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President Donald Trump will exit the Paris Agreement, a landmark international pact to combat climate change worldwide, a White House official confirmed Thursday afternoon.
Michael Catanzaro, an energy adviser in the Trump administration, told members of Congress during a conference call that “the United States is getting out of the Paris agreement,” according to the Daily Beast, which had reporters listening in on the call. Multiple members of Congress have since confirmed the decision.
Trump officially announced the decision at the White House on Thursday afternoon. “I’m am fighting every day for the people of this country,” Trump said. “Therefore … the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
The president added that the U.S. would be willing to reenter the Paris Agreement or a new agreement if the Trump administration is able to renegotiate terms that he views as more beneficial to the U.S.
Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord—a move he promised on the campaign trail—will spark controversy worldwide as the president puts the United States at odds with the nearly 200 countries that joined the international agreement.
The Paris Agreement, enacted in November, aims to limit global temperature increases to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, reduce the production of greenhouse gasses, and create a $100 billion-per-year fund to handle the effects of climate change.
Whether to exit the Paris climate agreement reportedly sparked division within the Trump administration. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Scott Pruitt argued that Trump should leave the agreement on the grounds that it would hurt the U.S. economy. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—formerly the CEO of ExxonMobil—pushed the president to remain in the deal on the grounds that it would harm America’s standing in the world and ability to work with other nations on climate and energy issues.
Former President Barack Obama, who entered the U.S. into the Paris Climate Accord, issued a statement during Trump’s White House address, condemning the president’s decision as counterproductive.
Obama statement on Paris Climate Agreement pic.twitter.com/htevQcZASg — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 1, 2017
Update 2:43pm CT: Added statements from Trump and Obama. |
Following a summer of violence in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, Israel has reinstated a controversial demolition policy repealed nearly a decade ago.
On Aug. 18, 2014, 23 Palestinians, including 13 children, were left homeless after Israeli forces blew up two buildings in Hebron, located in the southern West Bank.
The first floor of another property was sealed with concrete, making it uninhabitable.
The crime committed by the families was being related to Marwan al-Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisha, two suspects in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers months earlier.
Some weeks later, both men were shot dead by Israeli forces without due process or trial.
ISRAEL HAS SINCE announced that it will demolish or seal six properties in East Jerusalem and the West Bank belonging to the families of suspects in attacks against Israelis.
Four of the Palestinian attack suspects were shot dead at the scene of the incidents.
“The renewal of this policy comes even though the security benefits are questionable to say the least. This is a policy which is both illegal and immoral because it deliberately targets the innocent and people not involved in attacks,” says Sarit Michaeli from Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Punitive house demolitions were first enacted under the British mandate of Palestine and decreed that a property could be destroyed on suspicion that someone had committed an offense.
“This is a policy which is both illegal and immoral”
Although later canceled by the British, Israel continued to use the policy, demolishing some 1,300 Palestinian homes between 1967 to 1987 as punishment for suspected offences.
During the 2nd Intifada, at least 3,900 Palestinians were left homeless by demolitions designed to punish the actions of 333 Palestinian suspects, B’Tselem reports.
“It’s a war crime. It’s collective punishment because you punish innocent people. Israel isn’t doing it for any military necessity. They are sacrificing innocents,” says Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian rights group Al-Haq.
“Israel is the only state that uses this measure as part of an official policy.”
In 2005, an Israeli military committee found that punitive house demolitions were on the “verge of legality” and ineffective, and Israel temporarily ceased the policy for years.
‘Revenge, not deterrence’
The policy is now being reapplied at a time of escalating violence following the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June, the revenge killing of a Palestinian youth, and a military offensive in Gaza which killed over 2,000 Palestinians.
On Nov. 18, two Palestinians killed four Israelis in an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issuing orders for the demolition of both their families’ homes on the same day.
The attackers were shot dead at the scene of the incident but the families will bear the consequences; their homelessness compounding the ongoing discrimination in housing and employment faced by Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Illegal under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, unless the demolition is deemed absolutely necessary for a military operation, the policy is only ever used against Palestinians.
“The attackers were shot dead at the scene of the incident but the families will bear the consequences”
“They don’t do it in settlements, or Tel Aviv, they do it against Palestinians. I’m not with the idea of expanding the policy (to Israelis) because the practice itself is a violation of international law, but you see the war crime, and also the discrimination,” Jabarin says.
Israel’s High Court of Justice in August dismissed a petition by Israeli rights group HaMoked to prevent the demolition of the al-Qawasmeh and Abu Eisha homes in Hebron.
THE COURT ALSO rejected claims of discriminatory application of the policy, saying that the decision not to use the policy against the Jewish suspects in the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem does not entail “selective discrimination.”
“We think it’s immoral. We think it contradicts international law. We think it is against common sense and we think at this time especially it is going to ignite everything in Jerusalem,” director of HaMoked Dalia Kerstein said.
“I think it’s a tragedy, its collective punishment. In so many of these cases the people who committed the crime are dead or in jail. The people that suffer are the families, so it’s revenge.” |
Left-wing CNN’s sister network HLN blurred out the Trump 2016 logo of a man’s t-shirt it interviewed for a human interest segment on Wednesday. The man was being interviewed for his rescuing of a baby left unattended in a hot car.
Steven Eckel was wearing a blue Trump 2016 t-shirt during his initial interview with HLN, which was broadcast live. During a subsequent re-airing of the interview, however, HLN’s production team blurred out his t-shirt logo.
Below are screenshots of the original feed and then blurred re-airing.
See the two airings below.
On Tuesday, Steven Eckel, 53, rescued a 4-month old baby from the back of a hot, locked car by breaking a window the vehicle to remove the child. The baby was found in a Nissan Sentra in the parking lot of a Kohl's clothing store in Monmouth County, NJ. The outside temperature was in the upper 80s. Eckel and another bystander, Sarah Mazzone, were alerted by the baby's cries.
The baby's mother has since been charged with endangering the welfare of her child
CNN and HLN present themselves as politically unbiased new outlets.
H/T Reddit
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter. |
The conversation over Shavuot lunch at a friend’s house three years ago started innocently enough—we were talking about the Israeli Rabbinate’s reluctance to provide kosher supervision to food served at non-Orthodox events in Israeli hotels. One of the guests at the meal responded with, “The rabbis have to control who comes in. What if homosexuals come in?”
Like me, this guest was a mother of four sons, an immigrant who came here as a young girl, a woman who did not grow up observant, but became observant as a young adult. Our kids were close in age. Perhaps these similarities made her comment even more shocking to me. Like her, I love my children and care about their happiness, education, and religious commitment. Unlike her, I have a gay son.
My oldest had came out to us a few months before, at the end of his sophomore year in high school. At 16, he was secure enough to come out first to two of his closest friends, then to us, and then to all his friends outside of our community.
But in our neighborhood and our shul in Brooklyn, he remained completely closeted, and knew his chances of being accepted, or even allowed to remain in the shul he grew up in, were slim. He tested the waters some, mentioning that a friend from a summer program was gay, an acquaintance was a lesbian. A neighborhood friend told him gays are disgusting. Another informed him he would burn in hell for being friends with a lesbian girl. An adult leader of the youth minyan, where my son lead services and read Torah regularly, railed against the lifting of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” one Shabbat morning, as part of his discussion of the weekly Torah portion, telling the kids in attendance that homosexuality would lead to the downfall of our society. Another adult shul member told him that someone like him, a teen who was accepting of gays, did not belong in the shul we had been members of for over a decade.
How much worse would it be if he were out as gay himself? We feared the repercussions on all our children, the emotional trauma that would result when our son would be rejected by the community he grew up in. That Shavuot conversation reaffirmed our fears. Our son quickly said goodbye and left the holiday lunch; our younger kids were playing, and my husband and I were thankful that they were unaware of the conversation.
Outing our son to everyone at the lunch would have been wrong, but so was letting the comment go. We told the woman that violating laws of niddah, family purity, which surround a woman’s menstrual cycle, have roughly the same weight as the prohibition against homosexual intercourse in the Torah. Would she suggest that rabbis question every straight couple whether they keep those laws? No, she said, it’s not the same; homosexuality is an abomination. But abomination is the way toeva, the word used in the Torah, is translated now, we said; we don’t know the exact meaning of the word as it was used in that time. The same word is used to prohibit improper weights in the marketplace, something we would probably equate with unfair business practices today. No, she pressed on, homosexuality is wrong, abominable, disgusting. The man who started the conversation rejoined with, “Does it matter what other people do? Live and let live,” and the talk finally turned to something else.
We collected our younger kids and walked home. We found our oldest on the couch in the basement, his face stained with tears. “She said I don’t even deserve kosher food,” he said. If my son did not deserve kosher food, how could he expect a seat in shul, a place in the community? How could any of our children? If forced to choose between their religion and their brother, they would choose him. This was the first time we witnessed a homophobic comment made in front of our son, and the first time he could openly cry with us about it. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing board games, insisting that all four kids play together.
At the time, the only place to connect with other parents who may have had similar experiences was an online support group for Orthodox parents of LGBT children, and nobody in that group had teens. Nobody fully understood the challenges of parenting an openly gay Orthodox teen and his younger brothers, who knew about their brother’s sexual orientation, supported him fully, loved him unconditionally, and would be hurt almost as much as he would if they heard homophobic remarks.
A few months later, Eshel, an organization that supports traditionally observant LGBT Jews and their families, started a phone support group, and a year later they hosted the first retreat for parents, which has since become an annual event. But at the time, this was a parenting task we had to figure out on our own. With our lack of hope in the community confirmed, we made two decisions.
The first was the decision to move, for the sake of all four of our children. A community which would welcome our oldest son would be one that would likely be right for our whole family. Just as experiencing homophobia would hurt all of our children, and would undermine their religious commitment, experiencing tolerance and acceptance would show all of them the good in their religion and reaffirm it.
The second decision was to be completely open about our oldest son in our new community. LGBT acceptance by a community became our litmus test. We moved to our new home in Linden, New Jersey two weeks before Shavuot, a year after the lunch that catalyzed the process for us. At many meals since, we have discussed numerous topics with our new neighbors and friends–Israeli politics, kashrut, and LGBT issues, just to name a few, and we discovered that we were right about our new community. All four of our children feel accepted and loved, and so do my husband and I. |
Time is running out to provide your input on proposed Metrobus changes.
Every year, Metrobus planners propose service changes to maintain a Bus State of Good Operations (SOGO). This year’s official public participation period went live on Saturday, August 15 and will close at 5:00pm on Wednesday, September 23. That’s less than two weeks away!
Halfway through the public comment period, we thought we would give you sense of the process so far.
More than 3,000 online surveys have been completed. Two-thirds of these returns are from direct email outreach to customers using affected routes. If you are interested in receiving invitations to similar online surveys in the future, please register your SmarTrip card.
With more than 20 outreach events completed or scheduled, we are collecting feedback by going straight to the customer. Metro staff is out riding buses and showing up at bus stops and rail stations. We understand not everyone can go online so we are coming to them. Look for us and help us improve your bus experience.
These outreach activities have resulted in more than 2,000 written comments from customers all over the region.
At the time of this writing, the elimination of the 5A is not being well received nor is the elimination of the segment between McPherson Square and Kennedy Center on the Route 80. Many in the District are giving favorable marks to the free transfer between Capitol Heights/Addison Road Metrorail stations for select routes. Maryland customers are also excited for the Q Line free transfer to and from the Metrorail Red Line between Wheaton and Silver Spring.
In addition to English-language replies, we have received completed surveys from Spanish, Vietnamese, and Amharic speakers. Customers from all economic and ethnic groups are chiming in as well.
We want to hear more from our customers to see how these changes would affect your travel choices. Let us know how major service changes would impact you. Join the conversation by reading the official docket and submitting your thoughts online or in person.
-Email your comments to [email protected]
-Talk to Metro staff at a pop-up event
–Take an online survey
-Attend the public hearing on Thursday, September 17 at WMATA HQ (600 5th St NW, Washington, DC 20001).
Related Posts: |
Burma is three lands for the British reader. First, it's the old colony of temple bells, flying fishes and dynastic despots (home-grown as well as imported). Second, it's the betrayed golden land enslaved by be-medalled generals who enrich themselves through drug deals and gun down unarmed protesters. Third, it is modern Myanmar, a deeply wounded and fractured multi-ethnic society that is working through – in a phrase favoured by optimistic citizens – its "democratic transition".
For the past two decades western writers and readers have focused their minds on the brutality and cronyism of the dictatorship. Military men may still gift each other gold-plated pistols and compare their Singapore property portfolios, and doubts remain about the sincerity of the reforms, but the changes of the past two years – soldiers withdrawn from cities, political prisoners released and censorship ended – are truly remarkable. Now the country's poets, authors and journalists are writing with unprecedented freedom: touching hearts, steeling courage, showing that life need never go back to the bad, old ways.
1. 'A Hanging' by George Orwell
No surprise that George Orwell, author of the two defining parables of the 20th century, should be top of the list, especially as his five years in Burma atuned him to the suffering of the oppressed. More moving than 'Burmese Days' is his short story "A Hanging", in which he watches a condemned criminal walk towards the gallows … and sidestep a puddle. In that fleeting moment, Orwell marks the preciousness of human life and the heartlessness of power.
2. The Burman: His Life and Notions by Sir George Scott
Should a Sunday-born man marry a lady born on Wednesday? To bring luck, should a house be built on male, female or neuter foundation posts? George Scott served as frontier officer for three decades at the end of the 19th century, but his enduring legacy is as collector and sympathetic chronicler of the old ways in a country "where people are small and ghosts are big".
3. The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
The finest novel written on the English in Burma. It is set during the British invasion of 1885, when a poor boy is lifted up on the tides of political and social chaos that shaped Burma and India.
4. Golden Earth: Travels in Burma by Norman Lewis
Among the 20th century's finest travel writers, Norman Lewis visited Burma in the early 1950s. Golden Earth is a bittersweet portrait of the then-optimistic, now-lost land – before communist incursions and tribal insurrection shattered the dream.
5. From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe
"Nearly every night I dream of the Shan State, of Mandalay, of the jungle. The landscapes of my dreams resemble real ones, yet they shift like images on silver screens …" Pascal Khoo Thwe's mesmerising biography stretches from his grandmother's creation stories to civil war and a chance conversation about James Joyce that leads to a new life in Britain. A minor masterpiece.
6. Burmese Chronicles by Guy Delisle
How can a comic book convey the cruelty, injustice and absurdity of the SLORC years? Québécois Guy Delisle's enlightening and insightful graphic travelogue succeeds by disarming the reader, as we learn with him the truth about the struggle for survival under the generals.
7. Freedom from Fear and Other Writings by Aung San Suu Kyi
Few women in public life have suffered more for their beliefs than Aung San Suu Kyi, and inspired so many people by their example. "Concepts such as truth, justice, compassion are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power," she once wrote. Like the country itself, she too is working through a "democratic transition", from prisoner to parliamentarian, to (probably) president in 2015. In this collection of writings, which includes her Nobel peace prize speech, she shares the vision, hopes, principles and humanity that have sustained and continue to sustain her.
8. The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma by Thant Myint-U
For 200 years, Thant Myint-U's forefathers served Burma's royalty. His grandfather rose to become UN secretary-general. This remarkable family story is woven into Burma's history in a work that is moving, lyrical, shocking – and essential for anyone wishing to understand the country emerging today.
Zargana hasn't written a book – yet. The most popular comedian and satirist in Myanmar, Zargana (whose name translates as "tweezers") picked at the junta with his wicked puns for more than 20 years, many of which were spent in prison. His courageous performances bridged the gap between the three Burmas, not least in reviving the popularity of anyeint, the traditional vaudeville-like theatre.
10. Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, edited by ko ko thett and James Byrne
"Poetry is not by the language, not via the language from the language, not with the language without the language. It is written, made, composed, constructed, read and felt in the language. Of course, sometimes it is not," teases Zeyar Lynn, one of Myanmar's most influential living bards. His work – along with that of 14 other uncensored writers – has just been published in Bones Will Crow, the first anthology of Burmese poetry in the west, edited by ko ko thett and James Byrne, poet-in-residence at Clare Hall, Cambridge.
• Rory MacLean's Under the Dragon: A Journey Through Burma, published by IB Tauris, will be re-released next month as an ebook with a new introduction from William Dalrymple. He is crowd-financing a new book called Back in the USSR at Unbound and will be speaking at Burma Day at Asia House on Monday 20 May. |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - At least five people, including foreigners, were killed and 15 were wounded early on Monday, when a gunman opened fire at a nightclub in Mexico’s Playa del Carmen resort during the BPM electronic music festival.
Police officers stand outside the Blue Parrot nightclub after a gunman opened fire early on Monday outside the venue, killing several people and injuring others during a BPM electronic music festival, according to a statement of the organizers, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
Quintana Roo State Attorney General Miguel Angel Pech said a Canadian, an Italian and a Mexican were among the dead, while the U.S. embassy in Mexico said authorities had confirmed the death of an American. The nationality of the other victim was still unclear.
Pech had earlier said a second Canadian and a Colombian had been killed in the attack. One of the dead died in the stampede to leave the club, he added.
The gunman escaped and was still at large, Pech said, adding that the incident was not being investigated as an act of terrorism.
The Canadian government confirmed one citizen had died and said it was investigating reports of the death of a second.
Pech said the armed man entered the Blue Parrot nightclub around 3 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday, during the closing events of the festival. An attempt to stop him sparked a gunfight that drew in security staff.
The shooting spells a major blow for Mexico’s tourism industry, which has been one of the few bright spots in the economy, thanks to a weak peso exchange rate.
Tourists are generally shielded from the drug violence that has ripped Mexico apart over the last decade, killing well over 100,000 people since 2007.
Pech said seven of the 15 injured were still in the hospital. One was in grave condition, the state government said in a statement. Four people were arrested on suspicion of involvement.
Two BPM security workers were among the dead, Pech said, but in a statement, festival authorities said three of their security team had been killed. BPM blamed a lone individual for the shooting.
Quintana Roo and the surrounding Yucatan peninsula have traditionally been less violent than other parts of Mexico, with relatively few murders.
However, with many foreign tourists and a vibrant night life scene, there has long been an important local drug market in and around Playa Del Carmen, which is just south of the popular resort of Cancun.
REGIONAL CHAOS
The organizer of an electronic music event near Playa Del Carmen told Reuters that armed men who claimed to be part of a drug cartel turned up recently at one of his parties, demanding access to sell drugs.
The event’s security team decided to let them enter so as to avoid conflict, the organizer said, adding that cells from all the major Mexican cartels were now operating in Quintana Roo, a wealthy region full of tourists.
The organizer said the situation in Quintana Roo deteriorated after the political party controlling the state government was forced out in local elections last year, a shift that can spark violence as criminal groups struggle to realign allegiances with the incoming politicians.
“They’re all fighting for control of the region,” said the organizer, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals. “This is an aggression toward any promoter of electronic music in Mexico. It’s a wound for the entire community.”
He added that he thought BPM would have to end, and feared for his own events in the region.
PANIC ON THE STREETS
Videos purportedly shot at the scene shown on television and social media show dancers ducking for cover and running out on the streets to safety.
A man looks through a fence of the Blue Parrot nightclub after a gunman opened fire early Monday outside the venue, killing several people and injuring others during a BPM electronic music festival, according to a statement of the organizers, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico January 16, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
“This is a very, very sad situation. Tryna get my head around it still. Thoughts and condolences to all affected,” Scottish DJ Jackmaster, who was performing at BPM, said on social network Twitter.
The BPM festival, which was entering its 10th year, has grown to be one of the world’s biggest electronic music events, with top DJs flying in every January to play the clubs of Playa del Carmen along Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
In recent years, a growing number of DJs and fans of electronic music have flocked to the beautiful, balmy region to escape the frigid European and North American winters. |
PAIN
There he stood, as dangerous as ever.
She loathed him. She really did, but he was just so addictive.
She knew it was so horribly wrong. She really did, but there was just something...
Something that she saw, past the darkness of his cruel tendencies, underneath the heavy grey cloud of his many, many difficulties within himself, and towards other people.
The thing is, she also knew that he hated himself too, and she assumed that's what swayed her to be so terribley drawn to him.
His sleek back was to her, drawing himself into the shadows, wishing to hide himself from her. For his own benefit of course, never for her. She thought, at least. She always thought that he didn't want her the way she wanted him. She always thought that he just had her because he knew he could, and that she was easy to manipulate. She was, of course. She would do anything for him.
Even kill.
"Did you succeed?", his face, an alluring shadow, turned to her. She straightened, her pulse so alive.
"Yes", she breathed. He turned fully to look at her, his eyes intimidating and addictive. She froze.
"Did you like it?", the question terrified her, and the answer horrified her. He already knew the answer, already knew her like the back of his own hand. She hated him for that.
Her mouth dry, self-loathing leaving a foul taste there, she answered him, "Yes". It was quiet and small, ashamed. Her brown eyes dropped to the floor because she thought that if she looked at his beautiful face anymore she would vomit. She does, but not because of his beautiful face.
It rushed upon her, jerking her body onto the cold stone floor, her hands and knees pressed harshly into the ground. She hated herself. She detested the feeling she felt when she whispered that killing curse, the excitement, the absolute rush. The need for more.
Her body convulsed violently, her throat already sore and raw from the harshness of her stomach acid. She began to cry, and to bleed. It was a horrible scene, too raw and honest for any mere person to handle.
It was a good thing that Draco wasn't easily deterred. He watched her for the first few minutes, feeling for her. He knew that Hermione thought he didn't love her, but he did. He really did, he was just selfish. And cruel.
After the first few minutes of watching her pale, shaking body convulse as if under the cruciatus curse, her wonderful brown hair falling wildly around her face, and of listening to the retching and the crying, he approached her. The crying did it for him, he didn't like to hear Hermione cry, wasn't really like her.
His hand touched her back as he knelt down to her fragile body, and he felt her jerk. He scowled. I know I scare her, but really? Silly Hermione.
He spoke, his voice quiet and calming, casual, as if this was normal. It was for him, he had seen worse actually, "Hermione, lovely, get up". The first part was careful and affectionate, the second was a command, but only as a natural response. Draco was used to telling people what to do, which was usually followed by them complying.
She sobbed and wiped her mouth, trying to pull away from him. He found that very odd, Hermione rarely tryed to distance herself from him, unless trying to prove a point. It took a second of her weakly batting his cold hands away from her waist to help her before he realised that it was probably the command that had irritated her. He always forgot that she didn't appreciate being told what to do.
At his realisation, Draco carressed her waist and bent close to her face, speaking quietly so as not to scare her, "Lovely, don't fret. You did it for me, didn't you? Lovely?", She shivered.
Her voice was small, "Yes I did...but that doesn't make it okay", a sob climbed through her, her voice tumbling down to the floor and more tears streaming down her cheeks. Draco watched her, curious and interested. He had felt the same at the beginning, but it was peculiar to watch it rather than experience it for once. Poor, lovely Hermione.
Her hands shook, her sobs raw and strong. His hands rested lightly on her waist, his mouth beside her ear,"Hermione, please hush. You know I don't like it when you cry", He was a very selfish man, but not that bad, "It breaks my heart to listen to such a lovely creature be in such pain". She shook her head, covering her quivering mouth with a cold hand.
He was silent as he straightened up and led them away from the putrid smell of her vomit and into his quarters. She followed easily, to shook to protest. The candle light around them showed the mess as he pulled her in front of him; vomit on her hands and blood smeared over her mouth and throat, tears wet on her cheeks. Her eyes met his as she wept, and he looked down at her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.
"Oh lovely, what shall I ever do with you?", He mumbled quietly and she responded with a shake of her head, slow and dejected. He sighed and pulled them onto his plush bed, cradling her against him, stroking her head.
She cried into the night, forever saying the phrase, "I killed for you", sounding horrified, and he did not sleep until she stopped.
TO BE CONTINUED...
~Thank you for reading, let me know what you thought?~ |
UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova sent a letter of complaint to Iranian officials over the country’s upcoming Holocaust cartoon contest, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.
The contest will be held as part of the 11th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial, which is sponsored by the Tehran municipality. Organizers are expecting to draw entries from over 50 countries and offering a top prize of $50,000 for the best cartoon mocking the Holocaust.
Bokova’s complaint followed a request by Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, to condemn the contest. A UNESCO representative said the event is “completely opposed to the spirit of UNESCO and to actual programs and publications that UNESCO has been putting out for decades.” The representative added that combating racism and hate speech have been UNESCO’s priorities from the time of its founding.
UNESCO is scheduled to commemorate International Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday by focusing on “the roots and consequences of hate speech.” According to the Post, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is set to address UNESCO’s staff that day.
