navas didn’t “have any additional public information to release at this time.”
Thompson, R-Howard Township, however, offered some clarification.
“I have been informed that today’s actions were carried out ... as part of an ongoing worksite investigation, looking into the hiring of unauthorized workers,” Thompson said in response to an inquiry from the Centre Daily Times. “Due to (the) ongoing nature of the investigation, the department was not able to share additional details, but they have agreed to keep me informed as this moves forward.”
Officers were noted on scene, or employees or ownership confirmed investigations, at these locations: Hundred Degrees Hot Pot, My Thai, and Fuji and Jade Garden, all on Westerly Parkway; Penang on North Atherton Street; College Buffet in the WalMart Plaza off North Atherton; China Wok at Northland Center; and China Dragon on South Allen Street.
There were unconfirmed reports of a police presence at Hunan Wok on East College Avenue and Chen’s Mongolian Buffet on South Atherton Street. Chen’s was closed Thursday evening.
The owners of My Thai and Chen’s did not return messages seeking comment, and numbers for the others were either disconnected or unavailable. Calls to a number of the businesses Thursday evening were unanswered. At several others, employees answered but said no managers or owners were available for comment.
Endi Lu owns Ni Hao in Northland Center and Bellefonte Wok. Neither of his restaurants was visited by the authorities, but family members own College Buffet and China Wok.
“It’s tough. There’s all kinds of rumors out there,” Lu said. “But you hope people know how you run your business. Everything we do is above board.”
Three male employees from College Buffet were detained for questioning, he said. Lu said the restaurant closed because those men were cooks, but the plan was to be up and running for Friday service.
“We got all the staff back,” he said. “That’s good.”
At least 13 people were seen taken from the various locations, secured with plastic ties at their wrists, placed in law enforcement vans and driven to the State College Municipal Building. Officers were seen carrying cardboard boxes marked “evidence.”
Lu said health inspectors visited College Buffet after federal and state officials had completed their tasks there.
Homeland Security has not issued any follow-up information on the reason for the raid, any potential charges or the identities of the detained individuals. |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Tania Galbraith: "The whole building began to shake and it just wouldn't stop"
New Zealand's prime minister says at least 65 people have died after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch.
John Key said the toll was expected to rise further, adding: "We may be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day."
The tremor caused widespread damage as it occurred at a shallow depth of 5km (3.1 miles) during lunchtime when Christchurch was at its busiest.
The mayor of New Zealand's second-biggest city says 120 people have been rescued from the ruins.
The country's deadliest natural disaster in 80 years struck at 1251 (2351 GMT on Monday), 10km (6.2 miles) south-east of the city.
Screams from rubble
The damage is said to be far worse than after the 7.1-magnitude quake on 4 September, which left two people seriously injured but no fatalities.
We've had friends in town call us and say there are just bodies lying around: lots of dead bodies outside shops just lying there just covered in bricks Jaydn Katene, Christchurch resident Christchurch earthquake: Eyewitness accounts
The epicentre of that quake, which occurred in the middle of the night, was further away from the city and deeper underground, but it still caused an estimated $3bn (£1.9bn) in damage.
TV pictures of the aftermath of Tuesday's disaster showed scores of collapsed buildings in the South Island city of nearly 400,000 people.
Shocked survivors could be seen wandering the rubble-strewn streets, which cracked open as the ground beneath was liquefied by the tremor.
Police said that the dead included people on two buses which were crushed by falling buildings.
Helicopters plucked survivors to safety from rooftops, and dumped water on fires.
Officials said up to 30 people were feared still trapped inside the razed Pyne Gould Guinness building, where screams have been heard from the ruins.
CLICKABLE Select the images for more details.
Bexley Streets in the north-eastern suburb of Bexley were flooded as the quake caused water mains to burst, which coincided with heavy rain. Pyne Gould Guinness The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, which normally houses around 200 workers, collapsed. A number of people were thought to be trapped inside. Cathedral The 63m spire of the city's Anglican cathedral was toppled by the earthquake. A New Zealand TV reporter took a look inside the damaged building. CTV building Part of Christchurch's Canterbury Television [CTV] building completely collapsed in the earthquake. Some 24 people have been rescued from the building, but police said there might be between 60 and 120 bodies trapped underneath. Oxford Terrace In the aftermath of the earthquake, Rhys Taylor took this video on Oxford Terrace, 50 metres away from the city's main hospital. He said: "Cars were being used as ambulances to transport the injured."
Trapped under her desk inside the building, Anne Voss told Australia's Channel Seven by mobile phone: "I am hoping they will get me out soon because I have been here so long. And it's dark. And it's horrible."
Asked whether she was injured, she said: "I know I am bleeding and I can feel the ground is quite wet. I think it's blood."
Glacier smashed
A dozen visiting Japanese students are among those reported missing.
Bystanders have been using bare hands to try to free survivors trapped under debris.
Many injured people were carried out on blood-soaked stretchers or in the arms of shocked workmates and strangers.
Some escaped on ropes lowered from office towers. Others managed to crawl out of the rubble.
Analysis By nature, earthquakes tend to cluster in space and time. And Tuesday's tremor in Christchurch is almost certainly related to the much more energetic event that hit the region last September. The critical difference on this occasion is the ground broke almost directly under the country's second city, and at shallow depth, 5km (3 miles) below the surface. Contrast this with September's magnitude 7 quake: its epicentre occurred some 40km west of the city and at a depth of 10km, and it continued to rupture mainly away from the major built-up areas. New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The country straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates: the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates. On South Island, the location of the latest quake, the plates rub past each other horizontally. Depth and location key
The tremor sent the spire of Christchurch Cathedral, a landmark in the centre of the city, toppling into the square below.
John Gurr, a camera technician, told Reuters news agency the area outside the cathedral was "like a warzone".
Power and telephone lines have been knocked out, while burst pipes have deluged streets with water.
The suburbs of Lyttelton and New Brighton are reportedly "unliveable".
Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement she had been "utterly shocked" by the news.
"My thoughts are with all those who have been affected by this dreadful event," the statement said.
The quake caused some 30m tons of ice to shear away from New Zealand's biggest glacier.
Witnesses say massive icebergs formed when the Tasman Glacier in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park broke, tossing a nearby lake with huge waves.
Back in Christchurch, emergency shelters were set up in the city's Hagley Park, a race course and schools as night approached.
City Mayor Bob Parker told the BBC: "This is a terrible, terrible toll on our city."
"There is no power in most of the city; there is no water in most of the city," he added.
PM John Key said: "It is just a scene of utter devastation. We have to work as fast as we can to get people out of environments where they are trapped.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Grant Beedie in Christchurch: "There was no time to run"
"This is a community that is absolutely in agony. We just need this community, as it has done before and as it will do again, to come together, to check and support one another," he added.
Aftershocks
The military has been deployed to help the rescue effort, and the government has accepted an offer of specialist help from Australia.
A series of aftershocks, some as big as magnitude 5, have already rattled the stricken city, and officials warned residents to brace for more.
One Christchurch resident, Jaydn Katene, told the New Zealand Herald: "We've had friends in town call us and say there are just bodies lying around; lots of dead bodies outside shops just lying there just covered in bricks."
A British backpacker said the city "looked like a bomb had hit it".
New Zealand experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0.
The last fatal earthquake was in 1968, when a 7.1-magnitude tremor killed three people on the South Island's western coast.
Tuesday's was the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier killed 256 people. |
We often just read books and never think about how or why they were written, especially children’s books. Sometimes, the reason is obvious (a book about children with diabetes, for example), but most of the time, we just think that authors are very creative and come up with a book out of thin air. If you’ve ever written anything creative, you’ll know this isn’t true at all. Many times, authors have been influenced by a story in the news, a world problem or just a simple picture and an idea is born out of that. What about one of the most creative children’s authors of our time, Dr. Seuss? It turns out that there are some interesting facts behind his books.
Bennett Cerf, Theodor Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) editor, challenged him to write a book using 50 words or less. He actually made this challenge when Seuss was writing The Cat in the Hat (which used 225 words) but Geisel never backed down from a challenge and wrote Green Eggs and Ham with exactly 50 different words. Those words are:
a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
Do you think you could write a book in 50 words or less? Although the effort seems enormous, the beautiful simplicity of this book is what has made it timeless to generations of readers. You can find out a lot about Dr. Seuss and the ideas behind his books at Mental Floss. If you’d like to know more about the life of Dr. Seuss, Wikipedia has some great information as well as plenty of great links. Or you can visit the official Dr. Seuss website for some fun and games here.
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As power union TEEU affiliates to Right2Water, campaign expects large turnout for Saturday’s National Demonstration
Demand for abolition of water charges only first step in campaign for change.
At a press conference held this morning (Tuesday 25 August), the trade unions affiliated to Right2Water welcomed the decision by the power union TEEU to join the campaign. The TEEU’s Executive has voted to join Unite, Mandate, CWU, CPSU and OPATSI in supporting what Unite official and Right2Water coordinator Brendan Ogle described as “the greatest mobilisation of people power seen since the foundation of the state”.
Speaking at the press conference, Mandate General Secretary John Douglas said: “Right2Water is about opposition to water charges and the defence of a public good – but it is also about much more. The hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets of our towns and cities under the Right2Water banner know that water charges are just the tip of the austerity iceberg.
“Just months before the centenary of 1916, Ireland is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world where hundreds of thousands of us struggle to just get by. Only yesterday we learnt 300,000 children are in need of the means-tested Back-to-School allowance in order to help meet the costs of our supposedly free education system. At the same time, a relatively small few flourish in barely imaginable wealth.
“We need to assert our Right2Water – and it’s clear that people also want dramatic change in a number of policy areas. That is why, in May of this year, the Right2Water Trade Unions issued a draft set of Policy Principles for a Progressive Irish Government and submitted the Principles to a public consultation process. Almost 150 detailed submissions on a range of areas were received, and the resulting document will be launched at Saturday’s National Demonstration”, John Douglas said.
Unite official and Right2Water coordinator Brendan Ogle said: “Our experience in the Right2Water campaign is that, when we all work together, we can generate change – change that goes far beyond the issue of water charges. The ‘Banners Over Bridges’ action mounted last week in cities, towns and villages
throughout Ireland and beyond not only advertised Saturday’s demonstration – far more importantly, it was a clear demonstration of the unity and determination which has characterised the greatest mobilisation of people power seen since the foundation of the state.
“As the largest civil society organisation in the country, the trade union movement has been crucial to this mobilisation. In July, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions formally adopted an anti-water-charges position, and we are delighted that the TEEU has now voted to affiliate to Right2Water. On Saturday, tens of thousands of trade unions members from around the country will join with their friends and neighbours to send a simple message: the time for business as usual is over. The time for change is
now. First we need to abolish water charges and ensure public ownership of our water in perpetuity. And then we need to change the type of society we live in to one based on equality, fairness and solidarity rather than one based on greed and exploitation”, Brendan Ogle said.
Watch our video report of the last huge Right2Water demonstration here!
CPSU activist Dee Quinlan said: “We as a nation have always put our shoulder to the wheel. However, a time has to come when we stand up and say no, and that time is now. On August 29th at 2pm in Dublin everyone should take to the streets to show that we will no longer pay for the sins of the property speculators, top-tier bankers, centre right politicians and their pursuit of the policies of
austerity.
“If we accept these charges and recognise Irish Water, we are then in acceptance of the inevitable privatisation of water in this country. If the end goal of this unfair policy is not privatisation, then why is our government stubbornly refusing to hold a referendum to enshrine ownership of our water services in the hands of the public?”, Dee Quinlan asked.
Community activist Freda Hughes said: “Over the last seven years we have seen some of the most vulnerable in society bear the brunt of austerity – be they migrant communities, Travellers, lone parents, the sick or the elderly. Our government has imposed cuts that have resulted in over 300,000 people emigrating in the past four years and seen an increase of 55% in those affected by homelessness. Despite the fact that 69% of One Parent Families currently experience social and economic deprivation, last month we saw the One Parent Family Payment cut under the pretext of ‘incentivising’ people to take on more work. There has been no impact assessment, policy review or evidence to support implementation of these measures.
“This is possibly the most gendered cut our government has yet proposed, and it further compounds the pressures placed on some of the most vulnerable in our society. It is vital in this climate of inequality that we assert our Right2Water, oppose the charges and fight for public ownership”, Freda Hughes added.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License |
A year ago, before the man they call Bike Batman began his work—before he headed out on missions around the Emerald City with a pocketful of cash and the cops on speed dial and a paladin’s sense of wrongs to be righted, before he’d rescued two dozen stolen bikes from the grubby fingers of the city’s thieves, before even anyone referred to him as Bike Batman—he was just an average-seeming guy in Seattle who liked to ride his bicycles.
He rode his bike to work. After work, he rode his bike home again. In the evenings, in his basement, he wrenched on bikes that he fixed up and flipped. Monkeying with bikes helped him burn off stress. The guy had a wife who also liked to ride, a wife who at times would wonder aloud if all that half-finished transportation would be departing the basement soon, honey, so they could finally tackle that remodel.
In short, the guy showed no crime-fighting predilection—certainly no inkling to become a vigilante who would face off against criminals while armed with little more than a smartphone, some spare time, and a pair of brass balls. He didn’t choose to become Bike Batman.
Sometimes in life, though, the cape finds you.
All the action heroes have their origin story. Here is Bike Batman’s: It was May 2015. A Monday or a Tuesday. Our guy, an engineer, was at work. (Never mind where, and don’t worry about his name. He doesn’t want the glory or need the guff.) He was surfing online for a steel bike for his wife to ride on an upcoming trip. And—well, here, let him tell you what happened next:
“So I was looking for a Surly Cross-Check,” he says one recent day at lunch over a pulled-pork sandwich. “And I’d been searching for one on Craigslist forever. And one finally popped up. And it was really, really cheap. And I thought immediately, this is either stolen—it’s super beat-up and all the parts are junk—or the person doesn’t know what they have. It was like 300 bucks. And it would sell for $700—like half-price.
“So I started asking the guy questions about fit, about parts, about whatever. And the guy couldn’t answer anything. So I think, OK, this is probably stolen. And I did a quick Google: ‘Surly.’ ‘Cross-Check.’ ‘Seattle.’ ‘Stolen.’ And a Bike Index ad popped up. And the Bike Index ad had pictures of this bike, and it had a contact number for the owner of this thing.”
Bike Index, if you haven’t heard of it, is the nation’s largest bike registry and a clearinghouse for info on stolen rides. It lists more than 75,000 bikes. When someone loses his bike and turns to the web, if there’s a hit, Bike Index is often one of the first links that pops up.
So our guy—he’s not Batman at this point, remember, still just some joe who likes bikes and who’s in possession of a certain curiosity of mind, the kind of guy who likes to pull on a string to see what’s at the other end—reaches out to the original owner of the Cross-Check.
“I shoot her a text. I say, ‘I may have found your bike for sale. Could you provide some details?’ And she responded with pictures of her police report, pictures of her receipts, all this stuff. Serial number.
“I think she thought I was some weirdo.”
It could’ve ended there. Except it didn’t. That afternoon, our hero pulls on the string a little harder. He decides to pose as a buyer so he can meet the guy who’s selling the stolen bike. He has no idea what to say. No escape route. No nothing. The seller suggests meeting in downtown Seattle. Right by the city jail, as it turns out.
How Not to Lock Your Bike Locking up your bike and having it be there when you return is a minor miracle. We compiled a list of the 10 most obvious no-nos when securing your two-wheeled steed.
When the seller shows up, it’s not one guy. It’s three guys. “They looked like drug addicts. And, you know, whatever. I talk to people like this all the time. I take after my mom—talk to everybody. My wife hates it. And I start talking to them, looking at the bike. And immediately I’m like, this bike is set up exactly like the lady’s that I’ve been texting. I flip the bike over, check the serial number. The serial number’s the same. OK. At this point, the bike is stolen. I don’t know what to do.
“I said, ‘Just give me a second, guys.’ I dialed 911 on my phone. Conveniently, my phone didn’t dial. So I pretended to talk to the police as I derived a plan.
“And I said, ‘Well, guys, I’m sorry to tell you this, but this is my girlfriend’s bike. And it’s stolen. And I just talked to the police. And the way I see it, you’ve got two options. You can wait here for the police to come and tell them your story and how you came upon the bike, or you can get out of here and just let me throw the bike in my truck.’ One guy immediately ran away. As soon as I said ‘police,’ he was out of there.”
Here it should be said that even though you have met Batman only a few times, at places and times of his choosing, what strikes you most about him is his utter unremarkableness. To the near-stranger, he is beige, nearly without affect, almost boring. Don’t misunderstand: Once you get to know him, you see that he’s smart and funny. But his hands do not wave when he talks. Inflection is not one of his gifts. In this way, he rather reminds you of those other Batmans—Christian Bale, Michael Keaton—who managed to be both charismatic and two-dimensional at the same time.
Bike Batman, of course, is keenly aware of the face he presents to the world and to thieves. “It’s just important to be this energy sink, basically,” he’ll tell you later. “The only reason this has worked for me so far is that I just go in there and just keep an even keel the whole time…As soon as you start getting worked up, that person is going to start getting worked up with you and feed off the energy and vibe that you’re putting out.”
(It probably also doesn’t hurt that our hero is in his thirties, big-shouldered, thick russet beard, Viking-looking. He isn’t the first guy you would choose to fuck with over a hot Litespeed.)
But back to the action, where one thief has fled but a standoff has arisen with the remaining dirtbags across the empty saddle of the stolen bike:
“The other two guys were getting a little amped up. My heart is just in my throat. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just standing there. And I said, ‘Well, guys, I’m not waiting around any longer. Alright, I’m out of here.’ I throw it in my truck, try to race downtown at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, make it about 50 feet—and then stop at a traffic light.”
Not exactly a clean getaway.
Still, he makes it. “I called the lady: ‘Yep, it’s your bike.’ I drove about six blocks and met her downtown, gave it back to her. And she was just so happy.” It didn’t matter, he says, that the bike was all janky and barely worth the trouble.
Right there, our guy could’ve walked away. But his work didn’t feel finished. The seller—probably the coward who ran—had dozens of bikes for sale on Craigslist. So our guy forked over all the woman’s info to the Seattle Police Department. Then he waited for the boom to fall. And he waited. “Seattle PD was going really slow. And I was getting really frustrated watching these bikes go up for sale and coming down.”
He got a little obsessed. Doing his own “hack job investigations,” he found more Bike Index postings about stolen bikes, and then located them for sale on websites. About a week after his first sting, he saw a red Surly Karate Monkey for sale, cheap, on a site called OfferUp. He easily found the owner on Bike Index, a young country boy from Idaho whose ride vanished in the 20 minutes he ran upstairs to see his girlfriend at the University of Washington.
He and the kid set up the buy, then rendezvoused that night with the thieves and followed them to a bleak area south of downtown Seattle where trailers squatted in a circle and shadows moved in the dark bushes. It was the land of stolen bikes. Just tons of them. Again, our guy had no plan. No way to communicate with his new sidekick. “We were idiots,” he recalls. Once they confirmed it was the kid’s bike, “I was like, ‘Hey, why don’t you call the girlfriends and tell them we’re doing alright?’ And I’m wearing a wedding ring. I’m trying to pull it off and put it in my pocket.
‘Okay, the girlfriends.’ And he runs off to call 911.”
The kid must’ve screamed bloody murder, because seven cops descended. Cuffs slapped on perps. Bikes recovered. The police admired their initiative—and told them that their initiative would probably get them shot.
But goddamn it was a rush. “This kid was hosed if he didn’t have someone else. He was like, ‘Fuck this city,’” our guy recalls. “It was so much fun and felt so good to stand up and, you know, not let all these, particularly out-of-town people, get this bad rap for Seattle.” Later, some cops called him Robin Hood. A grateful citizen in the Seattle Times named him the “bike repo man.”
If the alter ego born that dark night must have a name, however, the guy preferred Bike Batman.
Stealing bikes is a crackin’ business. Across the nation, property crime has been falling for years, even precipitously. But bike thefts? Not so much. About 185,000 bikes were stolen in 2014, according to FBI statistics. That number is probably wildly low, because it doesn’t count burglaries in which a bike is taken. And only about one in three property crimes is even reported to police, the feds say.
In Seattle, 1,563 bikes were reported stolen last year, about double the number that were stolen in 2010. In Portland, aka Bike City USA, 2,100 bikes were stolen in 2014, according to a database compiled by the Oregonian. That number has doubled since 2007.
Bryan Hance is the Portland-based co-founder of Bike Index. He started his site out of frustration that thieves can steal a bike in Portland, say, and take it to Seattle, and the theft doesn’t get shared among law enforcement. “They’re totally balkanized. City A’s database does not talk to City B’s,” Hance says. Even college campuses usually don’t talk to the city around them. But if everyone registered their bike on a website and reported it there when stolen, bikes would be unsellable. In theory, anyway.
“Everybody asks, why bikes? And there are a couple factors,” says Hance. “One is that they’re worth a helluva lot more than they used to be. Ten years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find a $2,000 bike unless your were a racer,” he says. “Now, a median price for a commuter is $1,300. The price is better, the components are better.
“Factor number two: Back when gas was $5 a gallon, a lot of people started riding. And they’ve stuck with it. And that puts a lot more bikes on the road.
“Then, a) crystal meth, b) crystal meth, and c) crystal meth.” Oh, and heroin, Hance adds. “And that leads to a lot of shitty, low-level property crime.”
There are more reasons. Take the rise of online commerce sites used to sell the stolen goods. You know Craigslist and eBay. But do you know 5miles? Or Letgo? Or OfferUp or Neerbuy or Saily or VarageSale? These sites are a visual marketplace, showing pictures of an item but often including few words to describe it. They offer the seller anonymity while making it hard for police or others to search the web for keywords. Lost a bike? You could spend hours scrolling through pictures across more than a half-dozen sites trying to track it down. Then do it again the next day. These sites may sell legit merchandise. But they’re also the 21st-century way to fence stolen goods. Think tag sales for tweakers.
In Seattle, the detectives who deal with burglaries are the same ones who get handed bike thefts, says Detective Scotty Bach of the Seattle Police Department’s Major Crimes Task Force. In the inevitable triage that is police work, home burglaries—with its bigger price tags and terrified families—naturally go to the front of the line. Unless there’s a major lead or a big sting, bikes tend to fall by the wayside, says Bach. Every theft matters. But some matter more than others.
And then there’s the marketplace. Bikes wouldn’t get stolen if people didn’t buy stolen bikes. But people do buy stolen bikes. Either buyers are oblivious, or they put blinders on. Buying a cheap bike from someone you meet on an app “sort of gives it the sheen of legitimacy,” says Hance. (It’s not a sketchy deal in a dark alley! It’s e-commerce!) But people don’t ask the right questions. Or don’t want to. Or don’t care.
Finally, let’s give a grudging shout-out to the thieves. Though drug-addled and twitchy-fingered, they’re now damn good at what they do. U-locks scarcely slow them down anymore (angle grinders, modified car jacks, huge bolt cutters, pry bars). Cables? Might as well tie your bike with dental floss, laughs Hance. Some thieves don’t even bother with the locks initially: In Portland, thieves have used angle grinders to saw through bike racks and dealt with the lock later. There have been break-ins at apartment buildings that contain “those cheap, shitty aluminum” vertical bike racks, and the thieves “saw the entire freaking rack off the wall,” making off with 25 bikes at once, Hance says.
(Your smartest move is to take your bike inside. Boss won’t let you? Make your bike harder to steal than the bike parked next to it, says Hance. That means throwing on two locks, minimum. Bike theft is about time and convenience for the thief and making it just enough of a pain that he moves on. As the old joke goes, you don’t have to outrun the lion, you only have to outrun your buddy.)
So, yeah, it’s a jungle out there. Enough to make a city cry out for a hero.
In the 12 months since he began, in May 2014, Batman returned 24 bicycles to their owners—all in his spare time, for free. At first he did it solo. Over time, he met some cops, and he met victims who had friends who were cops, and he sometimes called them to help on his stings. Still more officers reached out to him after the story in the paper.
Getting bikes back to people became a bit of an addiction. “It felt so good, just so good to get people reconnected with this thing that they’ve got all this emotional attachment to,” he says. “And most of these guys don’t have renter’s insurance, or they don’t have an insurance policy on their bike for whatever reason. They’re out $2,000, $3,000 when this thing gets stolen.”
Consider the tale of Maggie Stapleton, one of Batman’s favorite recent stories.
On an unseasonably warm April Friday this year, Stapleton, who’s 29, was grilling outside with friends in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. As the day cooled, everyone went inside. When Stapleton did, she plumb forgot to lock up her bike.
Bicycles have stories. Her Salsa Vaya—steel, traffic-cone orange—was the bike she bought after she first met her boyfriend, a longtime cyclist. Atop her Salsa, Stapleton became a cyclist, and a bike commuter, riding to and from her job in downtown Seattle. She has put thousands of miles on it. This summer, she was training to ride the Ramrod, a glorious, one-day, 150-odd-mile, 10,000-foot crusher that loops Mount Rainier.
But when Stapleton came outside at midnight to ride home, the Vaya—well, you know.
Stapleton went home and posted the loss online wherever she could think of. She tweeted. She contacted bike shops. Nothing. She was bummed. “This bike does have a lot of sentimental value to me, because it’s the first bike that made me fall in love with cycling.”
And this is what’s so interesting about bikes, isn’t it? A bike is just a thing—an ingenious concatenation of gears and wire and leather and steel. Really, we should care for it no more than we care for a toaster, or a BluRay player. Yet we do. Hance thinks he knows why. Bikes carry the freight of memories of experiences we’ve pedaled through while in the saddle. “It’s not that it’s ‘a thousand-dollar bike that I’ve had for five years,’” he says. “It’s ‘the thousand-dollar bike that I rode cross-country with my dad who had cancer,’ or ‘that I bought when I had raging PTSD after Afghanistan.’” Sure, for 60 percent of people, when it’s gone, it’s gone. But the other 40 percent, it’s like they’ve lost a limb, says Hance. “They don’t want it back, they need it back,” he says. “They’re ready to go Rambo to get that bike back.
“That’s where things get real interesting.”
Call Stapleton one of the 60 percent. She was sick about her lost bike, sure. But what could she do? She’d forgotten to lock it up; now it was gone. Lesson learned, she said to herself. Then, on Monday night, she received a phone message. “I think I may have found your bike,” said the voice. She called back. It was Batman. He already was winging to North Seattle to meet the seller. He had been checking the listings one last time before bed when he saw a fishy post; cross-referenced it; and found Stapleton’s post on Bike Index, complete with tell-tale details—a scratch here, mismatched tires.
Stapleton met up with him in a Sam’s Club parking lot. Batman had already called the cops. A plan was hatched: The police would hide nearby as Batman met the thief in the parking lot of a Kidd Valley burger joint. He scrawled the Vaya’s serial number on his hand. If it matched the one on the bike, he’d turn the crank to call in the cavalry.
“What should I do?” Stapleton asked the officer.
“Why don’t you go get some french fries?” the cop replied.
So Stapleton watched through the plate-glass windows of the burger joint, about to lose her mind as the dirtbag produced her beloved bike, and Batman turned the crank, and the flashing lights woop-wooped into view. She went home that night with her Salsa Vaya.
“It does kind of restore my faith in humanity,” she says. “A lot of people do bad things, but someone out of the goodness of their heart reunites people with their stolen bikes?”
Only later did she realize she’d had a brush with Batman, whom she’d read about in the paper just days before.
Others are out there fighting bike crime, too. There’s a woman in San Francisco who’s good at it, Hance says. And bike messengers down there “who are not to be trifled with. God help the person who takes a bike messenger’s bike.” I ask for another. Hance points me to one of the best of the spotters, folks who see the stolen bikes online and contact the owners. A “ninja,” he calls him. The guy has tracked maybe 20 bikes.
The Portlander doesn’t want to give his name or where he works. He doesn’t want to get too involved. He’s got kids, he says. But he explains his methods.
He looks for suspicious bikes during free moments at work, he says, then puts the owners in touch with ads by the shady sellers. He calls himself a middleman. It’s a different kind of crime-fighting, he says, done in front of a computer, at a standing desk. But he also patrols his not-quite-gentrified neighborhood. He keeps an eye out. He started a monthly cleanup. He’s the kind of neighbor you want to have. “Once or twice a day, I’ll see someone what they call ‘ghost riding’ a bike”—riding one, while guiding a second, thousand-dollar bike. And they “don’t look like any kind of rider,” he says, when I ask him why he does this. “I’ve had two bikes stolen from my house,” he says.
Our thirst for justice runs strong. And just as we are creative in our desire to slake that thirst, we are ingenious in the search for vengeance. A corner of YouTube is devoted to the delight of those who have exacted retribution upon jerks who would steal our bikes. To watch these clips is to feel a bit like indulging in pornography. This is wish fulfillment, after all, the next best thing to the satisfaction of being there and punching the guy yourself. There’s the Portland guy on YouTube who sees his stolen bike in a Seattle Craigslist ad, drives three hours north to pose as a would-be buyer, and then hounds the thief on foot through Seattle traffic until police cuff the baddie. There are the videos of “bait bikes” outfitted with seats wired to remote-control stun guns. Grown men, their taints zapped, lift off from two wheels into the branches of tall trees. It’s sadistic stuff.
An aggressive anti-theft group in New Orleans called Stolen Bikes NOLA has begun posting mug shots of frequent offenders. Last year, in a surveillance spearheaded by a 240-pound former bounty hunter from Alabama, the group’s members performed an elaborate tail of a suspected thief known as Track Suit as the man moved through the French Quarter, even as Track Suit donned a wig and hat to avoid detection. (Police finally arrested Track Suit.)
Like the Portlander I spoke with, Batman’s crime-fighting also starts during downtime at work. Take this morning, he tells me while we’re at lunch. There was a ten-minute conference call. But he didn’t really have to participate much, he says. “So the first thing I did was pop up Craigslist and OfferUp on both screens of my computer and just scroll through them passively until I see something that, you know, raises a red flag for me. And then I cross-check Bike Index, or I’ll open up Bike Index and scroll through the recent stolen bikes. So, five minutes, or 30 seconds here and there.” Anyone can do it.
He pulls out his phone. Here’s one now that he’s flagged. It’s a Trek, lime green. With that, my sidekick powers of observation end.
Batman, though, is just getting started.
It’s a modern touring bike, he says. “I would say you could end up buying this for around a thousand bucks from REI. The components look fairly new. They’re asking $250 for it.
“If this is a normal sale, I would expect to see ‘TREK. MODEL. SIZE.’ And just some details,” he says. But look at this listing, he continues—all it says is “Green Trek Bike.” No size. No nothing.
Price, and an inarticulate seller, are only his first clues. He’s just getting warmed up. He’s a detective now, picking up bits of lint, gathering circumstantial evidence, building a case. “The photo is taken in front of a flipped-over shopping cart and a makeshift barbecue, some burnt chairs or something. OK, no big deal, whatever. But then I go to”—here he clicks on the guy’s profile—“this guy’s name, and this guy’s profile is made in May of 2016, and you look at his other sales, and they’re all equally sketchy.”
Next, Batman takes the info and surfs over to Bike Index. He punches in what he knows: “Trek.” “Green.” “Within 100 miles of Seattle.” Several contenders pop up. He starts to weed them out. It helps to know bikes by a glance, their geometry and components. Batman knows bikes.
“Nope. Nope.” None seem to match. It’s a dead end. Just another shifty-looking sale. For now, anyway.
One of the biggest problems in busting up bike sales is that a lot of people simply don’t report their bikes when they get lifted, he says. If a bike is stolen in Seattle that’s worth more than $500, you’ve got to visit a police precinct to file a theft report or wait for an officer to arrive to document the theft. “And if you work like I work, 12 hours a day, all the time—Saturday I’m gone constantly. If somebody was to steal something of mine, and a police officer wasn’t able to say, ‘I will be there in five minutes,’ I just can’t wait around the three hours for ‘I will be there between eight and noon.’ That ain’t gonna work. We live in a busy city.”
I ask Detective Bach what he thought of Batman’s vigilantism. He was blunt. “I thinks there’s some huge risks for what he’s doing,” Bach says. “I would never advise a citizen to meet a suspect on his own. You’re buying these bikes from people who possibly are high on narcotics. You just don’t know.”
A few years ago, Seattle Bike Blog’s Tom Fucoloro was nearly aerated with a screwdriver while helping to retrieve a friend’s stolen bike. Bach also points to an incident north of Seattle in February, in which several people claimed they’d found their stolen construction tools on OfferUp. After being unable to secure a police officer’s help in time, the people met the seller and tried to make a citizens’ arrest of the alleged thief. Instead, the man pulled a pistol. He later was arrested. (To be fair, Batman these days usually calls the cops as he goes to meet the perp, and they formulate a quick plan, so the the police are waiting nearby to descend.)
Still, Bach recommends gathering as much info as you can about the stolen bike and who has it to make the police’s job as easy as possible, and then calling the police so they can intervene or make the buy instead. “If you can get us involved early, that’s great,” Bach says. And then be persistent, he says, until someone with a badge pays attention.
Our Batman is quite familiar with some of the occupational hazards that come with being a bike vigilante. There’s the danger, for one.
Last summer, when Batman was still new at this, he spied a Cervélo P2 for sale, confronted the thief, and took it. (“I’ve got a picture of the victim, he’s standing on my porch with just this gigantic smile on his face, like, ‘Oh my God!’”) Two weeks later, another stolen bike pops up on OfferUp.
Batman got a little careless. Though he had changed his profile and his picture, his texting pattern was similar. He recommended meeting at the same parking garage. He arrived early and saw the same thief, who he later found was wanted for violent crimes. Now the guy was with four friends, who were waiting in the corners of the parking garage. Batman let that bike go and lived to fight another day.