The cartoon contest, which will take place in June, follows a similar event held in 2015 that featured hundreds of submissions of anti-Semitic art. Organizers claim that the contest is meant to expose “the West’s double standard behavior towards freedom of expression as it allows sacrilege of Islamic sanctities… but prevents research on the Holocaust due to the Zionist regime’s steadfast opposition.”
Though presented as a challenge to the West’s commitment to free speech, the contest is coming at a time when Iran is increasingly cracking down on free expression. Two Iranian poets were sentenced to lashes and jail time in October for shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, and the country was criticized in November by Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations official in charge of monitoring human rights in Iran, after five journalists were arrested. Iran “should not silence critical or dissenting voices under the guise of vague and unsubstantiated national security concerns,” Shaheed said.
Rouhani was asked about the Holocaust in a September 2013 interview with CNN. Though CNN and other outlets hailed Rouhani for breaking with his Holocaust-denying predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and condemning the genocide, an independent translation of the interview by the Wall Street Journal showed that CNN had mistranslated his remarks.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denied the Holocaust in a public address in 2014, saying that “the Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and, if it happened, it’s uncertain how it happened.”
Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote last year:
Given how entrenched and pervasive Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are within the Iranian regime, it is hard to dismiss the possibility that the regime’s principal motivation for embracing this narrative is to provide justification for its recurrence. Holocaust deniers, after all, have long sought to excuse the crime’s perpetrators and shift guilt onto its victims as a prelude to repeating that same crime.
[Photo: ISCAorg CH / YouTube ] |
An online portal called Newslaundry.com recently published a fact check report on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent interview to Arnab Goswami. Living up to the standards of Indian media, the “fact check” report is based on old data points, subjective interpretation of PM’s statements and even author’s personal opinion passed as facts.
Here is a fact check of Newslaundry’s fact check (Note – This is NOT a rating of PM’s interview; this is just a fact-check score of what he said.)
On the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana:
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Narendra Modi:
“I had said that within a given timeframe, we will open bank accounts for the poor. For something that had not been done for 60 years, setting a timeframe for it was in itself a risk.”
Newslaundry:
The Prime Minister’s claim that “something had not been done for 60 years”, referring to opening bank accounts for the poor, is patently false. Former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee launched a similar scheme in 2011 called Swabhimaan under the UPA government. While presenting the Union Budget for 2011-2012, the finance minister announced that under the scheme, banking services would be provided to 20,000 villages in the first year. Ultimately, the scheme ended up being merely an account-opening exercise.
Modi has definitely brought renewed vigour to the scheme – along with rebranding it – but to claim that this is the first time bank accounts were opened for the poor is factually incorrect.
Fact Check: While both Swabhimaan and Jan Dhan Yojna are financial inclusion schemes, there are several differences between the two pertaining to the target segments, coverage and facilities. While Swabhimaan was focused only in rural areas with population >2000, PMJDY aims for “comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country” (emphasis on ‘all’). And the results speak for themselves. As on 22 June 2016, 22.18 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been opened. So Jan Dhan is, in fact, the first pan India comprehensive financial inclusion scheme. Comparing it to Swabhimaan is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
(Source – http://www.pmjdy.gov.in/account)
Score –
PM – 0.75 (-0.25 for he could have chosen better words)
Newslaundry – 0.25 (-0.75 for selective interpretation)
Narendra Modi:
“The bank that he was seeing from afar, now he is able to enter that bank. This brings about a psychological transformation. Looked at in another way, did you ever imagine that 40 thousand crores could be injected into the banking system by contributions from the poor?”
Newslaundry:
This claim is correct. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana deposits, as of May, 2016, stand at Rs 38,048 crore.
Fact Check: Newslaundry is correct. The latest data says that the total balance in Jan Dhan accounts is Rs. 39152.86 crore as on 22 June 2016. (Source – http://www.pmjdy.gov.in/account)
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 1
On the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana:
Narendra Modi:
“Now, like the initiative we have taken, we have started the Mudra Yojana. More than three crore people in the country comprise washermen, barbers, milkman, newspaper vendors, cart vendors. We have given them nearly 1.25 lakh crore rupees without any guarantee.
Now just think, when three crore of these small businesses have got access to finance, they must have expanded their work. Now all this is not in the Labour Department’s registration. Three crore people have expanded their work.”
Newslaundry:
The government too has claimed that under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY), 3.5 crore beneficiaries have availed loans worth Rs 1.22 lakh crore. However, the effect the scheme has had in boosting entrepreneurship and providing employment in the unorganised sector cannot be measured, as the Prime Minister himself suggests.
Fact Check: The PM never quantified the employment generation effect of PMMY. So NL’s fact check should have been limited to verifying the loan amount and number of beneficiaries quoted by him. But NL deducted 0.5 from the score, saying that the effects of PMMY cannot be measured. I would recommend NL writers to do a course in basic economics before making such assertions. Government spending, regardless of the form of spending, always has a positive effect on employment opportunities, especially when the nature of spending is diversified (PMMY is not limited to any specific sector).
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 0.5
On the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana:
Narendra Modi:
“After Independence, for the first time, we have brought in Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana which can cover maximum number of farmers.”
Newslaundry:
Crop insurance schemes have existed in India since 1985, when the Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS) was launched by the Congress-led government. Since 1999, the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) have been functioning. Claiming that the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana (PMFBY) is the first such scheme since Independence is thoroughly misleading. As for the claim that PMFBY “can cover maximum number of farmers”, it’s not possible to verify it as enrolment is still going on for the scheme.
Fact Check: NL selectively chose only the first part of PM’s statement. For fact check, the statement must be considered in its entirety – After Independence, for the first time, we have brought in Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana which can cover maximum number of farmers.” The last part of the sentence is important.
CCIS was implemented only in 15 states and 2 UTs. NAIS and MNAIS, had failed to address the issues of high premium, linkage to crop loans and cap on claims. Due to the abysmal coverage they provided, most farmers were hesitant to subscribe to them. PMFBY aims to address these issues and will be a pan India scheme. So the PM is right in saying that this is the first scheme after independence which can cover maximum number of farmers.
Score –
PM – 0.75 (-0.25 for he could have chosen better words)
NL – 0.5
Narendra Modi:
“The farmer will have to pay only 2%, the government will take care of the rest.”
Newslaundry:
Under the scheme, farmers will have to pay a premium of 1.5-2% for food grains and oilseed crops. Also for cotton or horticultural crops, the premium can be as high as 5%. In contrast, under NAIS, premium rates were 1.5-3.5% for food grains and oilseed crops. Also, under MNAIS, premium rates were 2-15% (actual premiums under MNAIS could run up to 57%).
Fact check: Newslaundry’s research is correct.
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 1
On development of infrastructure:
Narendra Modi:
“You must have seen that the maximum electricity generation since Independence has occurred this year.”
Newslaundry:
The Prime Minister’s claim is true, but PM Manmohan Singh could have made the same claim in 2007, 2012 and 2013, as could Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2002. According to this government report (which traces the growth of India’s electricity sector), installed generating capacity has increased with every five-year plan from 1947-2015.
Fact check: Newslaundry tactfully shifts the goalpost to installed generation capacity from actual power generation. While all governments deserve credit for capacity addition, India has always faced power shortage, primarily due to coal shortage and mismanaged discoms. Modi govt tackled this challenge head on and as a result, for the first time in history, India will not have power deficit situation.
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 0.25 (-0.75 for shifting the goalpost)
Narendra Modi:
“The maximum amount of coal mined has been in this year.”
Newslaundry:
According to this report from the National Statistical Organisation, production of coal and lignite has increased year-on-year between 2005 and 2014. Growth in coal production slumped between 2011 and 2012, but historically, production has yet to fall in absolute terms.
Fact Check: NL again fails to read the statement in the context of what Modi govt inherited from UPA. Coal sector was plagued with scams and inefficiencies. Piyush Goyal introduced transparent practises like e-auctioning of coal blocks and removed bottlenecks. Result – Average coal stock in power plants increased by 200%, coal imports reduced, fuel costs for power plants are likely to go down and for the first time CIL is looking at commercially exporting coal to other countries.
Score –
PM – 0.75 (-0.25 for he could have given more details on coal reforms)
NL: 0.25 (-0.75 for shifting the goalpost)
Narendra Modi:
“The maximum length of roads being constructed daily is happening in this year.”
Newslaundry:
Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari too has claimed that the government is building roads at an all-time high rate of 20 kilometres per day. The data, however, says that since the NDA government came to power in 2014, the highest rate of road construction was 15.70 km/day between April 2015 and January 2016. Moreover, this rate was matched by the previous UPA government in 2012-2013.
Fact Check: The construction of highways touched an all-time high of 6,029km during 2015-16. UPA had achieved maximum of 5,732 km of national highways during 2012-13. Moreover, as of June 2016, NDA govt is on course to construct 28 KM of highways per day.
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 0.25 (-0.75 for using old data points)
Narendra Modi:
“The fastest loading and unloading of steamers at sea ports is happening now.”
Newslaundry:
Data for container traffic (unloaded/loaded) is not publicly available beyond 2013-2014, so it isn’t possible to confirm the Prime Minister’s claim. There is, however, information available about the total cargo traffic at India’s major ports for 2015. The tentative estimate for total cargo handled in 2014-2015 is 5,81,344 thousand tonnes — against 5,55,487 thousand tonnes in 2013-2014, a projected growth of 4.65%. In absolute terms, the amount of cargo moved is the highest since 1994-95.
Fact Check: The average turnaround time in 2013-14 was 2.32 days, which reduced to 2.12 days in 2015-16.
Source – http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/shipshape-performance-at-india-s-12-major-ports-116021501268_1.html
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 0.25 (-0.75 for poor research)
On food inflation:
Narendra Modi:
“You see the fast pace at which prices were rising under the previous government, today that speed has decelerated a lot. You can see the statistics, you will find it there.”
Newslaundry:
While the PM is correct that food inflation is not as high as it was under the previous government, inflation for the month of May, 2016 was at 7.55%, the highest it has been since August, 2014. Two years of drought have definitely pushed the inflation up, but the government also had the advantage of historically low oil prices. Moreover, inflation has also been kept under check due to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) inflation policy, which involved keeping repo rates high, for which the Governor attracted criticism from the PM’s party.
Fact Check: Newslaundry’s fact check on PM’s statement is not a fact check, but an opinion. While the author agrees that PM was factually correct, he tries to credit low fuel prices and RBI policies for low inflation. I fail to understand how this changes the fact that the inflation has reduced.
Score –
PM – 1
NL – 0.25 (-0.75 for trying to pass an opinion as a fact)
Overall score –
Narendra Modi – 9.25/10
Newslaundry – 4.5/10
Perhaps Newslaundry needs a lesson or two in research and fact-checking.
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Six long-range bombers have flown all the way from Russia to the Syrian governorate of Deir ez-Zor to attack Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) targets, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. A similar raid was conducted on Saturday.
The Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers flew through Iranian and Iraqi airspace on Monday and conducted airstrikes on the terrorist group’s command centers and weapons stockpiles, the ministry said in a statement.
The Russian military said all targets were successfully destroyed.
Russian long-range bombers target ISIS positions in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria https://t.co/DQxSgTxywQpic.twitter.com/iJH96bpgor — RT (@RT_com) January 21, 2017
As in Saturday’s raids, fighter jets from Russia’s airbase in Khmeimim, Syria, were scrambled to protect the bombers in Syrian airspace as they carried out their mission, according to the statement.
Fighting has intensified between IS fighters and government forces in the Deir ez-Zor governorate over the last week, as the Islamist jihadists are dispatching additional troops and weapons there to ready for a major offensive. While IS has managed to win some territory, the provincial capital remains under the control of Damascus. |
In an interview with viEUws, the European Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht, affirms that Europe wants to close the Canadian-European Trade Agreement (CETA) by the end of this year—which would have been today, since the European calendar year ends on October 31. CETA is a trade agreement designed to strengthen economic ties between Canada and the EU through “free” trade and increased investment. However, hidden within this treaty are intellectual property provisions that were essentially taken word-for-word from ACTA. And just like its close cousins, ACTA, KORUS, and TPP—and other trade agreements that are applauded by the entertainment industry for carrying expansive intellectual property provisions—CETA is being negotiated in secret.
In addition to this announcement, the Commissioner has also tried to reassure the public that the IP language of CETA has moved away from mirroring that of ACTA. When asked about the similarities between the agreements, De Gucht affirmed that the initial text was drafted when Europe had agreed on ACTA at the level of the Council of Ministers. Since the European Parliament rejected ACTA in July, De Gucht affirmed that they have “obviously” made changes to the CETA language on IP enforcement. While he continues to affirm that the language contained in ACTA was good, CETA was modified due to political and social pressure.
Commissioner De Gucht recognizes this won’t be an easy task, saying "We should have no illusions, there are still a number of difficult issues to tackle." Of course, EFF’s concern is that in hastily rushing to conclude this agreement, negotiators may still leave in many of the problematic provisions that existed in ACTA to appease the strong influence of private interests that are behind both agreements. EFF will keep a close eye on any announcements on CETA’s conclusion, and determine whether it ends up carrying ACTA’s shadow in its finalized language.
You can watch the 4 minute video of the interview with the Commissioner here.
----
Additional resources
CETA: EU Ditches Criminal Sanctions.... Almost, by EDRI (October 31, 2012) @ http://www.edri.org/CETA_criminal |
Police trying to identify a woman found incoherent and unresponsive on a Queens street corner over the weekend released surveillance video that shows a man dragging her out of a car and dumping her there. Jonathan Vigliotti reports. (Published Wednesday, April 8, 2015)
Police have identified a woman they say was found incoherent and unresponsive on a Queens street corner over the weekend as 18-year-old Safiya McLean.
McLean, who police say is homeless, was found Saturday at the intersection of 131st Street and Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hills. She was taken to Jamaica Hospital, where she remains in critical but stable condition.
Video released by police Tuesday shows a man wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt drive up to the curb near where the woman was found, get out of the car and walk around the back of the vehicle to the rear passenger side door. He fumbles around in the back seat for a nearly a minute, then emerges, holding a limp woman with a sweatshirt hood over her head beneath the armpits.
The woman's feet drag on the sidewalk as the man backs away from the car. He pulls her to a building and plops her on the ground; her head slumps forward as he tries to brace her body against the wall.
WATCH: Man Drags Woman From Car, Dumps Her
Police trying to identify a woman found unconscious and critically hurt on a Queens street corner over the weekend released surveillance video that shows a man dragging her out of a car and dumping her there. (Published Tuesday, April 7, 2015)
The man starts to walk away and the woman, without his support, slips down the building and rolls over, face first, onto the sidewalk. The man turns back briefly to look at her, then walks back to the car. The timestamp on the surveillance video indicates she was dumped around 12:30 a.m. Saturday.
Police say the investigation is ongoing. |
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) alongside other GOP leaders at the Capitol last month. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
A new tax break for the upper middle class was offered up Thursday in Senate Republicans' revised version of their bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
The legislation would make health insurance premiums more affordable for consumers who buy the kinds of inexpensive policies that are crucial to the GOP health-care agenda. Yet independent analysts caution that the benefits would mainly accrue to affluent households, and the provision might not substantially expand coverage among the uninsured.
The language relates to health savings accounts (HSAs), vehicles that allow consumers to set aside a portion of their income without it being taxed and then use that money to pay for medical expenses.
Currently, the accounts can be used only for out-of-pocket costs, such as insurance deductibles and co-payments. The GOP bill would allow owners of these accounts to use the money to pay for premiums as well. Doing so would make the accounts much more attractive, allowing taxpayers to claim a break on a major monthly expense rather than only on their out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits and other health-care items.
The provision would primarily benefit more-affluent households, in part because they are the ones that can afford to divert money into the accounts. And because marginal rates on income are steeper for wealthier taxpayers, they save more when they are able to write off an expense and reduce the income on which they have to pay taxes.
About 44 percent of households — mostly those that are less well off — do not pay any federal income tax, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Very few households in that group would benefit from being able to pay premiums out of health savings accounts.
Additionally, the most important benefits would go to people who are too affluent to qualify for the federal subsidies that would be available to help modest-income households buy private coverage on the individual market. Since the subsidies cover part of the cost of premiums, those who receive them would be able to deduct less from their incomes.
Under the GOP bill, the subsidies would be available to households at up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $71,000 for a family of three.
For that reason, critics of the GOP bill were skeptical that the change with HSAs would help uninsured Americans obtain coverage, noting that many who would be wealthy enough to benefit meaningfully already have insurance — coverage typically through an employer.
“It’s going to provide the greatest benefits to higher-income people who already can afford health insurance, so it’s not going to do much in the way of helping people afford coverage who are going to lose it,” said Edwin Park, a vice president for health policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — the two nonpartisan agencies responsible for supplying lawmakers with information about federal taxes and spending — have forecast in a preliminary analysis that the latest change to the rules around health savings accounts would increase coverage, according to a Senate aide. A precise estimate was not yet available on Thursday, however.
Predicting exactly how the provision would affect the number of uninsured Americans would be extremely difficult, outside experts said, and the result would depend on how the change would interact with other revisions. For instance, another element of the bill — put forward by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — could also make health savings accounts more common.
Under current federal law, the accounts are available only for people who purchase plans with higher deductibles. Cruz's proposal would make it easier for insurance companies to offer such policies, and if health savings accounts were more widely available because of the GOP legislation, more people might take advantage of the opportunity to write off their premiums.
As a result, the number of people who would benefit depends on how attractive the cheaper offerings would be under the Cruz proposal relative to the individual plans that would comply with the ACA's essential health benefits.
Since policymakers have to date not allowed taxpayers to pay for insurance out of their health savings accounts, any forecasts are part guesswork. That is true not only for the number of people who might take advantage of the new system but also for how much revenue the federal government would lose.
“I’m really reluctant to guess how much it’s going to cost,” said Linda Blumberg, an economist at the nonpartisan Urban Institute. “I don’t think it’s going to be huge money necessarily, but I think it’s going to have an impact.”
Tom Miller, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said, “It will be a pretty imprecise guess.”
“The only number that will matter will be supplied” by the CBO and JCT next week, he noted. The two agencies will release a comprehensive analysis of the revised bill.
That new version would keep several of the ACA taxes paid mainly by the very rich. Initially, GOP lawmakers had proposed repealing those.
One is a levy on the salaries of people earning more than $200,000 a year as individuals, or $250,000 for married couples. The other taxes are a surcharge on certain investments for households in that income category and what is effectively a special tax on the compensation executives receive from their firms in the insurance industry.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that households that do not pay federal income tax would not benefit from being able to pay premiums out of health savings accounts. While very few households in this group would likely benefit, it is possible that some could receive a larger Earned Income Tax Credit, for example. This version has been corrected. |
Image caption Fierce fighting has been raging around the key Syrian town of Qusair
The US and Germany have called on Russia not to supply Syria's military with an advanced missile system they say could prolong the conflict there.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said the delivery of Russian weaponry would have a "profoundly negative impact" and put Israel's security at risk.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged Moscow not to hinder the chances of mooted peace talks.
In Syria, fierce fighting continued on Friday around the key town of Qusair.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Activist Hadi says: "It's like hell inside Qusair"
Dozens of opposition fighters reached the town on Friday to bolster it against an offensive involving government forces and militants from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
One opposition activist told the BBC the humanitarian situation in the town near the Lebanese border was worsening, with 800 wounded people needing treatment.
'Unified' government
Mr Kerry and Mr Westerwelle held talks in Washington a day after Mr Assad said a Russian contract to supply the S-300 surface-to-air missile defence system was being implemented, without confirming any deliveries.
The S-300PMU-2 - the variant experts believe will be sent - is a highly capable system that, as well as targeting aircraft, also has the capacity to engage ballistic missiles.
Two Russian newspapers on Friday quoted defence sources as saying that it was unclear if any of the missile system would be delivered this year.
Mr Kerry called on Russia not to upset the balance in the region by providing weaponry to the Assad regime, "whether it's an old contract or not".
Analysis After 40 years of tight dictatorship in Syria, it is not surprising that the opposition is finding it hard to produce a coherent, representative leadership to face off against a tough regime team in the proposed Geneva conference. What was meant to be a three-day meeting of the opposition coalition in Istanbul turned into eight days of in-fighting that has failed to achieve its stated goals of electing a new leadership, approving an interim government and taking a clear position on the Geneva proposal. After initially saying it would go to Geneva with conditions, the opposition now says it will not go as long as Hezbollah is fighting at Qusair. That buys it time for the great deal of work, and doubtless wrangling, that will be needed to construct a plausible delegation for the talks, and more meetings will be held early next month. By contrast, the regime side is unified and coherent, and has decades of negotiating experience to draw on. The opposition risks a severe defeat in the talks, unless it gets its act together very seriously.
"It has a profoundly negative impact on the balance of interests and the stability of the region and it does put Israel at risk," he said.
"We hope that they will refrain from that in the interests of making this peace process work," he said.
He added that he was convinced the Syrian opposition would take part in US and Russian-backed talks expected to be held in Geneva next month. Russian and American officials are set to meet next week to prepare the ground for the peace conference.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says a lot more needs to be done for the opposition to be in any kind of shape to attend any conference in a coherent manner.
He says that, by contrast, the Syrian government appears unified and confident.
Mr Assad said on Thursday that Syria would "in principle" attend the peace conference in Geneva if there were not unacceptable preconditions.
In an interview with Lebanon's al-Manar TV, which is owned by Hezbollah, he warned that Syria would respond in kind to any future Israeli air strikes.
Qusair crisis
Meanwhile, Syrian state television said troops and Hezbollah fighters had captured the Arjun district of Qusair on Thursday.
Syria's Russian-made military Nearly 5,000 tanks; 2,500 infantry fighting vehicles; 2,500 self-propelled or towed artillery units
325 Tactical aircraft; 143 helicopters
Nearly 2,000 air defence pieces
295,000 active personnel; 314,000 reserve personnel Statistics: IISS Why Russia sells Syria arms
An attempt to get wounded people out of the town on Friday had failed, an opposition activist told the BBC, as the convoy had come under attack, with nine people killed.
The source said 30,000 people were still in Qusair, 80% of which was under rebel control, although these figures cannot be independently verified.
"There is no water at all, because the Assad regime controls the water supply, and there has been no electricity for four months," he said.
More than 80,000 people have been killed and 1.5 million have fled Syria since the uprising against Mr Assad began in 2011, according to UN estimates.
How the Russian S-300PMU-2 missile defence system works
The long-range surveillance radar tracks objects over a range of 300km (185 miles) and relays information to the command vehicle, which assesses potential targets A target is identified and the command vehicle orders the engagement radar to launch missiles Launch data is sent to the best placed of the battalion's six launch vehicles and it releases two surface-to-air missiles The engagement radar helps guide the missiles towards the target. It can guide up to 12 missiles simultaneously, engaging up to six targets at once
The vehicle used as a launcher is currently manufactured at the Minsk Wheel Tractor Plant (MZKT) in Belarus, although Russia is now shifting the production to its western city of Bryansk. |
www.Santoleri.com & www.Artist1.com
Nicholas Santoleri is an award-winning landscape, still life,
and portrait realism artist from (Chester County) Pennsylvania. Original paintings and fine art prints.
“The S-Bridge to Manayunk (Circa 1918)” award-winning watercolor by Nicholas P. Santoleri 2018
Recent Works Completed in 2018:
Recent Works Completed in 2017:
Works Completed in 2016:
“Ocean Pathway” (Ocean Grove, NJ) , an original pencil drawing and open edition print. ➡
Santoleri’s Artwork
For more than 30 years, Santoleri has created stunning and realistic art, and prints of many of his works are now available for your home or office.
Santoleri’s artworks highlight notable landscapes from throughout the Northeast, from Boathouse Row and Independence Hall in his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania backyard to other vistas from New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts. He also captures some Italian landscape views, adding international perspective to his portfolio.
His watercolors, pencil drawings, and other media works also include portraits and still-life paintings captured in the realist style. Among his more notable portraits is an oil painting of former President Bill Clinton, which currently hangs at the Thoreau Institute in Concord, Massachusetts.
Many of Santoleri’s works have also helped support charitable efforts, such as fundraising drives for Salvation Army, the Ronald McDonald House and many other agencies. He is also a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and continues refining his skills at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Read biography here… ➡
This website may be searched by key terms to help find a specific view or site. For more information on prints or specific artworks, contact the art studio at 610-995-2047.
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There was a stir at a conference of Mediterranean writers in Marseilles yesterday when Israeli author Moshe Sakal was booted from a panel discussion at the request of Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish.
The director of the conference, French-Jewish author Pierre Assouline, said Sakal's participation in the panel, which was on the Arab Spring, "was not crucial."
Moshe Sakal Daniel Tchetchik
Speaking by phone from Marseilles, Assouline told Haaretz that in the previous two years the conference had been held, Palestinian writers had refused to come because there were Israeli participants.