Perhaps it is no surprise that Mrs. Batman does not love these stories. Still, he adds, “She’s supportive. She knows it’s something that’s really important for me, and she has chosen to support me in it. But there are times where, for instance, with Maggie Stapleton’s bicycle, I found that at like 8:30 p.m. or something, I was literally brushing my teeth, looking through the bikes on OfferUp” and went out to bust the guy, he says. “And the whole thing was very rushed. She doesn’t like that. She wants me to contact the police, get a plan together.”
Then there are the hazards of trying to be a zealous do-gooder.
Last summer, Batman was flying high on his success, recovering bikes left and right, feeling cocksure. A Rodriguez coupled tandem came up for sale, dirt cheap. (A note here: Rodriguez Cycles are sweet custom steel rides hand-built in Seattle. A new, fully kitted tandem can go for up to $9,000 today.) The seller is sketchy, jittery, knows nothing about the bike. Batman sets up the buy and calls the police.
They meet. Batman tells the woman the jig is up.
Fuck off, she says. The bike’s mine.
The police arrive. They ream out Batman for profiling someone as a criminal with no proof. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “I had a friend, a bleeding heart liberal teacher, was just talking about what a piece of shit I was,” he says now. “I don’t even think I was aware of what I was doing.” (The unlikely owner apparently got the Rodriguez through an auction of a forgotten storage unit, à la Storage Wars.)
After that, he says, “I seriously considered stopping this foolishness altogether. But I got an email or a text from someone saying, ‘Thank you so much. I just put 60 miles on my bike or whatever, it feels amazing.’ And I thought, I can’t. It just feels too good.”
So he didn’t stop. But now he plays by new rules. If he can’t contact the owner and confirm that a bike is stolen, he won’t contact the cops and get them involved. Sometimes he’ll snap up a really suspicious bike himself and try to find the owner later. It’s all about acting fast, he says. “This is like ambulance chasing. If you’re not the first one there, someone else is gonna swoop in, and then you’re not gonna find the owner.”
And when it all goes right, it is sweet.
Last fall, Batman sees a carbon Cervélo P5—a crazy-expensive tri bike, maybe $9,000 retail—for about $3,000. It’s obviously hot. But Bike Index shows bupkes, and local police have no reports. Batman talks the kid selling it down to $1,700. Tells him he’ll have the cash when he gets back from a business trip in a week.
During the delay, Batman gets on the horn. He calls the Cervélo rep to find out where the bike was sold: Oregon. He calls the Oregon shop. The shop calls the bike’s owner. The owner calls Batman.
“I left for Hawaii three weeks ago,” the owner says. “That bike should be in my house.”
“Well, it’s not,” says Batman.
The next day, when he meets the thief, the fuzz swarms. Turns out two guys with family in the neighborhood knew the cyclist’s schedule and had emptied his house when he headed to the islands. Nobody even knows there’s been a crime until Bike Batman solves it.
Why does Bike Batman do this for us? He has a life, after all. He’s got a wife who wants to sit on the couch with him and watch Game of Thrones. He’s got friends. A busy career. He’s got bikes to ride—four at last count, not to mention the hobby bikes cluttering the basement. Why do this?
Our comic book heroes have always been different from us—in their monomania, in the black-and-white way they see the world. The rest of us accept early to shrug and live with the unfairness of it all. But the heroes we invent and raise up, they don’t shrug. They don’t accept things the way they are. That’s what makes them so appealing and yet also keeps us distant from them. We admire their monomania, and we distrust it. We want to know what’s really in their hearts that makes them not like us.
“Really, it might be 3 percent, let’s say, adrenaline. Some subconscious adrenaline seeking,” Batman says of his motives. (“It’s not like the adrenaline I get from riding a mountain bike or something, or riding really fast,” he wants you to know. “But it’s kind of the nervous energy I get when I’ve got way too much on my plate.”) “And there might be 2 percent of something else. But I would say 95 percent of it is just getting that bike returned.”
Here’s a for-instance, he says: After the recovery of Maggie Stapleton’s bike—the Salsa Vaya, the french fries—he friended her on Instagram. “I was having a really, really busy week the following week, after getting that thing back for her, and I was really not super-enthused with work. And every once in a while I would just open up Instagram and look at a picture of her riding the bike and just think, fuck. Yeah.”
“I know that sounds creepy,” Batman adds. And he laughs at himself. And you laugh with him, because the mask has slipped down, and you see that the guy across from you isn’t Batman anymore, isn’t some abstract concept about the war in man’s breast between Good and Evil. It’s just a big, Viking-looking guy who gets frustrated at work, just like you do, and who right now is wearing a giant grin on his face because he’s found something he really, really likes to do, and that something happens to be helping other people who are in a jam.
No, Bike Batman, that’s not creepy at all. In fact, that’s about the most normal thing in the world. |
A new outdoor bar has come to Cambridge, and the people behind it are also behind a couple of nearby spots.Boston Magazine is reporting that The Bar by the Elevator is now open at One Kendall Square, with the State Park and Mamaleh's team running the place. The new spot--which gets its name from the elevator outside of Mamaleh's--is a casual place with seating for 12 (and additional standing room) and a rotating list of beers on tap, cans of beer in a bamboo-wrapped refrigerator, rosé, sangria, and tiki drinks, along with a menu that includes hot dogs and sides from Mamaleh's.The article says that The Bar by the Elevator is open most evenings at 4:00 PM (weather permitting), with earlier opening hours on the weekends.Follow us on Twitter at @hiddenboston
Labels: bar openings, bars, Cambridge bars, Cambridge restaurants, Kendall Square restaurants, restaurant openings |
Hassan Rouhani's message to mark start of Jewish new year unexpected in Israel, which has identified Iran as security threat
Amid a global exchange of greetings and good wishes to mark Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, which began at sunset on Wednesday, there was one from a particularly surprising quarter.
Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, tweeted: "As the sun is about to set here in #Tehran I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah." A picture of an Iranian Jew praying at a synagogue in Tehran accompanied the tweet.
According to a 2012 census, there are fewer than 9,000 Jews among Iran's population of about 75 million.
The message from Rouhani was unexpected in Israel, which has identified Iran as a huge threat to its security. It says the regime is developing a nuclear weapons programme that could be used to annihilate the Jewish state.
Rouhani, who was elected in June, has pledged to tone down the "hate rhetoric" used by his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Barack Obama, also sent new year greetings to Jews around the world, wishing them "shana tova" from the Great Synagogue in Stockholm during a stopover en route to the G20 summit in St Petersburg.
Other wellwishers included the British prime minister, David Cameron, who sent "best wishes to Jewish communities in the UK and around the world observing the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur".
His message continued: "At this important time for the Jewish faith let us join you in praying for a new year that will achieve progress towards a lasting peace for Israel and the Middle East."
Rosh Hashanah marks the start of the year 5774 in the Jewish calendar and about a month of religious holidays. Yom Kippur, the solemn day of atonement and fasting for Jews, begins at sunset next Friday. It is followed by Sukkot, or the Feast of the Tabernacles, an eight-day holiday in which observant Jews take meals in a sukkah, an outdoor structure traditionally covered in palm fronds. |
All characters are relatively the same except for the characters who are filling the role of the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Lion.
Hermione continued groaning in pain from what had just transpired to her. So much pain that she fell into a deep coma. The last thing she remembered was entering Hogwarts' doors and being led into the clinic where she dreamed a hazy dream.
Hazy enough for Hermione to believe that she was in a middle of a storm, being whisked away along with the school into a far off land.
All the other students and teacher quickly left while touting brooms to fly away though Hermione continued to sleep. She slept as the school continued to soar into the sky. She slept as the school began to fall. She slept while the school fell through the clouds. She slept until the falling came to a sudden halt with a loud banging crash.
"What was that?!" Hermione asks after she wakes up and finds only her cat Crookshanks on top of her legs.
Hermione was very awake for a girl that had just woke up and begins to explore the school with Crookshanks following her every move.
She explored the school from every level, from the tunnels underneath it, to the towers above and found no one else inside other than her and Crookshanks.
"Maybe everyone is outside for a Quidditch game" Hermione told Crookshanks who was giving her a worried look that only a pet can make.
Without looking around anymore, Hermione opens the doors of the school and steps outside only to see a large amount of ninjas gather around her. Ninjas, ninjas everywhere but Hermione didn't have a clue as to what was happening.
"Oh Crookshanks," Hermione whispers. "I have a feeling we're not at Hogwarts anymore."
In a puff of smoke, an old man named Jiraiya appears before Hermione with large amounts of white hair and a red vest while holding a book titled "Makeout, Makeout Paradise".
"Are you a good ninja or a bad ninja?" Jiraiya begins to walk toward Hermione.
"Well," Hermione answered. "I'm not a ninja at all, I'm Hermione Granger from Hogwarts."
"Well, is that the ninja?" Jiraiya asked, points at Crookshanks, then proceeds to lift up the cat's tail for an observation. "Perhaps a cat girl ninja in disguise."
"Crookshanks is my cat!" Hermione answered "What are you doing to it?!"
"Well, I'm a little muddled, because the ninjas have called me here because a new ninja has arrived and has just dropped a school on the Wicked Ninja of the Snakes." Jiraiya explained while pointing around "There's the school, and here you are and there is all that remains of the Wicked Ninja of the Snakes."
Hermione looked and gasped at a person who looked surprisingly like Lord Voldemort, but with long black hair and a purple tongue jutting out of his motionless head which stuck out from under the school of Hogwarts. There was an odd name tag from a scratched head protector which said Orochimaru right next to the now dead ninja.
"So the ninjas here want to know, are you a good ninja or a bad ninja?" Jiraiya asked.
"But I've already told you, I'm not a ninja at all. Ninjas are old and creepy and would often spy on me while I'm taking a bath."
Jiraiya begins to laugh wildly with his arms to his side and his stomach and chest thrusting into the air as he does.
"What's so funny?" Hermione asked.
"I'm laughing because I am a ninja!" Jiraiya answered. "I'm Jiraiya, the good ninja of the frogs."
"You are?!" Hermione answers and tries to step back and away from Jiraiya. "And all those people?" Hermione asked nervously as well while pointing at the people around Jiraiya.
"They're ninjas too," Jiraiya answered. "and this is ninja land."
Hermione begins to run away from Jiraiya as soon as she could, following the closest road she could find through a leafy forest, which was yellow and bricked.
Crookshanks wasn't far behind and would alert Hermione when the ninja, Jiraiya, got closer asking Hermione to help him with his "research".
Hermione continued to run, thought quickly and shouted. "Accio!"
A broom quickly flew from the remains of the school and into Hermione's hand and she flew off at great speed with Crookshanks barely holding onto the broom's handle. Hermione almost touched the stratosphere but soon fell toward the middle of a grain field because she wasn't a good flyer.
"Ow!" Hermione commented while Crookshanks had managed to land beside her. "Now where are we? How do we get home?"
Hermione looked around and saw no hint of any good directions to follow but soon heard a voice "Maybe it's that way."
"Who was that?!" Hermione asked but received no answer.
However, Crookshank,being the brilliant cat that it was began hissing up a pole which alerted Hermione.
"What is it Crookshanks?" Hermione asked while looking up the pole and realized that it was a scarecrow's pole but instead of a scarecrow atop of it, it was a blonde boy in an orange jumpsuit who was stuck there.
"Who are you and how did you get up there?!" Hermione asked.
"My name is Naruto and I don't know?" the boy answered.
"What do you mean you don't know?!" Hermione asked again.
"Well, I don't know because I don't have a brain." Naruto answered.
"Don't have a brain?" Hermione was puzzled. "Then how can you talk?"
"Well, I know I talk a lot without a brain." Naruto answered. "For instance, I would be asking you to help me down from this pole instead of arguing if I had a brain."
"Oh." Hermione commented. "I guess you're right. So I should ask, how are you stuck there, maybe if I knew I would be able to help you down."
"I think the village people were trying to lynch me because I have this rope around my neck that keeps me up here." Naruto explained. "Of course I'm not bright about doing things, but if you cut off my head maybe I'll fall off."
"I don't think cutting off your head is a bright idea." Hermione answered slowly.
"But I don't see any other solution other than cutting off my head" Naruto said.
Hermione's mind was a bit cluttered after falling from the height of one of the earth's major atmospheres and had to think for a while.
"Maybe I can untie you." Hermione answered.
"But you'll need to untie knots, and I hate knots!" Naruto explained.
"Trust me, it's a lot safer than cutting off your head." Hermione answered.
"Oh fine!" Naruto agreed.
Hermione quickly flies up with her broom and begins untying Naruto who immediately plummets from the pole and onto the ground, landing on a now bloody nose.
"Ow!" Naruto yelled. "That wasn't safe at all, I have blood everywhere on the ground now. If you're a doctor, can you pick it up and put it back in me?"
"No, that's not how first aid works." Hermione said while floating down on her broom. "Why exactly did village try to lynch you?"
Naruto look extremely down trodden after Hermione had asked him her question.
"Because I'm a failure because I haven't got a brain." Naruto said sadly.
"But that doesn't explain anything." Hermione replied.
"You see." Naruto begins to sing:
I would wile away the hours
Annoying ninja scholars
Peeing on the grains
And I know I should be running
With prank I should be cunning
But I didn't have a brain
"I didn't ask for a song" Hermione commented though Naruto continues anyways.
I'd glue every griddle
On every individual
For chuckles and for games
With the thoughts I'd be thinking
I wouldn't be trapped by lures of bacon
But I didn't have a brain
Oh I would tell you why
Two plus five equals four
I could finish grammar school by age forty-four
And then my aim won't miss the floor
I would not be full of crayons
My mouth jammed with paint jobs
Which I licked off window panes
I wouldn't dance and be crazy
Hokage wouldn't be so angry
But I didn't have a brain
"That's nice and all," Hermione commented. "but I need to find a way home."
"Home?" Naruto asked. "I wouldn't know anything about that."
"Right," Hermione wasn't going to argue with that. "but do you know of anyone smarter than- say- you?"
"No clue." Naruto said proudly.
Hermione began thinking about the situation of trying to ask a question to a boy without a brain.
"Don't you know of any wizards at least?" Hermione asked. "I mean, you must have had some magical spell cast on you to survive so long without a brain."
"Wizard?" Naruto was puzzled. "I can think of the closest thing we have is the Hokage, he can make anything survive without a brain!"
"Really?!" Hermione was overjoyed. "He must be a powerful wizard then! I must see him."
"A powerful wizard?!" Naruto asked even though he should be the one providing the information "do you think he can give me a brain?"
Hermione was soon left speechless when Naruto began asking her about someone she never met before, even though Naruto was the person who brought up the subject.
"Sure..." Hermione said really slowly and pauses without knowing what more to tell Naruto.
"If that's true, I know where he lives!" Naruto said. "I just painted his house last week!"
"Really?!" Hermione was excited. "Take me to him please."
"Okay!" Naruto answered. "We're off to see the Hokage then!"
"Off we go!" Hermione said with her broom and Crookshanks behind her while they follow Naruto back onto the yellow brick road. |
Teacher positions in Hawaii’s public schools are filled by fewer certified teachers this year than last, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Hawaii Department of Education.
The latest figures show that while the number of instructors who’ve fulfilled a state-approved teacher education program is slightly up this year, the percentage of certified teachers in relation to total teaching positions statewide fell slightly to 92 percent from 93 percent the year before.
Out of the total 13,320 teaching positions as of October, 12,309 positions by the start of this school year were filled by certified teachers. That means 1,011 positions in Hawaii schools statewide are being filled by emergency hires or long-term substitutes.
Last school year, 12,268 certified teachers filled a total 13,188 positions, meaning there were 920 positions occupied by emergency hires or long-term subs.
The latest figures reflect a bit of a setback for Hawaii education officials, who have long been contending with a teacher shortage in the state in addition to weak retention levels as measured at the five-year mark.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
Hawaii’s Department of Education wants to fill 96 percent of its teacher positions with certified teachers by 2020 as part of its long-range strategic plan. The number of certified teachers in place by the start of each school year is one of 14 indicators of student success outlined in that plan.
The figures were presented to the Hawaii Board of Education by DOE administrators, relying on a new data tool that further breaks out these figures by the 15 complex areas statewide.
The percentage of certified teachers ranges widely across the state — only 84 percent of teachers in the Nanakuli-Waianae complex are certified, for instance, compared with 96 percent in Hilo-Waiakea on Big Island.
Certified teachers in Hawaii must have at least a bachelor’s degree and have completed a state-approved teacher training program plus other requirements.
Education officials also released the number of qualified instructors in special education classrooms. Out of the 2,151 special ed teaching positions this year, 1,840 are filled by certified instructors, meaning 311 spots, or 14 percent of the total positions, are occupied by those not trained in this area.
That percentage is about level with last year’s numbers, but disparities across each complex area are much starker. In Nanakuli-Waianae, for instance, only 73 percent of special education teachers in that region are certified.
When it comes to teacher retention at the five-year mark, 54 percent of teachers hired in 2013 stayed on as of the start of this school year, compared with 52 percent of teachers who were hired in 2012.
That only a little more than half of teachers in Hawaii stick around after five years led to a series of remarks by board members, who asked how the state could better entice teacher recruits, many of whom come from the mainland, to stay on for the long term.
“We don’t have enough teachers here turned out in Hawaii,” said board member Margaret Cox. “No matter what, there are those who are not going to stay.”
She urged education officials to rethink how to better acclimate newer teachers to Hawaii and the regions to which they’re assigned.
“How you work with those new teachers makes a big difference,” she said. |
In another strike against coal, a federal judge just shut down plans for a large coal mine expansion in Montana, saying US officials exaggerated the economic benefits of the mine while downplaying the impact it would have on the environment. Signal Peak Energy wanted to expand the Bull Mountain coal mine by 11 square miles and 176 million tons, claiming it would create jobs and generate tax revenue, all while not having any new impact on climate change.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy blocked the proposal, ruling that approving such a request should take into consideration not just the environmental effects of the mine, but shipping the fuel to Asia and the carbon cost for climate change of burning that fuel. The ruling has its roots in a lawsuit filed in 2015 by the Sierra Club, Montana Elders for a Livable tomorrow and the Montana Environmental Information Center, in which the groups stated that the government has not considered the effects of mining once it leaves the mountain.
Related: Global coal production falls 6.2% in the biggest decline in history
Mine owners argued the expansion would add $24 million in tax revenue and that there would be no additional impact to the environment, since customers could simply go elsewhere for more coal anyway. “This conclusion is illogical, and places the (Interior Department’s) thumb on the scale by inflating the benefits of the action while minimizing its impacts,” wrote Judge Molloy. Similar rulings in Colorado and Montana have been made in the past, but in those cases, mines were eventually allowed to expand after further environmental review.
Via the Associated Press
Images via Signal Peak Energy and Deposit Photos |
Almon Brown Strowger (February 11, 1839 – May 26, 1902) was an American inventor who gave his name to the Strowger switch, an electromechanical telephone exchange technology that his invention and patent inspired.
Early years [ edit ]
Strowger was born in Penfield, New York, near Rochester, the grandson of the second settler and first miller in Penfield. Little is known about his early life. It is said that if his mother gave her children a task, Strowger and his brothers would often try to devise a machine to do the task for them. He taught school in Penfield for a time, and served in the 8th New York Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War. It is believed[by whom?] that he fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia.
After the Civil War, it appears he first became a country school teacher before he became an undertaker. He is variously attributed as living in El Dorado, Kansas, or Topeka, Kansas, and finally Kansas City, Missouri. It is not clear where his idea of an automatic telephone exchange was originally conceived, but his patent application identifies him as being a resident of Kansas City, Missouri on March 10, 1891.
Rotary dialing [ edit ]
Anecdotally, Strowger's undertaking business was losing clients to a competitor whose telephone-operator wife was redirecting everyone who called for Strowger.[1] Motivated to remove the intermediary operator, he invented the first automatic telephone exchange in 1889; he received its patent in 1891.[2] It is reported that he initially constructed a model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.[citation needed]
Finances [ edit ]
While he may have come up with the idea, he was not alone in his endeavors and sought the assistance of his nephew William and others with a knowledge of electricity and money to realise his concepts. With this help the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company was formed and it installed and opened the first commercial exchange in (his then home town of) La Porte, Indiana, on November 3, 1892, with about 75 subscribers and capacity for 99. He married Susan A. (1846–1921) from Massachusetts in 1897 as his second wife. Strowger sold his patents to his associates in 1896 for $1,800 and sold his share in the Automatic Electric Company for $10,000 in 1898. His patents subsequently sold to Bell Systems for $2.5 million in 1916.
The company's engineers continued development of Strowger's designs and submitted several patents in the names of its employees. It also underwent several name changes. Strowger himself seems to have not taken part in this further development. He subsequently moved to St. Petersburg, Florida and appears to have returned to being an undertaker, as H.P. Bussey Funeral Home records report an unidentified body being moved "for Mr. Strowger" in December 1899. The same funeral home subsequently buried Strowger himself. Strowger was a man of some wealth at his death and was reported as owning at least a city block of property.
Death [ edit ]
He died, aged 63, of an aneurysm after suffering from anemia, at St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, Florida and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery the next day. His grave is marked with the traditional white headstone with an inscription that reads: "Lieut. A.B. Strowger, Co. A, 8 NY Cav."
He was survived by his widow Susan A. Strowger (1846–1921). After her death in Tampa, Florida, on April 14, 1921, her obituary appeared in the St. Petersburg Times, claiming she had additional "revolutionary" Strowger designs, but she had refused to make them public while she was alive because only others would profit from her husband's designs. She had claimed that her husband had only received $10,000 for his invention, when he should have received $1,000,000.
Legacy [ edit ]
A bronze plaque, to commemorate his invention, was placed on his grave in 1945 by telephone company officials. Strowger was admitted to the hall of fame of the U.S. Independent Telephone Association (now called the USTA) in 1965. Apart from his invention, his name has also been given to a locomotive and a company business award.
In 2003, the Verizon Foundation awarded $4500 to Pinellas Heritage, Inc. and the Pinellas Genealogy Society in Strowger's memory. The funds were used to develop a website to impart the history of the cemetery where Strowger is buried, and to restore two Civil War memorials. The Greenwood Cemetery project won an organization achievement award from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.
Patents [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Postage stamps distributed by the North Korean government. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
North Korea started its official “Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism” month by releasing two new postage stamps.
Surprise! They are not exactly a stars-and-stripes spectacular. Instead, the stamps offer some grim images predicting the promised annihilation of America. In one, a fist crushes an American missile, and a flag explodes in tatters. In the other, a hand holds a gun and eight missiles point toward a building that looks suspiciously like the U.S. Capitol.
The new offerings are part of a month of massive celebrations, including a gigantic anti-America rally where people carried placards reading “American imperialists are the war aggressor” and “Defend!” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency issued a statement calling on the world to stand up against “the fatty monster US imperialists” and calling the U.S. “a paper tiger easy to be crushed and set on fire.” The month commemorates the outbreak of the Korean War.
It's not the first time. North Korea has a rich tradition of issuing stamps about the American enemy, dating to the 1960s. As Quartz explained, “North Korea has issued hundreds of politically-themed stamps since 1946, and graphic anti-American motifs began appearing in the 1960s.”
One of the country's earliest offerings showed a young Kim Il-sung in front of a large South Korean flag. Others portrayed workers, soldiers and Soviet friendship. Others celebrated notable DPRK buildings, local sports heroes and popular animals and plants.
Among the anti-American highlights? A 1969 stamp of Richard Nixon speared by some fountain pens, aptly titled “International Conference of Journalists Against U.S. Imperialism.” A 1975 beauty showing a muscular North Korean punching a wimpy American soldier. “Yankee bastard” is splayed across the field in Korean.
Others feature, according to Quartz, tributes to Kim Jong Il, Disney characters and many, many options honoring the late Princess Diana.
North Korea has always had a soft spot for philately. According to Stamp Journal, there's a museum dedicated to the craft in Pyongyang. The country's Korean Stamp Company joined the Federation Internationale de Philatelie in 1965. Its headquarters are situated near one of the best hotels in the country's capital, making it easy to access for collectors.
The KSC has two main offerings: stamps for domestic use (printed on cheap, thin paper) and those designed to appeal to international collectors. The second are rarely used by the country's residents.
The stamps are popular among international stamp collectors who “get a kick out of danger,” although sanctions make it hard (not impossible) for the philately inclined. One Dutch collector was imprisoned on espionage charges for trying to buy stamps while on vacation in North Korea in 2011. |
Can former President George Bush really be a serial sex offender — in his 90s? That’s the extraordinary claim now being made in these febrile days of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
The latest — and third — Bush ‘victim’ to come forward is American novelist Christina Baker Kline.
In 2014, she posed for an official photograph with the wheelchair-bound ex-president at a literary event. ‘President Bush put his arm around me, low on my back,’ Kline wrote. Then he ‘squeezed my butt, hard’.
Can former President George Bush really be a serial sex offender — in his 90s? That’s the extraordinary claim now being made in these febrile days of the Harvey Weinstein scandal
‘I wasn’t traumatised. But it shouldn’t have happened.’
She hopes that by coming forward she will ‘begin to effect change’.
Her story echoes that of actress Jordana Grolnick, who claims Bush squeezed her bottom in 2016.
Actress Heather Lind was the first to speak out on Tuesday, saying she was groped by Bush while posing for a photograph in 2014. ‘I just thought, whatever, he’s a dirty old man.’
Trinny Woodall has found love with her multi-millionaire boyfriend Charles Saatchi, 74
His spokesman says: ‘At 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. On occasion he has patted the women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner.
‘Some have seen it as innocent, others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, he apologises most sincerely.’ Surely that should be the end of it.
One can’t help thinking if the ‘pest’ wasn’t a former President, these claims wouldn’t have been made.
While, of course, it is offensive for a man to touch a woman in this way, haven’t things got way out of proportion? When the #MeToo campaign began, encouraging women to detail their experiences of sexual harassment, it was after claims of rape and sexual assaults by film mogul Weinstein.
They were right to speak out. But now you can’t turn on a talk radio show without hearing the pitiful tale of some woman claiming she’s been traumatised for life after a man made a pass at her.
Shouldn’t such incidents have been dealt with by a fierce and humiliating reprimand at the time? By lumping every leer and lurch in the same catch-all basket as rape, we diminish the suffering of genuine victims.
By portraying a nonagenarian in a wheelchair as some kind of serial sex beast, Bush’s ‘victims’ — and the sisterhood — look frankly ridiculous.
TRIALS OF TRINNY
I Can hardly wait to read Trinny Woodall’s soon-to-be-published life story in which she reveals the tragedies of divorce, financial meltdown and finally finding happiness — in the arms of her multi-millionaire boyfriend Charles Saatchi, 74.
Not a self-help guide for us ordinary folk is it, love?
Interviewing our most famous astronaut, Tim Peake, This Morning’s Amanda Holden asked if he’d nicked a bit of the Moon as a souvenir. The only problem was that no one’s been there since 1972. Tim spent six months aboard the International Space Station orbiting in deep space. And no, the deep space wasn’t between vacuous Amanda’s ears.
Fats Domino was married to his childhood sweetheart for 61 years, had eight children and lived his entire life in New Orleans. After his death this week, a friend described him as ‘warm, fun-loving, spiritual, creative and humble — you don’t get more New Orleans than that’. A fitting epitaph for both this magnificent man and his magical city.
Fats Domino was married to his childhood sweetheart for 61 years, had eight children and lived his entire life in New Orleans
It could only have been a Liverpool fan who decided Wayne Rooney — who plays for rivals Everton — should do penance for his drink-driving by painting park benches in Macclesfield.
But given that Coleen is on her umpteenth hol this year — and not wearing her wedding ring — perhaps they should have got him painting dog houses instead.
WESTMINSTER WARS
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is under fire as arrest figures fall by half while crime rates soar. Are police cuts really to blame, or is it the millions wasted on historic sex abuse cases?
The mother of Jihadi Jack is appalled at Tory Rory Stewart’s suggestion that British traitors who joined ISIS should be killed in the Syria war zone by drones. Jack Letts, then 18, went for ‘naïve reasons’, his mum claims, and she wants government help to bring him home. I’d be happy to buy his ticket, provided he’s met at Heathrow airport by heavily armed anti-terror police.
Good to see Diane Abbott out supporting the sisterhood at the launch of Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti’s book Of Women. She was wearing a particularly lurid purple trouser suit she’d clearly borrowed from disgraced Kids Company boss Camila Batmanghelidjh.
A woman who poured boiling water over her husband’s mistress has been convicted of GBH. If I’d been Monika Fourie wanting revenge over my philandering husband, I’d have been tempted to pour it over him.
FERGIE'S BETRAYAL
You’d have thought that having had well-documented affairs while married to Prince Andrew, Fergie would have had more sympathy when she discovered her dog walker was having her own dalliance with Andrew’s butler.
Amanda Severn was dismissed with two weeks’ pay, about £500. Ms Severn feels betrayed, not just by the butler who’d led her to believe he was separated from his wife, but by Fergie: ‘She has shown no loyalty to me. I am not happy.’
Callousness apart, what a stupid move on Fergie’s part. The ex-employee has already let slip Fergie grandly insists she is called ‘Ma’am’ or ‘Your Royal Highness’ — neither of which she is entitled to — and still ‘rules the roost at the Duke’s home’.
Ms Severn clearly has stories to tell — and what’s the betting they’re worth more than the £500 the Yorks gave her?
Modern surgery can be a wonderful thing, as the Mail showed this week when a woman’s womb was removed for an intricate operation on her unborn child and then replaced. She is expected to have a normal birth in January.
The flip side of surgical advances came in the story of 28-year-old Star Delguidice who’s had dozens of operations and spent £200,000 on cosmetic surgery, including bum implants and breast enlargements.
She may be a miracle of modern medical practice but she’s also a walking tragedy.
IT SEEMS NANNIES DO KNOW BEST...
First we had singer Paloma Faith saying she was raising her child as gender neutral, now a couple has advertised for a nanny to raise their two children similarly.
Aged two and six, the kids must be called only by their names, never referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’, and Action Man and Barbie are banned as they reinforce gender stereotypes.
The parents complain they are struggling to fill the position. Why am I not surprised?
First we had singer Paloma Faith (pictured) saying she was raising her child as gender neutral, now a couple has advertised for a nanny to raise their two children similarly
The creators of the scheme to pay people £1,000 a month to take in hospital patients who are blocking beds claim they match the carer and patient carefully, and mostly they would be either friends or neighbours. In which case, why would anyone accept payment for what should be a simple act of Christian charity?
JAWS TALE IS A BIT FISHY
I love a shark escape story as much as anyone, but isn’t there something fishy about British diver John Craig’s claim that he swam for miles to escape a tiger shark that menaced him in waters off Shark Bay in Western Australia?
I know the spot well, because we holidayed there as kids. Craig claims he swam 4.6 miles in three hours. Hmmm. The ocean there is very cold, has average wind gusts of 20mph and swells of three metres. And the only being that could verify his ordeal is... the shark. |
October 24, 2013
by Compassion Over Killing Staff
Today, thousands of events are taking place across the US as part of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s annual Food Day Celebration. The events − ranging from film screenings to cooking demos and much more − aim to draw attention to our country’s urgent need for food policy reform.
And this year, Food Day comes just days after the Johns Hopkins Center for Livable Future released a scathing report warning of the detrimental effects of our country’s inaction on food issues. The analysis highlights the significant lack of progress on recommendations issued five years ago by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which suggested ways to improve public health, environment, animal welfare and rural community problems caused by industrial animal agriculture.
The new Johns Hopkins’ report further notes that the Administration and Congress have not merely failed to move forward on these important issues, but the government has acted “regressively.”
“There has been an appalling lack of progress. The failure to act by the USDA and FDA, the lack of action or concern by the Congress, and continued intransigence of the animal agriculture industry have made all of our problems worse,” stated Robert S. Lawrence, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
So, what did the report recommend in 2008? Here is a review:
Ban non-therapeutic use of antibiotics for farmed animals.
Implement a new system for dealing with farm waste.
Phase out the most inhumane animal confinement systems such as keeping animals in gestation crates, battery hen cages, and veal crates.
Aggressively enforce anti-trust laws for producers.
Increase funding for animal agriculture research.
In the last five years, we’ve seen antibiotics grow into a threatening public health problem. We’ve seen our environment degraded by factory farm waste. Progress on removing intensive confinement systems has only come from outside the government by the campaigning of animal protection groups. Stronger anti-trust laws have not been enforced. Finally, research funding has decreased.
The Center for a Living Future’s food system policy program director, Bob Martin, added, “Inaction was inexcusable five years ago, now it is unconscionable.”
As the growing popularity of Food Day brings communities together, it’s clear that people want change. And, as the Johns Hopkins report shows us, that call is falling on deaf ears by a majority of our elected officials. Luckily, you can change your actions today and help protect our planet, animals, and human health by choosing healthy and sustainable food options. Learn more at TryVeg.com. |
I’m no expert on the topic of education. I did sit through 19 years of classes. I have a pretty good idea of a good teacher when I see one. I have close friends who are school superintendents, principals and teachers. I have close friends who are former school superintendents, principals and teachers. There are more teachers sprinkled throughout my family than there are stars in a Christmas picture. For good measure, you can throw in a Kentucky Elementary School Principal of the Year into the batch.
But I am a sponge. So I ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. And I listen. What I’m about to say is not from Bill Cunningham’s table of knowledge. It is bare. This is what I’ve learned from them.