This year, Darwish said he had no problem with Israeli participants, so long as he would not have to sit with any of them at the same roundtable discussion.
Assouline said that when he explained to the audience before the discussion about the Palestinian's refusal to sit with Sakal, "half of the crowd got very angry, and the other half was thrilled."
Sakal, who entered the hall after the discussion had begun so he could listen to it, was somewhat surprised when his entrance caused a stir.
"I entered the hall just as [Moroccan poet] Tahar Ben Jelloun was speaking forcefully against this type of boycott," Sakal said. "He said that there are many Israeli authors who are supportive [of the Palestinian cause] and one should speak to them even if one doesn't approve of current Israeli politics."
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"There were hundreds of people there and there were a lot of hecklers," Sakal said. "People were very upset."
Darwish, said Sakal, accused him of expelling him from his home, and said "the Jewish-Arabs [Jews from Arab lands] particularly hate the Palestinians."
Sakal, who is of Syrian and Egyptian origin, said he told the crowd "I understand them but I also understand my situation, and the one thing that distressed me was that he didn't try to find out who I am or what my views are." |
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Non, le fourrage d’un petit pain par une saucisse, aussi salace soit-elle, ne risque pas de « corrompre les mineurs ». Pas plus que le frottement l’un contre l’autre de deux paquets de céréales, ou l’entrechoquement d’un pot de moutarde et d’une bouteille de ketchup, même accompagnés de soupirs plus ou moins suggestifs. C’est ce qu’ont estimé les juges du tribunal administratif de Paris qui, mardi 13 décembre, examinaient le recours déposé par plusieurs associations dont Promouvoir (proche des milieux catholiques intégristes et habituée des demandes de reclassification) demandant la suspension du visa d’exploitation de Sausage Party, dont l’affiche montre une saucisse fièrement dressée.
Ce film d’animation américain, qui met en scène des objets et produits de consommation courante se trémoussant dans des poses évocatrices, avant de se livrer à une orgie dans un caddie de supermaché, est sorti en France le 30 novembre accompagné de la mention « interdit aux moins de 12 ans ». Une restriction que Promouvoir, suivie par Juristes pour l’enfance et Action pour la dignité humaine, juge insuffisante et qu’elle demandait de porter aux moins de 16 ans. Aux Etats-Unis, le film a été classé R (pour restricted), c’est-à-dire interdit aux moins de 17 ans non accompagnés d’un adulte.
Après s’être livré à une analyse des scènes critiquées, le juge des référés a estimé que le film « ne diffusait pas un message à caractère violent et que les scènes à caractère sexuel ne visaient pas à corrompre les mineurs. Il lui a semblé que, compte tenu notamment de la dimension humoristique du film, l’absence d’interdiction aux jeunes adolescents ne méconnaissait pas l’exigence de protection de l’enfance et de la jeunesse ».
Le texte de l’ordonnance, qui donne le détail de la décision, recèle des passages savoureux : « Considérant que, si une séquence, furtive, mime les relations sexuelles entre une boîte de gruau et une boîte de crackers, elle ne paraît pas, en l’état de l’instruction, figurer un viol à caractère raciste », peut-on ainsi lire dans les attendus du jugement. Les juges, qui ont visionné le film minute par minute, se sont aussi arrêtés sur la « fameuse » scène finale, et en ont conclu que « si, durant trois minutes, des aliments et autres produits de consommation, dont aucun ne figure au demeurant un mineur, simulent explicitement diverses pratiques sexuelles, cette scène se déroule dans un univers imaginaire, et ne peut être interprétée comme incitant le spectateur mineur à en reproduire le contenu ».
« Allô le CNC »
Les détracteurs du film lui reprochaient de tenter de « corrompre la jeunesse » en créant la confusion par son style – le dessin animé –, le ton et l’expression des personnages rappelant, selon eux, l’univers de Pixar, le studio américain à qui l’on doit notamment les films pour enfants Le Monde de Dory, Vice Versa ouToy Story. André Bonnet, avocat de l’association Promouvoir, estimait en outre qu’une « bande-annonce totalement trompeuse » visait « volontairement à toucher le jeune public ». Le juge dit au contraire que « l’interdiction de la diffusion aux moins de douze ans, le titre, l’affiche et la bande-annonce du film mettent suffisamment en relief son caractère “subversif” et l’omniprésence des connotations sexuelles ».
D’autres associations s’étaient élevées contre ce film dès sa sortie en salles en France. La Manif pour tous avait, dans un tweet, demandé une interdiction aux mineurs en interpellant le Centre national de l’image animée (CNC, qui délivre les visas d’explotation) : « Allô @LeCNC, expliquez-nous comment vous autorisez la projection d’une partouze géante, à voir en famille? » Les Associations familiales catholiques (AFC) ont de leur côté mis en garde contre « un film clairement pornographique, sous couvert de second degré et de politiquement incorrect ».
Présenté par les producteurs, Colombia et Annapurn Pictures, et le distributeur comme « la première comédie d’animation pour adultes à l’humour particulièrement osé », le film de Greg Tiernan et Conrad Vernon se veut une critique de la société de consommation, portée par une fantaisie déjantée et des dialogues particulièrement crus. |
(STATS) – The most interesting debate this week may make Clinton and Trump appear like best buds.
Fans of North Dakota State, Sam Houston State, Jacksonville State and Eastern Washington can all beat their chests and clamor for No. 1.
Top-ranked North Dakota State's 19-17, last-second loss to No. 11 South Dakota State on Saturday has opened the door to a possible new No. 1 team when the STATS FCS Top 25 is released Monday afternoon.
Voters were quick to lower NDSU after this same weekend one year ago, when they dropped from No. 2 to 8 following a loss to South Dakota.
Will it happen in the national media poll again? Probably, but should it?
Southland Conference leader Sam Houston State (6-0), which is rolling behind quarterback Jeremiah Briscoe, would be next in line to move up from No. 2 and is one of two unbeaten teams in the FCS along with The Citadel.
Two-time defending Ohio Valley Conference champ Jacksonville State (5-1) has only lost to an FBS opponent, while Big Sky power Eastern Washington (5-1) has only lost to North Dakota State in overtime.
NDSU deserves to be ahead of Eastern because it did win the head-to-head matchup and has other quality wins over Charleston Southern, Iowa and Illinois State.
The Bison also routed Jacksonville State in last year's national championship game and have tormented Sam Houston in three of the past five postseasons.
Those games have nothing to do with this season, you say.
Well, they don't. But if FCS followers could agree going into the weekend that NDSU had separated itself from the rest of the competition by winning a record five straight national titles, then should a loss to a surging rival on the final play from scrimmage be enough to knock the FCS standard from the top spot?
Maybe not.
When New Hampshire became No. 1 late in the 2014 regular season, coach Sean McDonnell was quick to say NDSU was still the best team in the FCS. It proved to be that way by the end of the playoffs.
Then again, a new No. 1 would stand to stir the pot a little more and make the upcoming FCS playoffs all the more anticipated.
Let the campaigning begin.
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SECOND AND 10=
Ten more observations from the FCS weekend:
1.) Team of the week? Maybe South Dakota State, maybe The Citadel, but then there's Holy Cross, the other team that knocked off an unbeaten squad. The Crusaders (3-4) ended Harvard's 16-game winning streaks on both the road and outside the Ivy League with a 27-17 triumph. Senior linebacker Kyle Young led a defense that had six sacks and quarterback Geoff Wade threw for two touchdowns.
2.) Led by South Dakota State's 19-17 win at North Dakota State, the Missouri Valley Football Conference's five conference games were decided by a combined 15 points. Youngstown State rallied to a 14-10 win over Northern Iowa and three games were decided by three points each – South Dakota won 33-30 at Indiana State in double overtime, Western Illinois won at Missouri State 38-35 and Illinois State held off Southern Illinois 31-28. That was an incredible day of thrilling action.
3.) It's possible three teams which run a triple option offense could make the FCS playoffs. The Citadel (6-0), which leads the FCS in rushing, is in first place in the Southern Conference and primed to return to the postseason. But Wofford (4-2) is still very much in the SoCon picture, though it needs to beat The Citadel next weekend. Cal Poly (4-2) also is having a big season out of the Big Sky, with wins over Montana and South Dakota State and close losses to Nevada and North Dakota.
4.) As expected, Columbia came up short in second-year coach Al Bagnoli's return to Penn on the opposing sideline. It's Penn that's part of a three-way tie for first place in the Ivy League with Harvard and Princeton following its 35-10 win over Columbia. The Quakers have defeated the Lions in 20 straight seasons – the first 18 with Bagnoli leading the way.
5.) If any team is going to challenge defending champ Charleston Southern in the Big South, it might as well be the conference's most successful program, Liberty. The Flames (3-3, 1-0) not only beat Kennesaw State 36-21 in their conference opener, but they became the first team to reach 50 all-time Big South wins. Coach Turner Gill's Flames had to retool after suffering key graduation losses, but they tested themselves out of conference and have a chance to be unbeaten in the Big South when they host Charleston Southern on Nov. 12.
6.) Some of the conference title races have surprise contenders challenging the powers. North Dakota moved to 4-0 in the Big Sky and a half-game ahead of Eastern Washington, but dark horse Weber State is keeping the pressure on at 3-0. Pioneer League power San Diego is 4-0 in the league, while Marist, which often overachieves, is right behind at 3-0. Stony Brook, 3-0 in CAA Football, is right behind front-running James Madison, which is 4-0. Wagner already has more Northeast Conference wins this year at 2-0 than last year's one-win campaign. The Seahawks will benefit from co-leader Saint Francis and defending champ Duquesne playing next weekend.
7.) North Dakota (5-2), which rolled past Southern Utah 45-23, hadn't won a game on the same day North Dakota State lost one since Nov. 12, 2011. The Fighting Hawks will always be in the shadow of the program downstate, but they have done well to build their own winning program under coach Bubba Schweigert. Quarterback Keaton Studsrud has figured it all out and the running game is strong, with the Fighting Hawks still playing physical on defense. With an easy conference schedule this season, they could win their first Big Sky title and appear playoff-bound.
8.) Two-time defending SWAC champion Alcorn State was starting to look in trouble a couple weeks ago, but it has responded from three straight losses to win twice and move back atop the East Division. The Braves (3-3, 3-2) beat Texas Southern 23-20 when De'Lance Turner blocked a punt deep in the Tigers' territory in the fourth quarter and scored on a 2-yard run on the next play. They are a different team with quarterback Lenorris Footman back running the offense, but he suffered a shoulder injury in the win.
9.) No running back in the FCS is hotter than North Carolina A&T senior Tarik Cohen, who has reached 200 yards in three straight games, including 220 yards and three touchdowns in a 52-35 win at Bethune-Cookman. He scored on an 87-yard run to go with his FCS-season-best 94-yarder against Hampton. The MEAC's all-time rushing leader is the active rushing leader in the FCS and needs 79 yards to surpass 5,000 for his career.
10.) Even good teams with new coaches can struggle, such as Eastern Kentucky, McNeese and Montana State. The best performances among new FCS coaches have been at The Citadel (Brent Thompson) and CAA leader James Madison (Mike Houston), which are both in the Top 10, as well as Western Illinois (Charlie Fisher), which is closing in on the Top 10. Those three teams are a combined 17-2.
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A LOOK AHEAD=
While North Dakota State hopes to rebound next Saturday at Western Illinois, the two Missouri Valley co-leaders will get together as South Dakota State hosts Youngstown State.
Other key conference matchups include: Big Sky, Montana at Northern Arizona and Weber State at Southern Utah; Big South, Monmouth at Liberty; CAA, Albany at Villanova; Ivy, Harvard at Princeton; MEAC, North Carolina Central at Morgan State; NEC, Duquesne at Saint Francis (Friday night) and Wagner at Bryant; Ohio Valley, Eastern Kentucky at Jacksonville State; Southern, The Citadel at Wofford; and Southland, Sam Houston State at Nicholls. |
EXCLUSIVE: There isn’t a premiere date yet for Showtime’s new Twin Peaks series but the David Lynch directed project may be making an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival.
While nothing has been nailed down as strong as a good cup of joe, Deadline has learned that there have been discussions for the new version of the acclaimed ABC 1990s TV series to be showcased at the Robert Redford founded fest – which has increasingly seen a larger and larger small screen presence.
It is unclear whether the talks will lead to a Twin Peaks event at Sundance, which, if it happens, could be a surprise screening, one of the signature features at the festival. An element of surprise has been a major part of every Twin Peaks-related announcement so far, which all have been controlled by Lynch.
Another person with knowledge of the potential Sundance situation says “conversations are ongoing” about some sort of presence for the Showtime show in Park City later this month. Reached for comment, Showtime denied that Twin Peaks would be previewed at Sundance.
Details about the new series have been kept close to the cabler’s vest, but we know that Showtime’s Twin Peaks picks up 25 years after the often oddball residents of the Pacific Northwest town were shocked when homecoming queen Laura Palmer was murdered. The new series is written and EP’d by creators Mark Frost and Sundance alum Lynch. Before Sundance even kicks off, there is a Twin Peaks TCA panel set for January 9, though it is unclear whether footage from the series would be shown there.
Twin Peaks V.2017 also sees Kyle MacLachlan return as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. Additionally, several other cast members from the original series, including Lynch himself in a role as FBI Agent Gordon Cole, will be in the new version too.
After two seasons on ABC, Twin Peaks was canceled but Lynch resurrected the tale and characters for the big screen Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992 – which he directed.
The Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19-29, 2017.
Nellie Andreeva contributed to this report. |
It's difficult to imagine a modern workplace where men could assault women and it's not just seen as normal behaviour, but a "funny story" to tell around the office. But perhaps looking at the path these men take to get to such positions might explain how it might happen. When the "young sluts" Instagram account set up by boys from Brighton Boys Grammar was reported in the media last year, headmaster Ross Featherston said the school was taking the matter very seriously. The Age reported at the time that "a Melbourne mother who spoke out in disgust... told Fairfax Media that she received a threatening phone call from an 'old boys' club' parent'." When boys from Melbourne Grammar were filmed rating girls on a scale of one to 10 and being told not to bring anyone under a seven to the end of year formal the following month, headmaster Roy Kelley said the school was taking the matter very seriously. When a series of group sexual assaults at Trinity Grammar in Sydney was exposed in 2000, the school hired a public relations firm to divert the media reporting to an issue of "bullying" – rather than the systemic rapes of children, watched and applauded by large groups of students. Four students eventually pleaded guilty to various offences and were given good behaviour bonds. An in-depth examination of the culture at Trinity looked into the long history of so called elite schools and concluded that "bullying, brutalisation, and 'hardening' [is] characteristic of the production of ruling-class masculinity".
That none of the offenders faced any serious consequences was not surprising, the report said: "Each boy had his own team of lawyers. These were ruling-class boys." Boys at St Michael's Grammar School, one of Melbourne's most expensive private schools, were last year involved in what police called a pornography ring – a Dropbox folder containing nude images of girls from the school, believed to have been created by a 16-year-old male student, was accessed by several other male students at the school. These schools are feeders for the elite colleges like St Paul's College at Sydney University, infamous for its pro rape Facebook group. The five students suspended from ANU's John XXIII College for posting photos of women's breasts and rating them on Facebook were all from elite private schools in Victoria and NSW. Six months later another four students from John XXIII were suspended for chanting graphic sexual rhymes about "nailing women". Both Melbourne and Monash Universities had degrading "hotties of" Facebook pages taken down after female students complained. No one is born believing poor people are just too lazy to be rich or that women are nothing but objects of fear or lust. Despite how "very seriously" all these matters are taken by executives releasing media statements, sexism and entitlement seems entrenched in schools and universities for the privileged elite.
And where do the boys and young men go after their expensive educations? Merchant banks, prestigious professionals, corporate leadership and politics. The forensic examination of the rapes at Trinity summed it up perfectly: "From elite boarding schools to college to the boardroom, the masculinity of success separates emotion and friendship from each other and degrades caring and affection… women are outsiders, at best a necessary evil, at worst a threat to their liberties and to their very identity". Ross Gittins' incisive article yesterday described the effect of this on the national economy: "More than three decades of neoliberal ideology... have left business people convinced they're demi-gods, the source of all goodness and justly entitled to our approbation and genuflection." That entitlement wasn't created in a vacuum. No one is born believing poor people are just too lazy to be rich or that women are nothing but objects of fear or lust. These things are taught, both implicitly and explicitly.
The lessons are clear. From the ridiculousness of gendered clothes that allow boys to run and force girls to sit quietly with their knees together, to the sinister warning that encouraging rape might damage your job prospects by resurfacing "just when you need your best CV to work for you". Education and wealth is no protection from sexism. The huge gender disparity in the professions of the privileged like science, law and medicine are proof of that. Sexual harassment and bullying are higher in the media than in the police force. In the corporate world CEOs are three times more likely to be named John or Peter than to be female. The pipeline of sexism starts early and continues all the way through to the boardroom. Loading Whatever the results of the investigation into the allegations about the Macquarie Group, it would be a mistake to believe such cultures are rare or that they happen by accident.
They're taught in the homes, schools and universities of the wealthy and the trickle down effect of the attitudes, if not the entitlement itself, might be stronger than we imagine. |
SEOUL (Reuters) - LG Electronics Inc started taking orders on Wednesday for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions, hoping to outdo rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in the next-generation technology that could change the face of electronics displays.
Models pose next to LG Electronics' organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television in Seoul January 2, 2013. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won
LG Electronics and Samsung showcased 55-inch OLED TVs a year ago and they are expected to be priced up to five times higher than liquid-crystal display (LCD) equivalents when they reach store shelves next month.
Considered the future of consumer electronics displays, the OLED technology is more energy-efficient and offers higher contrast images than LCD, and is so thin that future mobile devices will be foldable like paper.
LG Electronics, the world’s No.2 TV manufacturer, said it would start delivery of the new TVs from early February, with plans to display them at 1,400 retail outlets in South Korea.
They would be launched in the United States, Europe and other Asian markets during the first quarter of 2013.
In South Korea, the 55-inch model would sell for 11 million won ($10,300) - nearly four times that of LG Electronics’ LED-backlit LCD model and around five times that of more common LCD versions.
The OLED launch announcement helped propel LG Electronics shares 5.4 percent higher on Wednesday, their biggest daily percentage gain in five months.
LG Display Co Ltd, which makes the OLED panel used in LG Electronics’ TVs, also rose 1.8 percent.
Global OLED TV sales are forecast to explode from 50,000 units this year to 1.7 million units in 2014, according to research firm DisplaySearch. That is still only a fraction of the roughly 250 million TVs of all kinds expected to be sold worldwide in 2013.
“The launch has more of a symbolic meaning that LG has the technology ready to commercialize ahead of any of its rivals,” said Sophia Kim, an analyst at Woori Investment & Securities.
“It will take another two to three years for OLED sets to become more affordable and thus commercially successful, because consumers will start buying them when prices halve to around 5 million won.”
OLED displays are already used on Samsung’s popular Galaxy S and Note smartphones.
But OLED panel makers such as LG Display and Samsung Display have yet to address manufacturing challenges to lower costs to compete against LCD panels.
LG and Samsung had hoped to launch OLED TVs in the second half of 2012 but manufacturing challenges meant they missed the potential windfall of hitting the U.S. market in time for the TV buying spree associated with the Superbowl in early February. ($1 = 1070.5750 Korean won) |
University of Toronto researchers are launching an app today designed to collect transit data that can be used by provincial and local governments as they make transit planning and funding decisions.
The university has been conducting transit surveys every five years since 1986, as part of a project funded by the Ontario government and municipalities in the Toronto area, as well as key transit agencies such as Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission.
Eric Miller, a professor of civil engineering at the university, and the principal investigator on the project, says that until now, the surveys have been conducted using landlines.
But as more people are using smartphones, Miller says trying to reach subjects by landline has become an issue, which is why the university is launching the new app, called City Logger.
The Android version will be released Monday and the iOS version will follow shortly after.
The app is free and will have two different versions, each being assigned randomly to users who download it.
The idea is to capture, in granular detail, transit users behaviour. It will run in the background collecting location and time data and will prompt users about the nature of their various trips, from commuting to work to trips to the grocery store to bicycle rides to walks.
"One real advantage is once the app is loaded we can observe people day after day for a week or two," Miller said. "You can identify patterns in people's lives."
More modern method
Miller said the traditional survey required "an army of people" that asked, when people answered their home phones, where they travelled on a given day.
"But people tend to forget short trips. You ask them what they did and they say went to work and came home, but forgot about going for lunch," Miller said.
It is also a much better tool to capture walking and cycling trips, he said.
"That's becoming more and more important to understand what's known as active transportation," Miller said.
The new initiative is far from perfect, he said, as not everyone has a smartphone — he estimates 60 to 65 per cent of Torontonians own one — and the data will complement their traditional survey, he said.
The initiative is part of a three-year, $1-million research project, he said.
Miller's team reports to the Transportation Information Steering Committee, which is chaired by the province's Ministry of Transportation.
Muhammad Khan, a senior adviser with the ministry's transportation planning branch, said the app is an experiment to see if it can address age bias with the traditional survey.
He said they first noticed issues back in 1991 with the rise of cellphones.
"The data was becoming more biased towards older generations and that was the critical issue we identified," Khan said.
He said they had some success with users filling out the survey online, but believes the app has potential to retrieve granular data that can be difficult get otherwise. |
Alaska Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller’s former supervisor at an Anchorage law firm says they were all too happy to see him go after his three years at the firm.
Attorney David Shoup of the firm — then called Condon Partnow & Sharrock told Justin Elliott of Salon: “We at this firm were not eager to have him stay, and so when he announced he was leaving, we were relieved.”Elliott reports that Shoup couldn’t say much about Miller’s time at the firm because of personnel policies.
But though Shoup says he is a registered Democrat who donated to Scott McAdams, he also says “my view of Joe Miller is colored by knowing Joe Miller.”
Miller has also had some trouble in another previous job: He admitted this week that he was disciplined during his time at the Fairbanks North Star Borough for violating the borough’s ethics policy.
The TPM Poll Average shows Miller with 34.5%, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) with 33.1%, and McAdams with 27.5%. |
Where’s our economy headed? Soon every factory worker will have to start driving for Uber, and the trucks will drive themselves—at least so the business press tells us.
But Kim Moody, co-founder of this magazine and the author of many books on U.S. labor, paints a different picture. Chris Brooks asked him to cut through the hype and describe what’s coming for working people and the opportunities for unions.
This is Part 1 of our interview with Kim Moody. Watch for Part 2, coming next week. —Eds.
Labor Notes: We read a lot about the “gig economy,” where workers cycle through multiple jobs using app-based companies like Uber, TaskRabbit [for everyday tasks such as cleaning or moving], and Mechanical Turk [for online tasks such as labeling images]. Is this really the future of work?
Kim Moody: One thing to notice is that, aside from outfits like Uber, most of these are not employers. They're digital platforms where you can find a job.
The apps are not determining the hours and pay, or even the technology used on the jobs. It’s still employers that are calling the shots. So if jobs are getting worse, it’s not because people can find them digitally as opposed to reading them in the newspaper.
Also, discussions of the gig economy often assume that suddenly there are all these people who are multiple job-holders. But the fact is that the proportion of the workforce who have more than one job hasn’t changed much in 40 years.
The vast majority of them are people with regular full-time jobs who are also moonlighting, which is a very old thing. There are a lot of multiple job-holders, but there have always been a lot of them.
There’s also been talk of the “1099 economy.” Are we really moving towards a future where 40 percent of workers will be freelancing?
The idea that freelancers can become 40 percent of the workforce is science fiction.
There are two kinds of self-employed. The greatest number are the “unincorporated self-employed,” or independent contractors. Their numbers have been dropping for years.
The other group, the incorporated ones, are people who run a small business. They have grown somewhat, but they are still just 4 percent of the workforce.
You argue that the “gig economy” and “precarious work” concepts miss the mark because they don’t get at the most concerning change: the rise of the crappy-job economy. Can you talk about what’s changed for workers and why?
The first change is work intensification. Work has gotten dramatically harder in the last 30 years or so, and continues to.
That’s happened through lean production, which reduces the amount of labor to produce the same or greater amount of product or service and is tied to just-in-time production. Lean production began in the automobile industry in the 1980s, but now it is everywhere. It’s in hospitals, it’s in schools.
Another aspect is electronic and biometric monitoring, measuring, and surveillance, which allow employers to see how to get more work literally out of each minute. Another aspect is that the amount of break time has fallen dramatically since the ’80s.
Whether you are working full-time or part-time, in a precarious job or not, chances are you are going to experience some of this.
The other side is income. Wages have been falling since the early 1970s. More and more people are actually working for less, in real terms, than they used to. This also impacts everybody, although part-time and precarious workers are likely to get paid even less than full-time people.
And if you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for the fastest-growing jobs, millions of new jobs over the next decade or so, 70 percent are projected to be low-skill, low-pay jobs.
In other words, we are not heading for some big high-tech economy. Instead we are heading for a low-paid workforce with crappy jobs. The end of good jobs is nigh.
While app-based “just-in-time” gigs have gotten lots of media attention, far less attention has been paid to “just-in-time” production. Can you talk about why massive logistics hubs have emerged, and what they mean for union organizing?
In order for globalization to be efficient, low pay isn’t necessarily enough, because you have to move products from one location to another. That required a change in the way products are moved—the “logistics revolution.”
The time it takes to deliver a product to the point of sale is an important factor in competition. Like production, transportation now operates on a just-in-time basis. Products move faster.
The speed of trucks, planes, and trains did not change. What did was the way things are processed. Goods don’t stay in warehouses very long. Products arrive on rail and are cross-docked and moved out by truck in a matter of hours. This process has really only taken shape in the 21st century.
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In order to make it work, the industry has created logistics clusters. These are huge concentrations of warehouses where rail, truck, air, and water transportation meet and can be coordinated, usually electronically.
You might think, “Well, this is all very high-tech.” But it turns out that it still requires thousands and thousands of workers. In the U.S. there are 60 of these clusters, but three stand out: the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Los Angeles and Long Beach port area, and Chicago. Each of these employs, in a small geographic area, at least 100,000 people.
Now, the whole idea of outsourcing back in the 1980s was to break up the concentrations of workers in places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, or Gary. But what these companies have done now, inadvertently, is to recruit incredibly massive concentrations of manual laborers.
It has evolved in a way that might shoot these companies in the foot—because here you have the potential to organize vast numbers of poorly paid workers into unions. And there are attempts to do just that
The other thing is that these clusters are tied together by just-in-time systems—which means you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of points in the transportation system that are highly vulnerable. If you stop work in one place, you are going to close down huge areas
Grind to a Halt The vulnerability of “just-in-time” production was on display recently at General Motors. Clark-Cutler-McDermott Co., which provides parts for almost every GM vehicle produced in North America, filed for bankruptcy in June. But with no inventory on hand and no alternative source of supply, GM warned that a shutdown at this supplier would halt its vehicle production across the continent within a day—and every day the shutdown lasted, the company would lose millions of dollars. GM scored a temporary restraining order, forcing Clark-Cutler-McDermott to continue production while the automaker sought out other suppliers. Ford faced a similar issue in May when the all-temp workforce at its Detroit Chassis parts plant in Ohio threatened to strike , which could have halted production at a nearby Ford factory within a day. The employer quickly agreed to recognize their union. —Chris Brooks
Media commentators and even presidential candidates blame the loss of millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs on trade and outsourcing. You’re skeptical. How do you explain it?
Outsourcing, if it is in the U.S.—which most of it has been—can break up the union, it can be very inconvenient to the people who lose their jobs, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate jobs in the U.S. The jobs are just moved to a different, lower-paid group of workers.
Offshoring is another thing, but it’s not as widespread as people think. While moving production abroad has definitely impacted certain industries like steel, textile, and clothing, it cannot account for the loss of jobs we have seen. I estimate that between a million and 2 million jobs have been lost since the mid-’80s to imports and offshoring.
Manufacturing output, from the 1960s to just before the Great Recession in 2007, actually grew by 131 percent; the manufacturing sector more than doubled its output. If everything was going abroad, you couldn’t possibly have that kind of growth.
How can this be? I believe the answer lies in lean production and new technology, as we talked about earlier. Productivity literally doubled, and manufacturing jobs dropped by 50 percent or more. It’s the productivity increase that explains the loss of jobs.
It is very difficult for politicians to deal with this question, because it means attacking employers. It means saying, “You are taking too much out of your workforce.” And of course since most economists, politicians, and experts think that productivity growth is a wonderful thing, it’s beyond criticism.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing about the future of automation. Former Service Employees President Andy Stern has been making the media rounds claiming that driverless trucks are going to replace millions of drivers.
You can sell a lot of books with this pop futurology. It reminds me of the great automation scare of the 1950s. It was popular then to make predictions that there wouldn’t be any factory workers left.
And automation has reduced the number of factory workers, but there are still 8 or 9 million of them lingering around—despite all this technology, which is much greater than anything they predicted in the ’50s.
I have a shelf of books predicting “the end of work.” And yet we have millions more workers than we used to—the problem being that they are worse off than they used to be, not that they don’t exist.
There’s more! We also asked Kim Moody about workforce demographics and outsourcing to the South. Stay tuned for Part 2.
Read more: Everyone in this auto parts plant was a temp—until they all joined the union and threatened to strike.
Read more: The Cargo Chain is a beautiful poster/pamphlet that maps out how ship hands, longshoremen, truck drivers, railroad operators, and warehouse workers move goods across North America. |
Ciaran appeared in many stage productions with prestigious companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and has gone on to star in films such as The Road to Perdition and Tomb Raider, and TV dramas such as Persuasion and the upcoming Rome.
What's he been in?
Ciaran stars alongside top names such as Kevin McKidd, James Purefoy and Polly Walker in the major drama Rome. He plays Julius Caesar.
His early career was spent on stage. After a long stint with the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre, he went on to perform in various theatres in both London and Ireland. He appeared in many productions for The Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre and was in the original cast for Patrick Marber's hit play Closer.
One of Ciaran's first screen roles was in Excalibur, the hugely successful telling of the King Arthur legend. The film also starred Helen Mirren and Cherie Lunghi and launched the careers of fellow Irishmen, Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne.
During this time he also appeared in a number of dramas on TV. These included Seaforth, Prime Suspect and he played Brian Keenan alongside Colin Firth as John McCarthy in Hostages, a fictionalised account of real events in Lebanon in the 1980s. He also played a dashing Jane Austen hero when he appeared as Captain Wentworth in an acclaimed adaptation of Persuasion with Amanda Root.
His career continued with roles in many major films such as playing the baddie in the second Lara Croft, Tomb Raider film; Husband to Helen Mirren's character in the nude WI ladies film, Calendar Girls and as the subject of a hit in The Road To Perdition.
Ciaran also appeared in the big-screen version of the 1980's cop show Miami Vice. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx play Crocket and Tubbs. He has also recently worked on a major new historical drama with Steven Spielberg.
Did you know?
Ciaran originally started studying law, before leaving university to take up a place at RADA.
His first acting job was as the back end of a pantomime horse.
Personal Details
Ciaran is married and has daughter
He was born in Belfast in 1953. |
SmartBridge Technology by ARK
BoldNinja Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 3, 2016
Did you know that ARK has a special feature known as SmartBridge? When you hear the crew members of ARK discuss our goals and strengths you will often hear SmartBridge mentioned. However, the reader may say to himself, “what exactly is a SmartBridge”?
Well, if you are one of those people, then this blog post will help you learn about the benefits of SmartBridges. The SmartBridge is a bit of code which helps ARK to be extremely diverse in the functionality provided by the ARK network. SmartBridges connect different blockchains to the core of ARK. This allows linked blockchains to send and receive a wide variety of data. This aspect can also be utilized by centralized services as well to provide Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), outside of the blockchain ecosystem.
The way in which this groundbreaking feature is able to achieve these significant features is through ‘Encoded Listeners’, which respond to specific triggers found within the SmartBridge. These listeners allow for their coded autonomous systems to recognize any trigger function notices created by a user. They subsequently process the information accordingly, and relay the information intended to be sent or received.
These Encoded Listeners will be developed by the administrators of the connecting blockchains. However, ARK intends on supplying a Rapid Deployment Engine, which will assist in creating these Encoded Listeners. This will make this process flow in the most efficient manner.
To discuss all of the potential use cases which can be utilized by SmartBridge would take volumes. So, instead, we will present examples to help put our explanation of SmartBridges into perspective.
One great example is the transfer of payments through various blockchain networks. This allows users to send a transaction with a specific amount of ETH from ARK, directly to the holder of the ETH account, once the information is processed and verified. Other applications will eventually lead to the transfer of data for user profiles, service ratings, contracts, and other applications. The use cases really are endless.
Another use case could be a 3rd party coin exchange service may look for specific triggers and handle cross blockchain payments for their customers. For example, You have ARK but want to pay for a movie using Netflix Credits but you don’t have any Netflix Credits. You could go through multiple steps to transfer into these credits to watch a movie but because you are a member of Bob’s coinshift platform, you can send an ARK transaction to bob with the instructions to pay for the video you want to watch with Netflix Credits on your behalf. This would not require Bob to be there and would be handled by the Centralized and Decentralized system that Bob’s Coinshift provides instantly for the consumer.
To more easily grasp the concept of SmartBridges, please review this image (full link to bigger image http://s22.postimg.org/a12rormvj/smartbridges_1.jpg ):
In this blog post, we have only scratched the surface of what can be achieved through SmartBridge technology. However, I hope it has helped to clarify any misunderstandings and given the reader some insight into its application and its potential. SmartBridges — connecting isolated blockchain technologies within blockchain ecosystem. We don’t build walls, we build bridges. |
When I first wrote this page, I lowballed Harem’s age at 27, which is closer to her age plus just her first dupe. I was surprised when I added them all up, so I went back and changed her original “a few months” to “a few years.”
This might be a slight reversal to thoughts I had expressed earlier, in that Harem used to have to get on a plane like everyone else to traverse the country. Once she’s there, she can use that body as an anchor to teleport her other dupes between them, effectively extending her range infinitely, at least as far as she knows.
For narrative reasons, I decided I needed her to be able to get places quickly so I didn’t have to hold a story up for 3 hours while people transported themselves around. I realized it would be a recurring problem since Sydney and Max can traverse the country in very short order, so I’d be stuck with whoever I’d already established was there or ferried along in Sydney’s bubble bus. So now Harem can at least make her way up each coast, and to cities around the great lakes with only a few hops. The center of the country is still largely inaccessible to her, at least without more conventional transportation.
I’ve always said Harem has a lot of life experiences and skills from jobs she’s held. I probably have to expand my mental list because she’s been around for like twice as long as I had though. Sure, some people make it to 50 without developing any significant skills, or they become quite good at one or two things, but Harem spends a year or two at a job then switches with the intention of building a raft of skills. More than a raft actually. A uh, cutter? A corsair of skills? I don’t know ship sizes.
Also I should say Harem didn’t spend a lot of time working at Starbucks or Wal-Mart (she did some of that for the experience of it) but mostly she’d get jobs working at a locksmith or an auto repair shop or a place making confectionery or a kitchen. Trade skills, Dirty Jobs stuff. Harem can make a meringue, crack a safe, rebuild your transmission, deliver a calf, then build a dresser. Actually, she can do it all at once.
Check out Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers. Sydney’s first Crossover! I’ve made a dedicated blog post for it, please comment there.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey. |
By Roger C.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782)
Out they went
“We booted the bastards out,” D said. “They wanted to water down AA and they tampered with the Steps.”
D was a representative at the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Intergroup. He was speaking immediately after the vote in May of 2011 to remove the meetings of Beyond Belief and We Agnostics, two agnostic groups, from the official GTA AA meeting list.
The Greater Vancouver Intergroup Society (GVIS) will soon decide on whether or not to list the agnostic meetings of two AA groups, We Agnostics and Sober Agnostics, on the regional AA meeting list and to include – or not – representatives of these groups in their monthly Greater Vancouver Intergroup Society meetings.
What many in AA don’t understand is that these agnostics and atheists are neither trying to water down AA or tamper with the fellowship’s program of recovery, as D so passionately put it.
And in the end we are not the foes of anyone in AA.
Appendix II: Spiritual Experience
As we all know, the Big Book – Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism – was first published in April, 1939.
What we don’t always know is that it immediately caused some real problems for some of those one hundred men and for other readers of the book.
And so in the second printing two years later in March, 1941, Appendix II: Spiritual Experience was added to the Big Book.
The appendix, just under four hundred words in length, is an effort to define more carefully and clearly the nature of recovery from alcoholism as it was understood by the majority of the men in the fellowship at that time. It is also more inclusive in its presentation of getting sober and living a life of sobriety.
In the appendix, sobriety is described as the result of a “personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.”
Moreover, that recovery is described as a path that usually takes time, sometimes lots of time. It is an educational journey involving change, learning and growth.
You can almost hear the sigh of relief when those of us who are a tad short of a belief in a divine and miraculous salvation read these words, simply because they so well reflect our own stories of “what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.” It acknowledges the often-times hard work of recovery from alcoholism. For us there is and was no interventionist God involved and “our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the ‘educational variety’ because they develop slowly over a period of time,” as it is so very well put in the appendix.
Another valuable thing Appendix II does is redefine a “higher power” as an “inner resource.” Here it is: “Our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.” We don’t have to look up into the clouds and stars for this higher power. Instead we can look within ourselves to find new insights into the nature and demands of our own lives and the absolute necessity, for us, of continuous sobriety.
The appendix still explicitly includes “God” as a higher power and a part of recovery for many alcoholics. Agnostics and atheists have no trouble with that, as a rule. Nor do we try to tell “our more religious members” that they should give up their faith and embrace agnosticism. What is extraordinarily disturbing – and sometimes amounts to bullying – is that the reverse is not true. Some believers never stop insisting that agnostics and atheists drop their own world views and adopt the believer’s God-based understanding of “how the world works.” Creepy to many of us, especially in a program that is meant to be based on attraction and not promotion.
Finally, the appendix embraces inclusivity, a hallmark of the guiding principles of AA. It acknowledges that the “personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself in many different forms.”
“In many different forms.”
This phrase invites us to welcome the fact that there are different paths to recovery. We should not in AA suggest there is only one way – “my way, the way I did it” – to get sober and maintain our sobriety. Because if we look around us honestly, that’s clearly not the truth.
Tampering with the Steps
The argument used to boot the agnostic groups out of the GTA Intergroup and its list of regional AA meetings is that we have “tampered” with the Steps.
Agnostic groups sometimes use alternative versions of the Steps.
Appendix II of the Big Book makes a distinction between two types of AA members. There are those who believe and those who do not. For instance, when describing the importance of an “inner resource” or a “Power greater than ourselves” in recovery, the appendix points out that: “Our more religious members call it ‘God consciousness.’”
Quite correct. And our least religious members don’t. A commonly shared version of Step Three goes as follows: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us.”
Many don’t relate to or find meaning in the word “God,” and the ideas that it represents. And many cannot engage in the mental gymnastics of saying “God as we understood Him” in order to please “our more religious members.”
Why don’t we just fake it ’til we make it? For one thing, being a hypocrite about one’s beliefs is the exact opposite of “rigorous honesty,” which is generally recognized as a crucial factor in recovery.
We are of course told, repeatedly and incessantly, that this deity of our understanding can be anything we want, a Good Orderly Direction or a Group of Drunks. So what’s wrong with reaching out to the “collective wisdom” of those who have searched before us?
Is the problem that this version has been written down?
It can be used because it’s the key to recovery “as we understand it” but it shouldn’t be written down? It can’t be shared in a group? It’s supposed to be a secret?
Or we get the boot?
Honestly?
Two things.
The Steps – even as originally written – are “suggestions” only. It says so on page 59 of the Big Book.
An AA member doesn’t have to do the Steps if that is her or his decision. Indeed, no one has ever been booted out of AA for not doing the Steps.
They are suggestions, not an order. Nowhere does it say, “To be a member of AA you must do the 12 Steps – and you must do them exactly as written.”
That’s not our fellowship.
AA is about unity, not uniformity.
The reality is that many agnostics and atheists in AA fully accept the premise that their sobriety depends upon “a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.” That’s why some of us have a commitment to the 12 Steps. For many, the Steps can bring about that change. And we understand that change is possible without “Him.” Without an interventionist “God.” And so many of us have our own versions of the Steps – based upon the original Steps – that allow us to access the resources that will bring about that change and help us to grow as we nurture and bolster our ongoing and continuous sobriety.
As members of AA, we also recognize that the Steps are suggestions only. If someone feels that the Eightfold Path of Buddhism is more helpful as a program of recovery, then that is fine too.
We are not here to tell another person what to do, but to support her or him in recovery.
That is AA, as we understand it.
The last thing the Steps were ever meant to be was an excuse to boot suffering alcoholics out of the door of the fellowship, even if the Steps were ignored or if versions different from the original Steps were used and shared. The person who wrote the Steps summed all of this up quite perfectly:
We must remember that AA’s Steps are suggestions only. A belief in them as they stand is not at all a requirement for membership among us. This liberty has made AA available to thousands who never would have tried at all, had we insisted on the Twelve Steps just as written. (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, p. 81)
A final thought on the Steps. We do not want to change the official and original AA Steps. No vote need be held by the General Service Conference. The various versions that are sometimes shared at agnostic groups are not meant to change the original 12 Steps but are solely for the use of the group, based upon the conscience of its members. Besides, these groups no more require their members to use any version of the Steps than does AA as a whole.
AA and Inclusivity
AA was always meant to be an umbrella under which any suffering alcoholic could find support. Any alcoholic. Any group of alcoholics. Practicing that is not watering down AA.
Tradition Three (long form):
Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation.
Some have argued that agnostic groups are affiliated to an outside issue, the ideology of agnosticism or atheism. That is really quite silly as non-theism is as much an ideology as not stamp collecting is a hobby. It would be a lot more legitimate to say that groups that end their meetings with the Lord’s Prayer are affiliated to the Christian Church, an outside issue and one of the few things forbidden by our Traditions and promised in the AA Preamble: “AA is not allied with any sect, denomination…”
The affiliation accusations against agnostic groups are simply not worth any further discussion.
And just in case the wording of the Third Tradition is not clear enough, in an AA Grapevine article published in 1946, appropriately titled Anarchy Melts, Bill Wilson wrote:
So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most anti-social, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholics Anonymous Group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our Recovery Program, even anti-each other — these rampant individuals are still an A.A. Group if they think so!
Forced by the facts to admit that agnostic and atheistic groups are not in violation of Tradition Three, some of our “more religious members” then resort to the argument that these alcoholics are trying to change AA and that that is a violation of Tradition Four: “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting AA as a whole.”
Do agnostic groups affect AA as a whole?
Not at all.
Certainly, if asked, most non-believers in AA are of the opinion that there ought to be room for all under the big tent of the fellowship. Our understanding is that AA is inclusive, and accepts everybody with a desire to stop drinking, regardless of belief or lack of belief. But that’s not new: it has always been AA’s message and its primary purpose.
Historically, agnostics groups have trundled along quite unnoticed in AA. Just two examples of this are the Quad A groups in Chicago which have been in existence since 1975, and the groups in California which started with the first group called “We Agnostics” in 1980 in Los Angeles. You can read about one of the founders of that group here: Father of We Agnostics Dies.
This peace is only disturbed when agnostics and atheists and their groups are crudely and unexpectedly attacked, as happened in Toronto. Then there is exactly what can be expected: an explosion of unseemly controversy and unwanted publicity.
Most agnostics and atheists in AA want the fellowship to be what it was originally meant to be: inclusive of everybody! We are not trying to change AA, we are hoping that AA will be and do what it was meant to be and do in the first place, when it was first founded.
The attacks on agnostics and atheists in AA most often display an intolerance towards others, and a disrespect for the beliefs of other alcoholics.
It drives people away.
As Bill Wilson wrote in another article in the Grapevine, The Dilemma of No Faith, in 1961: “In AA’s first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking… God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging – perhaps fatally so – to numbers of non-believers.”
The “subtle and sometimes crude” aggression towards agnostics and atheists in AA, and their groups, ought to stop. The damage is too real, and much too serious, to far, far too many people. Proselytizing and/or attacking simply don’t belong in our fellowship.
Decision time
Decision time is at hand in Vancouver.
The Greater Vancouver Intergroup Society (GVIS) is in the process of deciding on whether or not two agnostic groups shall be “deemed as AA groups” and “be allowed to be listed in the directory and on the GVIS website.”
How that decision is made is currently unclear. It may be a decision made by the Operating Committee or it may be put to a vote by group representatives at a regular monthly meeting of the GVIS.
As things now stand, the agnostic groups stand accused of “altering and/or modifying the literature of AA” and “using non GSO conference approved literature.”
Now, even the GSO will tell you that using literature that is not Conference-approved should never be considered a criminal act in AA, exposing a group to an ousting: The term Conference-approved “does not imply Conference disapproval of other material about AA. A great deal of literature helpful to alcoholics is published by others, and AA does not try to tell any individual member what he or she may or may not read.” (Service Material from the General Service Office)
And as for “altering and/or modifying” the 12 Steps – because that is really the issue here – well, we have dealt with that at length above and neither has that ever been a crime in the AA fellowship.
It’s one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic. It’s a fellowship of support. It has a “suggested” program of recovery.
It’s not about censorship. It’s not about rules. It’s not a “my way or the highway” kind of institution. That just isn’t AA.
Are those principles that hard to follow and respect?
One of the things that was shocking at the time the agnostic groups were booted out of the Greater Toronto Area Intergroup was the incredible hostility towards these groups by some of the people in attendance, some of the reps.
D’s reference to “booting out the bastards” was not that atypical, sadly.
It begs the question: Why is there this sometimes rampant hostility towards the non-believer?
Appendix II – a final reference to this wonderful addition to the Big Book – reminds us, all of us, that “Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.“
Open mindedness: “A willingness to respect views and beliefs that differ from one’s own. Open minded people have views but know that their views do not have to be held by everyone.” (Urban Dictionary)
For the record, we agnostics and atheists in AA are not, at least for the most part, bastards. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, moms and dads.
We are, come to think of it, exactly like every other member of the AA fellowship – the anyone’s, anywhere who reach out for help.
And who want the hand of AA always to be there.
Our beliefs and non-beliefs hurt not a single person in AA.
As Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, put it: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” (Notes on Virginia, 1782)
The Greater Vancouver Intergroup Society has a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate and support the very spirit and purpose of the fellowship of AA.
Or it can boot the two groups, We Agnostics and Sober Agnostics, off of the official regional AA meeting list and out of Intergroup. |
What's bugging locusts?
Since ancient times, locust plagues have been viewed as one of the most spectacular events in nature. In seemingly spontaneous fashion, as many as 10 billion critters can suddenly swarm the air and carpet the ground, blazing destructive paths that bring starvation and economic ruin.What makes them do it?A team of scientists led by Iain Couzin of Princeton University and including colleagues at the University of Oxford and the University of Sydney believes it may finally have an answer to this enduring mystery."Cannibalism," said Couzin, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton.Writing in the May 8 online edition of Current Biology, Couzin and colleagues say that the collective motion of locusts is driven by "cannibalistic interactions.""Cannibalism is rife within marching bands of locusts," said Couzin. Desert locusts usually feed on vegetation, but individual locusts have been observed to feed on other live locusts or cadavers. This behavior and its effect upon the group, however, have not previously been studied."No one knew until now that cannibalistic interactions are directly responsible for the collective motion exhibited by these bands," added Couzin, whose graduate student, Sepideh Bazazi, is the lead author on the paper.In zoology, cannibalism is defined as occurring when any species consumes members of its own kind.Young locusts are pressed to eat others when the food supply necessary for supporting the population starts to dwindle. Starved for essential nutrients such as protein and salt, young locust "nymphs" will nip at each other. Those under siege react by running from the aggressors. Others get jittery and simply seek to put space between them and any locust approaching from behind. That's how one aggressive interaction can lead to another and collectively start a vast migration, Couzin said.And the activity intensifies, as the biting and ominous approach of others increases both the propensity to move and the forward momentum of individual locusts.The researchers reached their conclusion by studying immature, flightless locusts. They developed computerized motion analysis to automatically track the insects marching in an enclosed arena.In nature, Couzin said, these locust nymphs can gather in large mobile groups called bands. They can stretch over tens of miles, devouring vegetation as they march. They inevitably precede the flying swarms of adult locusts."Once they take flight, locust control is extremely expensive and ineffective," Couzin said. "So understanding when, where and why the bands of juvenile locusts form is crucial for controlling locust populations."Through history, locusts have invaded up to one-fifth of the Earth's surface, he said. They have contributed to major humanitarian crises in areas such as Darfur and Niger.Besides having practical applications, understanding the movement of locusts also is part of a growing inquiry by scientists into an area known as group dynamics. With locusts, researchers have been seeking to understand how the group seems to move with the synchronized perfection of the Rockettes when there is no centralized leader and individuals can barely see beyond a few neighbors on either side.Animal groups such as flocks of birds, schools of fish and swarms of insects frequently exhibit such complex and coordinated collective motion and present a great opportunity to understand how local interactions can lead to vast collective behavior, the scientists said.###Princeton University: http://www.princeton.edu/ |
Wayne State to give 10 students a free medical degree
Buy Photo Students walk on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit. (Photo: File pohoto by Patricia Beck, Detroit Free Press)
Ten students are about to get a big helping hand toward their dream of becoming a doctor — Wayne State University will announce today it will pay for the complete education of 10 students each year from undergraduate to medical school.