Our educational system in America is in shambles. According to The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States is now 18th in secondary education among the 36 tested. Twenty years ago, we were near the top. That was about the time that control of our schools started shifting more heavily from states to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
We are using the wrong paradigm in assessing our educational system. Evaluating teachers and schools by evaluating students is like evaluating fishermen by evaluating the fish in the stream. My good friend Harold Knight—outdoor superstar—could fish for a thousand years in a Kentucky pond, but he’ll never catch swordfish or tuna.
We ignore a critical reality. Our schools reflect the community in which they are located. We have placed upon the back of teachers and school administrators the burden of transforming communities instead of teaching children what those particular children are capable of learning.
The best way to evaluate teachers is to evaluate teachers—not students. Some schools are composed of a student body of children from predominantly dysfunctional families. Poverty, ignorance, apathy, violence, and even hostility exist within many communities. Kids from those communities come from homes that do not nurture the child, teach the child, inspire the child. That child may sleep in school because he or she has been up all night playing video games, or agitated by drug-infested homes, even drive-by shootings.
A teacher in an inner city school recently told me, “A child in my room was not sleepless because of drive-by shooters keeping him awake. He was out on a drive by shooting!” And we expect teachers in those schools to make brain surgeons out of them. We expect those teachers to wave a magic wand and imbue that youngster with good test scores. We expect somehow that the test grades from those students are going to sparkle with proper teaching.
Speaking of inner cities. Here is what Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA—an inner city school across the river from Washington, D.C— said just the other day in an article in USA Today: “Unfortunately, a form of liberalism often works against the best interest of schools; an idealism that puts a target on the back of teachers by holding them accountable for making up for all the academic and social deficiencies that children of the urban underclass bring with them into school.”
In other words, we are placing upon our teachers the unbelievable burden of changing the society in which they teach, instead of the society around them changing the school in which they teach.
How many millions of tax payers’ dollars are being used to test children—not to see what they should know, but to meet evaluation standards set by a dazzling myriad of bureaucrats? We hear the so-called educational expert recommend 12-month school years. But how many hours are wasted, brilliance smothered, learning opportunities squandered by our teachers spending days and weeks teaching “the test.” The test which will mean whether principals and teachers retain their jobs on the abilities of the students rather than on their own merits.
If you were to put my educator friends and relatives to the task of drawing up a game plan to improve our educational system, here is what it would be.
1. Get the federal government out of the educational business with the exception of unconditional block grants to the states. Bureaucrats hidden away in small cubicles in Washington, D.C. have no business dictating to the people of rural Montana how to educate their young. The reason, quite frankly, is because they do not know how. One size does not fit all.
2. Give block grants to states. Approximately 27% of Kentucky’s educational money is from the federal government. Therefore, it would be catastrophic at this late hour for the feds to pull out all together. Our schools would fall apart without the money. But the money could be given in block grants without strings or conditions and trust the states to use it wisely. They will. The local voters will see to it.
3. Eliminate testing of students to evaluate teachers. Teachers would be evaluated by other teachers. If you want the process sophisticated by a blue ribbon review, then establish examining boards of former teachers from different school districts. This panel of educators—who are veterans of many years of working in the trenches of the classroom—would view videotapes of classes taken surreptitiously. If we are skittish about the eavesdropping, we can notify the subject teacher on the morning of the taping. At least three samplings a year would be needed. This would avoid unfairly catching a teacher on a bad day. Teachers would be graded just like students—A through F. They would be paid accordingly. Failing teachers would be fired. Evaluating a good teacher is not rocket science. Any person of average intelligence who has spent 12 years in a classroom as a student knows a good teacher from a bad one.
Interesting enough, lawyers are rated by their peers in the distinguished publication of Martindale and Hubbard. If your brother is looking for a good lawyer in Milwaukee, you can look one up in the book. Why not teachers? How would you like to be able to look up the rating of teachers at Smithville Elementary before you take a job there and enroll your children? And if we had a school full of “grade A and grade B” teachers where the students did not perform very well, then common sense would dictate that we need to look outside the school for a solution to the problem.
The ancient Greek mathematician, Archimedes, in describing the power of the lever said: “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” Give the “grade A” teacher a place to teach—and not be hounded by constant testing and evaluations and federal guidelines—and they will teach. And teach darn well. And yes, move the world.
As an old country judge, I know very little about education.
But I have friends—lots of them—who do. And no one is listening to them.
Except me. |
Last three weeks I’ve been sipping on the latest batch of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch 7. I’ve posted about Batches 3-6 and thought I could mention something about Batch 7. Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch 7 is the lowest proof of the releases as you can see in the table below. Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch 7 comes in at 64% / 128-proof. The earlier “hazmat” 140-poof bottle got everyone excited just on proof alone. Being the other end of the spectrum I’m curious how people feel about Batch 7. For me, I don’t really care about the actual proof. I just want a nice big Bourbon to sip on.
Batch 9 – 67.8% / 135.6-Proof
Batch 10 – 69.4% /138.8-Proof
Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is one of my favorite Bourbons. It’s very rich, and being 12 years old, has a lot of barrel character. Big burnt/char flavors with heavy dark caramel and vanilla goodness. Chasing special Bourbon releases is an exercise in frustration, but these Elijah Craig Barrel Proof releases are relatively easy to obtain. I can usually snag an extra bottle, and since it comes out every 3 months or so, I can easily enjoy one and stash another.
Anyway, I just can’t get motivated to keep reviewing the same Bourbon over and over to pick out slight various between batches. So, I’ll just add some comments.
Batch 7 I get a big caramel-vanilla punch and sweetness up front. Then in comes the burt-char flavors, filled in with oak and astringency. Throughout a steady alcohol burn from the barrel proof. The finish I get some dark fruits like raisins and some acrid residuals.
I’m not sure Batch 7 is my favorite, but there’s nothing here to change my appreciation of these releases. |
I am looking for a command that will accept as input multiple lines of text, each line containing a single integer, and output the sum of these integers.
As a bit of background, I have a log file which includes timing measurements, so through grepping for the relevant lines, and a bit of sed reformatting I can list all of the timings in that file. I'd like to work out the total however, and my mind has gone blank as to any command I can pipe this intermediate output to in order to do the final sum. I've always used expr in the past, but unless it runs in RPN mode I don't think it's going to cope with this (and even then it would be tricky).
What am I missing? Given that there are probably several ways to achieve this, I will be happy to read (and upvote ) any approach that works, even if someone else has already posted a different solution that does the job.
Related question: Shortest command to calculate the sum of a column of output on Unix? (credits @Andrew) |
Sitecore 8 Content Testing
Anything with the codename Skynet immediately gets my attention so I dug into Sitecore’s Content Testing. Essentially Content Testing can learn from AB and Multivariate tests to suggest changes and create tests which can improve conversion rates, engagement values, site usage. So lets create some robotic Overlords!
What is Content Testing?
The principles of Sitecore’s Content Testing is to test everything, remove assumptions, learn what produces benefits, have fun while doing it then get Sitecore to do all the work for you. Tests can completed at three levels;
Page Level Testing – Tests two or more pages, or versions of pages, against one another for the best outcome Component Testing – Measures value provided by differing components Content Testing – Measures value provided by differences in text, imagery, video etc.
Testing one of these ‘variables’ against another one is called an AB Test. For example, Promo Panel 1 and Promo Panel 2 will be added to different versions of the same page and Sitecore will measure the value generated by each over the duration of the test.
A Multivariate test will consist of n number of variables; layout, content, components, personalization. For each combination of the variables Sitecore produces an Experience. Sitecore then tests each Experience and evaluate the value it generates to recommend which change the User should implement.
In this post I’ll cover what makes up a Content Test, the tools to manage them, where the data is stored and of course how to create a Content Test and use its outcome.
Firstly, a Sitecore Test consists of the following attributes
Variables – the Items, Components, Content, Personalization, Component tests which are being varied
– the Items, Components, Content, Personalization, Component tests which are being varied Experience – a combination of the variables, ultimately what is being tested
– a combination of the variables, ultimately what is being tested Expected Effect – the test creator’s opinion if the test will produce a negative, positive or no change to the engagement value produced by the experience
– the test creator’s opinion if the test will produce a negative, positive or no change to the engagement value produced by the experience Traffic Allocation – a percentage of the visitors that will be exposed to the test
– a percentage of the visitors that will be exposed to the test Confidence Level – the statistical confidence percentage required before a result has been obtained
– the statistical confidence percentage required before a result has been obtained Test Objective – a measure in which the test is evaluated
– a measure in which the test is evaluated End Test Options – the conditions when a test can end; automated or manual
– the conditions when a test can end; automated or manual Duration – the minimum time a test can run before a relevant result is obtained and the maximum time a test can run
There are two methods to create a Test.
Sitecore Experience Optimization
The Experience Optimization app has been created to manage all tests and their outcomes in one tool fully integrated into Sitecore, written in SPEAK and can be found on the Launch Pad.
From the Experience Optimization Tool you can view Tests in all states; Draft, Active and Completed and once a number of tests have been completed Sitecore will have learned enough to begin displaying Suggested Tests. These Suggested Tests are what Sitecore has determined would be good changes to better achieve the goals, campaigns etc.
The stats of the gamification feature can also be accessed to see which User suggests changes that produce the highest effect, who accurately predicts results of tests and so on.
Most importantly, the Experience Optimization tools is where you create Page Tests. Page Tests in Sitecore is a method of creating AB tests for entire pages however you are not limited to only two pages. You can include n number existing pages, previous versions of pages or create new page versions to run tests against. You can edit the Pages from the the Experience Optimization tool before you begin the test.
Sitecore Workflow Content Testing
The other method to create Tests in Sitecore is via Workflow. These differ from Tests created in the Experience Optimization Tool; opposed to testing pages and against each other you test variables on the Item you are pushing through workflow. These variables are components, content, personalization, layouts and even AB Tests on components which make up a Multivariate Test.
To create a Test via Workflow requires unique Workflow Commands to present the Test interface to the User and submit the test. Once a test has been created it will be present in the Experience Optimization Tool to track.
I’ve recently posted how to add Content Testing to existing workflow.
Location of Tests in Sitecore
When a Test is created an Item called a Test Definition Item is created to contain the attributes and is stored under the Test Lab in the Marketing Control Panel.
This Test Definition Item is then linked to the Item in the test via the ‘Page level test set’ field within the Layout node of that Item.
A key consideration that Developers need to take note of. If the test includes more than one version of an Item, multiple versions of an Item will be present in the Web database. Until now only one version of an Item was ever present in the Web database.
Creating an Content Test in Sitecore
I’ll use an example to help explain how to create a Multivariate Test through Workflow. I chose Multivariate over Page Test as Page Tests follows the same process but simplified.
The first step is to create the variables. Add a new version of an Item by locking and then make your changes to the content, layout, components, personalization, component tests etc via the Experience Editor. After that it can be pushed through Workflow and begin creating the Multivariate Test. The interface will list out all variables that will be varied in the test based on the changes made to the new version of the Item.
When creating AB Tests via the Experience Optimization tool you can include more pages to test against at this step, including previous item versions, new item versions and other existing items. Once chosen you can further edit the pages to Test against by clicking the Pencil Icon on each Page bringing up the Experience Editor. If prefer you can make the changes to the version in the Content Editor before accessing the Experience Optimization tool.
The next step of configuring is the gameification where you can state if you believe the outcome of your changes will have a positive or negative effect on Engagement Value. Not only is this used for the gameification Leaderboards but Sitecore will learn which Users are suggest changes which have a negative effect on Engagement Value and react, for example showing the test to less visitors.
Multivariate Tests will display all Experiences which will be tested and the variables that created them. At this point you can choose to Enable or Disable a variable from the test if you so wish. From my example eight Experiences will be tested.
Sitecore will use historical data to inform how long it should take to determine which Experience is the winner.
The Traffic Allocation slider sets the percentage of visitors that will experience the Test when they access the applicable pages. Higher the allocation the bigger the sample size and in theory, the faster you will achieve a result. You may opt for a lower allocation if the change is risky, therefore only a small subset of the visitors will see it.
The Confidence level list defines at what statistical confidence percentage needs to be achieved before deciding an Experience has come out as a winner. The higher the percentage the more certain result needs to be which could take significant time to achieve if at all.
The Test Objective is used to measure how successful each Experience is. Therefore the Objective needs to be something that can be affected by users going through the Test Experience. Perhaps the Test affects users journey through the sales funnel ultimately leading to an order or maybe the test changes the content and layout of the account creation page. The former’s Test Objective would be the default Trailing Value per Visit and the latter’s would be Registrations.
This section also lets you define how a winner is a chosen; manually selected by a User or automatically by Sitecore.
The final setting of the Page Test is the duration measured in days. It is best practice to choose a reasonable minimum amount of time the test needs to run before a winner can be selected to ensure the sample size is large enough to produce representative results. A definitive maximum duration is required to prevent the test from running indefinitely, this is especially important when using the automated options for selecting a winning experience.
And that’s it.. for now!
Before this post becomes any longer I’ll split off into another future post concerning how to analyse your Test results and how to use Suggested Tests to do all the work for you.
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Joana Souza / AFP | Smoke rises from a wildfire at Curral dos Romeiros, Funchal in Madeira island on August 9, 2016.
Three people were killed, two seriously hurt and around a thousand forced to flee overnight as fires ravaged the Portuguese island of Madeira, reaching the capital Funchal, rescuers said Wednesday.
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The three victims were all local residents who died in their homes, authorities reported, and one person remains missing. A fourth person was also reported to have died due to a wildfire in mainland Portugal.
Regional governor Miguel Albuquerque said at a press conference that 80 people were in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Fuelled by a summer heatwave and strong winds, the fires have destroyed approximately 40 homes and a five-star hotel in the hills above Funchal.
Portuguese wildfires kill at least three people in Madeira: https://t.co/IJB5Cg1wUxhttps://t.co/0PFXmEElJE — Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) August 10, 2016
Albuquerque said that the fire in Funchal was mostly under control, but that several were still raging across the island.
"The situation is complex but not catastrophic," he told a press conference.
Fires began in the hills around Funchal on Monday night but 24 hours later worsened dramatically, fanned by strong winds.
Hospitals evacuated
Around 600 people were evacuated to a Portuguese military base, and 300 more were evacuated to the Barreiros stadium, Funchal mayor Paulo Cafofo said.
Two hospitals on the island were also evacuated.
Overnight, Portugal dispatched a team of 110 specialists including firefighters, police and doctors to help bolster the island's response to the blaze while the Azores, another Portuguese territory in the Atlantic ocean, deployed 30 men to assist.
#Madeira: one hospital+nursing homes evacuated, locals, tourists leave #Funchal center, at least 9 buildings burning pic.twitter.com/9VHlWTeYMm — rui borges (@homo_viator) August 9, 2016
Dubbed "the Pearl of the Atlantic," Madeira is an autonomous region of Portugal with a population of about a quarter of a million and a booming tourism industry.
Portugal battles 100 fires
Mainland Portugal, meanwhile, has also been struck by a spate of forest fires since Friday with the north of the country, where temperatures have surged to 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), particularly hard hit.
More than 3,000 people have been battling to contain roughly 100 fires across Portugal with 12 major blazes leading to the evacuation of local residents overnight.
The Portuguese interior ministry said it had requested help from the European Union in battling the inprecedented wildfires. Neighbouring Spain sent two planes and Italy one aircraft to help with the fire-fighting efforts.
"This abnormal situation surpasses the normal response capacity of our forces," Prime Minister Antonio Costa said, warning that the next few days could be critical due to soaring temperatures.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP) |
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Paul Waldman has done a lot of academic research on political ads. In fact, he says, he has personally watched “every single presidential general election campaign ad ever aired since the first ones in 1952.” So what does he think of Mitt Romney’s new ad that claims President Obama has a plan for “dropping work requirements” for welfare? “Under Obama’s plan,” says the narrator, “you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”
I’ve seen ads that were more inflammatory than this one, and ads that were in various ways more reprehensible than this one (not many, but some). But I cannot recall a single presidential campaign ad in the history of American politics that lied more blatantly than this one. …Usually candidates deceive voters by taking something their opponent says out of context, or giving a tendentious reading to facts, or distorting the effects of policies. But in this case, Romney and his people looked at a policy of the Obama administration to allow states to pursue alternative means of placing welfare recipients in jobs, and said, “Well, how about if we just say that they’re eliminating all work requirements and just sending people checks?” I have no idea if someone in the room said, “We could say that, but it’s not even remotely true,” and then someone else said, “Who gives a crap?”, or if nobody ever suggested in the first place that this might be problematic. But either way, they decided that they don’t even have to pretend to be telling the truth anymore.
This is what’s so striking about Romney’s campaign. As Paul says, it’s common to twist and distort and cherry pick. But Romney has flatly claimed that Obama said something that, in fact, a John McCain aide said. He’s snipped out sentences from an Obama speech and spliced the two halves back together so nobody could tell what he did. Then he did it again to another Obama speech. And he unequivocally said that Obama plans to drop work requirements for welfare even though he’s done nothing of the sort.
This really is a post-truth campaign. It’s different. It’s one thing to be nasty. All campaigns are nasty. It’s one thing to twist and distort and mock. Every campaign does that too. Even the attacks on Al Gore in 2000, as vicious as they were, were mostly media inventions. The Republican campaigns had the distortions handed to them on a platter.
But this is different. This is a presidential candidate just baldly making stuff up on the assumption that nobody will ever know. After all, they figure, who the hell reads Glenn Kessler aside from a bunch of Beltway nerds? And I guess they’re right.
But if it works, I wonder what 2016 will look like? |
1 Pick a secret name as your authentic name. Your real name is your human world cover name. For example, choose such names as Ellette and Elden for woodland, Moriel, and Morian for Dark elf, Fae.
2 Practice being quiet, mature, wise, convincing, slightly eccentric and eclectic. Contemplate philosophy quite a bit. Elves never say something unless they truly mean it, it makes sense, and they believe it with all their heart. They adore nature and everything it encompasses. They are also very in tune with the natural essence of things. They generally remain neutral in disputes, but will not hesitate to stand up and fight for what they believe in! Personalities can be hard to change (and they shouldn’t be, anyways), so if you are very talkative, then you can go for more a valley elf vibe like those of the Last Homely House in The Hobbit.
3 Be shy and mysterious at school. Don't give much information because you want to hide your identity.
4 Pretend to be curious about the human world. If there's a robotic toy, act interested––if you're an elf, you might not see these things much.
5 Keep a diary. Write down your life as an elf! Pretend to have tribe meetings and write it down too. Write traits of the 'humans' and phrases too.
6 Write down things "humans" do. When somebody tries to look at what you've written pull away then write something like, "Humans are very nosy." But nothing about a certain person, nobody wants trouble or drama!
7 Have a good sense of humor. If someone says, "Look at the rain! It's pouring!" Then look at the rain too, and say, "But the old man was never snoring. What kind of riddle is that anyway?" If people laugh, smile. But don't laugh along.
8 Make a tribe. Get some of our closest friends and show them this wikiHow article, and you can be a tribe. |
IF YOU are reading this in a prison in Missouri you probably didn't receive the June 29th issue of The Economist (pictured at right). For this we apologise, though it wasn't our fault. We recently received a letter from the Missouri Department of Corrections informing us that the issue had been censored.
Was this a pre-emptive strike against our editorialising on prison reform? Were Missouri officials unhappy with our endorsement of Barack Obama? Do they hate puppies? Up until 1974 any of those reasons might have been used to restrict prisoner mail. But that year the Supreme Court ruled that officials in California were violating prisoners' first-amendment rights by censoring mail for arbitrary reasons, like its political or religious content, or because it criticised the prison itself.
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So what gives, Missouri? According to the letter, prisoners were not allowed to receive the June 29th issue because it
1. constitutes a threat to the security or discipline of the institution;
2. may facilitate or encourage criminal activity; or
3. may interfere with the rehabilitation of an offender
Those are heavy charges (no wonder a subscription costs so much). The censorship committee specifically referenced page 28, on which this article appeared. The piece takes a nuanced look at two contentious Supreme Court rulings on voting rights and college admissions. Did the committee think prison progressives might riot?
No, the panel was more likely concerned with the image of a Ku Klux Klan member holding a noose that ran alongside the article. That would explain its contention that the issue "contains information which can be used to instill violence or hatred among the offender population". It's a bit of a stretch, but one could imagine some of the nuance of the article being lost if, say, a white inmate were to shove the picture of the Klansman in the face of a black prisoner.
The Supreme Court has given prison officials wide latitude to restrict mail in this way. While the court acknowledged prisoners' first-amendment rights in 1974, it gave more weight to "security, order, and the rehabilitation of inmates". It was actually a case involving inmates in Missouri, in 1987, that prompted the court to rule that the "strict scrutiny" standard of review wasn't necessary when considering prisoners' rights. A new regulation only had to be reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.
Using this lower standard, the court ruled in 2006 that periodicals could be denied to prisoners in order to induce better behaviour. Lower courts have found that it is okay to restrict pornography in order to reduce sexual harassment of female guards. It therefore seems perfectly reasonable that mail be restricted on the grounds that it might incite racial or religious violence.
Some of you may be wondering, since The Economist does not advocate racial or religious hatred (thank you for noticing), why didn't prison officials simply cut out the offending picture, or remove the offending page. Some 16 years ago, when an inmate named Isa Shabazz was denied his copies of Muhammad Speaks magazine, an appeals court asked the same question. "It is not clear why it was necessary to deny the entire issue", stated the court in remanding the issue back to a lower court.
The lower court, though, sided with the prison, which argued that "the costs to implement such a procedure would be prohibitive". A cursory economic analysis finds fault with that argument, considering the censors are already paid to spot offending material. Anyway, this is small fry compared to America's bigger problem of overcrowded prisons. Inmates, we hope, will be able to read about that in the current issue. |
George W. Bush skipping Republican National Convention
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Former President George W. Bush will not attend the Republican convention next month in Tampa, POLITICO has learned.
“President Bush was grateful for the invitation to the Republican National Convention,” Bush spokesman Freddy Ford wrote in an e-mail. “He supports Governor Romney and wants him to succeed. President Bush is confident that Mitt Romney will be a great President. But he’s still enjoying his time off the political stage and respectfully declined the invitation to go to Tampa.”
Asked if the former president had been invited to only attend or whether he was also asked to speak, Ford said the conversation didn’t get that far and the former president declined “before details were discussed.”
(Also on POLITICO: 2012 Swing State map, polling)
Bush’s preemptive move spares Romney of having to face the delicate question of whether to have the polarizing former president address the convention. It is customary for former presidents to attend the party gatherings, and often speak, but President Obama’s campaign surely would have used the opportunity to link Romney to the Bush administration.
Since leaving the White House in 2009, the 43rd president has kept a low profile and, in rare interviews, said he doesn’t think former presidents ought to be in critiquing their successors.
Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, also indicated last week that for health reasons he also wouldn’t attend this year’s convention. |
SPOONER, Wis. — Two recent and credible reports of feral hogs running wild in the woods of Washburn County spurred the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on Friday to remind hunters and landowners to shoot the animals on sight.
“Go ahead and poke them. We want them dead as soon as possible,” said Mike Zeckmeister, DNR wildlife supervisor in Spooner.
Zeckmeister said the wild hogs can cause severe damage to the forest. The pigs also can carry disease, damage wildlife habitat, compete with native wildlife for food, cause crop damage and even threaten human safety, the DNR notes.
The animals, which can grow to several hundred pounds, can either be wild boars that escape from game farms or, in some cases, domestic pigs that escape and turn wild.
“They physically change; they get hairy and grow tusks and everything. And they definitely can survive a Wisconsin winter,” Zeckmeister said.
The feral hogs’ most notable features include coarse hair with long bristles, elongated snouts and moderately long, uncurled tails. They are usually black, but also can be gray, brown, blond, white or even reddish to spotted.
The DNR gets occasional reports of wild pigs on the loose in northern Wisconsin. The Washburn County reports from August are the only recent ones, Zeckmeister said. But reports have come from Douglas, Polk, Burnett, Taylor and Oneida counties in the past decade, he said. Several hunters worked together to track and kill a giant wild hog in Polk County two years ago, he said.
No license or permit is required to shoot the pigs on your own property, but a small game or deer hunting license is needed on public land. Whoever shoots them can keep the meat, “and it’s pretty good, I’m told,” Zeckmeister said.
“The goal is, with hunting seasons coming up, that if someone is in their bow stand they won’t hesitate, wondering if they can shoot them. Go ahead and do it,” he said. “An ounce of prevention here can help a lot.”
If you cannot kill the wild pig, the DNR asks that you contact a local DNR wildlife biologist or file a report online.
In July 2001, several wild pigs escaped from a game farm in northern Douglas County by rooting under a fence. At least one was shot by a local landowner, but several were never accounted for.
It is illegal to operate a captive feral pig hunting facility in Wisconsin. It also is illegal to stock feral pigs for hunting purposes, to release hogs into the wild or to possess live feral hogs without a permit. |
If you are one of those avid travel journal readers or are constantly glued to National Geographic to learn about the most unique travel destinations, then you would have come across Waitomo Caves in New Zealand, where visitors take a boat journey to check out the illumination created by tiny fireflies that create ‘sky living’ lights. The phenomenon is so unique that it has become a staple in most traveller’s bucket list across the globe. But you need not go so far to witness this gorgeous sight! A tiny tribal village in Maharashtra is all set to host country’s first firefly festival.
Purushwadi, a village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra has been adopted by Grassroots, an organisation which is working towards promoting village tourism. It is home to million fireflies that light up summer nights like green glitter scattered on trees from May to July, every year.
The festival will be held from May 23 to July 6. Bonfires, fun village activities and traditional organic food just make the experience all the more unique. Grassroots organises tent camps at the village for the festival, which you need to book in advance or you can book a room at the MTDC resort in Igatpuri and then drive down to Purushwadi.
The village is quaint, green and there is much to explore. In the daytime engage is long, languid walks and sit by the riverbanks. You can help the villagers with their daily chores like sowing paddy, chopping wood or grinding wheat. As the sun sets, you can walk over to the valley to see how swarms of fireflies form a beautiful canopy of green lights and experience sheer magic come alive from fairytales.
How to get there from Chennai
Chennai->Mumbai->Purushwadi
Take a flight/train to Mumbai.Then you can drive down from Mumbai to Purushwadi (it is a four hour drive). You can also take a train to Igatpuri (about 90 km away from Purushwadi) or Kasara (about 100 km away from Purushwadi) and then drive down to Purushwadi.
It is time to plan a trip for this divine experience. Grassroutes curates the whole experience and you can check out their website.
Discover more things about Chennai: |
PARIS (Reuters) - A French judge has ordered U.S. carrier Continental Airlines and five individuals to stand trial over the crash of an Air France Concorde that killed 113 people, a prosecutor’s statement said on Thursday.
Firemen try to extinguish the flames from the burning wreckage of a Air France Concorde which crashed in Gonesse near Paris Roissy airport July 25, 2007. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
The judge said the defendants, including the man who oversaw the development of the Franco-British supersonic airliner, would be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
The Concorde crashed in flames minutes after take off from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000, killing all 109 on board and four people on the ground.
Investigations concluded that the plane caught fire after one of its tires was punctured by a small piece of metal that had fallen off a departing Continental flight, sending debris flying into the fuel tanks of the delta-winged plane.
Prosecutors say the metal strip had been incorrectly fitted to the Continental DC10 and was made of tough titanium metal, rather than regulation aluminum, which is softer and less likely to cause punctures.
Continental has denied responsibility for the crash and has said it would fight the charges.
Judges have issued an international arrest warrant for a welder named John Taylor, who worked for Continental at the time of the disaster, after he failed to appear for questioning. He and his supervisor, Stanley Ford, will both now stand trial.
Standing alongside them in the dock will be Henri Perrier, head of testing for Concorde before becoming director of the Concorde program, and Jacques Herubel, the plane’s chief engineer in the 1990s.
The fifth defendant was a former head of France’s civil aviation authority, Claude Frantzen.
A judicial report on the crash said the Concorde’s manufacturer Aerospatiale, now part of plane-maker EADS, had failed to correct its design after more than 70 incidents involving the plane’s tires occurred between 1979 and 2000.
Prosecutors say Frantzen was negligent because he was ultimately responsible for letting Concorde take to the skies and had not appreciated the fragility of the plane’s fuel tanks, which were strengthened only in the wake of the 2000 disaster.
The prosecutor’s statement said the Continental workers failed to follow normal procedures over repairs to the DC10. The prosecutor said Continental itself had been negligent over the maintenance of its fleet of DC10 aircraft.
Concorde’s two operators, Air France and British Airways, eventually took the plane out of service in 2003.
French officials said earlier this year that any trial would need massive organization and would probably not begin until late this year or early 2009. |
Bays Mountain produces film,'Totality'; Playing in planetariums across country Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Video
KINGSPORT, TN (WJHL)- This year the U.S. is in a rare path for the total solar eclipse happening August 21st. It's the first time in a century a total eclipse will stretch coast to coast.
"It happens really, really close to the Tri-Cities," Bays Mountain Planetarium Director Adam Thanz said.
Now a production about the eclipse made right here in the Tri-Cities is making its way across the country. A team of astronomers and staff at Bays Mountain Planetarium in Kingsport spent a year and a half creating a short film called "Totality," it tells you everything you need to know about eclipses.
Now that show is playing at 33 other planetariums in the U.S. as people across the country plan to see the total solar eclipse.
"We knew how important the eclipse was going to be, we had to have a program about it," Thanz said.
We talked with one student as he was leaving "Totality."
"I thought it was very interesting, I learned a lot," High school sophomore Nicholas Meredith said. "Now I'm even more excited for the solar eclipse."
So what is a total solar eclipse? It's where the sun, moon, and earth perfectly line up turning day in to night for a few minutes. Here in the Tri-Cities you'll see 96 percent of sun blocked by the moon. You'll also see some changes in the environment.
"The temperature change notice that, the wind will pick up, the animals will react," Thanz said.
You'll also get some one of a kind views.
"If you put your hand up first and then look that direction but blocking the sun near maximum to the left you'll see Jupiter to the right you will see Venus in the sky in the middle of the day," Thanz said.
Here in the Tri-Cities the partial eclipse will start at 1:07 p.m., and the maximum eclipse will happen at 2:36 p.m.
Thanz said because of limited parking there, they don't recommend going to Bays Mountain to view the eclipse, they say your backyard is just as good.
If you want to learn about how eclipses occur and what they are like ahead of August 21st you can see "Totality" at Bays Mountain Planetarium through August 20th.
The show is about 25 minutes long and is shown Monday through Friday at 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock, then on Saturday and Sunday at 1, 4, and 5 p.m.
Copyright 2017 WJHL. All Rights Reserved. |
Israel also sought to play down the impact of the expulsion of its ambassador, saying Mr. Levy had already completed his tour of duty and had been about to leave for home.
Turkey once ranked as Israel’s closest strategic ally in the Muslim world, but ties began to fray with an Israeli military operation in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.
The most recent deterioration in relations with Turkey has compounded Israel’s regional woes from the Arab Spring, which has redrawn the geopolitical landscape along Israel’s borders. Earlier this year, the revolution in Egypt ousted President Hosni Mubarak , once a crucial ally, while the bloody and unpredictable crackdown on dissent in Syria has raised yet more questions about regional stability.
Mr. Davutoglu said Friday that Israel had failed to grasp the consequences of “gigantic changes in the Middle East region.”
Turkey’s move on Friday came as a long-awaited United Nations review of the 2010 raid on the flotilla found that, while Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was both legal and appropriate, the way Israeli forces boarded the vessels trying to break that blockade 15 months ago was excessive and unreasonable.
The report also found that when Israeli commandos boarded the main ship, they faced “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers” and were therefore required to use force for their own protection. But the report called the force “excessive and unreasonable,” saying that the loss of life was unacceptable and that the Israeli military’s later treatment of passengers was abusive. Eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent died in the Israeli raid.
A copy of the 105-page report was obtained early by The New York Times.
In a statement on Friday, Israel’s prime minister’s office said that “as any other state, Israel has the right to defend its civilians and soldiers.”
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Israel’s refusal to apologize and Turkey’s insistence on an apology appeared to further cement the impasse. But both sides seemed ready on Friday to at least display readiness for further efforts to overcome it.
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“Israel cherishes the significant ties, past and present, between the Turkish and Jewish peoples,” the Israeli statement said. “For that reason, the State of Israel has made numerous attempts in the last few months to settle the dispute between the two countries, but regrettably, these attempts have not been successful. The State of Israel hopes that a way will be found to move beyond this discord and will continue its endeavors to that end.”
Privately, however, Israeli officials noted that relations between the former allies had started deteriorating long before the flotilla raid. They questioned whether those relations would be fully restored under any circumstances given what some here consider a steady reorientation in Turkish foreign policy away from Israel, in the direction of the Arab world and Iran .
An apology might bring the relationship back to how it was on the eve of the raid, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomatic situation. But, he said, “It will not put us back to how things were three years ago.”
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and president of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative-leaning research institute, said that “every Israeli official would like to see a restoration of Israel-Turkey relations in the longer term.” The question, he said, was whether the crisis was primarily over the flotilla raid, or whether that episode had “only put into sharper relief a more fundamental change.”
Israeli officials said that while Turkey’s expulsion of the Israeli ambassador marked a sharp diplomatic downturn in relations with Israel, military ties had already been undergoing serious erosion since 2009. “My feeling is that there is not a lot to suspend in that sense,” one official said.
In October 2009, Turkey asked Israel not to participate in a multinational air force exercise that was supposed to take place in Turkey. In June 2010, after the raid on the protest ship, Turkish officials said that Turkey had been blocking Israeli military flights from entering its airspace.
Turkey has been an important customer for Israel’s defense industries in the past, and an important partner for military and intelligence cooperation at many levels.