The move is aimed at getting talented students from low-income backgrounds into and through med school and eventually to work on addressing issues around health disparities.
"I want Wayne State to be known as the place for training biomedical scientists and MDs," Wayne State President M. Roy Wilson told the Free Press in an exclusive interview. "We want kids who can go anywhere, but choose to go to Wayne."
The idea is built, in part, off Wilson's own academic career.
Wilson, a doctor who specialized in research on glaucoma and blindness in populations from the Caribbean to West Africa, applied a year early to Harvard's medical school.
He got a letter back, placing him on the waiting list.
"It wasn't quite a guarantee that I'd get in, but it said I was a really strong student and they wanted me to finish up my undergraduate degree," Wilson said. He did get in and graduated with his MD.
"Medical school is so difficult to get into, even for people with good credentials," he said. "Knowing that I was in early meant I didn't have some of the anxiety some of my classmates had. It allowed me to take classes like philosophy and advanced English that really helped me be a better person and a better physician ultimately.
"Students who are in this program will really be able to emphasize learning and not competition with other students."
The program, Wayne Med-Direct, will include four years of paid undergraduate tuition, four years of paid undergraduate room and board costs in university housing and four years of paid medical school tuition, a total savings of $251,000.
It will admit 10 new students each year starting next summer. The university is accepting applications until Jan. 15.
To get into the program, a student will have to have a minimum 3.5 GPA and 1340 SAT or 30 ACT score, be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident and be an incoming freshman. Preference will be given to students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds who are also interested in studying health disparities. It is open to students from anywhere.
"We expect a large part of each cohort will be underrepresented minorities," Wilson said. "That will also help us in terms of diversity in the medical school over time."
Ambika Mathur, dean of Wayne State’s Graduate School and one of the architects of Wayne Med-Direct, will help oversee the administration of specialized programming for the cohort to ensure the students are equipped for success once they reach the School of Medicine.
“Incoming freshman who are admitted to the program will arrive on campus in the summer to participate in summer enrichment courses focused on chemistry, biology, physics and writing,” said Mathur. “In addition to their early arrival on campus, Wayne Med-Direct cohorts will participate in seminars, workshops and hands-on research and clinical training in the School of Medicine throughout their undergraduate careers.”
Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @reporterdavidj
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1LO4YZp |
Map Of Apalachicola Bay Estuary Shallow seafloors, seen by sea drones. NOAA
What shore knows not our maps? Most of them, it turns out. While satellites map much of the globe on a daily basis, there are parts of the planet so small and changing that they’re tricky to pin down exactly. NOAA, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, makes maps that anyone who navigates the sea can use, and to get the fine details on little inlets right, they turn to…
“Autonomous Surface Vehicles,” also known as sea drones and (at least at Popular Science) as Roboats. While much of NOAA’s sea plotting is done by ships, the smaller robots can swim to shallow inlets and areas, capturing parts of the ocean otherwise unknown. Using sonar and other measures, they plot the topography of the ocean floor, including details like sandbar shifts. Or, in other words, with sound they sound out the details of sounds. |
Online gamers received quite the scare last week when Blizzard announced it would require message board posters to use their real names. This was to be done in order to fight the scourge of online anonymity. The Internet freaked out, of course, so much so that Blizzard eventually changed its mind. I mention this up to not open old wounds, but to take the time to remind you of this: there are other MMOs in the world besides World of Warcraft. In fact, I’ve been playing one such MMO, the outer space-themed Eve Online (developed by Iceland’s CCP Games), for several days now. Come, let us enter a world (universe, really) of spaceships, cross-galaxy pirate raids, and Astronomical Units!
I’m almost positive you’ve already heard of Eve Online, if only because it has a reputation for being completely impossible to play. If someone were to compile a list of the most difficult games to get into, Eve Online would have to be right up there.
And with good reason, since that’s the way the developers like it. No hand-holding here.
I spoke to Senior Producer Arnar Gylfason on Monday and, to my credit, got him to say Eyjafjallajökull right off the bat. Awesome.
“Eve Online is an open world, sandbox MMO,” he says. “We provide the tools and the players provide the content. That means we provide the game’s mechanics, and we invite players to take part in that. They usually find new and exciting ways to do so.”
The game begins much like any other MMO: you create a character. There’s four main races, and each race is broken down into further sub-units called Bloodlines. It’s standard RPG fare: there’s warlike races, races obsessed with making money, a more spiritual race, etc. Different races have different stats, but different Bloodlines within a race have the same stats.
I created a Caldari Achura, a stargazer. I liked the idea of stargazing. I named him FernandoZorres, which has become my go-to name of late. You may have noticed.
A few seconds later and I’m floating in the middle of outer space. I have no idea what to do or where to go. Hopefully I don’t fly into a black hole. That would be inconvenient.
Before you know it, up pops a tutorial.
And thus begins our journey.
There’s two thing you immediately notice.
The first is that you’re just a ship—there’s no body or “avatar” in Eve Online. Well, not right now at least, but that’s something CCP Games is working on. The character you created moments ago is merely a portrait in the upper corner of the screen. You know, where the spiders make their webs and so forth.
The second thing you notice is the genuine sensation of being in outer space. Unlike in, say, Mass Effect, where the feeling is more akin to playing with a Lego Star Wars set than actually floating around the universe, in Eve everything sorta makes sense. You approach a planet at 300 m/s for five minutes (real life minutes, that is) and still feel like you haven’t moved an inch—the planet is still as large (or small) as it was when you first started approaching it. To visit far-away planets or space stations you need to activate a sort of warp speed, which cranks your velocity into terms of Astronomical Units per second. Suddenly driving around the Nürburgring in some fancy Aston Martin in Forza Motorsport 3 or Need for Speed: Shift doesn’t seem all that impressive.
When people say that Eve is hard they don’t mean that the game is difficult. It’s really no more difficult than any other game you’ve played. It’s not Ninja Gaiden or anything. No, what’s difficult about Eve is figuring out what to do and how to do it. After the brief tutorial, which teaches you the basics of flight and travel, combat, and picking a career path, the game essentially says: OK, you’re on your own, have fun! To quote Brian Regan, “This is not what I’m used to.”
So here you are, in the middle of outer space, with nothing but a small spaceship and a hope in your heart. It’s completely different from the Blizzard approach to things, where the developers leave little bread crumbs for you to follow from level 1 all the way to level 80. (The starting zones are even more noob-friendly in Cataclysm, let me tell you.) That’s not a bad thing, of course, but that’s not the way that CCP Games wants to go about doing things.
“Instead of providing players with what we call the ‘theme park approach,’ we’d rather they explore on their own, figure out what they want to do, and find their niche and settle into that,” says Gylfason.
In other words, there’s a bit of a learning curve.
“Ah, yes, the learning cliff,” he says.
I laugh because someone has actually gone out of their way to illustrate that metaphor.
“There’s two axes to that graph,” says Gylfason. “One of them is simply the complexity of the game. You have all these things, including conversations with other players. But that’s not really too different from any other MMO out there. There’s a lot of stuff to do, obviously. There’s all these things you have to realize like health bars, weapons systems, travel times, and stuff like that. The other part of it is maybe the sheer size of the Eve universe and the options that are available to you.”
As he’s saying this, I’m nodding my head in agreement like a total nerd.
Gylfason continues.
“There are so many different kinds of things that you can be doing that people sort of, well, some people sort of get lost. They don’t really know where to go after the tutorial ends. Should I go for PVP? Should I be going to mining, or maybe industry?”
“I’m an explorer!” I shout. Really loudly, too, judging by the fact that my headphones nearly blew out while listening to this interview again.
It’s not easy being an explorer in Eve Online. Well, again, not that it’s hard, difficulty-wise, but that the game world is so vast you almost feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot on your plate.
But maybe that’s how you should feel? Being an honest-to-goodness explorer probably isn’t the easiest thing to do. (Meanwhile, typing words every day about the iPhone 4 is cake. Dull cake, but cake nonetheless.) Can you imagine being one of the first Portuguese explorers charged with sailing around the Cape of Good Hope? You’d probably be a little nervous. You’d probably say to your men, “Well, let’s hope we make it back home, eh boys?”
I like an RPG with a little bit of meat to it.
Not to get too specific about my own character, being an explorer entails traveling around the universe and discovering different anomalies, then reporting them to an Agent at a space station. Then you get paid. The further you progress, the further you’ll have to go to find new, uncharted territory. No worries, though: there’s more than 5,000 solar systems in the game to keep you busy. More are added all the time.
“So yeah, there’s a lot to do,” says Gylfason. “Just picking where to go next can induce a sort of amazement in people in how many options there are.”
And that’s the word to use, “amazement.”
“The game is definitely the best representation of outer space that I’ve ever seen,” I tell Gylfason, clearly marking out. (Note: I don’t know if “marking out” translates well into Icelandic.) “It’s just so big. There’s definitely the feeling sometimes of, ‘Wow, I have no idea where I need to go’.”
Now, while I may not mind the feeling of having no idea where to go next, Gylfason says that CCP Games is trying to find a happy medium between the aforementioned “theme park approach,” where you know, step by step, where to go and what to do, and letting the player know, “Trying going that way. There might be some good stuff yonder…”
“Well, that may be one of the areas where we need to improve,” says Gylfason. “We may not be doing a good enough job of hinting to people where they could go next. We absolutely don’t want to lead players into specific routes or specific locations. That would be against the open world, sandbox feel. But that may be one of the problems Eve faces, figuring out how to guide players to new content without specifically pushing them in one direction or another.”
So, maybe there’s a thing or two Eve could learn from Blizzard with respect to introducing players to new content. What CCP Games has no intention of emulating? A Real ID-type meltdown.
“I can understand where Blizzard was coming from,” he says. “It’s really easy to be anonymous on the Internet and say whatever you want, flame people, incite fear. But their method of doing so, with Real ID and real names, I’m not sure that’s the best way to do things. I’m not saying I know the correct answer here, but that didn’t seem like the best idea.”
During that whole mess, one of the things that Real ID objectors suggested was to somehow link message board alts with a main character. This would prevent people from creating a throwaway character in the game and flaming/trashing/being a jerk on the message board with that character. You can’t needlessly trash another player as a level 1 alt if people see your “true” in-game character’s name. No more (well, less) flaming without having to having to resort to using actual, real names. I’d be fine with that. Then again, I was fine with Real ID, too, primarily because I don’t post on the Blizzard forums. That, and my real name is visible every single day.
Gylfason agrees. Not that this is being planned for Eve or anything, but it’s interesting to hear other game’s take on the subject.
“[Linking alts to mains] would certainly be more relevant to an in-game setting. It should accomplish most of what Blizzard was trying to accomplish without having to resort to real life drama.”
I should probably mention that you can download Eve Online for free, and there’s a free 14-day trial. That way, you can see if the game agrees with you at all. So if you’re so mad at Blizzard, you know, you have options.
What does the future hold for Eve Online Many things!
For one, CCP Games has been working on a new avatar system. That means, sometime in the future, you’ll actually be able to see your character in the game world and not just your spaceship. Some Eve veterans aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea, but Gylfason says you really can’t claim to be a complete outer space simulator if you can’t feel like you’re a living, breathing part of the world.
Another thing that recently rocked the game world was changes made to the PLEX system. Gylfason says that players are perhaps overreacting. More importantly, they’re clever.
Long story short, and very much simplified, there’s an in-game item called PLEX that you can buy with real world money. The item grants you extra playing time in the game—30 extra days of playing time, to be specific. Before yesterday, you weren’t able to transport PLEX around the in-game world inside your spaceship. Now you can. That means some no-good space pirate can attack you, destroy your ship, and destroy your PLEX. So, CCP Games has made money by selling you PLEX without having to actually provide you extra playing time.
“Our players are inherently smart, they’re inherently clever,” says Gylfason. “I don’t think players will put PLEX in their cargo hold, undock from a space station, then wait for pirates to come and shoot at them. Even if they do, the few PLEXes that are going to get lost due to piracy or ganging or whatever, as soon as you convert the ETC to PLEX, PLEX being an in-game item, you’ve already fulfilled your purchase. You’ve converted it to an in-game item that holds a similar value to other items, be it an armor repair or a shield booster or something. Currently that price is around 300 million ISK. And for 300 million ISK you can buy a type 2 battleship and lose that to piracy or ganking.”
Bottom line? Just like you’d be a fool to drive a car without a seatbelt, you’d be a fool purposefully risking PLEX by placing it in your cargo hold.
That is, unless you enjoy the thrill of transporting valuable items across space-time. |
From Ben Kew at Breitbart:
The initiative comes after years of financial turmoil for the company. In 2016, the company announced losses of £68.7 million, although cut that figure to £44.7 million in 2017.
Since last year, The Guardian has been begging its readers for money to help ease its financial woes, telling its readers that the world now needs The Guardian “more than ever”.More.
Reality check: The obvious question is why does the world need the Guardian? Much of the world may feel it needs left-wing views for sure but those views are not in short supply even without the Guardian. All media face this problem now but the left-wing ones are more likely to morph into latter-day Pravdas. For example, we learn, “Comment Isn’t Free: Guardian to CLOSE Comments On Articles About ‘Race, Immigration and Islam,’” due to “toxic” atmosphere. Forcing people to go elsewhere to find out what people are saying.
See also: New York Times warns reporter against talking to students |
Proposal: enable stateless persistant network interface names
Hello all, Problem: The kernel generally detects network interfaces ("eth0", "wlan1", etc.) in an unpredictable and often unstable order. But in order to refer to a particular one in /etc/network/ifupdown, networkd, firewall configs etc. you need to identify a particular one with a stable name. The general schema for this is to have an udev rule which does some matches to identify a particular interface, and assings a NAME="foo" to it. Interfaces with an explicit NAME= get called just like this, and others just get a kernel driver default, usually ethN, wlanN, or sometimes others (some wifi drivers have their own naming schemas). Over the years several solutions have appeared: - [mac] For many many years our we have installed an udev rule /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules which on first boot creates a MAC address → current name mapping and writes /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. - [biosdevname] is a package originally written by Dell (IIRC), which reads port/index/slot names from the BIOS and sets them in /lib/udev/rules.d/71-biosdevname.rules. - [ifnames] For about two years (since 197) upstream's udev has a builtin persistant name generator which checks firmware/BIOS provided index numbers or slot names (like biosdevname), falls back to slot names (PCI numbers, etc., in the spirit of /dev/disks/by-path/), and then optionally (not done by default) falls back to MAC address (similar to [mac]). This happens in /lib/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules. Note that these solutions can, and do get combined: The first rule which sets a name wins, i. e. currently [biosdevname] beats [mac] beats [ifnames]. Details about [mac] ------------------- This is our current solution which applies to most hardware out there. It was an useful hack almost a decade ago, but it really shows its age: * It's subject to inherent race conditions (detecting a new device vs. renaming an existing one), which sometimes leads to devices being called "renameX" and breaking your boot. (https://launchpad.net/bugs/1315218) * It requires a writable /etc/udev/rules.d/ for persistantly storing the assignment. We don't want/have that with system-image (touch/snappy). * It's incompatible with how cloud images operate, as the "physical" (emulated from the VM host) devices can change between boots. Hence we maintain an ever-growing blacklist in 75-persistent-net-generator.rules which causes bugs and pain with each new cloud or virtualization provider. Recent examples: LP #1437375, #1367883, #1361272, #1317776, #1274348, #1099278. Support for [mac] got dropped in upstream udev two years ago, and since then we have maintained it on the Debian/Ubuntu side. Details about [biosdevname] --------------------------- We have installed biosdevname from the server install images for several years, but never on desktop. This is a very good approach in principle, but unfortunately most desktop and laptop BIOSes out there don't actually set this kind of information, and of course none of the non-x86 machines do. I don't know how pervasive it is on dedicated server hardware. So this only actually helps for a small minority of cases, and currently falls back to [mac]. Details about [ifnames] ----------------------- This is a generic solution which extends the [biosdevname] idea and thus applies to all practical cases and all architectures. It doesn't need any persistant state (i. e. dynamic /etc/udev/rules.d/) and thus applies nicely to snappy/touch, and also avoids the race condition. The main downside is that by nature the device names are not familiar to current admins yet. For BIOS provided names you get e. g. ens0, for PCI slot names enp1s1 (ethernet) or wlp3s0 (wlan). But that's a necessary price to pay (biosdevname names look similar). As this hasn't been discussed yet, Debian and Ubuntu disable this by default. You can opt into this by booting with "net.ifnames=1" (which is a patch against upstream: there you disable it by booting with net.ifnames=0 or disabling 80-net-setup-link.rules). Proposal -------- I propose to retire [mac], i. e. drop /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules and enable [ifnames] by default on all platforms (client, server, touch, snappy), and stop installing biosdevname on server. This will provide the new stable interface names for all new installations, stop the different handling of server/client, work with system-image, and stops the woes cloud providers have with Ubuntu's [mac]. For upgrades: As we don't know what refers to existing stable network names, we can't ever safely remove a generated /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules or uninstall biosdevname. So when we do the above, names on existing installations will *not* change (as 70-persistent-net.rules trumps [biosdevname] trumps [ifnames]). So we can only let time and replacing/reinstalling machines take care of this. /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules requires zero maintenance from us (it's just like the admin had manually set their own rules). It doesn't look like biosdevname is being maintained upstream still, but it also doesn't really have to change unless Dell comes up with a new naming schema for new hardware. FTR, I will also discuss this in Debian, so that we use the same approach there. Opinions? Thanks, Martin -- Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 819 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20150508/f9ce3d85/attachment.pgp> |
The Abbott government's confidence that its direct action climate policy will meet Australia's emissions reduction target is based on Australia's track record in environmental policy and not on modelling, a Senate estimates hearing has heard.
Senators were told on Monday that the environment department and clean energy regulator had not done any modelling to assess whether the government's emissions reduction fund could meet Australia's 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020.
The white paper's suggestion that future energy policy should be "technology neutral" has raised concerns among the Greens and environment groups. Credit:Bloomberg
The emissions reduction fund, which will pay polluters to reduce their emissions, replaced Labor's carbon tax last year.
The first auctions for businesses, which will bid for funds through the scheme, will begin in April. |
Based on my write-up of Skin On vs Skin Off bacon, I feel that this first skinning step is optional. It's time consuming and I couldn't find a difference in taste. It's much easier to leave the skin on and pull it off when the smoking process is nearly finished. If you do decide to skin it, try to leave the fat but get rid of the tough skin. While pulling up on the skin, use a very sharp knife to cut it away from the fat. You can save the skin and make pork rinds if you'd like, but I discarded mine. Another good tip I heard was smoking the skin (whether by itself or smoked while on the belly), cutting it into slices, and using it to add smokey bacon flavor to soups, stocks, beans etc. Cut off any irregular bits of the ends and square up the pork belly.
Next, mix the curing salt, kosher salt, and pepper. If you're using brown sugar instead of maple syrup, throw that in with the curing mix. I experimented with the irregular end cuts by adding a bit of ground coffee to the curing mix. The bacon came out very similar to the regular cure but with a slight hint of coffee- pretty tasty. Take the maple syrup and rub down the pork belly. Sprinkle on the curing mix and place the belly into a large Ziplock bag. I placed the bag into a Pyrex dish to catch any juice if it leaked. Let cure in the fridge for 6-7 days, flipping the bag over each day. After the curing process is finished, rinse all the curing mix off of the pork belly, soak the bellies for 24 hours in plenty of water, and switch the water at least once throughout the 24 hour soak. I've noticed my bacon has come out almost too salty if I do not cycle the water. After the soak, drain, pat dry, and place on a metal rack in a Pyrex dish or cookie tray, and refrigerate for 2-4 hours. |
translated by Georgi Stankov
Introduction
by Georgi Stankov, November 1, 2013
This latest message of Asana Mahatari is of utmost relevance because it once again highlights the massive descent of old souls and angels as walk-ins into the existing majority of empty human shells on the upper 4D holograms. Basically it is so that the old Orion imprint of these human bodies is very resistant due to diverse, deep-seated patterns of fear that can be brought onto the surface only by shock experience in situations of deep crisis. Normally this fear patterns are stored in the deep compartments of the cells, in the human DNA-strands. In order for them to be deleted and removed, they must surface first. This is possible only through massive anxiety-provoking events such as the MPS .
That is why the MPS takes place on many upper 4D holograms in order to give these soulless beings with dark imprints the opportunity to be redeemed and healed by such a catharsis. The new souls are thus no full walk-ins. They behave like the soul of a fetus. Namely, she remains not fully incarnated as long as the pregnancy lasts and incarnates into the body of the newborn shortly before the birthing. At this moment the veil of forgetfulness falls. Before that the soul adapts to the body of the child in full consciousness and at the same time it also handles other tasks or simply wanders around the earth and meets with other incarnated soul siblings and slowly gets used to the future incarnation.
This message shows one more time how complex the process of ascension is and on how many different levels it occurs simultaneously. It is the most exciting story in this universe, as at the same time the ascension of an entire planet, including its population, takes place. And this happens not just once, but on many parallel 4D holograms at the same time. And all these energetic processes must be carefully coordinated and harmonized with each other.
It is truly a mystery of precision and yet this cosmic undertaking will come to a glorious conclusion when this timeline, on which we now reside, will find without great cataclysms its way to the upper 4D as balanced earth and to the 5D as the New Earth.
For most people the illusion of immutability will be maintained to the very end, and only to the few enlightened light warriors such as the PAT some hidden processes behind the veil are revealed, so that we know why we have to wait so long and so that this never-ending waiting does not completely worn our patience thin. Then, what a man understands, is half as bad, as Asana Mahatarihas already assured us, than the perennial uncertainty that now plagues the rest of the light workers and throws them into depravity.
______________________________ ________
Message
Karl’s dream, the brother of Jahn and director of the publishing house world of light: On the night of October 28-29, 2013: I sit and drive with Jahn in a modern, standard car. Before us we see that a car, an old Citroen (the famous duck) comes skidding. I step on the gas and we pass by this accident safely. Behind us we see how this car turns over, rotating around its own axis. Then it bounces into other cars, while other cars pass by unscathed. A pile-up is the result. We want to call the emergency service, however, we cannot reach anyone. Until we give up and continue to drive in the knowledge that there is certainly someone who has managed to avert the emergency service. Overall, we see that, despite these many accidents, there is hardly any bloodshed and the “great drama” fails to manifest. (end of dream)
This dream is precisely tuned to the events of this period and examines the current and new status of the ascension process. The cars indicate to the light vehicle, the cosmic vehicle (merkabah), the light body. Karl and Jahn sit in a standard car, which means that they have brought their light bodies up to date and will make it through this situation well. The old Citroen points to the lack of equipment of the light body and thus these people are skidding and they have accidents.
Here, these accidents go off for most people lightly, while others drive by unscathed. This means that the body shells of the people are now brought into good condition. First by accidents, which generate the necessary shock, so that a serious healing can be initiated. All light warriors, who have done their homework. remain, regardless of what kinds of accidents happen in their environment, unscathed.
This dream also points out to the “walk-ins” because before the new souls incarnate, the existing body shells and fragments must be healed by and large. This scene also shows that there is nothing left to do for the ascending humans, except to be aware of, except to observe very carefully – which is symbolized by the behavior of Karl and Jahn in the dream.
Even the attempt of assistance fails because there is no one at the other end of the phone line to receive the call, because the vibrational differences are too big and because the accident takes place already on another, lower vibrating level. This shows that here the worlds are already separated and sealed and thus there are no more links between them.
The fact is: this world separation occurs in relative peace and the new souls create, wherever it is reasonable and before they adapt to the bodies, at firstsome “accidents”, so that they can find a suitable home place to dwell. “Suitable” means that they take precautions to encounter an intact energy field of the physical body. That means in the last consequence: there will be a lot of “accidents” and radical changes. Worlds will truly ascend and worlds will fall and the people will experience twists of fate that they could have never imagined even in a dream.
It is important to know: each angel, who now seeks a temporary home in a previously soulless body, adapts it to his reality by generating through accidents in the body structure “states of shock” that force any kind of healing. This will be done in relative mildness and the great dramas will fail to appear (in the dream this is symbolized by the lack of bloodshed, despite the pile-up) Enough on this topic.
It is essential to understand that the present time summons up everything. Angels who incarnate in existing bodies or even create for a certain period of time their own body in order to make this experience. Angels who oscillate all the time between these two possibilities .