There has been growing debate in Israel about whether to apologize. Some senior officials have advised against it, saying that an apology denotes an acceptance of responsibility for what happened. Some have also pointed to the importance of upholding Israeli morale. Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman , said in July that an apology would be “humiliating” for Israel and tantamount to abandoning its soldiers.
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Others say that given Israel’s regional isolation and the strategic interests that Israel shares with Turkey, it is a price that the country has to pay.
“Just look at the map,” said Shlomo Brom, a retired general now at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “Turkey is located right by Syria, Iraq and Iran.”
He asked: “What is so hard about apologizing? Undoubtedly mistakes were made and people were killed.” |
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Zaha Hadid, a pioneering architect and the first female recipient of the Pritzker Prize, died in March at the age of sixty-five. Her vision and ambition have been rightfully celebrated around the world in the weeks since. But her passing also offers a moment to reflect critically on the state of contemporary architecture. Not so long ago, the world’s leading architects debated how architecture could be used to transform society by providing housing for workers, improving public health, and fostering social solidarity. Today, global architecture is peopled with “starchitects” like Hadid who specialize in mega projects for the global elite. Some of the starchitects’ projects are beautiful, to be sure. But they also often waste public money, facilitate corrupt and exploitative practices, and strengthen a planning model that excludes the populace from decision-making. Many architectural creations are poorly constructed, requiring exorbitant maintenance costs (invariably following massive budget overruns) and lacking consideration for the people who actually live in the built environment. Consider one of Hadid’s first buildings, a fire station. While aesthetically attractive, it was impractical for firefighters and was later converted into a museum. And Hadid’s curvaceous Maxxi building in Rome: in some respects it’s a wonderful design, yet it’s also like a fortress, failing to integrate or even engage with the surrounding neighborhood. The New York Times reports that maintenance costs on the building are $6.6–7.9 million per year (on top of the $150 million construction bill), more than the Maxxi’s annual budget from the Italian government, which has already had to bail the museum out on several occasions. Architecture is unique for its inherent social and utilitarian value. No one lost a home when Dylan went electric. No one became an indentured servant to print the latest Franzen. Yet ordinary people, whether they like it or not, must live with the consequences of architecture’s creations. A building can destroy your neighborhood, destroy your livelihood, even destroy your life. But many leading architects, and most architecture critics, fail to acknowledge the basic reality that architecture isn’t just a vacuum of aesthetic virtues and vague adjectives — it is a product of its political, economic, and social context. This context is overwhelmingly shaped by elite prerogatives. For example, Hadid’s $450 million Dongdaenum Design Plaza in Seoul was the pet project of former mayor Oh Se-hoon, who resigned after opposing a free school lunch program. Its construction displaced more than nine hundred merchants in local markets and occasioned the destruction of a historic baseball stadium still used by the community. Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan is an even starker example of the insidiousness of contemporary architecture. Hadid worked on that project with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev — a flagrant human rights abuser whose corruption and nepotism has been likened to that of a feudal state — to help transform Azerbaijan’s capital city into the next “global cultural hot-spot” (in the words of Baku, a quarterly magazine edited by the president’s daughter and published by Conde Naste). Hadid’s design for the center, named for President Aliyev’s father, delighted architecture critics and won the London Design Museum’s 2014 Design of the Year award — cold comfort for the 250 families expelled from their homes to make way for its construction. Hadid’s giant Galaxy Soho mall in Beijing is also sited on contested land. The mall displaced a neighborhood of traditional hutongs, whose residents say their land was coercively expropriated. Her firm insists that the area was already cleared by the time they got involved and that it complied with government regulations, but corrupt land deals are endemic in China. Perhaps the clearest distillation of architecture’s relationship with broader structures of oppression is Hadid’s work in Qatar, where she designed the Al Wakrah stadium for the World Cup. Asked in a February 2014 interview about working conditions in the Gulf States —indentured servitude, wage theft, worker fatalities — Hadid responded, “I have nothing to do with the workers. I think that’s an issue the government — if there’s a problem — should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved.” When pressed, she rhetorically threw up her hands: “I’m not taking it lightly but I think it’s for the government to take care of. It’s not my duty as an architect to look at.”
The Starchitects Architects were not always so indifferent to workers. Indeed, the aversion to ornamentation that modern architecture famously espoused was less an aesthetic judgment than an opposition to labor exploitation. As the Austrian architect Adolph Loos argued in his 1908 essay “Ornament and Crime,” ornamentation perpetuated poor conditions, long hours, and low wages. No ornamentation would mean higher wages and less work: “Ornament,” he wrote, “is wasted labor power and hence wasted health.” For the modernist architects that followed Loos, creating affordable housing for workers was a moral imperative that could fundamentally alter the character of society. At the height of their careers, architects like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius (and Bruno Taut and Ernő Goldfinger) were still designing large-scale housing projects. These days, however, the oeuvres of starchitects are full of questionable projects and clients. Santiago Calatrava has left behind a trail of shoddy construction and massive budget overruns — most recently, $4 billion for a transit station in lower Manhattan. Rafael Viñoly and Frank Gehry have designed edifices that send blinding rays of light onto unsuspecting neighbors. Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV building in Beijing, one of the most celebrated buildings in recent years, is more than a technical wonder — it’s a tool of propaganda for the Chinese state. Norman Foster had no qualms working with Kazakhstan’s authoritarian government to assemble the ironically named Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. Abu Dhabi has brought together a constellation of starchitects to erect both a complex of cultural institutions and a branch of New York University called “Happiness Island” — built by bonded labor working under not-so-happy conditions. Nowhere is the break from the socially minded past more pronounced than in housing. To the extent that starchitects build lodging at all, it’s for millionaires and billionaires. Frank Gehry’s biggest housing project is 8 Spruce Street in lower Manhattan, where the average apartment rents for more than $5,500 (requiring a net monthly income of about $14,000). Bernard Tschumi, the radical leftist of the group, made his first foray into housing with the Blue Condo in the Lower East Side. Average sale price? $1.5 million. Yet these are relative bargains compared to other starchitect projects. Apartments in Hadid’s soon-to-open New York debut range in price from $4.9 million to $50 million. Rafael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue has a $95 million penthouse. Because architects are largely beholden to their clientele, their predilection for designing luxury lodging is partly attributable to changes in the housing market and the global economy. But we shouldn’t let them off the hook that easily. By and large, elite architects have disengaged from efforts to make the most fundamental unit of architecture available to all. The one prominent exception proves the rule: Alejandro Aravena, the most recent winner of the Pritzker Prize, has developed plans for low-cost housing that he’s made available for free. By contrast, the luxury housing developments his colleagues busy themselves with are manifestations of plutocracy that simultaneously raise the cost of living for the vast majority of city residents. Prime movers in gentrification, Hadid and her fellow starchitects have deployed their talents in service of an urban development model that erects symbolic monuments for elites rather than improve the lives of ordinary people.
The Bilbao Effect Ever since Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum in post-industrial Bilbao, instantly turning the city into a tourist destination, municipalities around the world have been shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in public money for civic and cultural buildings. Boosters claim these cultural institutions will attract more transnational capital flows, more real estate investment, more tourists, more “innovation hubs” — the buzzword soup is bottomless. These projects don’t address, however, the structural problems — declining industry, wages, and state investment — that precipitated their supposed necessity. They don’t aim to “revitalize” the city, they aim to globalize it. The poor are all but ignored in the planning stages and then tossed aside post-construction, pushed out of public spaces by their idealized replacement. The primary beneficiaries are cultural tourists, major property holders, and the egos of public officials. Were the residents of Dongdaenum yearning for a Hadid-designed international design expo in their midst? Was Guangzhou in dire need of an opera house? Did anyone bother to ask the denizens of the city? Defenders of such projects often cite job creation as a justification. But while erecting flashy cultural institutions sometimes generates well-paying, unionized construction jobs, these are always temporary. Once up and running, low-paying service jobs predominate. A museum requires a few curatorial and research positions (which are not necessarily well-compensated) and many more security guards, tour guides, and cashiers. At New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), one of the richest museums in the world, the starting salary for a shop worker is $29,000, and maxes out at $50,000 for non-executive white collar workers. In addition, the expected efflorescence of high(er)-end commerce in the surrounding neighborhood, the ultimate goal of many such projects, largely produces a proliferation of waiters, cooks, shop workers, and so forth — a model of economic development that hinges on the patronage of wealthier consumers. Far from a boon for the city’s workers, the biggest beneficiaries are again property owners and capital. In our age of austerity, the folly of the Bilbao approach is even more apparent. As local residents struggle with high unemployment, stagnating wages, the rising cost of living, and reduced government services, municipalities are devoting significant resources to projects that are, in effect if not intent, created for tourists. The residents of Rome, for instance, likely did not need a new contemporary art museum. Local artists need cheap rent and gallery space. Italians undoubtedly need government investment in jobs and social services — the country’s youth unemployment rate is currently 37 percent. What they got instead was the Hadid-designed Maxxi building, which opened in 2010. Another common defense of these buildings invokes the great cathedrals of Europe: were they not expensive temples to elites? Were they not also “over budget” in some sense? Hasn’t their longevity proven their value? Putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t use medieval Europe as our moral barometer, there is a crucial difference: those churches were used by everyone. They were a social center, a town hall, a marketplace, the manifestation of the community’s highest spiritual aspirations, the place that gave life meaning. Few starchitect-designed buildings reach toward those heights; they were more apt (until being prohibited in New York City) to contain “poor doors.”
The Architects’ Retreat Architects are not entirely to blame for the current state of affairs. By the 1960s, and especially the 1970s, a backlash was brewing against more socially minded modernist architecture, now derided for its perceived homogeneity and decontextualized abstraction of place; in the common indictment: rows of monotonous, dreary boxes, or simply, boring and ugly. Brutalism — a derivative of modernism known for its extensive use of exposed concrete — came under especially harsh criticism. Increasingly, public housing projects, closely linked to modernist architecture, were similarly pilloried. This culminated in the nationally televised demolition of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in 1972, later dubbed the day “modern architecture died” by architecture critic Charles Jencks. At its core, the modernist architecture pioneered by Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and others was an attempt to create an approach that was a prism of its era. Emerging in the febrile atmosphere after World War I, modernist architecture took the machine as its icon, the factory as its temple, and rationalism as its guiding philosophy. “The house,” Le Corbusier famously said, ”is a machine for living in.” And it was easier and cheaper than ever to build. With pre-fabrication techniques and new building materials, a house could effectively be manufactured in a factory, and at a significantly lower price — enabling modern, high-quality housing for the whole of society. Many of the modernist architects were socialists or communists. Le Corbusier — who worked for both the Soviet Union and Vichy France — evinced a more technocratic, anti-radical attitude. For him, the adoption of a rational, mass housing program provided “modern man” with material and hygienic comfort as consolation for the destruction of the traditional world —helping stave off revolution. But even Le Corbusier exhibited a greater concern for the poor than most prominent architects today. For some time, the unadorned buildings and utilitarian calculations of Le Corbusier and his modernist colleagues dominated the field. When Pruitt-Igoe opened in 1954, it was a measure of the style’s influence. By the following decade, with conditions in the buildings deteriorating, it had become seen as modern architecture’s damning offense. Yet detractors omitted the social context: St. Louis, like other American cities at the time, was struggling with an evaporating industrial base and rapid white flight. The vast majority of Pruitt-Igoe’s residents were black, effectively barred from the new suburbs through de facto and de jure racism. The government was also to blame for Pruitt-Igoe’s poor condition. Building maintenance was lackluster, rents were hiked on increasingly impoverished residents, and community bonds were forcibly broken. Fathers were not allowed to stay with their families at the housing complex because the state thought this was unbecoming for welfare recipients. But some looked at the problems of public housing and decided it was architecture’s fault. What started as an aesthetic backlash — “less is a bore,” postmodern architect Robert Venturi quipped — developed into a more comprehensive critique of modernism’s social ethic. The modernists were portrayed as hubristic for thinking they could change the world and criticized as elitist for thinking they knew what people wanted. Architecture, dominated by modernism and its variants for nearly half a century, struggled to find a new language and sense of purpose. In response to these challenges, architects moved away from modernism and its explicit politics and sought to infuse buildings with semiotic character — “whimsical” references to the past, or metaphysical deconstructions of buildings. Hadid, for example, often cited Russian suprematism as a formative influence on her work. Arguably the first “pure” abstract art movement, suprematism eschewed objective reference in reality (exemplified most famously by founder Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square). But what Hadid found most appealing was the theoretical aspect — the possibility of a purely abstract architecture, devoid of its practitioners’ radical politics. Malevich identified his “revolution” in art with the Russian Revolution, and El Lissitzky created some of the most iconic imagery of the Soviet Union, for which he worked almost his entire professional life. (The admiration was ultimately not mutual: abstract art was suppressed under Stalin as ideologically suspect and supplanted by socialist realism.) By contrast, Patrick Schumacher, Hadid’s chief theorist, is an ardent libertarian who dreams of a “radical free-market urbanism” and rails against “political correctness” in architecture (e.g., “concern for the underprivileged”). This shift has helped most leading architects maintain the image of the ethereal aesthete while simultaneously freeing themselves from the burdens of political substance.
Structure for Structure’s Sake There are still many socially minded architects who would prefer to design and build social housing or carry out other progressive projects. But structural impediments often derail such ambitions. An architectural education in America is expensive. In addition to an undergraduate degree, aspiring architects must complete three years of graduate school — and like everything else in higher education, the price has been rising of late. At the Yale School of Architecture, one year of tuition (excluding room and board) is $46,500. Public universities are cheaper, but still steep: fees for in-state students at UCLA are about $24,000, and that’s before living expenses. Shouldering enormous debt after graduating, architects are anxious to rid themselves of the burden as quickly as possible. But starting salaries are not particularly high, especially for those pursuing socially conscious projects. Working for a bland corporate firm, if you can manage to get hired, offers security and benefits. Working for a star offers a path to increased prominence, with the potential to one day achieve a modicum of creative freedom — the freedom to choose what projects you want to work on, or at least pay down your debt. Young architects’ low compensation is not necessarily a reflection of their importance to the workflow. According to architecture scholar Peggy Deamer, as the field transitions away from an apprentice model and to complex software programs — which older principles are less adept at using — younger architects are increasingly responsible for substantive design decisions. Rising responsibility, however, hasn’t been matched by rising compensation. An additional problem is the pedagogy of architecture schools, which focus largely on aesthetics to the detriment of social context. But the greatest obstacle to a renewed social focus in architecture is the government’s retreat from social housing and similar undertakings. Before the rise of neoliberal politics, the government served as the benefactor for many young architects, pushing them to act on their progressive impulses. In the post–Pruitt-Igoe world, the very idea of public housing has been tarnished. Broader changes in the operating ideology of the economy and political system — roughly contemporaneous with the decline of modernist architecture — have also made any ambitious government plan to provide affordable housing almost unimaginable. These include: the assault on the welfare state; the fetishization of free-market efficiency and the reflexive promotion of privatization; and the increasing financialization of society, which re-conceptualizes things like housing as an investment rather than a means of shelter. While architects cannot dictate the terms of public housing policy, they can create a discourse that challenges the prevailing consensus. But they have largely failed to do so. Like the much-maligned public housing blocks, architecture has absorbed the surrounding context. Once adversarial, architecture now not only accommodates the economic system but aggrandizes its worst impulses, edifying its gross excesses with a glass-and-steel shroud of haughty benevolence, bereft of any social mission beyond displaying its own brilliance. It has become structure for structure’s sake. |
France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has dismissed the possibility of an agreement on the US-EU transatlantic trade deal, since it goes against the interests of the European Union.
“No free trade agreement should be concluded if it does not respect EU interests. Europe should be firm. France will be vigilant about this,” Valls said addressing members of the governing Socialist Party on Sunday, AFP reported.
“I can tell you frankly, there cannot be a transatlantic treaty agreement. This agreement is not on track,” Valls added.
Valls pointed that the agreement “would impose a viewpoint which would not only be a breeding ground for populism, but also quite simply be a viewpoint that would be bad for our economy.”
The TTIP – or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – is a EU-US free trade treaty project that was dubbed as controversial the moment it was proposed three years ago and has been criticized for its secretiveness and lack of accountability ever since.
The proposed agreement aims at promoting trade and multilateral economic growth by creating the world’s largest free-trade zone. Backers say it would help small businesses opening up markets and making customs processes easier, while trade tariffs on products would be reduced.
But critics fear big corporations would be the only ones to profit from the deal, with corporate interest coming even ahead of national interest.
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The French minister has also stressed the “dramatic” consequences of canceling quotas on milk, stipulated in the TTIP deal. Dairy sector is particularly important to France, being a key driver of its economy.
The negotiations on the treaty were expected to be over by the end of 2014, however they are still in progress with the next round being scheduled for July.
The undecided issues are planned to be settled by year’s end when Barack Obama’s presidential term comes to an end.
The project has, however, been met with quite fierce opposition in Europe, especially in France and Germany, with critics speaking of its negative effects on environment and agriculture.
Thousands of protesters took to streets in the German city of Hannover in April, opposing the deal in fear it would put corporate interest before the national. Large corporations will be given more prerogatives than middle-sized and small businesses if the project is accepted, the protesters believed.
All EU member states, except for pro-TTIP Britain that has decided to leave the bloc, have to ratify the agreement for it to come into effect. |
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MARK WARBURTON admits an 11th straight win in the Scottish Championship over St Mirren was largely down to the heroics of Wes Foderingham.
And he believes the 24-year-old - who was a youth international - is showing all the attributes needed to be England goalkeeper one day.
Foderingham produced a number of terrific saves as Gers maintained their 100 per cent start to the league campaign with a hard-fought 1-0 win in Paisley.
Warburton said: "It's the busiest Wes has been by far this season and he pulled out two or three outstanding saves.
"He's a top-class goalkeeper and you saw the quality he displayed again - his shot-stopping is first-class.
"I think Wes has the capability to go to a much higher level. I don't mean that in terms of the club but in terms of levels in the game.
"He has delivered the goods time and time again and he'll just keep getting better and better."
Asked if he is good enough to be an international keeper, Warburton added: "I think he could be. You look at his distribution, his shape.
"He comes for crosses, he's assured and dominates his area. You saw his quality again in this game."
Jason Holt claimed the only goal of the game in the first half and Rangers held on for the narrow win.
In Pictures: The best images from today's 1-0 win for Rangers against St Mirren..
Warburton said: "We weren't at our best for the whole game but we created four or five very good chances in the first half.
"The finish for the goal was sublime but we had two or three others that we should have put away.
"We were six out of 10. We were slack with the ball and the players are the first to admit it.
"But to come to this venue, against this type of opponent, and get the three points is really pleasing.
"Everyone is saying we are only winning by one or two but we are winning games of football at tough venues against teams who are not going to do what we want them to do.
"St Mirren was a tough test and we dealt with it."
Saints boss Ian Murray had nothing but praise for his own players.
He said: "The game plan almost worked and we have given Rangers as good a run for their money as anyone this season.
"You have to give good goalkeeping its due - he's probably won the game for Rangers.
"We could look at whether we could've done better with our finishing but overall I've got no complaints with our performance or effort.
"The challenge now is to maintain that standard." |
In addition to catching raindrops, homeowners and building managers are trying out another way to conserve water: composting toilets.
Last month the city of Austin, Tex., approved its first composting toilet. Columbus, Ohio is adding some composting toilets to its parks. Officials in Dutchess County, N.Y., are studying the concept.
The toilets are supposed to use no water and, over time, create a usable fertilizer. Many are supposed to be used indoors (although the Austin model, which appears to be different, is for an outhouse-type unit).
People put composting toilets in all kinds of places, according to Jim Weaver, the operations manager of BioLet, a composting toilet maker. “Boathouses. Pool houses. Barns. Workshops. Cabins. Anywhere where it’s not convenient or economical to put a conventional toilet,” he said.
Mr. Weaver said that business grew about 80 percent last year, but the recession caused a sharp drop. Things have picked back up in the past several weeks, however. Mr. Weaver said that the company typically sells more than 1,000 units a year.
BioLet’s fastest-growing markets include Florida, Virginia, Arizona and Nevada. Also, “Alaska is just booming,” he said, crediting an improved distribution system coupled with a “lack of ability to put in septic systems and such because of the permafrost.”
The company’s largest markets are Maine and the upper Midwest (where they are popular for cottages), as well as the Northwest, Texas and Colorado.
If you want to put in a composting toilet, the first thing to do is check with your local health department, said Tom Bruursema, general manager of the wastewater treatment unit program at the National Sanitation Foundation International, which sets standards for composting toilets and handles certification for some brands, such as Sun-Mar and Clivus Multrum.
“Anytime you’re dealing with residential wastewater, you have to have a permit from the health department,” he said. “That’s as true for a septic tank as it is for a compost toilet.”
A few people have reported some difficulty with their composting toilets. The units are not supposed to smell, but this blogger reported getting a whiff anyway.
Then, of course, there is the gross-out effect. Mr. Weaver said that BioLet’s toilets have to be emptied out about once every two months, depending on usage. This entertaining piece in The Los Angeles Times recounts how the author bought a composting toilet, used it a few times, then let it idle for two months — until she got the courage to empty it, which she now does on a regular basis. |
– Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG AEX: PHIA), the global leader in lighting, and Aruba signed a Memorandum of Innovation, a strategic partnership to help the island of Aruba meet its goal of running on 100 percent sustainable energy by 2020, enabled by Philips’ lighting and innovation expertise. In support of the Aruba government’s Smart Island Strategy for sustainability, Philips will help revamp the island’s entire public lighting system by completing an in-depth assessment and providing solutions for public buildings and outdoor lighting systems. It will also transform Aruba into a showcase of innovation in the region.Aruba has embarked on a sustainability path since 2010 and has entered into partnerships with global innovators to achieve its goals. Aruba’s energy policy is designed to achieve more efficient and sustainable production, supply and consumption of its utility services. Therefore sustainability plays an active role in the government’s policies. “The partnership with Philips will contribute to the sustainable economic development Aruba is pursuing, which relies on a knowledge-based economy using the island’s strategic location in the region between Europe and the Americas,” commented Prime Minister Mike Eman.Also as part of this Memorandum of Innovation, public buildings will be retrofitted with LED lighting to realize the benefits of energy efficiency. Philips will design a tailored solution for outdoor living that allows Aruba to maximize energy efficiency and improve current lighting levels to international standards. Philips estimates sustainable lighting could result in initial energy savings of 50-80% and lower annual CO2 emissions by 3,000 – 4,000 tons. “Retrofitting will be equivalent to savings of $1.2 - $1.7 million per year in energy costs”, said Minister Mike de Meza, in charge of Economic Affairs, Energy and Environment in a declaration.“Philips is proud to partner with Aruba and help the island to realize its strategy to become one of the most sustainable markets in the region and around the globe,” commented Henk de Jong, CEO of Philips Latin America. “This effort in Aruba will become an important showcase for innovation that helps deliver energy efficiencies and makes cities, office buildings, homes and products more sustainable. And we do it through meaningful innovation.”In addition to helping Aruba achieve its energy independence goals, the project will serve as a center of excellence for the development and testing of sustainable products and practices. In the longer-term, Philips will address expanded and improved sustainability and performance, including solar-powered systems, for indoor and outdoor public lighting and support economic development through applications that promote economic growth in targeted sectors, like tourism and hospitality.This collaboration in Aruba builds on Philips’ ongoing initiatives and commitment to Latin America and the Caribbean. Last year, Philips was chosen to convert the majority of public lighting for the City of Buenos Aires to LED technology, enabling 50 percent energy savings for the city. In 2009, Philips was awarded participation in Mexico’s groundbreaking Luz Sustentable project, involving the distribution of the first million of a total of 30 million energy saving light bulbs to households. The project is set to cut carbon emissions by over 7 million tons over a period of ten years. In addition, Philips continues to roll out its Light Up Your Game project, an initiative designed to light up community centers with LED solar-powered lighting to 30 semi and off-grid rural soccer fields across 10 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.Based on estimates by the International Energy Agency |
It's been more than a month since the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a 500-page summary of its report into the CIA's post-9/11 torture program, which provided a detailed and disturbing glimpse into a dark period in our nation's history.
The full report, which took over five years to complete, is more than 6,500 pages. It's been widely documented just how much opposition it had to overcome, including the CIA's interfering with Senate computers, to see the light of day.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who spearheaded the report, is introducing legislation that would prevent future administrations from ever employing torture techniques, such as waterboarding, but it's highly unlikely the new Republican-led Congress will take any action on her proposals. Some members of the GOP have pointed to a Washington Post-ABC poll, released last month, which indicated that a majority (59 percent) of U.S. citizens believe the CIA's treatment of suspected terrorists was justified and would be acceptable in the future.
After months of wrangling and millions of dollars spent in the fight over whether to disclose this controversial report, where, realistically, do we go from here?
Personally, I'm appalled by our government's behavior and how hard it worked to cover up its abuses from lawmakers and other key government officials, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In my more than three decades in Congress, and in my post-congressional work, including my co-chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission, I've often heard the words "national security" invoked to justify all kinds of government actions, and it's been repeatedly used to justify our recent conduct regarding torture. Gradually I have come to scrutinize the use of that rationale in supporting anti-terrorist actions by our government.
I do not see how you can read the report summary and argue, as some have, that these actions did not represent abuses of power. While I recognize there is a big debate over the line between "coercive interrogation" and "torture," I take issue with our government engaging in actions such as waterboarding, sealing prisoners in coffins and chaining them in cold dungeons. To any reasonable person, these actions would come under the definition of torture, which includes cruelty to human beings and the employment of severe force.
Some say our national security was well served by so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," but the efficacy of torture and other coercive actions in counterterrorism efforts are difficult to gauge. The benefits of such actions are not clear.
The doubt about their demonstrated value would, in itself, seem to me to be an argument for not using such controversial methods. Surely in a democracy, the burden is on those who favor enhanced techniques to show, beyond question, that they are effective. I do not think they have met that burden.
All of us should be concerned by the conduct of the CIA, which engaged in acts of brutality, farmed out responsibilities for these acts to contractors whom the agency didn't control, withheld important information from Congress and destroyed evidence. This conduct will make the agency's work more difficult in the years ahead. It will be used by terrorist groups seeking to recruit new members and fuel the types of dangerous threats the agency seeks to prevent.
That said, we continue to need our intelligence community and the CIA. Its work is, quite simply, too important. I've dealt with hundreds of intelligence officials over the years, and I have been impressed by their competence, dedication and patriotism.
We must also be mindful of the fact that very few intelligence personnel were involved in the egregious incidents detailed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Those who did participate likely believed they were acting in America's best interest and with a clear green light from their superiors.
The events related in the report did indicate, however, how hard it is to fit our intelligence community into a system of representative democracy that demands openness, transparency and accountability. Our intelligence agents work in secret and must work in secret. Somehow, though, we must devise a way to ensure that our constitutional provisions and restraints apply to our intelligence community like they do to everyone else in the country.
The principal step for Congress to take is to up its oversight game. Too often it is co-opted by the intelligence community, which persuaded Congress to avoid a public debate on massive surveillance and does not ask and insist on answers to hard questions.
This will not be easy, of course. But I would like to see more effort to integrate the intelligence community into our constitutional system of government. Even though some of the agency's actions likely violated the law, criminal charges aren't likely to satisfy even the most vocal opposition to the agency's behavior. More importantly, they would only consume enormous amounts of time and energy, and serve to divide and demoralize our intelligence community at a time when Americans need it to be as strong and effective as possible.
I remain troubled by an apparent lack of critical self-examination at the CIA as it engaged in conduct that put a stain on our nation's history and will make it more difficult for us to take the moral high ground on future issues. And I have doubts about the likelihood of our government never repeating these acts of coercion, even brutality.
But it's time to move on.
As we move forward, I hope that a U.S. policy will emerge that strongly states, as a matter of law, principle and practice, that we do not use torture. It is wrong, morally corrupt and not who we are as Americans.
Indeed, it is time to end torture. There should be no ambiguity about this. The American people should have the right to know what's being done in their name.
Even if there is some value to enhanced interrogation -- and that value is by no means clear -- we should still not do it. These methods cross the line of where we are as a moral people who have enacted laws against torture and agreed in international agreements to ban its usage. And that's what's ultimately at stake here: who we are as a people.
I do not believe that terrorists have the ability to destroy what America stands for, and it's time to state clearly that the policy of the U.S. government will be to never torture again. |
NEW DELHI — India used small boats this weekend to ferry some of its citizens to a naval destroyer anchored near Aden, Yemen, as an operation to evacuate about 4,000 Indians from Yemen’s war zone entered a difficult phase.
The Indian ship was not able to dock in Aden because of shelling, so the small boats carried people in groups of about 30, said Syed Akbaruddin, the spokesman for India’s External Affairs Ministry. About 2,000 Indians have now been transported out of Yemen, but the deteriorating conditions there mean that no more evacuations from Aden will be possible, he said.
“It’s been a hard task, and as the situation worsens, the time available to us lessens,” he said. “Difficult situations now are becoming more difficult as time passes.”
Several thousand Indian women work as nurses in Yemen, and many have been reluctant to leave, despite the intensifying conflict, because their families are so heavily dependent on their remittances. |
Halsey is the stage name of Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, a 20-year-old New Jersey native who has cultivated a dedicated following with just one EP to her name, last year's Room 93. With a shock of blue hair and vocal control beyond her years, Halsey arrived with just five songs and a buzzed-about live show. Since then she became the most tweeted-about artist at SXSW, toured with Imagine Dragons, and was the subject of a fascinating New York Times profile that explored her identity as a "biracial, bisexual and bipolar" artist. To boot, Halsey's debut album, Badlands' latest single, "New Americana", recently premiered on Apple Music's Beats 1 with an enthusiastic endorsement from Zane Lowe: "There’s a new icon there," he said, possibly making it so by fiat.
The momentum behind Halsey is undeniable, but Badlands mostly falls flat. At its best, the record plays like a conflagration of a half-decade's worth of alt-R&B—catchy, dark, spottily engaging. But it is weighed down by trite lyrics and stale production: The details of her story wind up far more interesting than the music itself, which is a weird place to be for a superstar-in-the-making.
Badlands opens with "Castle", an unhurried track with a trip-hop backbone that serves as a meditation on Halsey's growing fame. "Sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise," she sings, ready to reject celebrity like an industry pro from the get-go. "And there's an old man sitting on the throne that's saying that I probably shouldn't be so mean," she sings, taking a jab at the patriarchy; it's one of the occasional moments on Badlands where Halsey's personality emerges and the knives come out. But sonically, "Castle" is dull; a misguided plainchant interlude threatens to derail the track early on and the soupy production never quite congeals.
Elsewhere, Halsey's choices are even clunkier. "New Americana" reconstitutes Lana Del Rey's Hollywood Babylon-isms and Lorde's tongue-in-cheekiness as a millennial call-to-arms: "Viral mess, turned dreams into an empire/ Self-made success, now she rolls with Rockafellas," Halsey sings, piling on the Gen Y bromides. She runs down a "big issues" checklist, from social media fame (good? bad? maybe both!) to wealth inequality (a problem, no doubt!), and her concerns come across as plasticky and surface-level.
"New Americana" isn't the only time Halsey evokes Del Rey. "Drive" hews close to the Lizzy Grant playbook, with saccharine strings and West Coast anhedonia that has Ultraviolence written all over it. The more successful tracks tend to be the ones that feel personal and specific. "Ghost", which also appeared on Halsey's EP, gives you a sense of what she can do when the scale is smaller. The track is a sinuous synth-pop love song whose economical runtime plays in its favor; one can almost forgive the music video for being yet another Enter the Void knockoff. "Hurricane", a bonus track that doubled as an early single, also has a striking specificity to its unusually bleak lyrics: "He's got an eye for girls of eighteen/ And he turns them out like tricks," Halsey sings, painting a troubling picture of a traumatic youth.
Reading interviews with Halsey or scrolling through her Twitter feed, you get the sense of a canny and talented performer, one who legitimately wants to connect with fans. But the public persona only comes through on Badlands in fits and starts, and there isn't a single subversive or original second on the album. "We are the new Americana/ High on legal marijuana/ Raised on Biggie and Nirvana," goes the chorus on "New Americana." Like most of Badlands, it's calculated, defiant, and, ultimately, hollow. |
[spoiler] So I wanted to do this because there's been a lot of information regarding potential changes to the Soviet HT's with most of them already on supertest. Basically, this will be compiling everything we know so far regarding.
IS-4 line
The first one that needs to be mentioned is that it's been confirmed for a while now that the IS-4 will drop down to tier 9 with either the ST-I or possibly even the ST-II being the new tier 10, and this makes sense since since the ST-I was designed after the IS-4.
The interesting thing is that developers are looking to change the entire line, and I agree with that. The IS-4 and ST-I don't really play like the rest of the line, not that surprising when you look at them compared to the KV-4.
I have an idea on how they could do this line but I'll save that till the end, for now, this is what the line's to look like
Source: https://thedailybounce.net/2017/03/15/world-of-tanks-murazor-on-is-4-branch-changes/
T-10 / Obj 257
One of the most recent changes was the proposal for the T-10 to be changed to the Obj 257, which I believe was an early prototype to the Obj 260 (IS-7). The purpose was to improve the flow of the line so that the tiers 8, 9 and 10 were closer together playstyle wise.
As for the T-10, WG want to keep it at tier 9 as an alternative mini branch from the IS-3 with a new, unknown tier 10. Once again, I have a suggestion but that'll be at the end
Source: https://thedailybounce.net/2017/10/08/world-of-tanks-supertest-object-257-to-replace-t-10/
IS-M, Obj 705 & Obj 705A
Brand new on supertest is the IS-M, a rear turreted Soviet HT. From what I know, it was a modernization of the IS-2 so it's almost guaranteed to branch off from the tier 7 IS. At tier 9 is the Obj 705, from what I'm able to find about this tank it's meant to have similar perimeters as the Obj 260 but with a rear mounted turret, armed with a 122mm BL-13 gun (the gun that's in-game on the Defender) and estimated to weigh 65 tons.
Visual impression of the Object 705
But the one that concerns me the most is the Obj 705A, the proposed tier 10. Let me set the scene. Take the Obj 260, mount a 152mm gun and buff up the armor until the tank weighs 100 tons. Historically, it was proposed to get the 152mm M-51 and I'm not sure how WG will implement this, because the the 152mm M51 was designed to have similar ballistic capabilities as the 152mm BR-2... which we first see on the tier 7 Soviet artillery in-game
Visual impression of the Object 705A
Please note that the renders are for visual representation only and are in no way official models
Source: https://thedailybounce.net/2017/12/13/world-of-tanks-supertest-is-m-details/
My Suggestion
If you aren't interested in this then that's fine, feel free to ignore it as I'll drop it into spoiler tags as it's not really the primary focus of this post. But as promised, here's what I would suggest;
[spoiler]
I need to start off by saying that I'm not that knowledgeable in regards to soviet tanks. Starting at the bottom, I would swap the KV-4 for the Obj 253, a version of the IS-6. As much as I want the KV-4 to remain in the tech tree, I don't know of any designs that could fit at tier 9 and 10 after it. There're heaps of designs for the KV-4 but none of them would work unless WG made them ridiculously unhistorical or they made up tanks to fit. I'll keep the KV-4 in as a possibility of a line of super heavies should there be availability
As already planned by WG, the IS-4 would drop to tier 9 and the ST-I buffed to tier 10. At tier 8 would be a new tank, the "K" heavy tank which was pointed out to me by lavawing on reddit. Information I can find on the "K" heavy tank suggests that it was a plan for an IS with improved armor that became the precauser for the Object 701 (IS-4).
Jumping to the top of the line now, I would actually buff the T-10 into the tier 10 position, at tier 9 would be the K-91. It's a little known project that competed against the T-10 design and had two design variants. The first was for a mid turreted tank while the second was rear turreted with the whole crew in the turret. Naturally, the first design would be the one used here
I'm honestly not too sure about all this, there's a lot of love happening for the IS-7 branch with alternative tanks to get making it more apealing to go towards then the IS-4. But at the same time, we don't fully know what WG have planned for the IS-4 line. Time will tell, and it's about damn time that Russia got something other then just tier 8 premiums.[/spoiler] [/spoiler]
Here's the current confirmed look of the Soviet HT line based on a new leak that says the Obj 777 II will be added after the T-10: https://thearmoredpatrol.com/2018/01/15/tap-insider-news-15th-january-2018/
Stats of the Obj 777 II
Edited by DeadArashi, 15 January 2018 - 05:05 PM. |
UPDATE: We are now hearing that the business will remain open in 2015, with the closing date pegged at 30 June 2016 unless something changes. Thanks to Simon Smith for checking this out for us..
UPDATE 2 (6 Nov 2015): This story has gone viral, and The Brag and The Daily Telegraph are now running pieces on it. According to the latter, COMIC KINGDOM manager Clayton Wildridge “said the store would continue to trade until existing stock was sold. However, our sources tell us that the store is closing down over a period of 3 months.
Read on below for our original story.
Another one bites the dust. Several sources have reported that Sydney’s oldest comic book store, COMIC KINGDOM, will be shutting its doors after decades in the business. It’s part of a trend that only sees a handful of such stores left open in Sydney.
A staple on the Sydney scene since the 1980s, COMIC KINGDOM‘s distinctive visage at its Liverpool Street location is known for its eclectic display of pop culture items in the front window, and even more diverse range of memorabilia inside. The ground floor was an assortment or ‘stuff’ from television, film, comics and beyond, while the upper floor contained new releases, collections, toys, valuable issues, and an impressive back-issue stockpile room with issues dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.
Some of the ‘stuff’ on the lower floor of Comic Kingdom. Photo source: ComicBookResources
Owner Steve Smith’s store started off as the Bondi Book Exchange in Bondi Junction in the early 1980s, before COMIC KINGDOM opened another store that fans may recall was on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Liverpool. Then offshoot Comics and Cards found a home on Market Street, one that took advantage of the card collecting boom of the 1990s. COMIC KINGDOM eventually bought the multi-tiered building on Liverpool Street , consolidating its collections into one store. It has remained in the area of Sydney now known as ‘the Spanish Quarter’ until now.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, COMIC KINGDOM was part of a vibrant comics community that inhabited the Sydney CBD. Kings Comics, now in a prime location on Pitt Street, once occupied an underground section below street level location in Elizabeth Street across the road from Comics and Cards, with other locations such as Moore Park’s Fox Studios (now the Entertainment Quarter) no longer around. Down on George Street, just around the corner from COMIC KINGDOM, was the epically named The Land Beyond Beyond. As a young lad first getting into comics, this writer spent many an hour of his misspent youth making the trek between these four locations to hunt down bargains or seemingly rare and exciting issues.
Never as flashy as the brightly lit and socially engaged Kings Comics, even the most ardent of Sydney comics fans would argue that COMIC KINGDOM had seen better days. The front display’s manually placed “6” over the original “Open 7 Days” sign has been a long-standing indicator of those finer times. The creaky stairs that led from the street-level doorway flanked visitors with Eeerie and Punisher posters from a more successful time for the store. There was always a sense that you were merely visiting someone else’s spare room, a potential hoarder in the making, but inevitably went home with items that you wouldn’t have bought in any other circumstance. A recent trip looking for a current issue instead yielded The Amazing Spider-Man: Parallel Lives graphic novel from 1989 and a copy of Walt Simonson’s 1983 book Star Slammers.
For Sydney comics fans, it is far from the end of collecting. The aforementioned Kings remains a staple in the city and at the growing convention scene, while the nearby Books Kinokuniya keeps us in bountiful amounts of trade paperbacks and collections. Liverpool’s The Comic Shop still sells current single issues, as does Paramatta’s The Phantom Zone and relatively new plater Superhero Comics in Newtown. There’s also Arcadia Unbound over in Kingsgrove, a shop with arguably the biggest painted doors in all of comic book store history.
So long, COMIC KINGDOM. We may not have visited you as much as we should have, and perhaps we always took you for granted. Yet you will leave a hole in the scene, one that we hope is filled by other keen collectors of ‘stuff’. |
51
2808 Phelan Ln
Redondo Beach , CA 90278
(310) 214-1627
Saw the tips mention it, but no reviews yet... Phelan Good is now closed and is a Brazilian sandwich shop. RIP breakfast burritos and bananas foster French toast... You will be missed. :(
Love this place. Nothing super fancy but I love that it's in te neighborhood. The guys who run it are super great too. They cook a mean meal too!!
The shop is located at the center of an all residential area/ streets. If it wasn't for Yelp and Navigation, it's going to be hard to find this place. Weird area but very convenient to all the residential. Surrounded right smack in the middle of all but nothing residential streets, a very tiny shopping center with a liquor store, and dry cleaner next to a small park. It's tasty! I get their breakfast croissant which is with cheese, egg and thin sliced ham. Costs me almost $6.00 !!! Yes, its tasty because its grilled and greasy, and if you eat it right away. Just the little croissant with no sides was $6. Pretty pricey!! :-( If you check in with your phone, you can get 50Cents off a sandwhich, which I didn't even use.
Well, this is unfortunate. My favorite neighborhood cafe is anything but that now... Been doing a lot of traveling, so its been 6-7 weeks since I had the cafe. This past Saturday, a friend and I decided to order breakfast to pick-up. Called in - noticed a new voice on the other end but they've had help in the past and everything seemed normal - and we ordered a breakfast burrito with bacon and a sourdough sandwich with sausage, adding avocado. I was definitely disappointed in what we got. For $15 (including the $1 + all change tip) we received 1 under-seasoned breakfast burrito and - I am not kidding here - a HALF sourdough sandwich which they charged my $1.50 to add avocado to. I was shocked and confused. Furthermore, I didn't notice either Jason or Josh - there was clearly a hired on cook, the kid I spoke to on the phone and what appeared to be a new owner in a polo shirt and gold chain, clearly not prepping food. The menu, however, was the same though the portion sizes had clearly changed for the worse and I noticed they were using a cheaper wax paper that melted cheese just had its way with (not bad but indicative of major cost-cutting). Despite the same menu, I am suspecting this place is under new ownership. I noticed that the weekend specials emails dried up about 2 months ago, no Jason or Josh working when one or both were there any time I had frequented in the past year and the drastic cost-cutting changes. I think its fair to say I probably will be crossing this one of my list of eateries I visit often. It's a pity - Jason and Josh were making some really good food for awhile there.
Phelan Good left me Phelan a bit pissed off!, now don't get the wrong impression this food tasted real good and so could have been a 5 Star review, so WHY only 2 Stars? Hidden in the middle of a residential neighborhood next to a small park you'd probably not drive by this place and say hey let's eat here unless you might be visiting someone in the area. It's a cool little spot with a chalkboard menu on the wall that has a pretty good selection of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner..... I actually came out of my way to come here for ONE reason!, NOT just any Breakfast Burrito, But...... one called "Go Back to Bed Breakfast Burrito" ingredients are as follows; 4 Meats, Steak, Bacon, Sausage and Ham, 6 Eggs, 2 Salsa's, Potato's and Cheese wrapped in two large flour tortillas. $12.95 http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/EeZkpERJz2CBRNPFc0deeQ?select=5Qg1_F1KKgl1PObiIH2vEQ Sounds like it could be "The Ultimate Breakfast Burrito" and that's why I'm here, as you can see from the photo above this burrito is massive, just look at the knife and fork compared to the burrito, this is like one of those Man vs Food Challenges!. Instead of the four meats I asked for ALL Bacon, so I'm expecting Bacon, Bacon, Bacon and more Bacon, with the eggs, potato's and cheese...... at this point I'm thinking I've finally found The Ultimate Breakfast Burrito, until http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/EeZkpERJz2CBRNPFc0deeQ?select=B1fA8pt5F0rlasMpKeZ-Fg WOW, where's the Bacon?, you've got to be kidding me!. I've totally just got SCREWED...... NO WAY there is the equivalent of four different meats here, for $12.95 this should have been loaded with FULL STRIPS of BACON, and with the SIX eggs and potato's I couldn't taste the bacon bits and finding them was like finding Waldo. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT, the eggs were cooked to perfection nice, light and fluffy, did not have potato overload but a good balance, cheese was also minimal could have had a bit more, it came with red salsa inside couldn't get much flavor from it and zero heat, it also came with a side of green salsa that was a watery flavorless mess!. It's Big, it could easily feed 2-3 people, though I only ate half, I probably could have been a pig and ate the whole thing but definitely would have had to "Go Back to Bed", As for flavor the burrito was good if you like eggs and potato's but with a lack of meat and a price of $12.95 hence the 2 Stars.
Phelan Good Cafe sounds like "Feelin Good Cafe" ... am I thinking too much?? This is the kind of place that I hope will thrive and stick around for a while but it definitely needs people's help to spread the words due to it's hidden and sorta unconventional location for an eatery. Phelan is a new neighborhood cafe in this part of North Redondo. It's been open for about 5 months. Owner Josh is also the chef and sorta runs the whole show. Very friendly guy. Fun fact: he used to live on Catalina Island and worked as a chef there. The cafe itself has very minimal seating. It's not a service restaurant but it's a great place to grab some quick bites to eat. You order at the counter and wait for your food. There's about 2 tables inside and 3 on the patio outside. The cafe is clean with a modern vibe. Everything is mostly in black and white and the decor is kept quite simple. I dig the atmosphere because it doesnt come with the chaos and crazy long lines at Eat @ Joe's and it's definitely classier than places like El Burrito Jr or other diners. While the cafe is small, it does not feel cluttered. So no worries you claustrophobic folks. I do dig their breakfast burrito. For $4.95 + tax, you can get a solid size burrito with fresh off the grill potatoes, cheese and eggs. It's big. So far I'd eat eat half of it and save the other half for later. You can add meat for additional dough. While walking out, I saw some folks eating their sandwiches which looked very well presented. I would like to go back and try the Portobello Mushroom Sandwich. Can you tell I'm not a meat person yet? heheh ~ One downfall is that I wish Phelan had fiber friendly breakfast options ... ie: oatmeal with fresh fruits or for the sweet tooth people, pancakes and waffles. But like Yelper Elliot S. have mentioned, the owner takes suggestions... so perhaps the menu might expand upon more customer recommendations. Anywho, check out Phelan! Go support Josh so he can stick around. :D
What everyone is saying on Yelp is true! After passing the signs for Phelan Good Cafe I was curious, and looked them up online. Based on Yelp reviews, I *had* to try one of the breakfast burritos. I wasn't sure what to expect (the last time I had been in that location, my now-30-year-old brother was playing the little league equivalent of basketball in the park next door), but the cafe is clean and makes good use of the space. I had called ahead and asked what time they stopped serving breakfast, and was told by Josh that if there isn't a line he pretty much never says no to making breakfast. So, when we showed up about a half hour after official breakfast time ended, I was glad to see we had just beaten the lunch rush. My friend ordered an egg, cheese and potato breakfast burrito, and I got mine with sausage. I was pretty much focused on just the breakfast part of the menu because I knew what I wanted, but the rest that I scanned seemed really good--I love a well curated and thoughtful menu. We chatted with Josh a bit while he made our burritos, really cool guy. And then we stuffed our faces, and it was glorious. After living away from California for 7 years, I hadn't had a breakfast burrito in a while, and it was everything I hoped it would be. Everything was the right size so you have a nice mix of textures and tastes. Others have noted that the salsa isn't terribly impressive, and I'd agree, but I alternated between the salsa and spicy Srircha, which I enjoyed. I will definitely be back! I'd like to say I'd try the other menu items (I saw a few sandwiches being made that looked great), but realistically, I don't know if I can stray from that breakfast burrito. PS We signed up for their email newsletters, and this morning I got a list of their specials. 1) I super appreciated that they put the recipients under "BCC", which some small businesses are not so good at doing; and 2) today's special was a breakfast burrito with avocado and pepperjack and bananas foster french toast--the point being, sign up for their newsletter, because those specials sound damn good.
This place is quite small, no music in the background, very simple, the food and service was great! I had the Phelan Ciabatta with avocado and organic green tea. Then I decided to purchase one of their homemade red velvet mini cakes Togo... Yummm! If your looking for a really good wholesome sandwich made with great love, here's the place to go. The guy had an awesome attitude and made really good food! I'll definently come back again when I come back to this area. :) FYI , he dosen't mind you playing music off your phone since its pretty quiet there any how. As long as its decently PG-13. ;)
I have been to Phelan (feeling) Good 4 times after finding it on Yelp. Two guys own it and are working hard to make a go of it. The food is prepared fresh to order and takes a bit longer than fast food. But is sure is worth the wait. My guests and I have had a range of sandwiches but always get the garlic griddle fries...yes, cooked on the griddle. From breads, to ingredients, it has always been delicious. The selections all seem to have a little unique twist on the ingredients or preparation. But best of all, the prices are very reasonable. Stop by and support the two fellows as they work hard to provide fresh, delicious and reasonably priced food.
I'm so glad they've got something good in this location again. I almost cried when North Beach Deli closed last year. While I miss Nick and his awesome soups, I think Phelan Good Cafe may be able to fill the hole that North Beach Deli left when they closed their doors. Owner Josh and cook Jason are both awesome, friendly guys who are eager to please. They'll remember your name and ask you about your day. They also take recommendations (Josh added a vegetarian item to the menu on my request, a portabello mushroom ciabatta sandwich). Everything I've eaten here so far (probably six times in the last month or so since they opened) has been delicious, speedy, and reasonably priced. Don't tell Josh, but I'd pay even more for their food since they're in walking distance to my house, two minutes away. I highly recommend a burrito for breakfast, or a croissant sandwich for lunch. The hot drinks hit the spot for me too. The specials are awesome for lunch or dinner as well. Free wifi is a bonus. Come support this new business and help Josh be successful! You can take my word for it, he's worth it.
Wow, this place is tiny. Horrible location, I really feel for them, it is one of the worst locations I've ever seen for an eatery. I think the top of Mt. Fuji gets more traffic, actually, it probably does. Really cool menu though, I wanted to get a sandwich but couldn't decide right away. The only dude working there recommended the breakfast burrito, so I ordered the bacon. It was freakin' massive! Awesome price too, a lil more than $5. It seriously was a bomb in the belly. I had an extra long lunch break, & fell into a post burrito nap after stomach insertion. The tomatillo sauce it came with was forgettable, so I switched it for Sriracha. Definitely wanna go back though, like I said nice menu, burgers & such, and the prices are quite reasonable. Plus, I feel bad for them, like your friend who had to buy 50 tickets to play the Whiskey & is trying to sell them off desperately just to break even.
Been meaning to try this place since it opened as I think the name is really clever! Finally came for breakfast this weekend. Had a breakfast burrito with eggs, cheese and potatos - was really good and big! Their hot chocolate is also tasty. Their menu is alittle limited, but it has all the staples. Breakfast has bagel or croissant sandwiches and burritos. Lunch is all burgers and sandwiches. I think they may also be open for dinner on weekends. Inside is really small. There are three 2-seater patio tables and another 1 or 2 outside. Decor is pretty minimal but it works - painted concrete walls and a giant chalk board menu. No sound absorbers, so it gets really loud when they have the fan going. There were 3 people working behind the counter and all were incredibly nice and friendly. I will definitely return and try more of their menu!
I am very glad that this Cafe just opened, it is so convenient for me that I am already a frequent customer. Josh, the owner, is very friendly and his service is excellent. The menu is full of things you would normally find in an expensive restaurant, but the prices are affordable, even for a quick lunch. Everything I have tried so far has been excellent, I especially loved the bacon wrapped filet mingon, and all of their breakfast burritos are great. My latest purchase was the "go back to bed (breakfast) burrito" which contains four meats, 6 eggs, 2 salsas, potatoes and cheese. I also had an amazing crossiant stuffed with cream cheese and candied walnuts.
Visited, but decided not to eat. The restaurant is under new ownership. I tried ordering from the pictures of food posted by people for this restaurant but the cook did not recognize any of the food items. I tried to order: - the pastrami that's pictured "we don't have that" - the banana fosters french toast "we don't have that". The cook then handed me a menu printed from an ink jet printer in a sheet protector. I menu seems to be scaled back in contrast to the pictures of food items that are posted. For the record, this is less of a café and more like a full service deli. There are only 2 umbrella tables with 2 chairs each out front. . While not impressed with the aesthetics, I did not want to weigh the restaurant down to heavily with an unfavorable review because I did not actually try the food hence, the 3 star rating. The food may in fact be good. But I'll leave that for a more daring yelper to determine. If there's anything YELP could do, the pictures of the food items are inaccurate and misleading. It was the scrolling through the pictures that sold and I decided to navigate to that location.
This very tiny cafe is so unassuming but we went because of the 5 star reviews and because all the other places in Redondo were packed at 9:00 on a Sunday morning. The breakfast burrito and sandwich were simple yet amazingly tasty. Went back for lunch and the sandwich I ate was gone in under five minutes. It was so tasty I couldn't resist woofing it down. The Isreali Cous Cous is excellent. The food is fresh, the location may be outta the way but definitely worth going here is you live or work in the area. Rarely do you find a 5 Star / 1 Dollar Sign place and THIS IS IT!
As of November 2nd New owners took it over from the liquor store and are doing great, they added different flavors of tortilla shells to the bfast burritos! And they are going to have hot subs and ribs starting in dec!! !! And the new owners are long time locals of north Redondo !! Lots of changes coming to the Phelan Family Cafe!!
This place is an a pretty unexpected location. It seems to be in the middle of a neighborhood next to a small convenience store & catering company. I came here to grab a bite with my mom. We both ordered BLTAs (i think), & they were delicious. Staff was friendly. Food was served quickly.
I've frequented the Phelan Good Cafe since it opened and I have never been disappointed. The owner is so friendly and so are his staff, and the food is always fresh, delicious and made to order! All the specials are wonderful, especially the weekend breakfast specials. I signed up for their email list and I love waking up to their email specials - Red Flannel Hash, French Toast Sandwich and Chorizo & Egg Scramble, just to name a few. The Frisco burger is amazing and the homemade soups are delicious, filling comfort foods. Walk or ride your bike to Phelan Good Cafe ASAP! :)
Glad to have found this on here probably wouldn't have known about it otherwise... Really good breakfast burrito, good quality meat for the price, and excellent espresso! I'll be back for sure. |
WASHINGTON — The FBI is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents — allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.
The FBI soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.
The FBI recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.
“Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,” German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau’s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general’s findings in 2007 that the FBI had improperly used “national security letters” to obtain information like people’s phone bills.
Valerie Caproni, the FBI general counsel, said the bureau had fixed the problems with the national security letters and had taken steps to make sure they would not recur. She also said the bureau — which does not need permission to alter its manual so long as the rules fit within broad guidelines issued by the attorney general — had carefully weighed the risks and the benefits of each change.
Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity. |
A Tale of Two Seasons
If I told you the Padres season was halfway over, you’d probably think I’m terrible at math. I can assure you that isn’t the case, but I will say that the first part of the Padres season is at the halfway point. Let me explain… Baseball’s trade deadline is July 31st, the ultimate “are you in or are you out of the race” statement. Simple concept… If you are in the race at the midway point in July, then August and September baseball will have relevance to your fandom. If you are out of the race, then most owners will try and cut losses (fire sale), trading established players for prospects and making the marketing people really earn their money the next two months.
A baseball season is really set up in stages, and as the season moves along, teams are eliminated, white flags are raised until we have a champion. The major difference is that the first stage isn’t decorated. The first 100 games determine if you’re still in the hunt or you’re trying to “finish strong” to build momentum for the next season. I realize we can throw out a bunch of cliches about how it’s not over until it’s over, but sometimes it really is over.
After game 51, the Padres are 24-27. They have clinched a losing month for the seventh time over the last eight. In spite of that the Padres are in the race, although if they don’t start making up ground quickly that won’t be the case. First the good news: Last season two play-in (wild card) teams were under .500 on June 1st (KC, PIT) with a record of 26-30. Hopefully that makes you all warm and fuzzy. Some not so good news…
Over the last three years only two of the WC teams have been sub .500. You guessed it, KC and PIT
Since 2012, 51% of the teams with a record above .500 on June 1st have made the playoffs
Since 2012, 15% of the team with a record below .500 on Just 1st have made the playoffs.
Since 2012, 5% of the teams with a record below .500 on June 1st have made the playoffs as a Wild Card
Over the last three years it’s taken a minimum of 88,90, and 88 wins to make the playoffs.
The Padres need to go 64-47 (.577) the rest of the way to hit that 88 win number.
Padres are currently 14-21 against teams with a winning record.
Over the last 36 games the Padres are 14-22, a .389 winning percentage.
In spite of those facts, the Padres are at the tail end of a nasty stretch against the best teams in baseball and have a much more reasonable schedule in June. A few good teams (NYM, LAD, SF), average teams (ATL, AZ (2x), SEA) and a few bad teams (CIN, OAK (2x)). Mix in the return of Upton, Morrow, Myers, and Alonso within the next two weeks, and you should be able to stabilize the defense and the lineup (okay, maybe not stabilize the lineup, but you know what I’m saying here).
(Edit)Currently the Padres sit in 4th place in the NL West, only one game ahead of the last place Rockies. It is worth noting that the Friars are “only” 3.5 games behind the Mets for the second Wild Card spot, but that is very, very misleading. The Padres are… 1/2 game back of the DBacks, 1 GB of the Braves, 3GB of the Pirates, and the Cubs… And once they pass all those teams, they still have to catch the Mets.
The “it’s still early” excuse is now gone. The Padres season essentially comes down to the next 30-45 days. The ownership has given thumbs up for a club record $108MM payroll and this extremely talented team is only one game better than last years club. I’m sure all of us were expecting to be over .500 heading into June, including the front office. All the concerns we had going into the season are real… SS is a huge issue, OF defense is a mess, the inconsistency with the lineup still haunts us daily as the team has been shutout eight times this season, and eventually Derek Norris is going break into pieces right before our eyes. I can keep going, but I won’t. I will say this…
I’m calling on the Padres Brass to have more urgency. All offseason fans were told a fast start was paramount, it hasn’t happened. Something needs to happen quickly because the status quo isn’t cutting it. I don’t think some accountability is too much to ask.
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Maddie Meyer/Getty Images Last week, news broke that several cable networks were trying to put together a sports-free online TV package for less than $20 a month.
The thinking goes like this: Sports rights are incredibly expensive, and tons of people are paying for sports they don't watch in their cable bundle. In 2016, ESPN alone cost $6.10 in carriage fees per subscriber.
So why not have an option where you can chop off sports and pay a cheap rate for a good entertainment-only bundle. Makes sense, right?
Not exactly.
The main problem is that the parent companies of the major broadcast networks — NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox — have paid a lot for sports rights, so they want no part of a bundle that makes sports seem less vital. The cable networks they own are also out. Bye-bye FX.
Who is left in this bundle then? Bloomberg reported that Viacom, Discovery, and AMC are looking to make a deal with distributors. Rich Greenfield, a BTIG analyst and noted ESPN skeptic, told Business Insider he also thinks that Turner, which owns CNN, TBS, and TNT, would be "very interested" — even though Turner owns a fair amount of sports. Throw Scripps in there too. (Greenfield also said A&E, which is jointly owned by Hearst and Disney-ABC, could be a possibility.)
Those five (or six) put together could make a pretty compelling cheap bundle. You'd get a spread of programming from CNN's news, to AMC's quality dramas, to Comedy Central or the Food Network. There would be some non-sports holes from cable networks owned by the broadcasters, like Fox News or USA. But you wouldn't have to miss the marquee broadcast networks themselves, since all you need is a $25 digital antenna to tune in. They are free, after all.
"All [the broadcasters] want to make people forget that antennas exist," Greenfield said.
If you could keep that bundle priced at $15-$20, paired with a slick interface and on-demand options, Greenfield thinks 5-10 million homes could be interested. By cutting out the broadcasters, you would also avoid the complicated regional rights issues that have caused geographic headaches for services like DirecTV Now and YouTube TV.
The Have-Nots
But why are these cable networks trying to put together a sports-free package now?
Mostly it's because they are feeling squeezed by getting left off some of the new online bundles coming out. The idea of many of these new services is to offer a lower-cost cable alternative, but that means something has to give in terms of programming. Take YouTube TV, for example, which costs $35 a month. AMC recently got into the bundle, but all the other cable networks that aren't tied to a broadcaster have been cut out, including Turner. And they are angry. Some of those cable-only companies will get chopped off Hulu's upcoming service as well.
"Our conversations with investors certainly indicated a 'have' and 'have not' view of media stocks domestically, with [bigger companies] (the Haves) able to leverage their large breadth of content into something near full carriage on emerging distribution packages like YouTube TV, perhaps at the expense of the Have Not [small to medium companies]," RBC analyst Steven Cahall wrote in a note to clients Monday.
"Broadcasters try to make everyone else feel like losers," Greenfield said. "Those losers are going to turn around and try to be winners."
The wrath of the broadcasters could, however, spell problems for distributors that might want to sell a no-sports bundle. Some of the contracts cable and satellite providers have signed with heavyweights like Disney and Fox are loaded with fine print designed to stop new bundles like this. In 2015, Disney-owned ESPN sued Verizon over a sports-free bundle.
But if those issues can be worked out, the "loser bundle" could be a winning proposition, at least for some young people who aren't into sports or paying $100 a month for cable. Paying $20 or less, they'll also have a bit of room to add Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or HBO Now to the mix depending on your preference.
The big question will be how easy it will be to integrate this bundle in with your digital antenna. In some ways, the broadcasters are right: Losing NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox would be too much for many people. But Roku TVs already put the broadcast channels in the same interface as apps like Netflix and Hulu, and there are even ways to get a DVR without cable, though it comes with an added cost.
Still, if those hardware and software elements continue to improve, the "loser bundle" plus broadcast channels could become a viable option for people that just aren't that into sports. But chances are it won't happen without a fight. |
This week, filmmaker Whitney Dow launched "The Whiteness Project," a non-satirical, "deadly serious" multi-platform investigation into "how Americans who identify as 'white' experience their ethnicity." You can see the first round of interviews with 24 Buffalo, New York residents on the website here, and a preview of the project, via backer PBS, below.
Dow says that he is hoping to interview 1,000 "white people from all walks of life and localities" about the white experience (he's already put photos up on Facebook of interviewees from NYC and Milwaukee). Some of the participants focus on perceived criticisms of white people ("Some whites are very exclusive..."), some tone-deafly talk about POC ("Some black people kind of hold onto the back in the day, slave thing, or feel they aren't being treated right") and some don't really talk about being white (like this woman who instead talks about being intimidated by black men). Some people express themselves pretty reasonably, while others get increasingly angered.
While tweeting with Daily Dot reporter Miles Klee, Dow admitted he was nervous about how the project would be received by the public: "A bit nervous as I know it has a huge chance of being misunderstood. White people have been very tentative about engaging. POC either get it right away or are hugely offended," he wrote. You can get an idea of the reactions the project has inspired so far:
"The white guys will never have a chance to be a fireman or a cop anymore." via @bomani_jones http://t.co/uUXRNU7kXb — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 10, 2014
Whiteness Project gave me the jitters. We ain't gon make it are we? — Craig Jenkins (@CraigSJ) October 10, 2014
Whiteness project. "“You don’t know just where the line is.” http://t.co/jYVclxtzEj — Guy (@Payitforward87) October 10, 2014
FINALLY we get to hear white people's side of the story http://t.co/hGukizuPA9 — Jessica Roy (@JessicaKRoy) October 10, 2014
WE HAVE ACHIEVED PEAK CAUCASITY http://t.co/MrrYuhW8sP — Desus (@desusnice) October 10, 2014
what, exactly, is this meant to accomplish? http://t.co/ldWuRmVAFg — Mychal Denzel Smith (@mychalsmith) October 10, 2014
look how gradually angry this guy gets. this is way more useful than these black ppl panels you see on tv. http://t.co/JeYGbQvv7n — Bomani Jones (@bomani_jones) October 10, 2014
The Whiteness Project? I don't know why we need new nicknames for the United States tbh — An Amazon Wishlist (@ShrillCosby) October 10, 2014
The line is definitely somewhere before using coke cans as a hair accessory. (for more: http://t.co/QTKvdxhmgZ) pic.twitter.com/27C0EdDMTj — jessie (@ex_liontamer) October 10, 2014
But Dow adds that he has received at least one message which makes him feel the project is worthwhile:
@MilesKlee @whenthedrum Here's the note that made me feel I am on the right track. pic.twitter.com/VlnOXiXHYn — Whitney Dow (@whitneybdow) October 10, 2014
You can read Dowd's full artistic statement below:
While many media projects have investigated the history, culture, and experiences of various American ethnic minorities, there has been much less examination of how white Americans think about and experience their whiteness and how white culture shapes our society. Most people take for granted that there is a “white” race in America, but rarely is the concept of whiteness itself investigated. What does it mean to be a “white”? Can it be genetically defined? Is it a cultural construct? A state of mind? How does one come to be deemed “white” in America and what privileges does being perceived as white bestow? The Whiteness Project is a multi-platform media project that examines both the concept of whiteness itself and how those who identify as “white” process their ethnic identity. The project’s goal is to engender debate about the role of whiteness in American society and encourage white Americans to become fully vested participants in the ongoing debate about the role of race in American society. After almost two decades of making films with my black producing partner, Marco Williams, I have come to believe that most whites see themselves as outside the American racial paradigm and their race as a passive attribute. Subsequently, they feel that they do not have the same right to speak about race as non-whites. The Whiteness Project hopes to bring everyday white Americans, especially those who would not normally engage in a project about race, into the racial discussion—to help them understand the active role their race plays in every facet of their lives, to remove some of the confusion and guilt that many white people feel around the subject of race and to help white Americans learn to own their whiteness—and everything positive and negative it represents—in the same way that every other ethnicity owns its ethnic identity. I recognize that the idea of whiteness, or white privilege, is an uncomfortable one. The term “white privilege” itself feels pejorative and like something whose very recognition demands an admission of some kind of guilt. As a white person, I reject this. I have found that honestly examining the role my ethnicity plays in my day-to-day life, and, in fact, how it has shaped my life’s entire arc, has been incredibly enriching and enhanced the quality of all my relationships, regardless of the ethnic make-up of those involved. America, despite its history (or perhaps because of it), has been a leader in confronting issues of race. While deep racial fissures do exist in American society—as evidenced by recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and in reactions to the shooting of Trayvon Martin and to affirmative action court rulings—it is hard to imagine any other white-majority country embracing and celebrating the wide range of ethnicities and cultures that make up the nation and electing a biracial president to govern them all. I believe that the country is not just ready for a discussion on whiteness, but is hungry for it. My experiences working on this project have repeatedly shown me that when white people honestly engage on this topic, it is incredibly freeing for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, and makes discussions about race more productive, ultimately helping to advance a culture of true equality.
There are a lot of interviews to click around on the site. Of course, it may all be kind of moot, since race doesn't even exist apparently. |
Netflix has dropped another teaser for Season 3 of Orange Is the New Black , featuring interviews with stars Taylor Schilling and Laura Prepon and new cast member Ruby Rose.
As we learned in the season trailer, Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) has landed back in Litchfield.
"In Season 3, Alex has to deal with the consequences of violating your parole," Prepon says. "You definitely do see more of Alex's vulnerable side. But Alex is, like, a total badass. That's the cool thing about her."