The fact remains: this wonderful time will now produce new fruits on the tree of life. The incorrigible must now give away, because the love wins and the light prevails everywhere. Although the multiple death of all those almost soulless body fragments is a daily affair now, the horror stays away. And while the great events of all life roll on, the great cosmic drama fails to manifest in the incessantly new-created upper 4D holograms.
I am what I am
I am
ASANA MAHATARI |
Home European Tribune Your Page Recent Comments Diaries Donate West Midwest South East Cafe/Lounge Too Weak to Be President by BooMan
Mon Aug 20th, 2012 at 10:16:18 PM EST Steve Benen and Greg Sargent are trying to goad the press into confronting Mitt Romney about his campaign of complete falsehood. Today, the issue is the ads Romney is running that falsely accuse the president of stripping the work requirement out of Welfare Reform. Romney's actually telling this lie on the stump, too. But the Welfare work requirement is actually a bit peripheral compared to the $716 billion lie that Romney and the Republicans have been telling about Medicare. Benen makes a good point that if Obama's presidency has really been so bad, it should be easy to attack him with truthful statements. So, why are the two biggest points of attack we are seeing right now based on complete lies? It's no wonder that the president can't stand Romney: It is Romney himself who provides a rallying point for both the candidate and his team. Obama really doesnt like, admire or even grudgingly respect Romney. Its a level of contempt, say aides, he doesnt even feel for the conservative, combative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Hill Republican he disliked the most. There was a baseline of respect for John McCain. The president always thought he was an honorable man and a war hero, a longtime Obama adviser said. That doesnt hold true for Romney. He was no goddamned war hero. Time and again Obama has told the people around him that Romney stood for nothing. The word he would use to describe Romney was weak, too weak to stand up to his own moneymen, too weak to defend his own moderate record as the man who signed into law the first health insurance mandate as Massachusetts governor in 2006, too weak to admit Obama had done a single thing right as president. Maybe Romney is weak. But I know for certain that his arguments are weak. So, how should the press deal with this complete departure from reality?
Follow @BooMan23 |
Lynda DeBiccari waded in the rising waters during king tides at the Long Wharf in Boston in Nov. 2016.
Do king tides offer a glimpse into the future?
The flooding caused by the tides in coastal communities around the world, including here in Massachusetts, may be far more normal in just a few decades, thanks to climate change.
Experts warn that eventually sea levels will have risen to the point where such flooding will be routine.
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“King tides preview how sea level rise will affect coastal places,” the Environmental Protection Agency says. “As time goes by, the water level reached now during a king tide will be the water level reached at high tide on an average day.
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“Sea level rise will make today’s king tides become the future’s everyday tides,” the agency says.
King tides are caused by gravity that pulls oceans to their highest levels when the earth, moon, and sun are in a particular alignment.
Researchers have already found a sharp increase in coastal high tide flooding, also known as “nuisance” or “sunny-day” flooding, around the United States over the last century, particularly since the 1980s. They say climate change is to blame.
The EPA says that tides “are reaching higher and extending further inland than in the past.”
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“As sea level is rising, it requires less of a high tide or less of a storm to cause flooding,” said Rutgers University climate scientist Robert E. Kopp.
Scientists, including Kopp, have studied how the world’s oceans have risen significantly in recent decades, and at a far faster pace than in preceding centuries, as the planet has warmed to record levels.
Researchers have said they expect sea level rises in our region to continue to outpace other parts of the world. And a report in 2016 said the impact of climate change on Boston will be far more calamitous than previous studies have suggested.
Scientists say that harmful greenhouse gas emissions by humans have fueled the rising temperatures and sea level rise.
William Sweet, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a study published in late 2014, projected that a majority of coastal areas in the United States can expect to experience 30 or more days of nuisance flooding annually by 2050.
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That analysis featured projections for specific cities, including Boston.
Sweet said that even if humans are able to curb greenhouse gas emissions moderately, his analysis estimates that Boston can expect to endure about 50 days of nuisance flooding each year by 2050.
Under a scenario where humans fail to curb emissions in any significant way, Boston could expect as many as 120 days of nuisance flooding annually.
Some initiatives have been launched to document the impact of king tides, including through photographs of the flooding they cause, as a way to raise awareness for the predicted effect of climate change.
Kopp said that along with more minor cases of flooding, major flooding will also become more common.
For example, he said, research shows that floods that were considered one-in-100-year events as of 2000 will be about two and a half times more likely by 2030 and nearly nine times more likely by 2050, under a scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions are at relatively moderate levels.
If emissions are at high levels, such major floods would be even more frequent, he said.
Matt Rocheleau can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @mrochele |
Whether Donald Trump knows it or not, Dominionists are now in control of his presidential campaign. In recent weeks, Trump has appointed Stephen Bannon to the position of campaign CEO and Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager. Both of these individuals are members of the Council For National Policy, a secretive Dominionists organization. In fact, Kellyanne Conway sits on the executive committee.
Dominionists believe that America is a Christian nation and they oppose the separation of church and state. Ted Cruz’s father is a Dominionist preacher. They mix well with Christian Reconstructionists who want to impose strict biblical laws on America including execution for adultery, blasphemy, and homosexuality. These two fringe religious groups make up the majority of the Council’s 500 member base; along with a colorful array of extreme activists on the far right. The Council’s goal is to manipulate government agenda from within.
Nation magazine says that the Council “networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.” Marc Ambinder of ABC News said “The group wants to be the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations.” That’s the organization Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi worked for previously.
The Johno Show Trump Truths Part 7: Council for National Policy
If you’re still not convinced the Dominionists have taken over the Trump campaign guess where Kellyanne Conway used to work before making her move over to Trump. She managed Ted Cruz’s biggest Super PAC called Keep The Promise 1, where she raised over $16 million dollars from just one source; New York City hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer.
Together these two ran millions of dollars in anti-Trump ads in defense of Ted Cruz. But once Trump won and Cruz dropped out Mercer switched horses, changed the name of the Super PAC and re-focused on anti-Hillary ads for Donald.
And all of this overseen by the Council For National Policy, which was founded in 1981 by fundamentalist Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind book series and the head of the Moral Majority organization. Founding members of the Council also included Nelson Bunker Hunt, the billionaire who lost everything trying to corner the world market in silver, and T. Cullen Davis the oil tycoon who stood trial for allegedly forcing his second wife’s 12 year-old daughter into the basement of her home and making her kneel before shooting and killing her.
Woody Jenkins, the Council’s first executive director, told Newsweek quote: “One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government.”
As the council grew, it entertained some far right wing extremists including Ku Klux Klan members Richard Shoff and Lawrence Pratt along with Michael Peroutka who served on the board of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group that advocates for a newly seceded South ruled by white people.
Other less extreme but still dangerous members of the Council include Tony Perkins and Kenneth Blackwell of the Family Research Council. Both have sat on the Executive Committee. These are the guys that claim that pedophilia is “a homosexual problem,” and that gay people want to “recruit” children.
Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel was on the Board of Governors. Mat has attempted to push for the re-criminalization of gay sex. He has also described the Boy Scouts as a “playground for pedophiles,” and likened LGBT activists to terrorists.
There is even an amazing crossover of members from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council for National Policy. Nearly a dozen have shown up in the 2014 directory. With that many members dually active on both councils you have to question if the CFR hasn’t already been influenced by the CNP’s agenda. |
A polite, but unlucky, drugs suspect has found himself in more trouble after he doffed his hat to the female judge - only for cocaine to fall out in the middle of the courthouse.
Juan Jose Vidrio Bibriesca, originally of Mexico who was in the country illegally, was at Eagle County District Court on November 8 for a bond violation on felony drug charge.
The 43-year-old had just taken a stand on the podium in front of Judge Katharine Sullivan, when he decided to do the gentlemanly thing and removed his hat.
Juan Jose Vidrio Bibriesca, (pictured) originally of Mexico who was in the country illegally, was at Eagle County District Court on November 8 for a bond violation on felony drug charge
Unfortunately for him, as he swung his hat behind his back, an eagle-eyed police officer noticed a small square of folded paper fall from it to the ground.
That paper was later found to contain cocaine. Court room surveillance cameras confirmed the tiny package had come from Bibriesca's hat.
Bibriesca was almost immediately taken next door to the county jail where he received two new charges; narcotics possession and another bond violation.
Booking documents don't indicate if he has hired an attorney.
It is not clear whether he has been approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement yet.
The 43-year-old had just taken a stand on the podium at Eagle County District Court (pictured) when he decided to do the gentlemanly thing and removed his hat |
The head of China’s National Energy Administration, the country’s energy regulatory and planning agency, said that China has revised its 2020 forecasts for domestic shale gas production to 30 billion cubic meters per year, down from a previous target of 60 to 100 billion cubic meters. This revision acknowledges the complexity, and at times difficulty, involved in developing China's shale gas resources. Moreso, the downward revision simply makes expectations more realistic. Internally, China has been operating under the assumption that its initial estimates were wildly optimistic.
China has moved to secure access to large volumes of natural gas from a number of different sources. Despite the downgrade in expectations, China has had encouraging results so far that have led Chinese oil and natural gas companies to revise upward their expectations over the next three years. Most important, the acknowledgement will not fundamentally alter China's efforts to limit coal consumption growth by allowing natural gas to offset growing energy demand, supplanting coal in key urban centers such as Beijing, which has banned all coal use from 2020.
Historically, China has shunned natural gas production due to inadequate transport infrastructure and cheaper, larger coal resources. As a result, China uses coal in many ways -- five to ten percent of its transportation fuels are coal-based and industrial use counts for a quarter of the country's coal consumption. However, as China's economic growth has skyrocketed, so has coal consumption and with it the need to control smog and carbon emissions. Estimates of how much China's natural gas consumption will grow over the next decade range from 250 billion cubic meters to nearly 500 billion cubic meters per year, though somewhere around 400 billion cubic meters seems the most likely. For a comparison, China consumed just 162 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2013.
The Role of Shale Gas in China's Future
U.S. production of shale gas has single-handedly shattered the expectation that the United States would emerge as one of the world's largest natural gas importers by making the country one of the world's largest exporters of the fossil fuel in the near future. China, which owns the world's largest estimated shale gas reserves -- more than 30 trillion cubic meters -- hopes that shale gas could do the same for China.
However, China is not the United States and faces technological, geological, technical and topological hurdles in developing its shale gas resources. China's domestic oil and natural gas companies do not have the experience or technological base that the United States was able to tap into in order to quickly develop its resources once they became economical. Progress is being made, however, and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., commonly known as Sinopec, is developing one field with primarily domestically developed equipment and personnel. Yet it will take time for China to create a support and development base to progress from pilot shale gas development phases to widespread production phases.
For example, China's most promising basin, the Sichuan, is in a deeply faulted region. Not only does this limit the utility of horizontal drilling, but also the frequency of earthquakes in the region will raise fears that they are being caused by hydraulic fracturing. Even if those claims are completely untrue, this may not change the local population's perception when disaster strikes, adding to environmental opposition to shale gas development in China. Additionally, the region is mountainous, and this slows the movement of equipment from site to site and adds to the cost of production.
Despite the downward revision of its targets for 2020, the year has been successful for China National Petroleum Corp. and Sinopec -- China's two largest oil companies -- in their own shale gas endeavors. Sinopec's flagship shale gas project is the Fuling project, which is already producing 3.2 million cubic meters of shale gas per day. This led the company to increase their projections for 2015 to 5 billion cubic meters, up from earlier projections of 1 billion cubic meters, after wells drilled over the last 18 months performed much better than anticipated. The company expects the block to reach 10 billion cubic meters of production per year in 2017, which is a reasonable estimate. China National Petroleum Corp. does not have a flagship project and lags slightly behind Sinopec, but recent success caused the company to increase their expectations to 2.6 billion cubic meters in 2015 -- an upward revision of their planned target by nearly 75 percent. They expect to produce 11 billion cubic meters of shale gas annually by 2020. In total, China's output overall in 2015 and 2017 looks like it will surpass Beijing's target figure.
Partnerships with Foreign Companies
Joint ventures between China's three main oil and natural gas companies and the supermajors have not progressed as quickly. Royal Dutch/Shell signed a production-sharing contract with China National Petroleum Corp. for developing the Fushun-Yongchuan block and Shell spent $1 billion in 2013 in the Sichuan basin, focusing on exploratory and appraisal drilling and learning the geology. Shell is spending the year continuing this program before making a final decision on whether or not to move forward with the production-sharing contract to fully develop the block.
In general, the supermajors have struggled in China, and their investments have not always been profitable. For example, Chevron's big investment in China was the $6.4 billion, 12 billion cubic meters per year Chuandongbei natural gas project. It was originally slated to come online in 2010 before being delayed to 2015 because of its geological complexity and disagreements with Chevron's partner, China National Petroleum Corp., and the Chinese government on how to implement the project. The delays plus cost overruns (36 percent over original estimates) have made it a difficult investment.
China, hoping to change its image and increase profitability for joint ventures in its shale gas sector, is in the process of setting up an extensive incentive program. These measures include a value-added tax refund, waivers on import tariffs for equipment, direct subsidies and a resource tax waiver. One of the most important incentives will be a complete deregulation of prices. On Sept. 1, the wholesale price for imported liquefied natural gas, shale gas and coalbed methane will be completely independent of government control. China is also raising the wholesale price for non-residential users by 20.5 percent to help the profitability of deep water and tight gas production.
There have also been several important partnerships between China's national oil companies and key Western oil service companies. These types of contracts are just as important as foreign majors' participation in bringing in the equipment, know-how and technology to develop these resources. In June, Sinopec signed a joint venture deal with FTS International, one of the largest well completion services in China. This joint venture will include the manufacture of pumps and equipment in the United States optimized for well completion and stimulation in China's shale basins. Sinopec has also announced the formation of a joint venture with Weatherford International to collaborate on advanced drilling tools, such as those used in high temperature and high pressure wells, and well completion. In July, Halliburton Co. formed a joint venture with Petrotech (Xinjiang) Engineering to provide hydraulic fracturing and other advanced oilfield services in Xinjiang province, home to one of China's other massive shale deposits, the Tarim basin.
China's Other Natural Gas Strategies
These partnerships should help China eventually develop its extensive shale resources, but as mentioned, China's demand will grow dramatically, and Beijing appears to be using all available options to secure its natural gas supply. While shale gas offers the most potential, China is developing alternatives. Coalbed methane production could reach 20 to 30 billion cubic meters per year by 2020. Tight gas and conventional natural gas could approach 150 billion cubic meters annually by 2020. Moreover, China has plans for coal gasification, which involves the underground gasification of coal and either upgrading it into synthetic natural gas or using it directly to generate power. The latter is a part of Beijing's push to move some power generation westward to less populous regions where environmental concerns over smog are less pronounced.
At the same time, China is moving to secure large volumes of natural gas from both pipeline and liquefied natural gas sources. China National Petroleum Corp. deals with Russia, Turkmenistan and Myanmar on natural gas supplies coming over land have received much attention, especially May's $400 billion deal with Gazprom for 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year for 30 years, but China has been building up its regasification facilities just as quickly and the country will still depend on liquefied natural gas exports.
It is also important to realize that Beijing's crackdown on PetroChina and the China National Petroleum Corp. is about removing the companies' power and influence in China. Ever since the late 1990s, when China created three vertically integrated national oil companies, Beijing pushed for the three to compete with each another. China National Petroleum Corp. has been the beneficiary of the deals for piped natural gas, as it controls much of China's internal natural gas distribution pipelines, whereas Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Corp. have been pushing for liquefied natural gas contracts and import terminals instead of pursuing piped natural gas. Already, almost 70 billion cubic meters of regasification capacity is in operation or under construction. Expansion proposals at those facilities could add 80 billion cubic meters in capacity. Sinopec alone has five new plants under construction. The contracted volumes of LNG supplies to feed these regasification facilities lag behind the total regasification capacity coming online, but China also buys LNG on the spot market.
While China's amendment of its shale gas forecasts is indicative of how slowly the sector could develop, China remains strongly committed to the continued expansion of natural gas supply and use. This revision also does not deter the long-term potential and possible success of China's shale gas development. In time, China will certainly be a major natural gas producer, and recent events have been relatively encouraging. However, China's shale gas development might never be as profitable as the United States', nor will it seemingly boom overnight. |
Alabama Football G13 vs Missouri SEC Championship 2014 v
Alabama running back Kenyan Drake (17) celebrates after the SEC Championship Game.
(Vasha Hunt/[email protected])
ATLANTA -- Confetti was falling, players were hugging and Kenyan Drake was celebrating.
Exactly nine weeks after breaking his leg at Ole Miss, the Alabama running back soaked it in Saturday evening. The Crimson Tide had just finished the clinical 42-13 beating of Missouri in the SEC Championship Game and Drake was a little sore.
His walking boot came off Tuesday and the speedy back jogged onto the field with the team before kickoff.
"I'm kinda paying for it now," Drake said with a smile as his teammates received the championship hardware.
The junior went on to speak candidly about the horrific injury that ended a promising season early in Alabama's only loss of the season. First, however, he said there's no shot at returning for the playoff run. But he'll be back by spring "for sure," Drake said.
Going back to Oct. 4 in Oxford, Drake remembers the play that changed everything. He'd been one of the more explosive players on the team through four games as a threat to run and catch. Drake's five receptions netted 159 yards and two touchdowns while rushing 22 times for 112 yards and four more scores.
But the big season ended in an instant. Catching a short pass from Blake Sims, the running back looked for room across the middle.
"I kinda, when I cut, somebody hit me low and somebody else hit me high and my foot couldn't take that kind of pressure," Drake said. "So that's just the way it goes sometimes."
Teammates quickly called for the medical staff. When Drake looked down, he saw the gruesome sight of his foot turned the wrong direction.
"I didn't know what to think," he said. "Obviously, your foot isn't supposed to be sideways like that. So I kind of went into shock and the trainers came out there and took real good care of me, put it back in place and after that I didn't really feel it anymore."
As he was loaded on the cart to be taken off the field, CBS zoomed in to show tears streaming down Drake's face.
"I cried (not) because it hurt, I cried because I didn't know how my future was going to end up," he said. "I have the best doctors in the country and they took real good care of me."
The response from fans has been overwhelming. Letters are still rolling in from all over and he's posted pictures of the crates of mail that arrived.
"It's been really crazy," Drake said. "I've enjoyed just being a student for once after the hustle and bustle of going to the game all the time, but I miss being out there with my team. Nothing feels better than being out on the field with my team." |
× Man’s dying wish: 8 Eagles players as pallbearers so they can ‘let him down one last time’
PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. – As one of his final wishes, a New Jersey man asked for eight Philadelphia Eagles football players to work as pallbearers at his funeral in a last jab at his favorite NFL team.
Jeffrey Clayton Riegel made the unusual request “so the Eagles can let him down one last time,” according to his obituary.
Riegel, of Port Republic, New Jersey, was 56 when he died on Aug. 18 and “left this Earth to finish a long overdue game of golf.”
He was described as a wonderful husband, uncle, brother and son. “He was the last truly, completely good man,” the obituary reads, “No one that met him failed to love him.”
Riegel had a gift for nicknames, and if you were close to him, you got one. In his last days, Riegel even gave himself one, telling his oncologist, “just call me Lucky.”
Riegel left behind his wife, Donna Lee, his parents and six siblings.
A funeral service at is scheduled for August 24 at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Port Republic, New Jersey. More information is available on the Wimberg Funeral Home website. |
CHAPIN, SOUTH CAROLINA—Long ago, I read an interview with the late New Orleans piano titan Professor Longhair. He casually mentioned that he'd served in World War II. The interviewer was surprised. This tidbit never had been mentioned in any piece ever written about 'Fess. So, the interviewer asked, where did you serve?
I served behind enemy lines, 'Fess told him.
But where, the interviewer insisted.
Shreveport, 'Fess replied.
So, anyway, I'm in South Carolina.
Specifically, I'm here, on the banks of Lake Murray, in a funky little town where, if you're particularly alert, you might see a camel standing stolidly in a field, surrounded on all sides by sheep. Not far from the camel, there's an empty warehouse and the sign out front says that it's AVAILABLE in giant white letters. This unremarkable place may well be the spot at which the involvement of the Bush family in our politics comes to an unremarkable end. Right around noon on Wednesday, word came down that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley would come to this empty warehouse in Chapin to give her formal endorsement to Young Marco Rubio's presidential campaign.
In truth, it's not easy to see what this does to the very top of the field. Even given the rebound she's received in the wake of her handling of the murders at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, Haley's endorsement is not likely to shake loose many of the people who have signed on with He, Trump and neither is it like to dislodge much of the support given to Tailgunner Ted Cruz by the substantial Bible-banging community throughout the state. And, in 2012, Haley's endorsement of Willard Romney failed to keep N. Leroy Gingrich, definer of civilization's rules and leader (maybe) of the civilizing forces, from gaining the only primary victory of his extended book tour. But what it demonstrably may be is the final shot below the waterline of Jeb (!) Bush's floundering campaign.
Bush, it seems, romanced Haley hard. In another year, and with another member of the Bush family, it may even have worked. But this is the year in which He, Trump has pantsed Jeb (!) on live television a couple of dozen times. Cruz has beaten him to Gethsemane and Rubio is the new, fresh face that the national media is desperately trying to keep viable in the hopes that nobody notices that Young Marco is a big bag of feathers. That leaves Jeb (!) grappling with John Kasich for the ever-dwindling Not Insane faction of the Republican party, which doesn't even exist down here, and Kasich at least is still a governor now. There is no rationale for Jeb (!) Bush's candidacy, and it's quite possible that there never was one.
It's god's own joke that the Bush family may pass from our politics in South Carolina. It was from here that came Lee Atwater, who ratfcked Michael Dukakis on behalf of Poppy in 1988. It was here in 2000 that C-Plus Augustus turned Karl Rove—an Atwater acolyte—loose on John McCain. And, in 2016, Jeb (!) may well end up life and death for fourth place with noted narcoleptic Dr. Ben Carson. The grotesquerie is glorious, a Southern gothic end for a dynastic political family, now rendered merely a curiosity, like a camel in the barnyard. |
On the last Saturday night in August, Demi Lovato sang the national anthem at a major sporting event. This was—until recently, anyway—a benignly honorable thing for a pop star to do, a chance to step out from behind the Auto-Tune and requisite choreography and remind the world, Yes, when I want to, I can really fucking belt it out. This, though, was no ordinary Major Sporting Event. It was the Floyd Mayweather–Conor McGregor fight, one of the more depressing collisions of capitalism and unchecked machismo in recent history, not exactly the ring o’er which our flag has most proudly waved. What Lovato seemed to be reminding the world that night was more along the lines of, Yes, I do have an album coming out soon, and there is very little I won’t do to promote it.
And yet, as is often the case with Demi Lovato, there was more to the story. Though boxing and UFC fans will be forgiven—THIS TIME—for not knowing the biography of a former Disney Channel star, Lovato trains at Jay Glazer’s famed Unbreakable Performance Center, alongside fighters Chuck Liddell and Cung Le. She boxes, has expressed interest in cage-fighting, and, just days after the Mayweather-McGregor fight, she earned a blue belt in jiu-jitsu. Last spring UFC middleweight contender “Suga” Rashad Evans saw Lovato at the gym and Instagrammed a selfie with her, marveling, “She trains crazy hard! Hell, I thought she was training for a fight but they say that’s just how she rolls.”
This fighting spirit was all over her last album, Confident—perhaps to a fault. Demi Lovato has little interest in subtlety, and she sometimes feels like the pop star equivalent of a jammed caps-lock button. “I’D DO ANYTHING FOR YOU!” she wailed on one of Confident’s better songs. “NAIL MY HEART TO THE CEILING! PUT MY FIST THROUGH A WALL!” It made the demolition described in Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” seem comparably tame. Elsewhere, she name-checked Ronda Rousey (who was, the fighter tweeted, “really honored”) and on an entirely different song, sang, “Knuckles out and the guard in my mouth / When you’re hungry for the next round, I’ll be waiting for you.” Confident seemed like an album reverse engineered not so much to replicate the success of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” but to hop in the ring and kick its candy-ass.
I am relieved to report that Lovato’s new album, Tell Me You Love Me, is better, more relaxed, and a lot less eager to punch you in the mouth. It’s also a reason to take her seriously as a pop vocalist and a reminder that more people should have been doing so all along.
If you ever have 42 minutes to spare and wish to spend them cultivating respect for Demi Lovato, might I suggest watching Stay Strong, a 2012 documentary about her that aired on MTV. Though she was only 19 at the time it was filmed, she speaks with a wisdom and a candor that transcends the clichés we expect from young celebrities. “There’s days where I don’t think I can make it,” she admits. “And now I’m healthy, but that’s the thing. An addiction is an addiction … and this is a daily battle that I will face for the rest of my life.” The title of the documentary, she reveals halfway through, comes from the cursive tattoos she got on her wrists, partially to cover up her old cutting scars.