And it looks like Piper (Taylor Schilling) and Alex are going to ~rekindle~ things – presumably until Alex finds out Piper dobbed her in to the parole officer.
Though whether Piper or a different inmate gave Alex this epic hickey is another question.
Though whether Piper or a different inmate gave Alex this epic hickey is another question.
The pair look set to return to their volatile to-ing and fro-ing, but maybe with a role reversal this time.
The pair look set to return to their volatile to-ing and fro-ing, but maybe with a role reversal this time.
"As Piper's growing and Alex is growing, their dynamic is turned on its head a little," said Schilling. "Piper's in a stronger place than we've ever seen her before."
Prepon agreed, saying, "The interesting thing about the relationship is that the dynamic constantly changes between the two of them." |
Charles Wade checks Twitter while cleaning an apartment on Jan. 31, 2015, in St. Louis. (Whitney Curtis for The Washington Post/file)
A well-known activist who played a significant role assisting Black Lives Matter activists and other demonstrators in Ferguson and Baltimore was arrested last month in Prince George’s County and charged with prostitution and human trafficking.
Police accuse Charles Wade — founder of Operation Help or Hush — of using online ads to organize meetings between a 17-year-old girl and Johns who paid her for sex, according to court documents.
Wade was arrested, the documents state, on suspicion of setting up a meeting April 25 at a Howard Johnson Inn in College Park, where the teenager agreed to have sex with an undercover detective during a sting operation.
The police report, provided to The Post by the Prince George’s County state’s attorney office, alleges that Wade was “watching” the undercover officer as he entered the hotel room in which the prostitution was scheduled to take place.
In a subsequent interview with police, the documents state, the woman said Wade was aware of her age and referred to himself as her “manager.”
“You only have five months until you’re 18 so I’m not worried,” he is accused of telling her, according to the documents.
Wade — whose trial is scheduled to begin June 3 — faces multiple counts of prostitution and human trafficking, the documents state.
The 33-year-old posted $25,000 bail two days after his arrest, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
[Black Lives Matter and America’s long history of resisting civil rights protesters]
Wade has vehemently denied the charges. In a statement posted on Twitter, he said he had been providing temporary housing for the teenager, who had apparently told him she was 20. He said his organization handles large numbers of temporary-housing requests for people in need and that he had treated the young woman’s situation accordingly, using hotel rewards points he had amassed over the years.
“As the person who booked, paid for, checked in with government issued identification, I was also arrested as I was walking to a store on about a half dozen charges related to her activities and arrest,” the statement said.
Wade told The Washington Post on Monday that his work has always been humanitarian in nature and that his arrest was part of a larger effort to link him to — and discredit — Black Lives Matter, a movement he claims he has been associated with but never involved with politically.
“This case is highly politicized for obvious reasons; but I also feel like there are parts of this that are clearly sensationalism and there are parts of this that are doing anything possible to discredit a larger movement, which I have been associated with,” he said. “The claims are obviously so absurd that they border on satire for me, but they are not funny because they have real-life consequences.”
Those consequences, Wade said, have come in the form of online threats to his family, which, he said, has been threatened with lynching and other forms of violence.
“First and foremost,” Wade said, “this is a legal matter, and my freedom is not predicated on the court of public opinion. I’m confident that I will be exonerated.”
A Post report about Ferguson activists last year noted that Wade, a native of Bowie, Md., once worked as an image consultant for Solange Knowles, sister of pop star Beyoncé. After Michael Brown’s shooting death at the hands of a white police officer sparked unrest in Ferguson, Mo., Wade began raising money on Twitter to help protesters with basic needs, including food, housing and gas.
Wade eventually started Operation Help or Hush to formally assist the protest movement.
“Effective community organizing requires infrastructure and supplies to endure,” the organization’s online description says. “We buy supplies for making signs, cover travel expenses, ensure organizers have food and shelter, and develop systems to link organizers together.”
When The Post caught up with Wade in 2015, he said he was extremely busy juggling challenges large and small.
“It’s really demoralizing that you have to fight so hard just to do something decent for people,” he said then.
On Monday, Wade struck a similar tone while discussing his arrest, telling The Post that his efforts to help people had backfired — but that, ultimately, he held himself responsible for not being more diligent in vetting the teenager’s background.
“For that reason alone, I’ve paused any further work,” he said. “My primary focus is my safety, my sanity, peace, and addressing the legal matter that is at hand.”
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The scene of an explosion in Homs last month. After two blasts in a largely Alawite area of the city, dozens of Alawites rallied, demanding the removal of the provincial governor. (AFP/Getty Images)
The Alawite backbone of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime shows signs of wobbling under the strain of Syria’s civil war.
Members of the minority group have become more critical of the regime’s handling of the conflict on social media and during rare protests, according to activists and analysts. They also say Alawites, who form the core of Assad’s security forces, increasingly have avoided compulsory military service in a nearly four-year war where their community has sustained huge casualties relative to Syria’s Sunnis, who lead the rebellion.
Security forces have sharpened the friction by responding with arrests and intimidation. But while few think this immediately threatens the rule of Assad, who also is Alawite, the rising tension signals exhaustion in a community that is crucial for his regime’s ability to confront a revolt that shows little sign of ending.
“The Alawites are growing more and more impatient with the regime because it hasn’t been able to demonstrate much progress in ending the war,” said Louay Hussein, 54, a Damascus-based Alawite activist who is critical of the Assad regime.
On Wednesday, Hussein was detained by Syrian authorities while attempting to cross into Lebanon, his political allies said. He has been arrested before over his opposition to the Assad regime.
Residents walk past posters of slain Syrian soldiers and a poster of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the city of Tartous, the capital of a coastal province in Syria. (Diaa Hadid/AP)
Syrian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, partly attributed this sentiment to demographics: Syria’s Sunni majority vastly outnumbers the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam who formed about 12 percent of the country's prewar population of 24 million.
“People are realizing that the war is not going to go away anytime soon and that you can’t shoot your way out of this problem — not with Syria’s demographics,” he said. “There are too many Sunnis.”
Though Alawites never uniformly supported Assad, their fear of an increasingly radicalized opposition stops them from breaking with the regime in significant numbers, analysts say. Extremist Sunnis consider them apostates, and in turn Alawites view the regime as a bulwark against the fanatical violence espoused by groups like Islamic State.
Still, members of their community have increasingly vented frustration in public.
Dozens rallied in Homs following twin bombings last month that killed nearly 50 children in a largely Alawite area of the city, demanding the removal of the provincial governor over failure to stop the attacks. Though stopping short of calling for Assad’s ouster, they refused to hoist pictures of him during the demonstration.
Small protests also have taken place recently in Alawite areas along Syria’s coastline, according to Alawite activists who are in contact with residents in those areas.
In Tartus, residents have held rallies and distributed fliers urging people to “speak up” over mounting war casualties and accusations that the regime abandoned soldiers who were then captured and executed by Sunni extremists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, recently put the number of security forces killed at a minimum of 110,000, while many describe rural Alawite villages as virtually gutted of military-age men.
Naser al-Nukkari, an Alawite who coordinates with activists in Syria, said the Tartus rallies also protested arrests of men who refused mandatory military service. That included soldiers apprehending medical staff several weeks ago at Tartus’ al-Basel Hospital, as well as the recent arrest of people at the city’s electricity company offices who had turned up in response to advertised job openings.
“The electricity company played a trick on them, because more people are refusing the military service,” said al-Nukkari, who recently fled to Paris because fear of arrest over his activism.
Analysts, activists and local media speak about intensified efforts in regime-held areas to arrest the increasing numbers of men who avoid service in the military and its supporting units, such as the National Defense Force, a local-volunteer force consisting mainly of Alawites. They say the regime efforts are to compensate for huge losses in manpower and to escalate attacks on rebel areas.
As many as 5,000 men in Tartus alone had reportedly failed to report for military duty by January of this year, while activists and analysts have noticed a trend of Alawites moving abroad.
“I’m getting a sense from a number of sources and anecdotal evidence that people on the regime side are looking for asylum, to get out of Syria and go abroad,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center.
Louay Hussein, the Alawite activist who lives in Damascus, said more of his Alawite friends, including a family of six, began last year to relocate to Europe and Arab countries.
“Alawites feel they have to choose the regime, no matter how badly they hate it. So with this choice, many want to leave,” he said.
For those who stay, defying the regime can be dangerous. One anti-regime activist said more than a dozen fellow Alawites were arrested by security forces during the past two months for initiating dialogue with leaders of Sunni villages. One of them was taken from a village near the coastal city of Latakia and temporarily held at a state security prison, where jailors beat him so badly that he now needs assistance walking, said the activist, who declined to be identified over fear for his safety.
Rising criticism on social media has also resulted in arrests, including several in Homs following the attacks last month that killed scores of children. One woman who posted criticism of Assad on Facebook after the attack was promptly apprehended by state security.
Joshua Landis, a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma who has regular contact with Alawites in Syria, said such criticism signals a shift in their thinking over how to end the war. That includes abandoning the pan-Arab nationalism espoused by the Assad regime for partitioning Syria to create a separate, Alawite-controlled enclave.
“They’re thinking about radical solutions. They know they can’t conquer these rebel areas, and they don't want their kids dying anymore,” he said.
Suzan Haidamous contributed to this story from Beirut. |
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo's biggest Switch game, will not be available when the console launches in March.
Sounds like the ship has sailed on a March launch.
That's according to a new report which details the game's current state of development, and which tallies with information provided to Eurogamer by sources close to Nintendo.
Last night, reliable Nintendo tipster Emily Rogers detailed the game's localisation schedule, which will now continue through until the end of 2016. "Four-to-six months of testing will follow" before the game launches.
Eurogamer had separately been told of the same schedule, as Nintendo is committed to launching the game in as close to perfect a state as possible after so long in development.
To put it lightly, this is no small feat. Breath of the Wild is a huge open-world game which leans heavily on sandbox systems.
Nintendo's latest official estimate for Breath of the Wild is simply "2017". This was not updated when the Nintendo Switch was fully unveiled last month.
The question, then, is what big first-party title will now spearhead the Switch's launch. We've heard the console's new Mario will be ready in time to fill this role.
Nintendo is set to reveal more information on the Switch - for example, the fact it has a touchscreen - at a special event on 13th January.
The only area of Zelda gameplay shown to press and fans remains the E3 demo from this year. Eurogamer understands that Nintendo has elected not to demo this version any further to avoid fans become bored of the same vertical slice which has been polished for public consumption.
However, there was an expectation among fans that Zelda would arrive alongside the Switch after - especially after being in the works for such a long time.
Breath of the Wild was originally announced for Wii U back in 2013, and has since been delayed multiple times. Fans have compared its release to that of Twilight Princess, which was originally developed just for GameCube but was delayed to release simultaneously at the launch of the Wii.
When it does arrive, though? Based on our hands-on time with the game so far, Breath of the Wild is shaping up to be something very special - when it does arrive.
Nintendo declined comment when contacted about this story. |
Today, for reasons only known by Donald Trump, Trump decided to file suit against his former Senior Consultant, Sam Nunberg, as Caleb reported, and subsequently I wrote about the beans having been spilled on the alleged Lewandowski/Hicks love affair. But the Huffington Post picked up on yet another angle.
Sam Nunberg has now alleged in a court document what many conservatives have thought for a long time … Donald Trump set up fake business entities to augment his actual campaign, allowing him to maneuver around the restrictions put upon most campaigns.
From HuffPo:
Nurnberg says in his answer to the lawsuit that the Trump campaign illegally created a fictitious company, called Trump 2012 PCA. The company is listed as a plaintiff in the suit against Nurnberg, along with Trump’s formal campaign. snip Nurnberg also claims the campaign “may very well” have violated campaign finance laws by using Trump company resources for Trump’s political campaign.
This is probably a stock example for lawyers involved in elections on why you don’t file a lawsuit during an election: You don’t get to control how the guy on the other end of the law suit reacts, and you better hope he doesn’t have the dirt on you, discovery is hell. Nunberg just seems eager to start with the pineapples.*
TRUMP 2012 PCA IS VIOLATING GENERAL BUSINESS LAW § 130 AND THEREFORE THIS ACTION MUST BE DISMISSED Trump 2012 PCA is neither a legal entity authorized by the Department of State to do business in the State of New York nor an assumer name for a legal entity or individual authorized to do business in the State of New York under the provisions of General Business Law § 130. Nor has Trumpv2012 PCA filed required certificates in the county clerk’s offices as required for its principal to legally conduct business under that assumed name.
Of course, this hell will be of Trump’s own creation, as have been most of his hiccups this election cycle, despite his protestations to the contrary. Seriously, have we ever had a candidate whine so much about how they are treated by the press? But I digress, there is more goodness to be found in the HuffPo report.
Like, who convinced Trump it was a good idea to take on this lawsuit, and for what reason? The simple answer is Lewandowski needed to cover his … um … assets.
Lewandowski advocated the suit as a way to make sure his relationship with Hicks ― which Nunberg’s filing calls a “sordid and apparently illicit affair” ― didn’t become public, the adviser said. “Corey egged him on this suit,” the adviser said, adding that once it was filed, Trump was not interested in dropping it. “Trump never backs down.” “Nunberg will go for Trump’s throat. This is going to be all-out war,” the adviser predicted. “This is going to be ugly.”
I have to say, as one of the original #NeverTrump people out there, this feels exceptional. But get some more popcorn, because the show is just about to begin.
Nunberg is bringing the heat in the suit, explicitly leaving a trail of crumbs for the FEC to follow if they so choose.
During this entire period, the Trump Campaign may very well have violated Federal Election Law by co-mingling corporate resources and failing to file the costs and expenditures the Trump Campaign has already incurred this past May and June.
Nunberg also noted in his filing that he believes this entire suit is due to Trump still being incredibly butt hurt over Nurnberg’s endorsement of Ted Cruz.
The Trump Campaign is seeking in excess of $10,000,000.00 and punitive damages because Mr. Nunberg endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz and allegedly used “a serious of derogatory remarks concerning Mr. Trump.” This is especially hypocritical for a candidate who frequently describes his opponents as “losers,” “crooked,” “child molesters,” and “liars.” Even this past weekend the Trump Campaign compared the 20123 Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, to a “dog.”
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for this to go to court, because we know Trump never backs down. Never settles.
* Google “Little Nicky, Pineapple” … it’s a classical reference. |
Raghuram Rajan will not be the governor of the Reserve Bank of India after September. That's not idle speculation inspired by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy's campaign calling for him to leave. It has been announced by Rajan himself in a letter to his colleagues at the central bank which the RBI published on Saturday. The internationally renowned economist wrote that he will be returning to academia after the end of his tenure as governor on September 4.
This ends months of speculation over whether Rajan, a United Progressive Alliance appointee, would see his tenure extended after his three-year term ends. Swamy was at the head of a public, often nasty campaign calling for Rajan to be sacked because he is not "mentally fully Indian." Swamy claimed that there were many others in the BJP who agreed with him.
The campaign prompted plenty of pushback from others, particularly economists who have lauded Rajan for his efforts in helping stabilise the Indian economy over the past few years. Many also suggested that not extending Rajan's tenure would have a detrimental effect on India's image with the business community abroad. The Economic Times' Swaminathan Aiyar even said that Rajan leaving would see billions of dollars in investment also follow him out of the country.
There were murmurs also that many in the establishment did not want Rajan to continue, in part because of his insistence on hawkish monetary policy that focused more on controlling inflation than cutting interest rates to make credit cheaper for industry.
The other reason why the government wanted him to go: Rajan's celebrity status, at home and abroad, meant he was one of the few people who could publicly criticise the government's policy. Most prominently, just as the government was touting India's status as the fastest growing major economy in the world, Rajan brought up the old phrase, "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
Swamy's campaign might have embarrassed the government, prompting the Prime Minister to say that the media shouldn't discuss these things and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to criticise the personal attacks. But it hasn't stopped the government from asking him to leave.
Rajan says as much in his letter to his colleagues at the central bank.
I am an academic and I have always made it clear that my ultimate home is in the realm of ideas. The approaching end of my three year term, and of my leave at the University of Chicago, was therefore a good time to reflect on how much we had accomplished. While all of what we laid out on that first day is done, two subsequent developments are yet to be completed. Inflation is in the target zone, but the monetary policy committee that will set policy has yet to be formed. Moreover, the bank clean up initiated under the Asset Quality Review, having already brought more credibility to bank balance sheets, is still ongoing. International developments also pose some risks in the short term. While I was open to seeing these developments through, on due reflection, and after consultation with the government, I want to share with you that I will be returning to academia when my term as Governor ends on September 4, 2016. I will, of course, always be available to serve my country when needed.
(Emphasis added)
As he wrote, Rajan was "open" to seeing the developments through, but the government was not on the same page. Discussions between the finance ministry and Rajan before the last monetary policy statement, where the central banker chose not to cut rates, did not go well.
As a result, come September, Rajan will be back at the University of Chicago and India will have a new RBI governor. Significantly, however, Rajan's final monetary policy statement is also likely to be the last one put out solely by an RBI governor: His tenure saw the signing of monetary policy agreements between the central bank and the government agreeing to inflation targeting as the primary aim of the RBI, as well as the setting up of a monetary policy committee – including government appointees with no RBI veto – that will set the interest rate.
Whatever the view of his tenure as central banker, and there will be many over the coming days including the Sensex's verdict on Monday morning (which is probably why the decision was announced on the weekend), he will have left the RBI in a very different place than where the institution was before him. |
Exactly two months after the summer’s Unite the Right white nationalist rally that left three dead and many injured, a legal group has filed an unprecedented complaint on behalf of Charlottesville, local businesses and neighborhood associations that could prohibit “unlawful paramilitary activity” in the city.
Lawyers with the University of Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection claim the independent militiamen and women, many carrying “60 to 80 pounds of combat gear,” such as semi-automatic assault rifles slung over their shoulders, made tensions boil at what some have called the largest gathering of white supremacists in recent history.
“Regardless of ideology, the presence of these private armies, whether armed with assault rifles or bats, batons or clubs, significantly heightens the possibility of violence, as we saw on August 12,” said Mary McCord, an attorney with Georgetown Law’s ICAP, who filed the complaint which is, as she says, “seeking to ensure that the streets do not become battlefields for those who organize and engage in paramilitary activity.”
According to the complaint, rally organizers, including homegrown Jason Kessler, solicited private militias to attend the rally, held group-wide planning calls and circulated an instructional document called “General Orders.”
“All the while, attendees encouraged one another to ‘prepare for war,’” according to ICAP.
Named defendants in the lawsuit include Kessler and Identity Evropa CEO Eli Mosley, white nationalist groups Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, League of the South, and the National Socialist Movement, and private militia groups Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, New York LIght Foot Militia, Virginia Minutemen Militia, American Freedom Keepers, American Warrior Revolution, Redneck Revolt and the Socialist Rifle Association.
Kessler and the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia did not immediately respond to interview requests.
“It’s a unique lawsuit,” says Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead, who has represented far-right and far-left defendants for 40 years. “There are some real complications.”
According to Virginia law, “the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power,” but Whitehead points to the 2008 Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller, in which justices voted 5-4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry weapons unconnected with service in a militia. He says the definition of “militia” under Virginia law is vague, and several groups named in the suit do not identify as militia groups.
The 75-page complaint is a culmination of investigations, including interviews with residents and bystanders, hours of footage, hundreds of photos and thousands of social media posts, McCord said outside Charlottesville Circuit Court after her group and members of City Council filed the suit.
“The investigation uncovered overwhelming evidence, much of which has only become available after August 12, of planning by alt-right groups to engage in the very type of militaristic violence that resulted,” McCord says. “They have vowed to come back, as have the self-professed militia purporting to be peacekeepers.”
Michie Hamlett attorneys Lee Livingston and Kyle NcNew will serve as the local counsel for the suit. Livingston reminded those outside the courthouse of the terror the city faced that day.
“August 12 is a tragic story now—a part of the lives of all Charlottesvillians,” he says. “A street we walk to restaurants, where we enjoy life with our neighbors, on that street, our neighbors were plowed over by a car. The images of bodies being smashed by that car will never leave us. A park where we celebrate festivals became a scene of medieval squad maneuvers, people struck down, people bleeding. We fear that a dark chapter was opened in our nation’s history on our doorstep, a chapter many had thought was closed in the 20th century.”
He said he hopes the suit will provide public servants “who protect the peace” a tool to prevent private armies from returning to the area, protect those who use Emancipation Park and the surrounding area from the “intimidating, unregulated soldiers,” and allow the community to come together, “in at least a small step, to reduce what feels like a dark turn of our story.”
Added Mayor Mike Signer, “I support [the lawsuit] as a stand against the disintegration of our democracy, and as a call for us to put a firm close to this horrible chapter in our democracy where people think it’s okay to parade in military outfits in public, to openly threaten violence against other people, to fire weapons into crowds, to beat people in public and to use a car as a weapon.” |
The history of the Statue of Liberty became the focus of a back-and-forth between Stephen Miller, an aide to President Donald Trump, and CNN’s Jim Acosta during the White House Press Briefing on Wednesday.
The broadcast journalist had argued that the President’s support of a bill that would place new limits on legal immigration did not jibe with the spirit embodied by the monument, as expressed by the Emma Lazarus poem that has become synonymous with Lady Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor,” it famously declares, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
“The poem that you’re referring to was added later,” Miller replied. “It’s not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.”
The poem was engraved onto a plaque placed on the pedestal in 1903 — nearly two decades after the statue was unveiled — and that the monument wasn’t always associated with immigration.
Originally, the meaning of the monument had more to do with the abolition of slavery than with immigration. In the 1860s, French anti-slavery activist Edouard de Laboulaye had first proposed that France should make a gift of the statue, dubbed “Liberty Enlightening the World” and designed by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, both to commemorate the alliance between the U.S. and France during the American Revolution and the end of slavery in the U.S. after the Civil War, according to the National Park Service.
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But, while the statue herself would be a gift, it would be up to Americans to raise money to construct the monument’s base. Many years passed during this period, and in that time the main liberty-related questions on Americans’ minds — especially in New York City — evolved. The Civil War had ended, but a “Great Wave of Immigration” had begun, as 23.5 million persons immigrated between 1880 and 1920.
It was as a result of the need to fund the pedestal that Emma Lazarus was tapped to write the famous sonnet “The New Colossus” for a Statue of Liberty fundraiser in 1883. Inspired by her work with Russian Jews detained by immigration officials on Ward Island, she included a new facet of liberty in her interpretation of what the statue could mean.
Word about the poem got out, and it was reprinted in newspapers Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and in the New York Times. It became even more popular more than a decade after Lazarus’ 1887 death, when her friend Georgina Schuyler happened upon a copy of the poem in 1901 and was moved to bring it new attention. She started a campaign to raise awareness of the poem timeliness. Its text was added to Lady Liberty’s pedestal two years later, as the wave of immigration continued.
In the years since, though the statue would take on many additional layers of meaning, the link between it and immigration would solidify, with many recognizing that — even if Laboulaye had had something else in mind — Lady Liberty and Emma Lazarus were important parts of the history of immigration in the U.S. For example, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, it was in a ceremony on Liberty Island.
As Esther Schor, who wrote a biography on the author, said in 2011, “Emma Lazarus was the first American to make any sense of this statue.”
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at [email protected]. |
Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. (AP photos)
In 1996, President Bill Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over." Twenty-one years later, President Trump is bringing it back.
A new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll shows a record-high 57 percent of registered voters say the government should do more for the American people, versus 39 percent who say it does too much that should be left to individuals and businesses.
Since 1995, four separate pollsters -- NBC-WSJ, CNN, Gallup and the Pew Research Center -- have tested this question a combined four dozen times, and this is the most pro-big-government response to date.
As recently as 2011, just one-third (33 percent) of Americans favored bigger government, while 63 percent though it too big. And back in Clinton's day, shortly before the admonition above in his 1996 State of the Union address, the American people were 62-to-32 in favor of smaller government.
What changed? Well, a GOP president, of course. Republicans tend to be more skeptical of the size of government when Democrats are in power.
But even more than that is Trump's rhetoric. While other Republicans will at least talk a good game about shrinking government, he hasn't really bothered; instead he has talked about a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and increasing government borrowing while borrowing is cheap. He gave lip service to balancing the budget as president, but as with many Trump goals, it has quickly gone by the wayside. The White House isn't even pretending that is still a goal.
And Trump's affinity for big government may be one of the truly big paradigm shifts of his presidency. He has taken in a GOP that got religion on the size of government during the Obama administration and is anxious to see what Trump's brand of populist big government can do for it -- the national debt apparently be damned.
Here's a sampling of Trump's big-government proclivities that I pointed to last year:
He has called for a massive increase in defense spending that the Trump campaign has said would amount to as much as $500 billion over 10 years, by eliminating the sequester that forced spending cuts when Congress was unable to reach an agreement on a budget.
Trump has said that he wants to spend at least double the $275 billion over five years that [Hillary] Clinton has proposed spending on rebuilding the country's infrastructure — roads, bridges, etc. “By the way, [Hillary Clinton's] numbers is a fraction of what we’re talking about; we need much more money than that to rebuild our infrastructure," he told Fox Business Network in August. "I would say at least double her numbers, and you’re going to really need more than that. We have bridges that are falling down.” He even said in his last book that infrastructure requires "a trillion-dollar rebuilding program."
He has said that he would prevent the Ford Motor Company from building a plant in Mexico by threatening it with tariffs on anything produced there. "Let me give you the bad news: Every car, every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35 percent tax — okay? — and that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction," he said last year.
Trump has said he thinks eminent domain — government seizing private property and compensating people for it in the name of developing it — is "wonderful."
He has proposed massive increases in immigration enforcement that The Fix calculated would cost more than $50 billion over five years — potentially even doubling the amount spent on it.
Although Republicans have pushed for entitlement reforms to keep programs such as Social Security solvent, Trump has said he won't do it — at all. "I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is," he has said. He has also said: "It’s my intention to leave Social Security the way it is — not increase the age and to leave it as is."
On another front, Republicans seem to have warmed to the idea of government involvement in health care, after decrying it for the past seven years. A January Pew Research Center poll -- even before the GOP tried and failed to replace the Affordable Care Act -- showed the percentage of Americans who think the government has a responsibility to provide health care to everyone had risen from 51 percent to 60 percent.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, it rose from 19 percent to 32 percent. And more recently, polls show a big shift in the GOP from repealing the ACA toward keeping it and restructuring it.
Consider it one way that Trump has truly changed Washington. |
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin lost almost a fifth of its value in 10 hours on Friday, having surged more than 40 percent in the preceding 48 hours, sparking fears the market may be heading for a price collapse.
In a hectic day on Thursday, bitcoin leapt from below $16,000 to $19,500 in less than an hour on the U.S.-based GDAX, one of the biggest exchanges globally, while it was still changing hands at about $15,900 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp. Some market watchers attributed the lurch higher to the coming launch of bitcoin futures on major exchanges.
Having then climbed to $16,666 on Bitstamp at around 0200 GMT on Friday, it tumbled to $13,482 by around 1200 GMT - a slide of more than 19 percent. It was last down 8.2 percent at $15,232.32 on BitStamp.
On Sunday, the Chicago-based Cboe Global Markets exchange is due to launch a futures contract on the digital currency, to be followed by CME Group the next week.
Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA in London, said investors may have taken profits on bitcoin gains ahead of the Cboe launch, which could open the door to short speculators who believe the price has risen far too quickly.
“The initial bounce after this morning’s sell-off suggests there’s still appetite for buying dips but that may not last if we don’t see the kind of rebound witnessed previously,” said Erlam.
“Saying that, the way bitcoin is trading at the minute, I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see it end the day in the green,” he added.
For an interactive graphic, click on tmsnrt.rs/2AHKJPd.
As investors braced for the Cboe launch, some big U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, will not immediately clear bitcoin trades for clients once investors start trading futures contracts, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
JPMorgan and Citigroup did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Thursday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said it planned to clear bitcoin futures for some clients as the new contracts go live on exchanges in the coming days.
As bitcoin slumped, other cryptocurrencies climbed. Ethereum the second-biggest, was up nearly 8 percent, according to trade website Coinmarketcap.
For the week, bitcoin was still up almost a third. Since the start of October, bitcoin has more than tripled in price. So far this year it has soared about 15 fold, stoking concerns that the bubble would burst in dramatic fashion.
A collection of Bitcoin (virtual currency) tokens are displayed in this picture illustration taken December 8, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration
Its rapid rise has drawn in millions of new investors. So far this week, more than half a million new users have opened wallets with retail-focused bitcoin wallet provider Blockchain, the firm said, doubling the total number of users to 20 million since last year.
“Like a herd, market participants have a tendency to follow the money,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst, at Forex.com in London.
“So when bitcoin goes up in value by hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per day, the fear of missing out (FOMO) kicks in and speculators rush to buy the cryptocurrency because they don’t want to be left out.” |
Today the draft text of the U.S.-Europe free trade agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), was leaked by Greenpeace Netherlands. The leak reveals for the first time the current state of the text of 15 chapters and annexes, along with a confidential commentary from the European Union.
There's not much concerning digital rights issues in the current text, because text on most of those issues has not been tabled yet. The closest that we have is the Electronic communications/Telecommunications chapter, which despite its broader-seeming title, is almost entirely about the liberalization of the telecommunications sector, and raises few obvious concerns.
In particular we have not yet seen provisions on other digital policy issues, such as the provisions in the TPP's e-commerce chapter that promote the free flow of information across borders, as well as copyright rules such as those in the TPP's intellectual property chapter.
Free Flow of Information
There are two reasons why the free flow provisions are yet to be agreed. First, they depend on the U.S. and Europe reaching a common understanding on how to reconcile them with privacy and data protection rules. So far, this is addressed only obliquely through an EU text proposal, "Each Party shall ensure the confidentiality of electronic communications and related traffic data by means of a public electronic communication network and publicly available electronic communications services without restricting trade in services." The parties' recent agreement on a new Privacy Shield regime goes some way towards bridging their differences on this topic, but that controversial agreement remains vulnerable to legal challenge and is far from a solid framework for the treatment of the same topic in TTIP.
The second reason why provisions on free flow of digital information haven't found their way into TTIP is Europe's insistence on maintaining the artificial barriers that require a separate license to be obtained to make digital content available in each country. Further insight into this stand-off comes from a paragraph of the March 2016 document on the State of Play in the TTIP Negotiations [PDF] that was amongst today's leaks:
Discussions on e-commerce covered all proposals except for the provisions on data flows and computing facilities. There was good progress on understanding each other's proposals and on exploring potential possibilities for compromise. With regard to non-discrimination of digital products, the US emphasized that they are very interested in this concept irrespective of the coverage of audio-visual services. They signaled some openness to refer to a more neutral term (digital content instead of digital products) and to exclude audio-visual services from this provision.
Copyright
An intellectual property chapter was not amongst those leaked today. The European State of Play document explains why, and warns of the possible consequences of the U.S. negotiators' delay:
the US remains unwilling to table, at this stage, concrete proposals on more sensitive offensive interests that have been expressed by some of its right holders or that are explicitly referred to in its TPA (for instance on patents, on technical protection measures and digital rights management or on enforcement). When confronted with the EU warning that bringing sensitive proposals that would require changes in EU law to the table – and doing it at a late stage of the negotiation – may have a negative impact on stakeholders and has very limited chances of being accepted, the US reiterated its understanding that the IPR chapter should not be a standard (TPP type) text, but also insisted that such a departure from its “model” creates some difficulties in terms of addressing the demands included in the IPR related sections of its TPA.
What this essentially means is that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is compelled by last year's Trade Promotion Authority (Fast Track) law to negotiate trade agreements with the objective of providing rightholders with "the legal and technological means to control the use of their works through the Internet and other global communication media, and to prevent the unauthorized use of their works". A failure to secure this outcome in TTIP would likely create difficulties for the agreement's passage through Congress, much as the TPP is currently encountering difficulties from Congressional hardliners over the USTR's failure to agree to 12 year terms of protection for biologic medicines.
Similarly, the Europeans are concerned about the lack of progress from the U.S. side in implementing copyright and patent law changes in U.S. domestic law. Europe describes these as including "the draft laws on patent reform (addressing the problem of patent trolls) and on the copyright sectors identified as offensive interests by the EU (broadcasting rights, public performance and resale rights)." Although we too decry the delay in addressing patent reform, Congress is right to demur over Europe's demands that broadcasters and performers be given new copyright-like powers.
Of course, it would be no loss if there were no intellectual property chapter in the TTIP at all. Copyright, patents and other so-called intellectual property rights have, at best, a tenuous connection to trade and they impact constituencies whom trade negotiators consistently overlook. As such, EFF has long held that intellectual property does not belong in trade agreements at all.
Where are the Users?
The fact that the most useful information about TTIP has come, not from the leaked texts of the chapters themselves, but from the State of Play document, is very telling. It shows that much more is required to reform these closed trade agreements than simply releasing the text. Access to the draft texts alone, while the negotiations themselves remain closed and opaque, is worth very little. Only through inside access to the negotiations themselves is their broader context revealed.
This means that all affected stakeholders, not just the privileged insiders of trade advisory committees, should have appropriate levels of access to all stages of the negotiations, from agenda setting to drafting. Moreover, unlike today's release of text, this access should be a dialogue, in which stakeholders from outside the trade microcosm are empowered to discuss their concerns with negotiators, and to make a case for their own priorities to be reflected in the agreement. (Some more concrete suggestions in this regard appear in the Brussels Declaration on Trade the Internet that EFF and its partners concluded earlier this year.)