Like many child stars, Lovato grew up in dizzying fast-motion. She was a Dallas-raised pageant girl who began acting professionally when she was 7 years old on Barney & Friends alongside another future star, Selena Gomez. (Do yourself a favor and fall down that YouTube hole.) Lovato entered the all-powerful Disney Channel orbit a few years later, and in 2008 her life became a tween dream come true when she was cast as the lead in one of the network’s original movies, Camp Rock, alongside the Jonas Brothers. It became one of the most successful Disney Channel movies in the franchise’s history: Nearly 9 million people watched its premiere, which is more than a million more than watched the youth-cultural phenomenon High School Musical. Camp Rock’s tremendous success rippled beyond the Disney universe when its soundtrack debuted at no. 3 on the Billboard albums chart and the song that Lovato sings in the climactic moment of the film, “This Is Me,” hit no. 9 on the Hot 100. Her life changed overnight, accelerating into a cycle that she remembers as, “Tour, TV show, movie, album. Tour, TV show, movie, album.” In Stay Strong, Lovato sighs, “I was exhausted. I had so many issues underneath that needed to be taken care of, and we just kept putting Band-Aids over it.”
The final Camp Rock tour did not exactly have a Disney-approved ending: After the last stop, Lovato checked herself into rehab. She was only 18, but she was seeking treatment for issues she’d already spent more than a decade dealing with. “I battled depression at a really young age, which started when I was 7 years old,” she said. She has a memory of being 4 years old, touching her stomach in the mirror “and thinking I was fat.” Struggles with bulimia, cutting, and drug use later followed. It took several trips to rehab for her treatment plan to stick and, during her last visit, Lovato was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. (She has since become an advocate for mental health issues and spoke about her experience last year at the Democratic National Convention. A clip of this speech is, for now, the only Demi Lovato video you can access through C-SPAN’s website.)
Contemporary pop music—and especially the kind performed by young women—often traffics in themes of triumph over vaguely defined adversity. (“Do you know what it’s like to feel so in the dark, to dream about a life where you’re the shining star?” Lovato asked on her Camp Rock hit.) When Lovato first checked into rehab, the scandal surrounding a “fallen Disney star” might have seemed like a career death sentence; instead, her honesty in talking about these experiences bound her more intimately to her fan base, who were themselves aging into problems too complicated to be resolved in 22-minute Disney Channel plotlines. The most striking scene in Stay Strong is when Lovato allows a camera crew to film her first Thanksgiving since leaving an eating-disorder treatment center. In moments like these, there’s something poignant, and even symbiotic, about her relationship to her fans. “I didn’t go into treatment thinking, OK, now I’m going to be an inspiration,” she said recently. “At times, I was resentful for having that kind of responsibility, but now, it’s really become a part of my life. It holds me accountable.”
She has, in recent years, returned the favor. She now co-owns an eating-disorder treatment center and brings the center’s CEO on tour with her, as a resource for her fans.
Lovato is one of those omnipresent artists who seems to pop up and perform at every awards show (indeed, the day after Mayweather-McGregor, she joined the VMAs via satellite from Vegas to perform her current hit “Sorry Not Sorry”). But when you know her history, her ubiquity in the music industry feels like a defiant show of will. She is sober in a pop world currently obsessed with party-girl personas, she is a famous person recovering from an eating disorder at a time when internet trolls can snark on her every ounce of body fat. You’d worry about Demi Lovato if she seemed anything less than strong as all hell.
Something else is striking about revisiting Stay Strong: Lovato has become a much better singer since then. Her tone was once a little nasal, her control a little wobbly—not great crimes for a singer of spunky tween-pop songs, but things that would sooner or later have to progress if she was going to successfully transition into a more adult pop singer. It’s happened. Tell Me You Love Me is further proof. Sure, “Sorry Not Sorry” is undeniably fun, and there is a glorious, ridiculous song on this album called “Daddy Issues” that I, too, eagerly await its performance one day on RuPaul’s Drag Race. But the most promising thing about this new album is how Lovato leans into what she does best: high-drama, theater-kid-worthy ballads.
While nobody was looking, Demi Lovato suddenly became one of the great torch singers in contemporary pop. Sure, plenty of fans have known this since her wrenching 2011 hit “Skyscraper,” but her voice has only become more muscular in the past few years. Perhaps the most stunning moment on the new album is the flickering torch song “You Don’t Do It for Me Anymore,” an Adele-grade tearjerker that Demi pulls off with flair. Another highlight is “Crybaby,” a swinging cabaret number that she gives a modern kind of sass. And then there’s the sultry, DJ Mustard–produced “Lonely,” which—like Solange’s “Mad” before it—continues the recent trend of Lil Wayne appearing on female singers’ albums to show a different side of himself on incredibly emo verses (“I can’t see the forest from the tree, the water from the sea and I was starting to believe but it’s a forest full of dreams”).
Nearly two years later, though, I remain haunted by Demi Lovato’s finest moment, when she performed the stripped-down Confident ballad “Stone Cold” on Saturday Night Live. Ever the fighter, Lovato shows up to every TV performance like she’s got something to prove, but this one was something else. “If happy is hurt,” she sang, her voice breaking under the weight of feeling, “I’m happy for you.” She seemed, at one point in the song, to be crying, and you almost thought she wasn’t going to make it through. But her voice gathered strength as she went on, as if drawing electricity from dark clouds and finally raining down on her with sweet relief. She was channeling pain from her past and emerging cleansed. Demi Lovato’s music, at its best, is a reminder that vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the kind of strong you don’t want to mess with, in or out of the ring. |
By the time Najah al-Shalmeih walked toward her family at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Saturday night, at the end of her long trip from her native Syria, the crowd of protesters and supporters numbered in the dozens—and her son's emotions had grown beyond his ability to handle. Hisham Yasin cried as he embraced his mother and as the crowd cheered. Jubilant, he led them in a chant: "USA! USA! USA!"
Yasin kept chanting as he walked his mother—detained for nine hours despite having a US green card—toward a scrum of media wanting to get her story.
The grandmother opened her bag and gave her grandchildren candy.
Yasin, his wife, and their children made up one of at least nine families waiting for their loved ones who flew in on Emirates flight EK221 from Dubai. They were one of an untold number of people across the country who waited on Saturday to learn the fate of their family members and friends who had been detained following an executive order signed by Donald Trump on Friday night that banned travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries and temporarily suspended all refugee admissions.
Over the weekend there was confusion about how the order was supposed to be interpreted—initially, the White House indicated that it would apply to lawful permanent residents of the US (a.k.a. green card holders, like al-Shalmeih) returning from these countries, but White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus seemed to contradict that on Sunday morning.
Unlike most of those in Dallas last night, Yasin was was able to leave the airport with some semblance of closure, his mother safely on the right side of a security barrier.
Samar Mustafa wasn't so lucky.
"I don't know how the president can just decide something like this and it can immediately happen," Mustafa told VICE.
Mustafa's mother, Shadia Osaman, could be seen lying down every time the doors opened to let people into the US side of the international terminal. "Go in there and get her mom out!" Mustafa's family yelled throughout the night. Osaman is from Sudan, which like Syria is one of the countries included in the executive order, and was traveling to Dallas to see her daughter and her granddaughter. As of midnight there was still no sign of her.
"If he knew this was going to happen, why didn't he say so before?" Mustafa asked of Trump. "Is this how it's going to be as president?"
Despite an order from a federal judge declaring a stay on Trump's executive order on Saturday night, Mustafa's mother remained in detention late Saturday night, as well as several other travellers on the flight from Dubai.
"No word," on them, Alia Salem of the local chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations, or CAIR, texted VICE late Saturday.
The families of nine detained passengers waited for hours to learn their fate. At one point, Yasin's oldest child, no more than five, began to offer candy to the growing group of family members, advocates, journalists, and attorneys. His younger brother slept in his Yasin's arms while another brother cried for a balloon that had gotten away. Salem put out the word to supporters and media. Men and women showed up and began making signs. Cameras arrived. Yasin and his family fretted nonetheless.
By the time his mother arrived, Yasin was beside himself. She emerged from the double glass doors in a white hijab, running and smiling at her daughter, Mariam, wearing a similar white silk hijab. They embraced and cried. For a moment in Terminal D on this strange night of fear and uncertainty there was joy.
That lasted only so long.
Mustafa approached Najah al-Shalmeih after she greeted her jubilant daughter. The 47-year-old wanted to know about her mother, detained on the other side for being from Sudan.
"Have you seen her? How is she doing?" Mustafa asked.
Mustafa was told that her mother was fine—though she hadn't been able to text her daughter for several hours due to a dead cell phone—and that she along with several others was waiting to hear her fate.
Everyone back there is tired, al-Shalmeih reported. They have been waiting for so long and have been sitting on chairs, some of them lying on the floor, going to sleep, al-Shalmeih said. But they are there, for now.
Al-Shalmeih made her way through the media scrum, past multiple interviews, and eventually out the door with her family. Salem stayed around waiting. Her daughter had brought flowers for her grandmother, visiting from Sudan for the first time in years.
"She brought flowers," Salem said of her daughter. "We have been here long enough that the flowers have died." |
Following the example of Japan, which has already begun constructing numerous floating solar arrays to meet it’s renewable energy goals, UK’s Thames Water has now announced plans to do the same. They are already building what will be the largest floating solar array in Europe, and they plan to install it on a reservoir in London. This project is part of Thames Water’s goal of finding solutions to generate one third of its own energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Placing a solar array onto a body of water is actually a very good idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is hard to obtain large areas of land where solar panels can be installed, especially in densely populated cities such as London. The second reason why placing them in water makes great sense is that the water can then be used to cool the panels, which makes them perform better and extends their lifespan. And placing them on reservoirs has the added benefit of blocking out sunlight and therefore inhibits algae growth in the water, while it also reduces loss of water through evaporation.
The floating solar array in London will be constructed on the Queen Elizabeth II Reservoir, which is located near Walton-on-Thames. It will be comprised of 23,000 solar PV panels, which will be used to cover around one-tenth of the large body of water. To put in perspective, the covered area will be roughly the size of 8 football pitches. The capacity of the array will be 6.3 MW and it is estimated to generate 5.8 million kilowatt hours of energy in the first year. This would be enough energy to power around 1,800 households for a full year. The power generated by the array will be used to partially power the water treatment plant located near the reservoir. |
Cricket legend Shane Warne has undertaken an unlikely venture - saving Tasty Toobs from discontinuation.
Warne shared his surprising love of the Smith's Snackfoods chip-like snack on social media saying he and son Jackson were 'shattered,' and urged the company to make contact as he had a mysterious 'plan.'
'This can't be true, my son @jackson_warne18 and I are shattered, Smiths please contact me asap, as I have a plan...' he shared on Sunday.
Cricket legend, Shane Warne attempts to save the discontinuation of Tasty Toobs by posting on social media
Bags of Tasty Toobs before production of the snack was stopped
Smith's pulled the pin on the 'tasty saucy bite-sized snack,' after lack of consumer demand left the company struggling to continue their production.
The news was discovered after one consumer contacted Smith's to ask why he could not find his favourite snack on the shelf anymore.
After receiving a grim reply from Karen Mackay from the Consumer Information Centre on Friday, fans of the junk food declared their outrage on social media.
Twetting, Shane Warne says the snacks are favourite of his and his sons
Shane Warne says he has a plan to help continue the production of Tasty Toobs
Facebook user Russell Hayter broke the news of the end of Tasty Toobs
Toobs fans had been noticing the disappearance of their favourite snack from store shelves over the past several months
Since the news broke, fans have taken to social media to express outrage, both mock and real
Some Tasty Toobs fans across Australia had noticed that their favourite snack had begun disappearing from stores and were wondering why.
Now they have an answer, and they don't seem to be happy.
Since the news broke, fans have taken to social media to express outrage, both mock and real.
It was Russell Hayter, of Sydney, who discovered the tubular-shaped potato snack was done and alerted the public, Good Food reported.
This is not the first time Tasty Toobs have been removed from the market.
Smiths pulled the product in 2001 before relaunching the snack in 2007.
An image shows what the potato based, tomato flavoured snack looked like |
I’ve run across a company with an unusual amount of potential. Before anyone gets too excited, I mean as much potential for disaster as potential for extraordinary returns.
Kinbasha Gaming International is incorporated in Florida, but operates exclusively in Japan. The US company was formed via reverse merger when a public shell company merged with Kinbasha Co. Ltd., a Japanese company in operation since 1954. Following the reverse merger with the public shell, Kinbasha CEO Masatoshi Takahama owns 62.6% of shares outstanding.
Kinbasha operates 21 pachinko parlors in Japan, 18 in Ibaraki Prefecture northeast of Tokyo, two in metro Tokyo and one in Chiba Prefecture. I must admit I was not familiar with pachinko prior to researching this company, but pachinko is apparently a very popular pastime in Japan. Think of a pachinko machine as a mix between a slot machine and a pinball machine, housed in an arcade with hundreds of others. According to the company, Japan has over 12,000 pachinko parlors, which attracted 12.6 million players and $227 billion in total wagers in 2011.
Players launch small steel pachinko balls and attempt to trap them, earning additional balls and points as they go. Much like pinball machines, pachinko machines are often themed, incorporating popular entertainment series and characters. Players trade the points they earn for items like candy and cigarettes on the premises, or can trade special vouchers awarded for high scores for cash off-site. Wikipedia has a much more thorough explanation.
Kinbasha’s pachinko parlors are successful and produce healthy operating profit, but the company has a serious problem: its balance sheet. As of June 30, Kinbasha had $122.48 million in total capital leases, notes payable, bonds payable and accrued interest against shareholders’ equity of negative $28.08 million. Worse, $92 million of this figure is in default. This massive debt relates to an expansionary effort the company undertook in the early 2000s, during which it attempted to build and operate restaurants and hotels. The expansion was a failure, and Kinbasha began to default on its debt in 2006. The company notes that its lenders could choose to foreclose at any time, which would result in the loss of its pachinko license and a wholesale liquidation, a scenario in which shareholders would likely receive absolutely nothing.
So here we have a company swimming in debt, with the specter of foreclosure and liquidation looming. Who in his right mind would invest in this? While the situation seems dire, things are actually not as bad as they look, for a few reasons.
1. This is Japan, where debt works differently. The Japanese government’s number one fear is deflation, because of the disastrous effect it can have on a highly-indebted, demographically stagnant society. In order to reduce the chances of deflation, the Japanese government leans heavily on banks and lenders, encouraging them to restructure and extend defaulted loans, rather than foreclose. This “extend and pretend” strategy has drawbacks of its own, but it benefits Kinbasha. Though some of its debt has been in default since 2006, lenders have made no effort to begin foreclosure proceedings, and have actually forgiven some debt in restructuring deals. The company notes that its defaulted debt is subject to penalty interest rates of 14% and up, but few lenders have opted to charge the penalty rates, allowing the average rate on the defaulted notes to remain a very manageable 3.60%.
2. The company’s operating profits are sufficient to cover interest expense and to make regular principal payments on its debt. Kinbasha produced $37.1 million in operating cash flow in fiscal 2013. The company used its cash flow to reduce debt and capital leases by $9.61 million in fiscal 2013, and by another $3.91 in the first quarter of fiscal 2014. Because Kinbasha generates this kind of cash flow, the company is worth more alive than it is dead. Lenders are not stupid, and they know that receiving full principal value over several years (with regular interest along the way) is better than shutting down the show and getting a fraction of principal in a liquidation.
As I mentioned in point 2, Kinbasha’s pachinko operations generate substantial operating profit. Adjusted for a one-time gain in fiscal 2013, the company’s EBIT was $11.69 million in fiscal 2013 and $13.75 million for the twelve trailing months. Fiscal 2013’s results were affected by the the Fukushima earthquake, so I view the twelve trailing months figure as more indicative of sustainable EBIT. Interest costs for the most recent quarter were $1.71 million, which annualizes to $6.82 million. Kinbasha has net operating loss carryforwards of around $13 million, which will buy it a few more tax free years. Subtracting annualized interest expense from trailing EBIT gives pro forma net income of $6.91 million.
Going with that $6.91 pro forma net income figure, let’s take a look at Kinbasha’s valuation. The company has 12.26 million shares outstanding, and a bid/ask midpoint of $0.825.
With a market cap of only $10.11 million, Kinbasha trades at a pro forma P/E ratio of 1.46. At this point, you can probably see why I say Kinbasha has potential. Then again, I never look exclusively at a company’s equity. I always examine the valuation of the entire capital structure. Note: I have annualized the most recent quarter’s depreciation figure so as not to overstate it.
From an enterprise perspective, Kinbasha looks cheap on an EV/EBITDA basis and reasonably valued based on EV/EBIT.
In essence, what we have here is a typical leveraged equity situation, just taken to an extreme. Kinbasha’s equity value is less than one tenth of its entire enterprise value, which results in a heavily compressed P/E ratio despite a relatively normal EV/EBIT ratio. Any change in the valuation ratio or the capital structure will have a disproportional effect on the value of Kinbasha’s equity because the company is so cartoonishly leveraged.
Here’s what I mean. Here is a range of values for Kinbasha’s equity, determined by holding the capital structure and EBIT equal and changing the EV/EBIT multiple.
Kinbasha’s operations must command an EV/EBIT multiple a little higher than 8.0 for the equity to be worth anything at all. (Below that, the equity is worthless and the debt is impaired as well.) But at higher multiples, more and more value accrues to the equity.
That’s one lever by which Kinbasha’s share price could increase. The market could decide to assign a higher valuation multiple, and the stock could be off to the races.
However, it’s not the only lever. The other is debt reduction. Highly leveraged firms can often create value for shareholders simply by reducing their excess debt to a manageable level. As long as the total enterprise of the firm remains the same, free cash flow from operations that is applied to debt reduction increases equity value dollar for dollar. When the equity proportion of the company’s enterprise value is so small to start, the effects can be dramatic. Compounding the effect is that debt reduction often reduces the company’s bankruptcy risk, leading to multiple expansion.
Let’s imagine that Kinbasha’s operations continue to do well. EBIT grows at 3% each year for the next three years, to $15.02 million. In each of the next three years, Kinbasha uses its free cash flow to pay down debt: $10 million this year, $11 million the next year, and $12 million the year after that. At the end of the three years, net debt will have been reduced by $33 million to $84.01 million.
Using the same valuation multiples as before except with higher EBIT and lower net debt shows massive potential increases in Kinbasha’s equity value three years from now.
That’s the power of leveraged equities. In Kinbasha is successful in reducing debt and maintaining/growing EBIT, its shares could double, triple or more.
Of course, that’s if things go as planned. Kinbasha’s lenders could decide to foreclose at any time, shuttering the entire operation. Or they could observe Kinbasha’s progress and choose to apply penalty rates, figuring the company could pay. That would crimp cash flow and slow debt reduction efforts.
Finally, Kinbasha itself could lose focus on debt reduction and choose to undertake another expansion. The company notes in its annual report that it would like to open another 15 pachinko parlors, three each year for five years. The company also notes this would require substantial capital, and the company will not proceed with its plans unless it can secure this capital. If the company is tempted to pursue equity financing at these levels, the resulting dilution would greatly reduce the potential returns from de-leveraging.
So there you have it. On one hand, Kinbasha is a deeply-indebted company in incurable default, relying on the mercy of lenders not to foreclose and cause a total loss for shareholders. Any decline in EBIT due to a poor economy, regulatory changes or changing consumer tastes would also destroy the equity’s value. On the other hand, you have a company with strong cash flow and ongoing debt reduction, as well as lenders with strong incentives not to upset the status quo.
A total loss on one hand, and a multi-bagger on the other. Kinbasha’s value proposition all depends on the respective likelihoods of these scenarios.
I think the chances are better than not that Kinbasha will succeed in deleveraging and will negotiate a debt restructuring with its creditors. Yet, the chances of total loss are material and this is not your ordinary equity investment. Proceed at your own risk.
No position. |
Early life Edit
Military career Edit
Political life Edit
Pegahmagabow in 1945 while attending a conference in Ottawa where the National Indian Government was formed. Upon his return to Canada he continued to serve in the Algonquin Regiment militia as a non-permanent active member.[1] Following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps, he was elected chief of the Parry Island Band from February 1921. Once in office he caused a schism in the band after he wrote a letter calling for certain individuals and those of mixed race to be expelled from the reserve.[12] He was re-elected in 1924 and served until he was deposed via an internal power struggle in April 1925. Before the motion could go through, Pegahmagabow resigned.[13] A decade later, he was appointed councillor from 1933 to 1936. In 1933 the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) changed its policies and forbade First Nation chiefs from corresponding with the DIA. They directed that all correspondence, as of the spring of 1933, go through the Indian Agent.[14] This gave huge power to the Agent, something that grated on Pegahmagabow, who did not get along with his Indian Agent, John Daly.[14] First Nation members who served in the army during World War I were particularly active as political activists. They had travelled the world, earned the respect of the comrades in the trenches, and refused to be sidelined by the newly empowered Indian Agent. Historian Paul Williams termed these advocates "returned soldier chiefs", and singled out a few, including Pegahmagabow, as being especially active.[15] This caused intense disagreements with Daly and eventually led to Pegahmagabow being deposed as chief.[2] Daly and other agents who came in contact with Pegahmagabow were incredibly frustrated by his attempts, in his words, to free his people from "white slavery".[12] The Indian agents labelled him a "mental case" and strove to sideline him and his supporters.[12] In addition to the power struggle between the Indian council and the DIA with which Pegahmagabow took issue, he was a constant agitator over the islands in Georgian Bay of the Huron. The Regional First Nation governments claimed the islands as their own and Pegahmagabow and other chiefs tried in vain to get recognition of their status.[16] During World War II Pegahmagabow worked as a guard at a munitions plant near Nobel, Ontario, and was a Sergeant-major in the local militia.[17] In 1943, he became the Supreme Chief of the Native Independent Government, an early First Nations organization.[17]
Family and legacy Edit
See also Edit
^ Other sources have given Pegahmagabow's birth year as 1888 or 1891.
Bibliography Edit
Further reading Edit |
Apologies to Dijkstra for butchering that quote again , but the rage against <table>s is getting out of hand. Back in the dark ages, when it was impossible to get consistent HTML rendering across browsers and platforms someone decided to use the <table> element , originally designed to markup tabular data, to layout webpages.
Ever since that moment <table>s have been an unfairly shunned part of the HTML spec. When CSS became a stable and supported spec many people started screaming from the roof tops “Stop using <table> it ruins webpages”, and too many people have taken this to heart, so much that any time tabular data needs to be presented bizarre alternatives are used.
This was an example of a bad table of data that caught my eye a while ago:
Its supposed to give an idea of the cumulative revenue of iPhone Apps over time, but its hard to tell that as there is no title. Good data tells a story, good metadata explains that story. There is no metadata here to explain any of these numbers, here is what a search engine sees when they look at the HTML on that page:
Period ending.....Period downloads.....Cumulative downloads....Period revenues Jun 2008............no apps...................no apps........................no revenues Dec 2008.............600 M......................600 M..........................$ 172 M Jun 2009..............800 M....................1.4 B.............................$ 228 M Dec 2009..........1.6 B.........................3.0 B............................$ 458 M Jun 2010...........2.0 B.........................5.0 B............................$ 542 M Total.................5.0 B.........................5.0 B............................$1.4 B
Accessibility and search robots aside, here is no context to any of this, the units change between rows, the number of dots changes each time. Its hard to say what this data is without purposefully reading the text around it. I could drone on about the lack of metadata describing the data in this table, but instead I’ll counter this with a better example.
Here is the same table, rewritten as an actual <table>, using only what’s defined in the HTML4 and above W3C specifications:
A few things instantly stand out: the columns all match up nicely, both in display and in the table-model; each of the years is clearly marked; the table is relatively self-explanatory; and lastly it appears as a table to anyone who reads it. Furthermore, all of the formatting is done using CSS; thats right the presentation is left to the CSS and the descriptive markup is done using a <table>, just how it is intended to be done. But even this is only a fraction of the possible metadata to place into a HTML table.
However, this is not the worse example of a ‘table’ I have seen, the one that sent me over the edge was this large image that highlights the relative pros and cons of different smart phones:
The main issue with this, is this image of a table is mostly text, is quite large and static. You cannot easily copy text out of this, you can’t easily reorder the table and unless you have a large screen it would be quite difficult to compare two products that weren’t both very close to each other. Unlike the table of iPhone revenues, I am not going to go to the effort of transcribing this into a proper HTML table.