As welcome as today's leak is, it doesn't fix these systemic flaws in the process of negotiating trade agreements such as TTIP and the TPP. Until both sides of TTIP accept significant reforms to the way in which the negotiations are being conducted, we cannot expect that this agreement will respond to the actual needs of users, creators and innovators. |
If you’ve avoided vampire/zombie television until now because you think it’s either dumb sci-fi or drippy romance aimed at teenagers, “In the Flesh,” a three-part mini-series that begins Thursday on BBC America, gives you a chance to find out just how well written and layered some of these shows are.
Fans of series like “The Walking Dead” on AMC already know that the genre at its best isn’t about eating flesh or biting necks; it’s about people and not-quite-people who face challenges and decisions that resonate in the real world. “In the Flesh” may have vacant-eyed living corpses in it, but it’s about tolerance and intolerance, forgiveness and family.
The story takes place in a Britain where, some time before the series begins, thousands of dead people have risen from their graves, wreaking havoc and causing a virulent anti-zombie backlash. But these beings, who suffer from — as it has been labeled — partially deceased syndrome, have fallen under a government protective order. With the help of new medications they are being reintroduced into human society.
One of them is a teenager named Kieren (Luke Newberry) whose village, Roarton, is a particular hotbed of anti-zombie sentiment. A militia patrols in search of the undead, and few residents are welcoming the return of the partially deceased. Kieren faces resistance in his own home: his sister (Harriet Cains) is an enthusiastic soldier in the militia. |
2) The ridiculous notion that it is in any nation’s interest to liquidate gold for Central Banker created fiat, which can be conjured into existence in infinite amounts, at zero costs in no time.
3) That the politics on the ground of the ruling party seem to be shifting against repatriating the gold (that is clearly Bloomberg News’ take).
With that out of the way, below is the original post, unchanged, because as I said, the main points are still completely relevant:
Just last week, I published a post titled, Video of the Day – “End the Fed” Rallies are Exploding Throughout Germany, which subsequently went viral. Interestingly, only a few days later we find out that Germany’s very own criminal political class has decided it will continue to store the nation’s gold in New York rather than bring it back home as had been the intention. It’s quite ironic that just as protests against the fascist Federal Reserve are spreading throughout the land, the political class officially decides to keep Germany’s treasure across the Atlantic, in care of none other than The Fed itself. |
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It's understandable, as people always like to take a stand, but it's not understandable why you take their side - the children on Israel side are bleeding just the same. It's true that in terms of numbers, more people suffer on their side. It's a simple matter of population density, human shield factors, and fire power. Don't mistake me, I feel sorry for them. I just feel more sorry for my family, my neighbours and friends and country first. It seems you don't.
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"The renowned Israeli historian revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the Middle East."
"If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution. For we must take into account not only the lives of these children but also the history of the people of Israel."
Source: Yvon Gelbner, "Zionist policy and the fate of European Jewry", in Yad Vashem studies (Jerusalem, vol. XII), p. 199.
"The saving of the Jews in Europe did not figure at the head of the list of priorities of the ruling class. It was the foundation of the State which was primordial in their eyes."
Source: Tom Segev, "Le septième million", Ed. Liana Levi (Paris, 1993), p. 539.
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© Unknown
I am ashamed to be an Israeli. There, I said it. And yes, I know better than most that theremany good and kind people in Israel. But what is happening right now in Gaza in the name of those good people CANNOT be tolerated, because it goes against everything humane and decent.Yes, there are deaths on the Israeli side as well, but despite the heartbreak and tragedy experienced by the families of the victims, it's important to understand that the amount of pain and suffering experienced by the Palestinians is infinitely greater, and it's the responsibility of all of us to speak out against it!We forgot the lessons of the past, and because of that, because of our lack of responsibility, ignorance and inaction, we allowed psychopathic leaders and their twisted ideologies to take hold of our own perception of reality. But if we could just stop for a moment and think, we would clearly see that this situation is not about "who fired first" and "how many rockets" (although, research shows that Israel was the aggressor in most past cases, including this one ), but about the basics, like human decency, conscience, andafter our government ("oops, again") is murdering children and calling it 'self-defense'.And that's the bottom line, that I, as an Israeli, even if I didn't pull the trigger, will still have blood on my hands if I see what is happening and stay silent.Now, saying the above isn't easy at all, especially when people I love in Israel are currently experiencing all the horrors that come with living in a war situation. I will also be criticized, and I understand that expressing my real views on a matter may have certain social repercussions, and being accused of not caring about your people is only one of them. For example, as one of my long-term friends recently told me:So I feel that's it's essential to not only take a stand and do what is right, but also to clarify several of the misconceptions that have been poisoning the Israeli mind, and which are the result of decades-long programming and lies that led to the erosion of fundamental human values like compassion and conscience. The unfortunate truth is that Israeli policies are harming first of all its own population, and may be about the total devastation of the country and mass loss of lives.For the past two days I have been in constant contact with my mother over Skype. She told me about several rockets falling, and how she and her neighbors had to leave their homes (she lives toward the south, but is considered to be in the center of the country). Until now, rockets fired from Gaza have never reached that far. She also told me how frightened she is, that she feels like a trapped rat, that there are causalities and damage to property and that the situation is serious and feels like war. And, according to the officials and Israeli Home Front Command (equivalent to Homeland Security), this will continue for 7 weeks or more . She also told me how painful it was to see her neighbor's children, who looked so confused and scared, and how living under mortal threat causes one to evaluate one's life and priorities.As for the general atmosphere in the country, most Israelis support the decisions of the government and army, are sick of the continuous fighting, and basically agree with the idea of a "final solution" for the "Palestinian problem", if it will put a stop to the constant disturbance in their lives.Now, it's important to note that I am not diminishing in any way the tragic situation that Israelis find themselves in. Itscary, difficult and intolerable, and no one, no matter what nationality, should go through such experiences. Heck, I could easily be in Israel right now to experience it all myself. It should also be mentioned that, once upon a time, my views weren't that different from the views of an average Israeli, and that despite opening my eyes to the true nature of the conflict, except on several occasions, I still didn't go out of my way to do something about it.Getting back to the issue at hand, there appear to be several problems here, and they have to do with either the ignorance or unwillingness to deal with the reality of the situation, and also with the lack of compassion toward others.Let's begin with the misconception that Israelis did not steal anybody's land and actually owned it first and foremost. There are several interpretations of what exactly happened, but most of Israelis agree with the one where they were legally given the land by the UN in 1947 (not to mention the religious claim on the Holy Land, that it was promised to the Jews by God, and thus belongs to them). Part of that consensus interpretation is that the local Palestinian population was offered to stay, but instead chose to flee and leave their homes.Well, as always when it comes to so-called 'historical facts', it depends on what sources inform the 'consensus view'. It doesn't take much research into the matter to realise that the UN didn't even have the legal power to take the land from one people and deliver it to another. Reading the actual text of the Resolution 181 shows that itpartition Palestine or offer any legal basis for doing so. "It merelythat the partition plan be implemented andthe Security Council to take up the matter from there. Itthe inhabitants of Palestine to accept the plan, but they were certainly."Notice that the land wasn't empty, and there were already legal inhabitants occupying it. As for the Palestinians choosing to leave of their own accord, one should read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.Here is a talk by the same author:And an independent documentary by another Israeli who opened his eyes, which includes commentary from Pappe:It seems that Zionists were determined to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, while using any means possible, including disregarding people's lives - even those of their own kind. Ben Gurion, Israel's first head of state, declared outright to the "Labor" Zionists on December 7th, 1938:Also,Another fundamental misconception has to do with the balance of powers, so to speak. Israelis believe that US has influence over Israeli politics, and that the Arab lobby is very strong in the US and Europe, and that this contributes to the 'bleeding heart' sentiments and pro-Palestinian attitudes of many Europeans. The truth is, the Israeli lobby in the US exercises enormous influence over US foreign policy, to the point where presidential candidates try to out-compete each other with expressions of love and loyalty toward the Zionist state. There is practically no aspect of US politics that isn't influenced by Israel and Israeli interests The next gross misconception is that Palestinians don't have the same emotional substratum as Israelis or other human beings. This misconception contributes to the belief that Palestinians don't really suffer, that they fake their angst and tears in front of the camera, especially when it comes to the death of small children. That they are masters of deception and express exaggerated emotions in order to gain sympathy from others. For example, another thing my mother shared with me concerned a video snippet she saw on Israeli TV. It was a video taken by a night camera that showed Palestinians carrying someone who was killed in the attack. According to her, it was an example of their deception, because this "dead person" was able to somehow fall and then get up, or move parts of his body.Well, I don't want to say "talk about projecting!" but this is a classic case of seeing only what you want to see. There is an old Hebrew expression, Berosh haganav boer hakova, or 'the hat burns on the thief's head'. In other words, dishonest people think that everyone is a crook. That is not to say that all Palestinians are entirely innocent. They, undoubtedly, also have their share of psychopaths who use situations to their advantage. But we must not forget Mossad's famous motto: "by deception thou shalt wage war" and Hasbara - the Israeli Foreign Office's favorite method of waging information warfare. So let's be honest here and agree that Israelis are very much familiar with lies and deception, and using any means possible to further their aim.The bottom line is that such dehumanization (read this article to learn more on the concept and its connection to the racial bias) makes it easier to go on with one's life and feel good about it, while knowing that just several kilometers away someone is being blown to pieces.I want to hear an Israeli honestly say that he or she never heard a fellow Israeli saying that "Palestinians are like cockroaches or bugs" and "if one child dies, it's no grave matter to the mother because she can always breed more." They are "all future terrorists" anyway, right? More so, it gives rise to various despicable phenomena, such as " extreme tourism ", where West Bank shooting ranges welcome kids and teach them to "eliminate terrorists". Another version of extreme tourism that actually happens these days in Israel is to prepare food and drinks, drive to the area near Gaza, set up the table, and watch rockets fly. Hey, who needs to watch the new James Bond movie when you can watch the action live up close and personal!So this extreme emotional disconnect and feelings of superiority (disguised as feelings of victim-hood) are the reasons why it's easy to feel fear and pain when it comes to "one's own kind", and forget that Palestinians experience the same fear and panic, and feelings of being trapped like a rat, on a daily basis. "Oh, but they had it coming", many Israelis would say. "They chose Hamas and thus refused peace, so it means that Israel has the right to defend itself, no matter how harsh the response. Palestinians are the ones who send rockets and suicide bombers and have nothing but hate toward Israelis simply because of their warmongering nature. They can't help themselves, therefore they have to be eliminated for our greater good, we, their morally superior neighbors."The problem with such beliefs is that they are based on nothing but lies. The truth is much more sinister than most Israelis realize, because the authorities to whom they have given power to protect them from harm are the very ones who are busy using those citizens to further their pathological agenda. Read the following articles to learn only a fraction about the depth of their crimes:But as it always goes with such matters, no amount of facts or data will convince someone who chooses to close their mind and thus continue to justify horrendous crimes. Israel sees itself as a democratic and enlightened country, but displays of ugly and barbaric behavior are common there, especially during hard times. Israelis love saying how during a crisis, solidarity and mutual help become a common thing, how everyone tries to help and do their best to ease each other's pain. And these are, no doubt, commendable qualities, but if they are extended only toward representatives of a specific race or nationality, and others can be eliminated if needed or "if they leave no choice", then such nationalistic egotism is the same symptom of pathology that was displayed by ... yes, Nazi Germany. These are strong words for Israelis to hear, but then, we are dealing with a situation where there is no time left to beat around the bush.Israelis, while justifying their silence in the face of atrocities, have another argument they love to fall back on: that it's easy to speak out for Palestinians when you're not living in the country. They invite the 'accusers' to spend a year or two in Israel and experience for themselves the constant stress and fear. The thing is, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who has been paying attention will have heard about the recent mass demonstrations in Israel that have exposed deep social and economic problems. There is so much rot in the Zionist state, and on so many levels, it's a wonder the insane Zionist project is still standing. That's what happens when the country is ruled by psychopaths, whose only means of keeping the project going is to spill more blood, preferably the blood of 'those untermenschen over there', while ramping up the jingoistic, militaristic and murderous fervor in an effort to drown out people's protests, rally them round a common cause, and make them forget their troubles.But not everything is lost. Not yet anyway. Therepeople of conscience in Israel, people who refuse to participate in its crimes. These people are often ostracized and have to deal with enormous negative and hateful repercussions, yet they have the courage to speak the truth Unfortunately, they are a minority, although I am sure that more people would join them if they knew that their government doesn't give a damn about them. It's a crucial time for Israel because more and more countries around the world are growing inpatient with its bullshit. Since psychopaths lack insight, Netanyahu and his kind fail to recognize that they are digging a hole for themselves. The time may soon come when they will have to pay a price for their crimes against humanity. But how many people, Israeli, Palestinian or other, will have to die before that happens? It's time to wake up and do what is right: to refuse to participate in murder. Stop the attack on Gaza! |
This article was taken from the December 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
In September 2010 the Yemen ministry of industry announced a national strategy to combat food shortages. The UN Food Price Index had reached consecutive record highs in the previous few months.
Yemen had also suffered flooding, which had killed around 100 people and disrupted farming. The strategy, which included a review of existing subsidies and the development of food-for-work programmes, proved ineffective. By December 2010, concerned that protests over rising food prices were starting to grow in Tunisia, Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, halved income tax and ordered the government to control the prices of basic commodities.
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By late January, though, thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to demand Saleh's resignation, brandishing flatbread with baked-in slogans and wearing the food as helmets. The clashes continued into February and grew more violent as the UN's Food Price Index reached an all-time high. On March 18, 45 protesters were killed when an unidentified gunman opened fire. Six days later, the government fought a battle with al-Qaeda gunmen in the province of Abyan and Marib, killing 15. The same day, 10,000 protesters gathered in the capital city Sana'a. Saleh said that he would accept the opposition's transition plan that day, but clung on for another month. He finally quit Yemen for Saudi Arabia after a bomb planted in the presidential compound exploded, killing seven people; Saleh suffered 40 per cent burns, shrapnel wounds and internal bleeding.
In total, Human Rights Watch estimates that 233 protesters were killed on the streets. Three months later, Saleh unexpectedly flew back to Yemen; 100 more protesters and tribesmen were killed in the first five days of his return and the situation remains unresolved.
Read next Gallery: The news forecast: Can you predict the future by mining millions of web pages for data? Gallery: The news forecast: Can you predict the future by mining millions of web pages for data?
A year earlier, on January 12, 2010, a tech startup posted an article on its blog: "Yemen heading for disaster in 2010?" The author, "Ninja Shoes", wrote: "Based on the information we've gathered, Yemen will likely experience food shortages and torrential floods in 2010. This combination of natural disasters, propensity for famine and malnutrition, and challenges with Islamic radicals and terrorists, make it a hot spot for conflict in the future."
The 20 employees of Recorded Future aren't foreign-policy experts. They aren't traders either, but if you'd started using Recorded Future's predictions to buy US stocks on January 1, 2009, you would have made an annual return of 56.69 per cent. (The S&P 500 had an annualised return of 17.22 per cent over the same period.) Between May 13 and August 5 this year, as markets behaved with vertiginous abandon, their strategy returned 10.4 per cent; in contrast, the S&P 500 lost 9.9 per cent of its value.
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They're data experts: computer scientists, statisticians and experts in linguistics. And in the data, they think, lies the future.
All Recorded Future's predictions, whatever the field, are based on publicly available information -- news articles, government sites, financial reports, tweets -- fed into the company's own algorithms. The result, it claims, is a "new tool that allows you to visualise the future" -- one that is changing how government intelligence agencies gather information and how giant hedge funds place bets. On its website, Recorded Future states: "We don't grant interviews and we don't issue press releases." But behind closed doors, the company is developing the technology that has been described be one tech blog as an "information weapon".
The company, cofounded by Christopher Ahlberg, an entrepreneur who sold his first business for $195 million and served in the Swedish special forces, has $8.5 million in funding. Its first two investors were Google and the CIA. Recorded Future counts US government agencies, banks and hedge funds among the clients paying million-dollar contracts. But its true ambition is to organise all the data on the internet for similar predictive analysis -- to make the future calculable.
Recorded Future's main office is in Gothenburg, Sweden. On a drab morning in May, trams clang past a metal door that doesn't bear the company's name. Two flights of stairs lead to a wooden door, with a discreet sticker label-gunned above the letterbox in caps: "RECORDED FUTURE". The rooms date from the 17th century; they're airy and bright with high ceilings and intricate plaster mouldings. Eight employees work here on the technical aspects of the system. The company also has offices in Boston, New York and Arlington, Virginia -- ten minutes' drive from the Pentagon, 15 from Langley. "Yemen took four or five months longer than we predicted," says Ahlberg, 43, sitting on a sofa in a small meeting room. Before Wired visited, he warned over the telephone: "You won't get a government agency out of my mouth. Dude, if I do that, they're coming to take my kids." In person, he's tall, with hair cropped short, and is quick to laugh. The telephone caveat still stands, but Ahlberg is willing to talk for the first time about what exactly it is his company does and why Google, intelligence agencies and hedge funds are all so interested.
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Ahlberg was born in September 1968, in Kungälv, a town 40 minutes' drive north of Gothenburg. His father was a captain on merchant ships, his mother taught French and English in Sweden. In his first year at secondary school, he created a drawing program on his Sinclair Spectrum called Art CAD ("like an early version of Photoshop") and sold individual copies by advertising it in the local paper. After school, he wanted to study computer science but first had to complete military service in 1987. He chose the Lapplands Jägarregemente special forces, and began training for a hypothetical Russian invasion: "They would come in from Finland and go to Norway; we were supposed to cut them off in the middle. We were supposed to do what the Iraqis are doing now, guerrilla warfare. But we were master cross-country skiers."
Ahlberg then went onto take his degree at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. As a post doc, he travelled to the University of Maryland to work as a visiting researcher at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab for two summers. During the first visit, at 23, he co-authored a published paper with the director of the lab; the second summer, he co-wrote two, about the new field of data visualisation. Ahlberg returned to Sweden, finishing his PhD in four years instead of six, but it was his work at Maryland that formed the basis for his first company, Spotfire. Launched in 1996, the business created visualisation tools for business intelligence; in 2007, it was bought by Tibco for $195 million(£125m). "I didn't have to work anymore," says Ahlberg. "But I can't stop."
Spotfire had helped businesses visualise internal databases.
After the sale, "we started hanging around in coffee shops in Boston and New York", says Ahlberg. "We thought: what's the most interesting data source out there? And it's nebulous, but the web is the most interesting dataset there is on the planet. Instead of just corporate databases, let's think about the web as my data source." Ahlberg began talking with Staffan Truvé, who had supervised his PhD and started Spotfire with him. "It was in the back of my head that, as humans, we had generally started to become better at predicting things," says 48-year-old Truvé. "Your car tells you that you need to change your oil in 200km, or there is a sign saying your bus is coming in five minutes. These tiny predictive signals are popping up everywhere." Ahlberg was excited: "So then the premise becomes that the web has predictive power. How can we harvest that?"
A few isolated, eye-catching examples have shown the prognostic possibilities in such data. In 2008, Google showed search queries could accurately predict the spread of flu in the US up to two weeks before the federal Centers for Disease Control. In his book,
Super Crunchers, Ian Ayers claimed that creditcard companies can predict with 98 per cent accuracy whether you'll divorce, based on your purchases -- Google's Marissa Mayer even quoted the statistic at SXSW 2011 (however, in a recent statement, Visa denied that it monitored such data or made any such conclusions, saying the claim was "inaccurate and wrong"). One recent study has shown Twitter to be 88.67 per cent accurate in predicting the Dow Jones three days in advance. This July, financier Paul Hawtin founded a London hedge fund that is based entirely on social media. And in September, a researcher from the University of Illinois fed the Nautilus supercomputer with 100 million news items, much like Recorded Future does, and "anticipated" the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama Bin Laden, albeit retrospectively -- a prediction of the past. But for Ahlberg to develop a tool that could create predictions for any input, from finance to terrorism, would be much harder. Recorded Future would not only have to index the internet, but also understand and interpret it.
The first generation of search engines, such as Lycos and Alta Vista, used traditional text search to deliver web pages, deploying their own algorithms, but essentially looking at individual documents in isolation. Google changed this in 1998. Its PageRank algorithm analysed the links between web pages, promoting those that had more links pointing to them from other sites. Recorded Future is part of the third generation: instead of explicit link analysis, it examines implicit links -- what it calls "invisible links" between documents that refer to the same entities or events.
It does this by separating the documents and their content from what they talk about, identifying canonical entities and events that exist outside of the article. "What matters is that it's freaking complicated," says Ahlberg.
In practice, Recorded Future harvests 25,000 data sources as RSS feeds, which could include Companies House and US Securities and Exchange Commission filings, a New York Times article, Twitter and Facebook posts, obscure blogs (there's one on Norwegian salmon fishing) or transcripts from earnings calls or political speeches -- "just a flood of stuff", says Ahlberg. It does the same for Chinese and Arabic sources. "Then we look for entities -- people, places, technologies; and events -- a murder, a bomb explosion, a person moving from A to B, product launches."
This linguistic analysis is "really tough", according to Truvé.
Because Recorded Future takes sources from all over the internet, rather than a particular data set, "the data is not so nice". "We could have built a perfect data set around Pfizer, say, or Barack Obama," says Ahlberg. "It's harder then to think of the big picture. So we tried to make this ambitious." Recorded Future currently uses two separate algorithms, one proprietary, one licensed, to analyse language; the staffers in Gothenburg are tweaking them continually to see which works better. But the result is that Recorded Future knows who Nicolas Sarkozy is, say: that he's the president of France, he's the husband of Carla Bruni, he's 1.65m tall in his socks, he travelled to Deauville for the G8 summit in May. If you Google "president of France", you'll get two Wikipedia pages on "president of France" then " Nicolas Sarkozy". Useful, but Google doesn't know how the two, Sarkozy and the presidency, are actually related; it's just searching for pages linking to the terms.
Recorded Future ranks all these canonical entities and events, based on the number of references to them, the credibility of the document or document source and several other factors, such as the co-occurrence of different events and entities in the same or in related documents, to create a "momentum" score. Positive or negative sentiment is added to this score. For example, searching big pharma in general will tell you that over the next five years, nine of the world's 15 best-selling medicines will lose patent protection -- the event earns a high momentum score because it is backed by 13 news items from 12 sources -- or that, specifically, Inhibitex, a biopharma business, will need cash in November 2011 if it plans to fund the Phase 2b development of a new drug internally, based on five items from five sources.
Recorded Future isn't the only company attempting to bring hardcore linguistic analysis to a larger audience. Wolfram Alpha is a search engine that can understand a query such as "nuclear explosions in China" and deliver relevant information such as maps and kilotonnes per explosion, although it's culled from "tame" data curated by the company itself. And IBM didn't develop Watson just to school humans on Jeopardy; it's actually a huge research project dedicated to processing questions asked in natural language, based on four terabytes of structured and unstructured data sets, including the full text of Wikipedia. "There are any number of offerings coming on to the market now," says Colin Shearer, senior vice president at SPSS, a predictive-analytics company owned by IBM. One of those is Quid, a two-year-old, 45-strong business founded in 2008. "Human activity has never left an information trail like it does today," says Bob Goodson, its founder. "If only we could harness the intelligence that's locked in the information, we could build systems to understand the world better, and therefore make better decisions." Quid includes Microsoft among its customers. With $15 million in investment, it aims to be the next Bloomberg in business intelligence.
Where Recorded Future goes beyond mere analysis of open data, though, is by adding the "time and space" dimension of the documents -- "references to when and where an event has taken place, or when and where it will take place," says Truvé, "since many documents actually refer to events expected to take place in the future." Using RSS streams allows Recorded Future to have a publishing time as an anchor point for this temporal analysis, which means it can deal with difficult expressions such as "next week", "in three months' time" or "in two quarters". This may sound simple, but it's crucial: the time and space analysis is the first way Recorded Future can make predictions about the future -- by aggregating weighted opinions about the likely timing of future events using algorithmic crowdsourcing. On top of that, it uses statistical models to predict future happenings based on historical records of similar chains of events. "The secret sauce is not dependent upon one ingredient," says Truvé. "It's a combination."
On April 1, 2009, a few months after Ahlberg and Truvé began testing this combination, Ahlberg met Rich Miner, the co-creator of the Android mobile operating system (with Andy Rubin) and a partner at Google Ventures, at the Starbucks on Harvard Square, Massachusetts. Miner was impressed: "We believed there was predictive power in the information contained in the web," he says. "If you can organise that information temporally, then you can look at past and present, and infer things from the future. That's pretty unique so far from Recorded Future." The CIA thought so, too.
In the 40s the allies routinely bombed rail bridges to disrupt supply lines into Nazi-occupied France. After a raid, though, the Royal Air Force couldn't fly reconnaissance missions over the targets as they were considered too risky, so it didn't know if a bridge had been destroyed. The Special Operations Executive (SOE), however, came up with a novel strategy for finding out. By monitoring the daily prices of oranges on sale at various fruit stalls Paris, SOE agents dropped behind enemy lines were able to tell which supply chains had been affected. (Germans embedded in London were doing the same thing; unfortunately for the Nazis, they were under the control of SOE and were fed false information.) This is the differ- ence between information and intelligence: information is the price of oranges, intelli- gence is knowing which supply chain has been affected. This openly available, "free" infor- mation, when it's turned into intelligence, becomes extremely valuable. "Open-source intelligence has always been crucial, but for most of the cold war it was neglected by western intelligence agencies," says Calder Walton, a research associate at Cambridge University and author of the book Empire of Secrets, to be published in 2013. "That was the archetypal intelligence war: intelligence necessarily involved information that couldn't be gained from any other source -- human agents or telephone tapping." That doesn't mean covert intelligence was more effective, though: Daniel Moynihan, a former US senator, compared CIA reports gathered from secret sources with Soviet documents recovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall and found they significantly overestimated Soviet capabilities. But he discovered that western think tanks using publicly available material, such as the RAND Corporation, were much more accurate. US diplomat George Kennan estimated in 1997 that "95 per cent of what we need to know about foreign countries could very well be obtained by the careful and competent study of perfectly legitimate sources of information open and available to us". "All of this has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union," says Walton. "Open-source intelligence has boomed in recent years -- especially since 9/11." At a conference in 2008, Michael Hayden, then director of the CIA, said: "Open-source intelligence contributes to national security in unique and valuable ways virtually every day." Stephen Mercado, an ana- lyst in the CIA directorate of science and technology, estimates that 80 per cent of all valuable intelligence now comes from open sources. In January 2011, Sir Gus O'Donnell, head of the UKcivil service, told the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq: "I have strongly and always been of the view that we probably underestimated open source
[intelligence]." Open source is the big growth area in intelligence and every western agency is looking for the tools to give it an edge.
Ahlberg refuses to discuss his company's work with the CIA, or even whether there is work with the CIA. In-Q-Tel (IQT) is the CIA's investment arm (mission statement: "Identifies, adapts and delivers innovative technological solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency"). It invests only in startup companies that will "provide strong, near-term advantages (within 36 months) to the IC [intelligence community]." IQT doesn't invest without the US secret intelligence services in mind. It backed Recorded Future with slightly less than $2.5 million.
Stephen Davidson, an investor at IQT who sits on Recorded Future's board, refused to comment; a spokesperson for IQT said that "while we are pleased to have Recorded Future as part of the IQT portfolio, we will respectfully decline to provide additional information about our investment". Does Ahlberg know what intelligence purposes Recorded Future is put to? "We would not know about those things," he says, folding his arms. "At this stage, I don't even want to know what people are doing with some of these things." He points out that IQT is "an independent company; at least to my knowledge theycan't force any [government agency] to use it." Truvé, though, says Recorded Future is working with 17 or 18 intelligence agencies. Another board member, Roger Ehrenberg, used to run a $6 billion hedge fund for Deutsche Bank before setting up his own firm, IA Ventures. According to Ehrenberg, In-Q-Tel is "actively involved" with Recorded Future. "Fundamentally, they look to invest in companies where they know they have a customer within the government," he says. "It's not just the CIA." Chris Holden, who works in Recorded Future's Arlington office, admitted to wired (with some understatement) that "we have a little bit of work with the federal government". Holden says that Recorded Future is being used to identify technologies the US government may invest in, such as nanotechnology in body armour. "It's not all super secret stuff necessarily." So, does having IQT as an investor mean thatRecorded Future is beholden to the US government, even if it is a private company? "We are an independent company," repeats Ahlberg. "Neither the US government, nor Google, nor hedge funds nor banks have ever tried to make us do anything. And frankly, you're sitting here with a bunch of Swedes.
There's no way in hell you could get them to do anything bad."
Still, it's possible to identify examples of how one might use Recorded Future for open-source intelligence. Take the al-Qaeda leadership after Bin Laden's death: who would fill the vacuum?
Recorded Future ran a search. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a founding member of Egypt's Islamic Jihad militant group, and long considered by the US government to be Bin Laden's right-hand man, showed some significant spikes in recorded and discussed activity in the last 12 months,especially when he called for military backing of Libyan rebels, suggesting al-Qaeda could fill a power vacuum in that country. But al-Zawahiri's sentiment score was extremely negative, to the degree that conspiracy theories were emerging that he was responsible for disclosing Bin Laden's location to the US. Saif al-Adel, a senior al-Qaeda commander, was attracting attention back in October 2010, written about as "the new face of al-Qaeda in 2011". Recorded Future concluded that it was "clear that Said al-Adel has been routed in Pakistan for some time now and appears to be embedded in the political structure of al-Qaeda"; his momentum score was high. They also found that Libyan Abu Yahya al-Libi (described by a former CIA analyst as an "insurgent-theologian"), offered access to one of the most volatile regions on the globe right now, based on his current likely location, which al-Qaeda might consider a useful foothold. Finally, they looked at Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American imam who posted pro-al-Qaeda/anti-western YouTube videos, and ran a blog and Facebook page. Clearly of interest given the attempted US drone strike to kill him days after Bin Laden's death, he started building momentum in late March and April with reports that he was urging on the Arab Spring protests. Al- Awlaki was killed in Yemen dur- ing a US drone attack on September 30 this year.
Recorded Future concluded that multiple players will rise to prominence regionally, that al-Qaeda could split around al-Zawahiri, and that al-Qaeda sees advantage to be taken in the Arab pro-democracy protests. A couple of months later, al-Zawahiri was confirmed, although experts were sceptical about whether he could unite the membership in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States behind him.
Ahlberg is more willing to talk about how Recorded Future is being used in finance. "If you take our momentum score, and look across S&P 500 companies, can you predict the liquidity or the stock volume of those companies over time?" asks Ahlberg. "It turns out you can." Stock that is being talked about and is in investors' attention is, of course, more likely to be traded: "It's much easier to prove volume than direction, whether a stock is going up or down." So Recorded Future takes momentum and combines it with sentiment -- whether a company is mentioned in a positive light -- and derives a score. Taking these news bursts across the S&P 500, it can sort them into ten different groups, from high to low. "Then you say, every day, 'I am going to own what is in the top and short what is in the bottom.' You are making lots of small picks on a daily basis - this strategy turns over the portfolio 63 per cent every day."
Running predictive tests on data from January 2009 to January 2011, Recorded Future showed that its top decile has a beta (a measure of risk in portfolio) of 1.08 -- fairly low -- and a statistically significant annualised continuous alpha (a risk-adjusted measure of active return on investment) of +16 per cent. The bottom two deciles had a high beta (1.37 and 1.34, respectively) but with statistically significant negative alphas, at -42 per cent and -26 per cent annually. "Constructing hedged portfolios out of the securities in these deciles provides some compelling trading strategies," says Evan Sparks, an analyst at Recorded Future.
Beyond high-frequency trading strategies, the company says it can predict stock shifts on the basis of one-day events, separated into scheduled events and speculative events. "The theory that if something is written saying, 'on Friday so and so will release earnings', that should be priced into the market immediately," says Ahlberg. "In reality it is not." Recorded Future took 19,000 such events and asked what happens to the stock price. On average, as stocks come into those scheduled events, the prices rise; coming out of them they fall five base points either way. "It's like finding a roulette wheel that is skewed."
Another way is to examine the next two weeks of a particular business's future and look for certain events. One is insiders selling stock. You may think this would be a good time to sell; in fact, insiders often sell just after stocks have already peaked. So Recorded Future looks for data that can be combined with this knowledge. If an insider sells stock after a management lay-off, stock falls on average 1.5 per cent. Expand this event to a whole market and "You have 2,000 events within 2011," says Ahlberg. "By turning it into a big data screen, I have created my own skewed roulette wheel I can consistently bet on." Chris Malloy is an associate professor at Harvard Business School who specialises in behavioural finance. He's played with Recorded Future's data: "I haven't seen anything with that ability. It's pretty neat -- no one's doing that. The predictability is certainly good."
What Recorded Future can't forecast are "black swan events", which are by definition unpredictable and undirected. "You can look at what happens afterwards, though," says Ahlberg. He takes the example of a natural disaster. "Start looking at how other countries behave. After a natural disaster, the US will travel there every time, the UK does it 50 per cent of the time, Iran will do it every single time, China never really does." China did, though, after the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Two months later, it announced a new trade agreement. China didn't travel to Haiti: no trade agreement followed. But it did after Pakistan was hit by flood, soon announcing a $10 billion deal. "We're looking for those historical patterns and using them to predict what might happen," says Ahlberg.
Recorded Future's hedge-fund clients are only slightly less secretive than theCIA. Ehrenberg says a handful of Wall Street hedge funds and banks are using the technology: "Recorded Future is a high-value signal, relative to conventional quantitative-analysis trading signals. People are making money." Josh Holden, CEO of Fina Technologies, which creates algorithms for high-frequency quant trading by hedge funds, says that Recorded Future's client base "is closely guarded. But there are more than a few firms using it.
Sandfire AG is a Swiss consultancy in the public and private security sectors, and a client of Recorded Future. "It helps us keep track of travel routes of high-level decision-makers," says Felix Juhl, a senior partner. "A state visit by a high-ranking politician may be followed by specific corporate activities.
Keeping track of travel routes can serve as an early warning."
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Ahlberg says Recorded Future now earns revenues in the millions of dollars from a client base of less than 100, but which includes governments, hedge funds, big banks, watchdogs and consultancies.
This select clientele place a high value on the distilled insight the company provides. Ahlberg sees a big opportunity: "Even within what we have started around finance and intelligence, there is no reason why we couldn't build another $100 million-revenue company within a small set of years." But Recorded Future plans on being more than just a profitable business tool. Ahlberg is expanding its indexes: he eventually wants every piece of data on the planet streaming live through his company's algorithms. The ultimate goal? "We want to organise the world -- and the internet -- for analysis." What Ahlberg doesn't say, perhaps deliberately, is that ever more data will likely lead to ever more accurate predictions. "It's dangerous to start talking about predicting the future," he says. "We're trying to play that down."
Tom Cheshire is assistant editor at wired. He wrote about the Ariane 5 rocket in 10.11 |
Waymo unveils a self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
DETROIT (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O) unveiled its latest self-driving system in a Chrysler Pacifica minivan during a Sunday preview ahead of the Detroit auto show, saying the technology is more reliable and affordable.
The announcement came from John Krafcik, head of Google’s Waymo unit, whose search for partners to develop and install the company’s autonomous driving technology into real cars has so far yielded only an alliance with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCHA.MI)(FCAU.N) and a pending deal with Honda Motor Co (7267.T).
Headlining a future mobility conference during the show’s media preview, Krafcik said Waymo’s latest set of self-driving hardware and software incorporated a new array of sensors, including an enhanced vision system, improved radar and laser-based lidar, all developed and built in-house.
Krafcik said Waymo had reduced the cost of a single lidar unit by 90 percent, to about $7,500. Among major outside suppliers of this technology, Velodyne Lidar Inc and Quanergy Systems Inc both have said they are developing smaller solid-state lidar units that eventually would cost $200 or less.
Waymo’s existing test fleet of self-driving cars, including some specially equipped Lexus RX450s and Google’s own “Firefly” prototypes, has accumulated nearly 2.5 million miles in less than eight years, mostly on city streets.
Krafcik said Waymo planned to test the first self-driving Pacificas this month on public roads in California and Arizona. He did not say when the system would be ready to install in production vehicles.
Delphi Automotive Plc (DLPH.N) and Mobileye NV MBLY.N have said they are collaborating on a self-driving system that could be sold to automakers beginning in 2019.
Ford Motor Co (F.N), General Motors Co (GM.N) and BMW AG (BMWG.DE) have said they intend to introduce self-driving cars in 2021. |
CNN’s Debate Night: Sanders Vs. Cruz: The Future Of Obamacare airing Tuesday from 9-10:45 PM ET was the night’s top-rated cable news program in the 25-54 age bracket. Moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the debate between Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Bernie Sanders averaged 932,000 viewers in the so-called news bracket, besting Fox News Channel (720K) by 29% in the block of time, and MSNBC (417K) by 124%.
The debate’s total viewer draw, 2.45 million, finished behind FNC’s 3.39M and ahead of MSNBC’s 1.95M.
CNN finished first for primetime in the news demo with 782K viewers, to FNC’s 732K and MSNBC’s 385K. In total viewers, FNC logged 3.6M primetime viewers, followed by CNN’s 2.1M and MSNBC’s 1.8M.
The Sanders-Cruz debate outrated all CNN non-election town hall premieres in both total viewers and in adults 25-54. Most recently, for example, the network’s town hall with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, on January 31, logged 577K news-demo viewers and 1.7M total viewers, and the January 12 town hall with House Speaker Paul Ryan clocked 571K news-demo viewers and 1.5M total viewers. |
Official U.S. Navy Page Sen. John Boozman (R-Arkansas) said personal information on the Navy's most elite special operations team could be in the hands of America's adversaries following the cyberattack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Boozman told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that the attacks, suspected to have originated in China, targeted the "most sensitive information we have."
"The breach there was really staggering, this magnitude some of the most sensitive information," Boozman said. "A lot of people when you fill out a form to get a top security clearance, you're talking about a 120-plus-page form."
The security breaches have left the personal information of roughly 22 million federal employees in the hands of hackers, including Social Security numbers, fingerprints, and passwords.
Individuals applying for security clearances include members of SEAL Team 6.
"The second breach, you've got military personnel," Boozman said. "We might have a situation, you never know, SEAL Team 6, their records are in there because they went through the same security clearance."
"So it's just really very, very serious," he said.
The Arkansas senator criticized the lack of cybersecurity within OPM, saying the agency "didn't even know how many servers they had."
"We spend $82 billion a year on IT, $82 billion a year and we have very little to show for it," Boozman said. "But I think it's the tip of the iceberg, certainly as a committee we're going to look — if we need to give them more money, we'll do whatever it takes to keep these things safe." |
Image copyright ESO / M. Kornmesser Image caption Artwork: Ross 128 b might be a target in the search for extra-terrestrial life
Astronomers have found a cool, Earth-sized planet that's relatively close to our Solar System.
The properties of this newly discovered planet - called Ross 128 b - make it a prime target in the search for life elsewhere in the cosmos.
At just 11 light-years away, it's the second closest exoplanet of its kind to Earth.
But the closest one, known as Proxima b, looks to be less hospitable for life.
Found in 2016, it orbits the star Proxima Centauri, which is known to be a rather active "red dwarf" star. This means that powerful eruptions periodically batter Proxima b with harmful radiation.
The new planet, Ross 128 b, orbits a star that's not dissimilar to Proxima Centauri (it's also a red dwarf), but is significantly less active.
Where should we look for alien life?
Neighbouring star has Earth-sized planet
Co-discoverer Nicola Astudillo-Defru from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland told BBC News: "Just because Proxima Centauri blasts its planet with strong flares and high energy radiation, yes, I think Ross 128 is much more comfortable for the development of life.
"But we still need to know what the atmosphere of Ross 128 b is like. Depending on its composition and the reflectivity of its clouds, the exoplanet may be life friendly with liquid water as the Earth, or sterile like Venus."
Image copyright ESO/F. Kamphues Image caption The discovery was made at the La Silla Observatory in Chile
Lead author of the study describing the find, Xavier Bonfils, from the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics in Grenoble (IPAG), France, told BBC News: "Ross 128 is one of the quietest stars of our sample and, although it is a little further away from us (2.6x), it makes for an excellent alternative target."
The new world was discovered with the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (Harps) instrument at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The work will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Dr Astudillo-Defru said the find was the result of more than a decade of "intensive monitoring" using the Harps instrument.
At 1.35 times the mass of our planet, Ross 128 b is a bit heftier than Earth and orbits 20 times closer to its star than we orbit the Sun. But because the new planet's parent star is much smaller and dimmer than our yellow sun, it receives only a little more solar radiation than Earth.
Consequently, it is expected to have a surface temperature close to that on our own planet.
Image copyright ESO Image caption Artwork: The Extremely Large Telescope should be able to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets like Ross 128 b
Image copyright NASA Image caption Artwork: The James Webb Space Telescope should launch in 2019
In the search for habitable worlds beyond our Solar System, astronomers generally look for low-mass, rocky and temperate planets like ours.
But these are comparatively difficult to detect; most of the 3,500 known exoplanets are so-called Hot Jupiters - huge gas giants orbiting very close to their parent stars that don't have suitable conditions for life.
Of the smaller contingent of Earth-sized planets, the vast majority orbit red dwarf stars - the most common type in the Milky Way. Because this category of star is dim, it's easier for astronomers to detect low-mass planets when they pass in front (as viewed from Earth), blocking out a portion of the light.
Red dwarfs are generally more active than G-type stars like the Sun, but there's underlying variation.
At "just" 4.2 light-years away, Proxima b may be the closest exoplanet with a mild temperature. But it receives about 30 times more extreme ultraviolet radiation than Earth. Ross 128 b, on the other hand, is the "quietest" nearby star to host a temperate exoplanet.
Image copyright ESO/M.Kornmesser Image caption Artwork: Proxima b is in the habitable zone, but could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation
Astronomers often talk about the "habitable zone" around a star - it's the range of distances where temperatures allow water (essential for life as we know it) to remain liquid on the surface of a planet.
Where the habitable zone lies depends on the star itself: red dwarfs are dimmer and therefore cooler than the Sun, so their habitable zones are shifted closer in than the equivalent zone in our Solar System.
There's still uncertainty about whether Ross 128 b is within its star's habitable zone, but scientists say that with temperatures of between -60 and +20°C, it can be considered temperate.
But, as Dr Astudillo-Defru alluded to, a lot depends on the presence of an atmosphere. An envelope of greenhouse gases can warm the surface and provide sufficient pressure to keep water in the liquid state.
Next, astronomers want to study the atmospheric composition and chemistry of suitable, nearby worlds like Ross 128 b. The detection of gases such as oxygen could potentially point to biological processes.
Image copyright ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza Image caption The Harps instrument is housed at the 3.6m telescope in La Silla
But Nicola Astudillo-Defru told me: "It is still a debate what are the best biomarkers. For now we have di-oxygen (O2) and ozone as good bio-markers, others like carbon dioxide or methane can be generated both from geological events or life. For sure we will start looking for these species and water vapour."
Several gases have already been detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets, but this line of enquiry is expected to be boosted immeasurably when observatories such as the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) get going in coming years.
"When the ELT comes online (at the middle of the next decade) it shall provide both the collecting power and the angular resolution to observe Ross 128 b directly. We will be able to see if it has an atmosphere and, eventually, to search for O2, water and CH4 (methane)," Dr Bonfils explained.
"Each one would be super exciting and an important step toward the evidence of life outside our Solar System. Yet, individually, none is a definitive proof for life. There are ways to produce either O2 or CH4 abiotically. However, for now, we don't know any false positive if all three were to be detected together."
Although currently 11 light-years from Earth, the new planet's parent star Ross 128 is moving towards us and is expected to overtake Proxima Centauri as our nearest stellar neighbour in just 79,000 years - a heartbeat on cosmic timescales.
Follow Paul on Twitter. |
January 3, 2013
CSS3 transitions bring simple and elegant animations to web applications, but there’s a lot more to the spec than first meets the eye.
In this post I’m going to delve into some of the more complicated parts of CSS transitions, from chaining and events to hardware acceleration and animation functions.
Letting the browser control animations sequences allows it to optimize performance and efficiency by altering the frame rate, minimizing paints and offloading some of the work to the GPU.
Browser support
CSS transitions are supported in practically every version of Firefox, Safari and Chrome. They’re supported in IE 10 and onwards. If CSS animations aren’t supported in a given browser, than the properties will be applied instantly, gracefully degrading.
Webkit based browsers (Safari and Chrome), still require -webkit prefixes for animations and gradients, but these are soon being removed.
Applying transitions
A simple way of applying transitions is with CSS pseudo-classes, such as :hover . Notice we’re specifying the property name, the length of transition, and one of the default timing functions, linear [demo].
.element { height: 100px; transition: height 2s linear; } .element:hover { height: 200px; }
When the :hover pseudo-class is activated, the height will be transitioned linearly from 100px to 200px over a period of 2 seconds.
duration is the only required item in the transition shorthand. The browser defaults to a timing function of ease , and a property of all , unless these are provided.
We don’t want to be restricted to using psuedo-classes when it comes to activating transitions - clearly that’s not very flexible. The solution is to programmatically add and remove classes [demo].
/* CSS */ .element { opacity: 0.0; transform: scale(0.95) translate3d(0,100%,0); transition: transform 400ms ease, opacity 400ms ease; } .element.active { opacity: 1.0; transform: scale(1.0) translate3d(0,0,0); } .element.inactive { opacity: 0.0; transform: scale(1) translate3d(0,0,0); } // JS with jQuery var active = function(){ $('.element').removeClass('inactive').addClass('active'); }; var inactive = function(){ $('.element').removeClass('active').addClass('inactive'); };
In the example above, we’ve got two different transitions, the element slides up when activated, and fades out when deactivated. All the JavaScript does is toggle the two classes active and inactive .
Transitioning gradients
Not every CSS property can be transitioned, and the basic rule is that you can only transition through absolute values. For example, you can’t transition between a height of 0px to auto . The browser can’t calculate the intermediate transition values, so the property change is instant. Oli Studholme has conveniently provided a full list of transition support properties.
The other major property that can’t be transitioned between is background gradients (although pure colors are supported). There’s no technical reason behind this limitation, it’s just taking a while for the browsers to implement support.
In the mean time, there are a few good workarounds. The first involves adding a transparency to the gradient, and then transitioning between background colors. For example [demo]:
.panel { background-color: #000; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(255, 255, 0, 0.4), #FAFAFA); transition: background-color 400ms ease; } .panel:hover { background-color: #DDD; }
If the gradient is continuous, you can transition the background-position as documented here. Otherwise, your last resort is to create two elements, one overlaid on top of the other, and transition their opacity [demo].
.element { width: 100px; height: 100px; position: relative; background: linear-gradient(#C7D3DC,#5B798E); } .element .inner { content: ''; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; background: linear-gradient(#DDD, #FAFAFA); opacity: 0; transition: opacity 1s linear; } .element:hover .inner { opacity: 1; }
The caveats to the latter approach are that it does require extra markup, and the inner div can catch pointer events. Pseudo elements, such as :before and :after would be an ideal use-case here, but unfortunately only Firefox supports pseudo element transitions. Eliott Sprehn is working on support for Webkit, which is coming soon.
Hardware acceleration
Transitioning certain properties, such as left and margin causes the browser to recalculating styles every frame. This is fairly expensive, and can lead to unnecessary re-paints, especially if you have a lot of elements on the screen. This is especially noticeable in less powerful devices, such as mobiles.
This solution is to offload the rendering to the GPU using CSS transformations. In simple terms, this turns the element into an image during the transition, avoiding any style recalculations which greatly increases performance. A simple way of forcing the browser to hardware render an element is to set the transformation’s z axis, which you can do with translate3d :
transform: translate3d(0,0,0);
Now, this isn’t a magic cure to performance problems, and comes with lots of issues of its own. You should only use hardware acceleration when it’s required, and certainly not enable it on every element.
For example, hardware acceleration can cause subtle font issues, such as a font appearing to lose its weight. This is due to a bug where subpixel anti-aliasing isn’t supported when an element is being hardware accelerated. You can see a clear difference between the two rendering modes:
The short-term fix, albeit controversial, is to disable subpixel anti-aliasing completely. However, be sure to understand the caveats in doing so.
font-smoothing: antialiased;
In addition, different browsers use different hardware acceleration libraries, which can cause cross-browser problems. For example, whilst Chrome and Safari are both built on WebKit, Chrome uses Skia for graphics rendering while Safari uses CoreGraphics. The differences between the two are subtle, but real.
You can use Chrome’s Inspector to Profile the page, showing all the repaints. Additionally you can show paint triangles in the Inspector’s options, and even turn on Composited Render Layer Borders in about:flags to see which layers are operating on the GPU. The key is to reduce paints by batch updating the DOM, and move as much as possible to the GPU.
If you’re having display issues between browsers with hardware acceleration, such as flickering or juddering, make sure you’re not nestling elements with the transform3d() CSS property set. As a last resort, try having browser specific transformations.
It’s worth noting that the translate3d hack is becoming less relevant. In fact recent builds of Chrome automatically use the GPU for opacity and 2d transitions. iOS6 Safari has explicitly disabled this trick, and requires yet more workarounds.
Clipping
To take advantage of GPU rendering, you’ll need to avoid style recalculations by using CSS transformations rather than properties like width . What do you do though if you do need to animate an element’s width? The solution is clipping.
In the example below, you can see a search box with two transition states. The second expanded state is hidden by a clipping element.
To transition to the expanded width, all we need to is translate the X axis left. The key thing here is that we’re using translate3d rather than altering the element’s width [demo].
.clipped { overflow: hidden; position: relative; } .clipped .clip { right: 0px; width: 45px; height: 45px; background: url(/images/clip.png) no-repeat } input:focus { -webkit-transform: translate3d(-50px, 0, 0); }
By ensuring that we’re not recalculating the element’s width every frame, the transition will a whole lot smoother and performant.
Timing functions
So far we’ve been using some of the browser’s pre-defined timing functions: linear , ease , ease-in , ease-out and ease-in-out . For more complex timing functions we’re going to have to write our own timing function by specifying four points along a cubic-bezier curve.
transition: -webkit-transform 1s cubic-bezier(.17,.67,.69,1.33);
Rather than guessing at values, it’s often easier to either use a bunch of pre-defined curves, or play around with a graphing tool.
Notice you can drag the values out of bounds and produce a bouncing transition, for example:
transition: all 600ms cubic‑bezier(0.175, 0.885, 0.32, 1.275);
Programmatic transitions
Writing transitions in CSS is all very well, but sometimes you need a bit more control, especially when it comes to chaining transitions. Luckily we can not only invoke transitions from JavaScript, but also define them.
CSS transitions take a magical all property which ensures that any property changes are transitioned. Let’s see how to use this in practice [demo].
var defaults = { duration: 400, easing: '' }; $.fn.transition = function (properties, options) { options = $.extend({}, defaults, options); properties['webkitTransition'] = 'all ' + options.duration + 'ms ' + options.easing; $(this).css(properties); };
Now we have this jQuery function $.fn.transition , which we can use to programmatically invoke transitions.
$('.element').transition({background: 'red'});
Transition callback
The next step to chaining transitions is having transition end callbacks. You can achieve this in Webkit, by listening to the webkitTransitionEnd event. For other browsers, you’ll need to do a bit of sniffing to find the right event name.
var callback = function () { // ... } $(this).one('webkitTransitionEnd', callback) $(this).css(properties);
Be aware that sometimes this event doesn’t fire, usually in the case when properties don’t change or a paint isn’t triggered. To ensure we always get a callback, let’s set a timeout that’ll trigger the event manually.
$.fn.emulateTransitionEnd = function(duration) { var called = false, $el = this; $(this).one('webkitTransitionEnd', function() { called = true; }); var callback = function() { if (!called) $($el).trigger('webkitTransitionEnd'); }; setTimeout(callback, duration); };
Now we can invoke $.fn.emulateTransitionEnd() before we set the element’s CSS to ensure our transition end callback is triggered [demo].
$(this).one('webkitTransitionEnd', callback); $(this).emulateTransitionEnd(options.duration + 50); $(this).css(properties);
Chaining transitions
So now we can programmatically apply transitions, getting callbacks when they finish, we can start queuing transitions. We could write our own queue to do this, but as we’re using jQuery we might as well tap into the library’s existing functionality.
jQuery provides two main functions to communicate with its queuing API, $.fn.queue(callback) and $.fn.dequeue() . The former adds a callback to the queue, while the latter executes the next item on the queue.
In other words we need to set our CSS transition inside a $.fn.queue callback, and then make sure we invoke $.fn.dequeue when the transition is complete [demo].
var $el = $(this); $el.queue(function(){ $el.one('webkitTransitionEnd', function(){ $el.dequeue(); }); $el.css(properties); });
That’s example is fairly simple, but it lets us build up complex chained animations, and even use jQuery’s delay() function; for example:
$('.element').transition({left: '20px'}) .delay(200) .transition({background: 'red'});
Redrawing
Often when transitioning, you’ll have two sets of CSS properties. The initial properties that the animation should start at, and the final set of properties the transition should end on.
$('.element').css({left: '10px'}) .transition({left: '20px'});
However, you’ll find that if you apply both sets of properties, one immediately after the other, then the browser tries to optimize the property changes, ignoring your initial properties and preventing a transition. Behind the scenes, browsers batch up property changes before painting which, while usually speeding up rendering, can sometimes have adverse affects.
The solution is to force a redraw between applying the two sets of properties. A simple method of doing this is just by accessing a DOM element’s offsetHeight property, like so [demo]:
$.fn.redraw = function(){ $(this).each(function(){ var redraw = this.offsetHeight; }); };
This will work in most browsers, but I’ve had occasions in Android where this hasn’t been enough. The alternative is to either use timeouts, or by toggling a class name.
$('.element').css({left: '10px'}) .redraw() .transition({left: '20px'});
The future
Transitions are being actively worked on, and the next spec looks really promising. The proposals include a new JavaScript API focussing on addressing some of the existing limitations to transitions, and giving developers much more flexibility.
In fact, you can find a shim on the new API on GitHub. It involves instantiating a Animation constructor, passing in an element to animate, the properties to animate to, and various other options such as a delay.
var anim = new Animation(elem, { left: '100px' }, 3); anim.play();
With this new API you can synchronize animations, provide custom timing functions, and get completion callbacks. This is truly exciting stuff!
Transitions
By now, you hopefully have a deeper understanding of CSS transitions, and how a simple API can be combined to produce complex and rich effects.
Most of the JavaScript examples come straight out of the source of GFX, a jQuery CSS transition library. As well as the core library, I’ve included a number of additional effects, such as slide in/out, explode in/out and 3d flipping.
Thanks to Paul Irish for reviewing this article.
Incidentally, I’ve been turning the contents of this post into a talk. If you know or organize a conference that would be suitable for this material, please do get in touch! Over the last year I spoke at six conferences, and I’m keen to do even more in 2013.
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More than 100 Dayton Public Schools teachers walked out of a school board meeting en masse Wednesday night, the second straight month that they’ve walked out to hold a rally on the street corner outside.
Contract negotiations between the school district and the Dayton Education Association — which represents teachers, counselors, therapists and others — have dragged on since January. The existing contract expires June 30.
RELATED: Teachers call August strike possibility “very real”
Dayton teachers union President David Romick said Wednesday that there has been some progress in mediation in the past week, but that major issues remain. He also said that further mediation dates are not confirmed. In mediation, the two sides are separate, with the mediator carrying proposals back and forth.
“We’re looking to continue mediation into the summer and hopefully get this done,” Romick said.
DPS Superintendent Rhonda Corr has joined the district’s negotiation team in the past week, and also cited progress in recent days.
RELATED: Half of local schools in contract talks this year
“Sometimes when it gets down to the nitty gritty, superintendents get involved,” Corr said. “I was in touch with David Romick today, and we’re setting up to get a mediator. If we can get back to the table (Thursday), I’d be the happiest person. I’m willing to work weekends, late hours, whatever it takes. We are serious about it, and we do respect our teachers.”
The union has given its leadership the OK to issue a strike notice if necessary, although any strike likely wouldn’t begin until the start of the school year Aug. 15.
Dayton Public Schools’ last day of classes this year is Friday. The union is urging teachers to take home any personal belongings that they use in the classroom, rather than leaving them at school this summer. Last week, union officials called the possibility of a strike in August “very real.”
RELATED: Teacher pay varies widely in area districts
At Wednesday’s rally, teachers chanted, “No contract, no work” and “Union busting’s got to go” as RTA drivers and others honked in support as they drove by. Romick repeatedly mentioned how much support teachers had in the community.
“We will get through this together and become even stronger through this process, while looking forward to the day when we can return to school to greet the eager faces of our children,” he said.
SCHOOL UPDATES: Follow Jeremy Kelley DDN on Facebook and Twitter |
Post Apoc: Welcome to the End Times at http://www.reddit.com/r/Roleplay/
Ever has those moments come true…
Maybe it happened just how you expected…
Or ….seemingly just to make a lot of nerds pretty happy….
Or…okay well, you got me there!
But it is here, it isn’t going away. Time to accept it, so what will you do?
Maybe just let it happen, maybe just let it go…
Nah, thats lame! Lets deal with this but first we need…friends.
And tools yo.
Anything is a tool if you are creative enough, right?
Oh and courage, plenty of courage.
Hope you didn’t forget wheels? Yeah, next time pay attention when mythbusters is telling you how gas is refined, okay?
I think you may just be able to do this!
You are a survivor, a brute force living machine, you will walk out of this, stand on the wreckage, and yell your name. Friends may fall, allies may betray, but you keep right on going. But always remember, never lose your sense of humor. |
The advantage of Afterburn is significantly increased thrust; the disadvantage, it’s very high fuel ($) consumption and inefficiency. This is often regarded as acceptable for the short periods during which it is typically used.
With the Jets cooled in the hangar for the time being awaiting it’s second call to the runway that is the NHL, it seems like a good time to look at the potential opening day roster for season 2.
Part 1: Between the Pipes, Goaltenders
Future Czech Olympian Ondrej Pavelec must improve his conditioning for him to continue with his development towards becoming an elite NHL net minder. By signing the recently turned 25 year old to a 5 year deal worth $19.5M the Winnipeg Jets believe the six foot three, 220lb Pavelec will develop into the franchise goaltender every championship team needs.
Clearly ensconced as the number one option for Coach Claude Noel, Pavelec should benefit from a greater commitment to team defense and the continued progression of the teams young defenders. With a career save percentage of .907 and just 70 career wins, True North has seemingly taken a leap of faith in the kid from Kladno, Czech Republic. For those who witnessed firsthand the talents of Mr. Pavelec in 2011-12, his first season as the franchises starter, it is difficult to argue against his potential. A greater level of consistency and another season under the watchful eye of goalie coach Wade Flaherty will surely see ‘Pavs’ get career victory number 100.
Playing a similar style to that of Nashville’s Pekka Rinne, Pavelec is very strong getting from post to post and shutting the door in a hurry. Exceptionally athletic for a big man his physique poses great challenges for shooters as he leaves very little of the net visible. An abysmal 8 goals against on only 20 shootout attempts in 2011-12 must improve for the Jets to contend for a playoff spot in 2012-13. His game awareness and positional play is outstanding although he is occasionally prone to soft goals and does show signs of fatigue. Pavelec seems to thrive in big game situations and is in fact a potential franchise goaltender with a modest cap hit of $3.9M. During the lockout Pavelec will return home to the Czech Republic and suit up for HC Trinec of the Kontinental Hockey League as reported via Twitter by Pavelec’s agent Allan Walsh.
A resilient and inspired Al Montoya has the size and intangibles to be a top notch starting goaltender in the NHL and could get as many as 25-30 starts for the Jets in 2012-13. Hoping to finally establish himself as a big league player, the former U.S. World Junior Championship gold medalist was named the top goaltending prospect in 2005 and has unfortunately found himself behind such incumbents as Henrik Lundqvist and Ilya Bryzgalov. Having toiled in the comical goaltending situation orchestrated on Long Island the Jets believe a strong season in a hockey mad community like Winnipeg could propel the former Michigan Wolverine to finally realize his immense potential.
Drafted sixth overall by the New York Rangers in 2004 and with just 21 wins in 57 career starts for the NY Islanders and Phoenix Coyotes, the journeyman puck stopper from Chicago should fit in well with the team dynamic and provide consistent minutes which will give the Jets a chance to win each night.
Credit GM Kevin Cheveldayoff for solidifying the goaltending situation this past summer, after losing Chris Mason as a UFA to the Nashville Predators and Pavelec threatening to play in the KHL, the team’s lack of depth at the position was well exposed.
The Jets afforded 4 picks in the last 2 entry drafts on goaltenders in an attempt to add some positional depth to the organization. Look for at least 1, perhaps 2 more tenders to be claimed in the 2013 draft of which the Jets will have 6 picks in the first three rounds and 13 overall.
The top goaltending prospect in the system, Eddie Pasquale, had a strong season in St John’s, leading the team to the Conference finals before falling to the eventual champion Norfolk Admirals. By establishing himself in the AHL, Pasquale looks to challenge for NHL time in the near future. It would likely serve him best to be the go to guy in St John’s for another season or two as opposed to sitting on the bench in Winnipeg.
Also in the system is Connor Hellebuyck drafted in the 5th round (130th) in 2012. He will attend UMass Lowell this fall. Equipped with good size and loads of raw potential the mentally tough Commerce Michigan native will be given plenty of time to develop.
Depth chart; Ondrej Pavelec, Al Montoya, Eddie Pasquale
The Jets finished 26thoverall for goals against with an average of 2.95 per game last season and only scored an average of 2.7. Montoya may prove to be an upgrade over Chris Mason but as the young core continues to develop offensively they will certainly need to rely heavily on Ondrej Pavelec for any level of success they hope to achieve this winter. |
Climb aboard the KSPRT Grosston Roller Coaster for a wild ride through the latest week of TBTL with Bobby, Ann and Great Big Man Mike. We (somewhat) tactfully tackle TBTL’s recent gauntlet of bodily function talk, but might need an ice bath and some sample pierogis if anyone expects us to podcast tomorrow. Just remember: unicycles are a deal-breaker, don’t forget the bulk whipping cream, and it’s always better not to be the guy who farted.
Oh, and Ann Needs Advice!
This episode recaps TBTL episodes 2255 (Rudy behavior, KPUG Hottie of the Day, farting, NPC), 2256 (KIRO, laptop woes, gum, Binaca Blast, Japanese kids unicycles), 2257 (Gobble Gobble text chat, whipping cream, Costco, Thanksgiving Eve, charity, Drake U ice bath pee, booger archive), 2258 (Thanksgiving, Carey, Genevieve, Burbank Kitchens, cookies, family, Lannistercare), 2259 (Leftovers, Chopin’s heart, The Mountain from Game of Thrones.) |
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Despite the expenditure of millions of dollars and even a venomous, lie-filled robocall by Donald Trump, Republicans were not able to stop Jon Ossoff from leading the polls in April’s Georgia special election.
Ossoff finished with just under 50 percent, which forced a runoff election on June 20 and Trump happily took credit for a “BIG ‘R’ win” that never took place. All that election accomplished was to put off the final reckoning.
Now, in the weeks leading up to that day, a new poll by Anzalone Liszt Grove Research shows Jon Ossoff leading his opponent, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel 48 to 47 percent, with 5 percent undecided. This is precisely what pundits said was impossible with all the other Republican candidates removed.
There is even better news for Democrats, who experience poor turnout in midterms. According to the poll,
“Part of Ossoff’s success in earning 48% in the April special election was his ability to drive turnout among voters who do not typically vote in special elections or midterms. According to voter file results, 25% of all voters who participated in the April special election voted in 2016, but had not voted in 2014. In the current polling of run-off voters, Ossoff holds at 12-point lead over Handel among these voters.”
This was the first poll since the GA-06 primary and it was conducted by a progressive polling firm, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, which was hired by the Ossoff campaign.
ALG is openly proud of its role in helping elect President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Don’t assume that invalidates the results, however, for as Rachel Maddow says, the company has “a good track record.”
Handel was the top vote-getter in April, finishing with 20 percent to Ossoff’s 48, and her numbers were expected to rise with her competition eliminated. That does not appear to have taken place.
This is an election Donald Trump told Karen Handel “You’d better win.” She told him not to worry about it. Now there is every reason for both her and Trump to be worried.
Despite Trump’s claims, it was Republicans who poured vast sums into the special election and they have poured millions more in since, yet now Ossoff is doing the impossible and literally out of nowhere running in a statistical dead heat against an established Republican candidate.
If she loses, it will be Democrat Jon Ossoff who replaces Tom Price in the House of Representatives, and not the Republican ally an embattled Donald Trump so badly needs.
Photo: Screen grab, MSNBC
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Of course, at the time no one could get one. The hardware was unfinished, and the tools in Windows Holographic, a new component of Windows 10, which would allow developers to build holographic apps had yet to be to be released.
But even then I knew that HoloLens and Windows Holographic would have a profound impact on Microsoft and the future of personal computing. Developer's adoption of the platform and manufacturer partnerships for HoloLens-like wearable computers are core to Microsoft's vision. Microsoft fellow Alex Kipman explains :
…Windows has always been built with an ecosystem of partners. Throughout our history, we have brought new attributes to Windows that empower not only developers but also our device makers to unleash their creativity to the world. Windows Holographic was created from the ground up with that same heritage in mind.
As partners have emulated the Surface with affordable 2-in-1s, Microsoft's goal is to foster an explosion of untethered wearable holographic computers for everyone!
Bringing Holographic computing to the masses isn't as easy as a "show the world today and change the world tomorrow" strategy. The hardware, the platform and the way we think about personal computing requires a systematic, deliberate and strategic shift. This takes time.
When Microsoft introduced HoloLens it seemed like a science fiction fantasy to onlookers. "Could this untethered wearable computer projecting holograms into the user's world be real?" Moreover, could it really be "uncool" Microsoft, that is presenting this artifact from the future? The answer to both questions was: Yes.
"Could this untethered wearable computer be real?"
HoloLens and Windows Holographic not only took the industry by surprise, but the ambition it represents as a bold new personal computing platform have many proclaiming Redmond as innovative in a way that Apple and Google are not. Apple's Tim Cook recently acknowledged the importance of augmented reality (Apple is rumored to be working on their own AR headset) and Google has made investments in the mysterious Magic Leap — are they playing catch-up?
The industry is still wrapping its heads around the implications and potential of Microsoft's holographic platform. Furthermore, developers are challenging their imaginations with its boundary-crossing nature. Potential hardware partners are, no doubt, entertaining strategies that will help bring wearable holographic computers to the masses.
A long road to the masses
Microsoft wants to get holographic computing right. They want Windows Holographic to be the industry's platform for this new way of computing. That's one of the reasons "holographic APIs are enabled inside every Windows 10 build." Moreover, Microsoft wants hardware partners to manufacture holographic computers patterned after the $3000 aspirational HoloLens.
Thus, to build an infrastructure of support, Microsoft has engaged in a tempered approach to the market. Redmond has demonstrated the efficacy of the technology first in specific industries and with specific use cases before launching haphazardly to the masses. |
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