Compare this with a similar table from wikipedia also providing a comparison of smartphones and the differences are obvious. First of all, the table is now web-crawlable – whatever data is in this table is now indexed in Google, instant bonus, and the user can easily search through the page to find what they needed to know. There is also a whole lot of Javascript on the page. For example, clicking the boxes next the each of the column titles reorders the whole table around that column. In the first table this isn’t too noticeable with most entries having either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but the Hardware and OS table from further down the same page is full of figures, and now I can easily find the lightest phone (it’s the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger, something that would be much harder to find out on the image ‘table’).
Furthermore there are plenty of ways that you can easily add functionality to tables, to reoorder, hide, expand or change to add plenty of use to your tables.
The web is supposed to be full of life and allow use to use our data in exciting new ways, so don’t stick with static images, or unstructured text for your tables when there is a much more useful alternative out there. |
Share. Turns out Magneto's real mutant ability is the power to move you. Turns out Magneto's real mutant ability is the power to move you.
Magneto has made veteran X-Men director Bryan Singer cry on the set of X-Men: Apocalypse.
During the San Pedro International Film Festival, Singer was asked about what to expect from the upcoming X-Men movie.
In his response, Singer mentioned that fans can expect a running time in excess of two hours, but that doesn't mean X-Men: Apocalypse is boring.
Singer refers to it as a "wrap-up of six movies" and said we can expect the trailer in six months.
X-Men: Apocalypse Hi-Res Images 8 IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 OF 08 01 OF 08 X-Men: Apocalypse Hi-Res Images Download Image Captions ESC
Expect an emphasis on pathos in the sixth core X-Men movie and, in particular, a scene from Michael Fassbender that made his director cry.
While Singer came short of describing Fassbender's ad-libbed scene extension, he described it as "heartbreaking" and "not a typical comic book scene at all". He added that he "hope[s] it makes the cut".
Exit Theatre Mode
X-Men: Apocalypse hits cinemas worldwide in May 2016, but you can see high-res images from the movie here and an Egyptian tease set photo here.
Nathan Lawrence is a freelance writer from Sydney who never read X-Men comics, but sure likes the movies. Track him down on Twitter. |
An episode of “The Big Interview” featuring Bob Weir will air tomorrow, and AXS TV has shared a second clip ahead of the program. Hosted by Dan Rather, the new clip focuses on Weir’s unique style of rhythm guitar.
In it, Weir talks about how he was influenced by John Coltrane pianist McCoy Tyner, as there were very few rhythm guitarists playing complicated chord progressions during the early days of the Grateful Dead. He mentions Jerry Garcia’s tenacity for playing lead guitar parts, and wanted his own role in the band to be a unique one.
Enjoy the clip below:
The episode airs tomorrow, August 11th, at 11:00 PM. For another taste of the interview, you can watch the first clip released from this conversation between two iconic American figures. |
Unity Editor Download Assistant
Component Installers Windows
Component Installers Mac
We are happy to announce Unity 2017.1.2p4. The release notes and the corresponding issue tracker link for issues fixed in this release are as shown below.
As always, patch releases are recommended only for users affected by those bugs fixed in that patch.
Improvements
Video: RGB to YUV conversion that happens during video transcoding and recording is now 2-3 times faster.
Fixes
(935433) - AI: Fixed NavMesh.SamplePoint failing for meshes in range when another navmesh was below the point and out of range.
(942625) - Android: Fixed symbols.zip not including symbols file.
(924891) - Android: Disable GPU fences for two Android 6 devices which have been found to have compatibility issues causing performance loss: HTC 10 and LG G5 SE.
(959908) - Android: Fixed loading player data for very specific file sizes/content.
(961094 (948200)) - Android: Fixed crash on some Adreno devices.
(971571) - Android: Fixed a rare static splash screen crash.
(964932 (943438)) - Animation: Fixed assert when loading AnimationClip asynchronously in AssetBundles.
(964917 (925381)) - Editor: Fixed an issue where performing a drag and drop operation to a GameObject that is being edited in the Preview window of Timeline would apply changes to its associated Prefab that cannot be reverted.
(943051) - Editor: Fixed Scene view picking sometimes not selecting the topmost object.
(953161) - Editor: Fixed Player Settings, not using the default icon if there are no icons specified.
(948327 (930624)) - Editor: Fixed plugin Inspector showing only one option in Framework Dependencies for iOS platform and .NET 4.6.
(968535) - Editor: Fixed editor restart prompt when selecting the same Active Input Handling option.
(954607) - Editor: Fixed random hangs during Editor startup.
(969962 (956872)) - Facebook: Fixed unhandled BadImageFormatException for deleted SDK .dll.
(854349) - GI: Fixed Enlighten not generating lightmaps for meshes imported without UVs and with Generate Lightmap UVs option enabled.
(925552) - GI: Fixed project build errors when Reflection Probes Projection setting in Tier1(Graphics Settings) is unchecked.
(754298) - GI: Fixed terrain artifacts caused by Enlighten terrain mesh triangulation being different from the original mesh triangulation.
(939947) - GI: Fixed exception being thrown when the backgroung color of a Reflection Probe is changed.
(935328) - GI: Fixed a crash in 'RenderTexture::DiscardContents' when opening a scene.
(936003) - GI: Changed memory label for filtering in Progressive Lightmapper.
(930042) - GI: Remove unnecessary error message being displayed in console.
(935149) - GI: Fixed metadata pass values when using terrain mesh with MaterialPropertyBlock and Realtime GI.
(929875) - Graphics: Fixed displaying incorrect light mode when multiple lights are selected.
(930221) - Graphics: Fixed shadows when shadow prepare job is not run.
(964921 (962696)) - Graphics: Fixed batching with unused stencil bit in G-Buffer pass.
(None) - IL2CPP: Improve incremental build performance on OSX.
(966623) - IL2CPP: Fixed crash in thread pool during shutdown.
(922979) - IL2CPP: Fixed an issue where android builds would crash on launch with the 4.5 runtime when the byte code stripping option was selected.
(962352) - iOS: Fixed the Screen.dpi() method from the Trampoline code in order to return the correct number of DPI in iPhone 8, iPhone 8+ and iPhone X. Also fixed - the iPhone 8+ and iPhone X model checking.
(920200 (878689)) - iOS: Added an option to disable UISystemGestureGateGestureRecognizers touch delays in the Trampoline. These delays are meant to filter out accidental - clicks very close to the edges of the screen, but some users reported that they have been experiencing issues related to them, DISABLE_TOUCH_DELAYS flag has been added in order to control this behaviour.
(972893 (942401)) - iOS: Fixed screen not rotating away when disabling current autorotation using Screen.autorotateTo.
(967467 (966830)) - iOS: Fixed PlayerSettings.iOS.appleDeveloperTeamID being ignored if automatic signing is off.
(None) - Multiplayer: Fixed reliable message sometimes being delivered twice.
(960530) - Physics: Fixed previous collision not being ignored when recreating 2D physics contacts.
(957044) - Physics: Fixed collider from crashing or getting into a bad state when disabled from an animation.
(965605) - Physics: Fixed loading a scene with a Rigidbody2D with simulation off allowing interpolation when simulation is subsequently turned on.
(965075) - Physics: Fixed recursive 2D physics callbacks happening when re-parenting inside a callback.
(869346) (835980) - Plugins: Removed warning messages about Audio spatializers in logs for applications that were not using spatializers.
(935582) - Scripting: Fixed crash in AssemblyUpdater when property body contains reference to an obsolete API method / property.
(827984) - Scripting: Fixed deadlocks and pauses when using System.Threading.Monitor.
(964302) - Terrain: Remove Editor error about non read/write textures.
(953270) - UI: Fixed 'd3d11: failed to create buffer' error in CanvasRenderer.
(958902 (924188)) - UI: Fixed issue where canvas elements that are moved whilst they're disabled weren't displayed in the correct location upon being re-enabled.
(962255 (908289)) - Video: Fixed video decoding errors due to bad file I/O for high res/bitrate video.
(965362) - Video: Fixed VideoPlayer crash on OSX 10.9 and iOS 7.0 or below.
(965363 (921560)) - Video: Fixed crashing RemoteWebCamTexture (when Unity Remote helper app) when marked DontDestroy.
(966690) - Video: Fixed erroneous negative stride crash on Windows.
(940942) - WebGL: Fixed missing slashes in https blob url.
(900105) - WebGL: Fixed black screen / missing progress bar during loading.
(949418) WWW: Fixed WWW class regressions related to throwing NullReferenceException.
(None) - XR: Fixed a thread affinity issue on certain mobile devices that could affect performance when resuming VR apps.
(966173) - XR: Fixed Daydream applications hanging before quitting to Android home when calling Application.Quit.
(None) - XR: Fixed forcing LandscapeLeft default Orientation on all mobile VR applications.
Revision: d597d0924185 |
MELBOURNE, FL – Despite the unprecedented negative media coverage, President Donald Trump’s supporters are as enthusiastic as ever.
Saturday’s rally at the Melbourne-Orlando International Airport was proof of that.
Trump returned to the site where he held one of many rallies in the Sunshine State — but this time as President of the United States. He was accompanied by his wife, first lady Melania Trump, before a crowd of at least 9,000 and another few hundred watching the rally on big screen televisions assembled outside the hangar on the airport grounds.
All attendees now in the AeroMod hangar for the @realDonaldTrump rally. Total attendees at event = 9,000. — Melbourne Police (@MelbournePolice) February 18, 2017
At the rally were some of the familiar elements of Trump’s campaign rallies, including YouTube supporters Diamond and Silk, chants of “lock her up” and “CNN sucks,” and Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American” blaring on the loudspeakers as Trump made his appearance.
After being introduced by the first lady, who recited the Lord’s Prayer, Trump boasted about his administration’s early progress and reiterated what is motivating his policies.
“It’s now been one month since my inauguration,” Trump said. “And I am here to tell you about our incredible progress in making America great again. And I’m also here to tell you about our plans for the future. And they’re big, and they’re bold, and it’s what our country is all about. Believe me. I’m here because I want to be among my friends and among the people.”
Trump remarks included a bigger focus on the “dishonest press,” whom he said were part of the opposition to his efforts to “make America great again.” He said to raucous cheers:
I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news. The dishonest media, which has published one false story after another, with no sources, even though they pretend they have them. They make them up in many cases. They just don’t want to report the truth. And they’ve been calling us wrong now for two years. They don’t get it. But they’re starting to get it. I can tell you that. They’ve become a big part of the problem. They are part of the corrupt system.
The president maintained he wasn’t the first commander-in-chief to fight back against the media and vowed not to allow the media to get away with “their lies.” He went on to say:
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out oftentimes on their lies. When the media lies to people, I will never, ever let them get away with it. I will do whatever I can that they don’t get away with it. They have their own agenda. And their agenda is not your agenda. In fact, when Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself,’ he said, ‘becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.’ That was June 14 — my birthday — 1807.
“But despite all their lies, misrepresentations, and false stories, they could not defeat us in the primaries,” he added. “And they could not defeat us in the general election. And we will continue to expose them for what they are. And most importantly, we will continue to win, win, win. We are not going to let the fake news tell us what to do, how to live, or what to believe. We are free and independent people. And we will make our own choices.”
Trump’s remarks on immigration and trade were consistent with his “America first” campaign rhetoric, including the threat of a border tax on products built by companies that moved their manufacturing facilitiesfrom the United States to another country. He said:
You want us to enforce our immigration laws, and to defend our borders. You want fair trade deals and a level playing field. We don’t have a level playing field. Because you understand that when American workers win, America as a country wins and wins big. And every country over the last long period of time has been taking advantage of the stupidity of our politicians. It’s not going to happen any longer. You want lower taxes, less regulation, millions of new jobs and more products stamped with those beautiful, beautiful words, Made in the USA. You want to make it easier for companies to do business in America, and harder for companies to leave. We don’t want companies saying ‘everybody’s fired, we’re moving to another country, we’re going to make the products, sell it across the border.’ And isn’t that wonderful? Not going to happen anymore. We’re going to have strong borders. And when they want to sell that product back across our border, they’re going to pay a 35 percent tax. And you know what? They’re never going to leave. They will never, ever leave.
On trade, Trump reminded attendees of fulfilling his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and double-down on his pledge to have better trade deals and to take on nations that manipulate their currencies. He said:
I followed through on my promise to withdraw from the job-killing disaster known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP. We have just terminated our relationship to it. We’re going to have tremendous trade deals all over the world. But they’re going to be bilateral, or as we would say, one-on-one. None of these deals where we get caught in quicksand, where we get mired in, and we can’t do anything about it. Like, by the way, NAFTA and so many others. And my administration has begun plans to crack down on foreign cheating and currency manipulation, which is killing our companies and really, really hurting our workers. We’re going to end it.
Trump noted the progress he had made in the early days of his presidency regarding the Dakota and Keystone pipelines, which he said will be constructed with pipe made in the United States. He reported to cheers:
Within a few days of taking the oath of office, I’ve taken steps to begin the construction of Keystone and the Dakota Access pipeline. Anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 jobs. And very importantly, as I was about to sign it, I said who makes the pipe? Who makes the pipe? Something this audience understands very well, right? Simple question. The lawyers put this very complex document in front. I said who makes the pipe? They said, ‘Sir, it can be made anywhere.’ I said not anymore. So I put a little clause in the bottom. The pipe has to be made in the United States of America if we’re going to have pipelines.
In the middle of the rally, Trump invited Gene Huber onto the stage with him. Huber, of nearby Boynton Beach, FL, reportedly waited 13 hours and was first in line to get in the hangar for the rally.
“Mr. President, thank you, sir,” Huber said on stage. “We the people, our movement is the reason why our president of the United States is standing here in front of us today. When President Trump, during the election, promised all these things that he was going to do for us, I knew he was going to do this for us.”
“A star is born,” Trump declared after Huber’s remarks.
Trump’s remarks also included a vote of confidence for law enforcement. He said he had instructed his Justice Department to stand with police that were targets of violence.
“I directed the Department of Justice to take a firm, firm stance to protect our cops, sheriffs, and police from crimes of violence against them,” Trump said. “We will work with our police, not against our police. Our police do a great job. And they’ve never been troubled like they’re troubled now. It’s very unfair what’s happening. So we want to cherish our law enforcement. And we will always protect those who protect us.”
Also in the realm of public safety, Trump touted efforts by Defense Secretary James Mattis to defeat ISIS and his instructions to the Pentagon to rebuild the military.
“I’ve also directed the defense community, headed by a general and now — well you know, he said it. He said it,” he said. “… and now Secretary ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis to develop a plan to totally destroy ISIS. I have ordered the Department of Defense to begin plans for the great rebuilding of the United States military. We will pursue peace through strength.”
“Our military is badly depleted,” Trump continued. “You have planes in the military where the father flew them and now the son is flying it. It’s so old. We make the best equipment anywhere in the world. We’re going to start using our best and most modern equipment.”
Trump slammed his Democratic opponents in the U.S. Senate for their obstruction, especially with regard to his cabinet appointments.
“We have to tell the Democrats, because they’re doing the wrong thing for the American people, to stop their tactics of delay and obstruction and destruction,” he said. “They got to get on with it. My administration is also pushing ahead strongly with very historic tax reform. We are working to lower tax rates in the middle class, to reduce tax rates big league on businesses. And to make our tax code more fair and very simple for all Americans so it’s understandable by everyone. Senate Democrats should work with us to lower taxes and bring back our jobs. But the Democrats want to increase your taxes very, very substantially. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Watch — Rallygoers jeer media with chants of “tell the truth!”:
Before returning to Air Force One to depart on his trip back to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL 120 miles to the south, Trump touted the movement that led to his election win, which he described as a reaction to global elites that have “done very well for themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
“[They] have left working families with shrinking wages,” Trump said. “Really, I mean they are shrinking. Eighteen years ago many of you in this room made more money working one job than you’re making right now working two and three jobs.”
This is Trump’s third consecutive weekend in the Sunshine State, but the first appearance open to the public.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor |
Capcom revealed some new details on their upcoming Resident Evil 6 at their Captivate event last week and… damn.
As we already know, Resident Evil 6 includes Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield- the two main protagonists of the RE franchise- both. In one single game. The game also features a new character, a mysterious mercenary called Jake Muller. Here’s the shocker- he’s Albert Wesker’s son (many already guessed it, so congrats to them).
All three of them will have sidekicks in the game- Leon is paired with US government agent Helena Harper, Chris with BSAA member Piers Nivans and Jake with Sherry Birkin daughter of two former Umbrella scientists.
All three main characters will have their own story– they will have different storylines, playable separately, and all three stories will be woven together seamlessly (so it seems). The three campaigns will also have co-op modes, which makes it that much more awesome.
This basically gives us three games in one, all three with two meaty modes.
“There are a couple of ways we’re trying to differentiate the stories in the game,” states Kobayashi (via mweb.co.za). “For example, we’re trying to incorporate horror elements into all the stories. But as you know horror is a big genre and there are different types of horror. So Leon’s story is more traditional Gothic horror, Chris is in battle and as he fights his way and moves forward the things that he encounters are horrific in their own way. Jake [new character, son of Albert Wesker] as mentioned is trying to escape from the country he was in, so he’s being chased and followed. So there’s that certain tension and horror element to his story that is different to that of Chris or Leon. So we’re trying to present a different iteration of horror in each of the stories.
Story-wise, the main characters of the game will be facing the new C-virus and the new Chrysalide, both of which are new threats that will pit you against dangerous foes.
You can watch the latest trailer here. |
Meet Beaudine
BEAUDINE, another suspected shiba inu/chi mix who is just a baby himself....and can you stand that adorable grin??
UPDATE FROM BEAUDINE"S FOSTER:
Beaudine is an 8 month old sweetheart. Shiba Inu mix, he is playful, likes to collect and then feast on shoes, is tiny, just 10 pounds, and is like the wind when outside. He loves other dogs and just wants to be a puppy.
Now accepting applications at thepixelfund.org
Spread the word - Like us on Facebook!
If you are interested in adopting this pet, please visit our website before contacting us. www.thepixelfund.org. Most of your questions can be answered there and you will find an adoption application. If you see this animal still posted on Petfinder, it is still available for adoption. We are volunteers rescuing in our spare time, so emails and questions accompanied by a completed application will be answered promptly. Emails without an application are answered only as we have time. Thank you for considering adoption! |
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: A win for consumers, or a looming disaster for the nation's biggest sports?
This afternoon, Optus won a landmark copyright case against the National Rugby League, the AFL and Telstra.
It means Optus can continue to show sports online and on mobile phones, well, almost in real time.
Amy Bainbridge reports.
AMY BAINBRIDGE, REPORTER: Watching sports is big business. The AFL sells the copyright to its matches to free-to-air and pay TV, as well as the live online streaming rights to Telstra.
The latest Telstra deal is worth $153 million. The value of that deal has been thrown into question.
At the centre of this dispute is the Optus TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV from their phone or computer and watch it as soon as two minutes after the initial broadcast.
CLARE GILL, OPTUS SPOKESWOMAN: This has been a win for Australians, for innovation and for the law. This is a product similar to things that you can do today. So we see this no different from any other personal video recording device.
CRAIG MIDDLETON, TELSTRA SPOKESMAN: Well this isn't an ultimate win and the judge has obviously flagged that by making a full court appeal available as an option. We're gonna go away and consider that option.
AMY BAINBRIDGE: The Federal Court found that because individuals were making a recording for private use to watch at a convenient time that TV Now did not infringe copyright laws. The judge stressed that who was making the recording was significant and it was the individual, not Optus.
STEVEN RARES, FEDERAL COURT: Even though Optus provided all the significant technology for making, keeping and playing the recording, I considered that in substance this was no different to a person using equipment or technology in his or her own home or elsewhere to copy or record a broadcast. I noted that a similar result had been reached by appeal courts in the United States and Singapore.
MARK MCDONNELL, TELCO ANALYST, BBY: Well it's a victory in round one for Optus, and I say round one because I think it will be appealed and this is ultimately of such commercial significance that a judgment from a single judge is unlikely to be accepted without further testing.
AMY BAINBRIDGE: With the new AFL season imminent, this judgment means Telstra has paid millions for a deal with the AFL that's not actually buying exclusive rights and the NRL is negotiating its new broadcast rights package, tipped to be over $1 billion, to begin next year. But the implications flow beyond football.
MARK MCDONNELL: Frankly, this could go all the way through all of the sporting codes. I've already touched on the cricket; I mean, there's the V8 Supercars, there's the Olympic Games, there's a whole range of high value sports events that potentially play out as a result of a landmark case such as this.
PETER COX, MEDIA ANALYST: The internet and mobile phones are now really essential components for sport in the future. If the revenue is reduced on those, that will affect the expansion into the western suburbs for Sydney for example in AFL. This is a great threat to the sporting codes.
AMY BAINBRIDGE: And some believe Australia's copyright laws have failed to keep pace with the rapidly changing media environment.
PETER COX: It is certainly a case where the laws need to be updated to meet the modern technology that's available today and the changing marketplace at the same time.
CLARE GILL: The 2006 amendments in the Copyright Act allowed for these type of innovations. Technology is changing and that's what we're allowing. It's about recording free-to-air television and playing it back at a time more convenient. It's simply a personal video recording device, as is available today.
AMY BAINBRIDGE: The AFL, NRL and Telstra have been ordered to pay Optus's court costs. Both football codes have released statements saying they're likely to appeal the decision and the AFL maintains Optus Now is a breach of copyright.
Amy Bainbridge, Lateline. |
A gay couple on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging Michigan's refusal to recognize their out-of-state marriage.
Bruce T. Morgan and Brian P. Merucci, who married in New York last year, argue that a separate ruling currently on hold striking down Michigan's ban on gay marriage means the state must recognize their nuptials.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati stayed the lower court's order in March after roughly 300 gay and lesbian couples exchanged vows in Michigan.
Republican Governor Rick Snyder declared the marriages valid but refused to recognize them pending an appeal.
Morgan and Merucci say Snyder failed to address the marriages of gay couples performed elsewhere.
Stephanie D. Myott, the couple's attorney, told MLive.com that “Snyder only addressed the couples who married in Michigan after the DeBoer ruling.”
“No one is talking about the thousands of couples in Michigan who were married in another state, like Bruce and Brian. The Constitution protects their fundamental rights as well,” she said.
“Unlike the same-sex marriages performed in Michigan on Mach 22, 2014, the legality of Bruce and Brian's marriage is in no way dependent upon the decision in the Sixth Circuit appeal,” the couple's complaint states. “Bruce and Brian's marriage was legal when performed in New York. When judge Friedman found the Marriage Amendment and its implementing statutes unconstitutional, Section 2 of DOMA no longer allowed Michigan to deny Bruce and Brian their state marital rights and benefits, which were vested in them pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Even if the Sixth Circuit overturns Judge Friedman's decision, Bruce and Brian's state marital rights and benefits are vested in them and cannot be taken away.”
Morgan, who is battling a 2011 diagnosis of inoperable brain cancer, said he wanted the marriage recognized so that hospital staff will recognize “the decisions [Merucci] makes regarding my care.”
“I know that Brian will be by my side during this difficult time, and I want him to be recognized as my spouse when he does because that is who is he is,” Morgan said. |
The BBC is to be given free reign to dramatically slash the number of hours it devotes to religion on Radio 4, under a shake-up of the rules by the broadcasting watchdog.
Ofcom has ripped up the old broadcasting licence - and many of its strict targets for BBC radio - to make it easier for the corporation to keep pace with audience demands for podcasts and other new ways of listening to radio-style content.
Under the current regime, BBC radio must meet around 200 targets demanding regular coverage of things like health, farming, consumer affairs, business, education and disability on Radio 4.
The BBC is to be given free reign to dramatically slash the number of hours it devotes to religion on Radio 4 (file picture)
The station is also obliged to devote 180 hours a year to comedy and 600 hours of drama.
Ofcom has dramatically slashed that rule book to just 20 targets, according to a draft document.
Critics have warned that the BBC could become less distinctive as a result, and warned that it would dilute its public service role.
Voice of the Listener and Viewer, the lobby group, told Ofcom that the move risked undermining 'Radio 4's distinctiveness and its ambition to deliver the mission to engage and entertain.'
However, BBC chiefs said that it needed more 'flexibility' to exercise its 'creative discretion' as audiences abandon traditional broadcasts and listen to digital music services and other radio-style content in new ways.
In a letter to Ofcom, BBC policy director Clare Sumner said that the broadcaster remained committed to drama and comedy but questioned whether targets demanding a certain number of hours in these 'expensive genres' was the best way of 'maximising the distinctiveness. |
Paul Morigi via Getty Images Anastasia Somoza, an international disability rights advocate, delivered remarks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
The Women’s March on Washington Saturday is poised to be the largest gathering of people with disabilities in U.S. history, but that doesn’t mean the march is accessible to the entire community.
Many of those who cannot attend ― for reasons of physical ability or stamina, for instance ― will be particularly affected by the Republican agenda, most notably a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Fortunately, there’s still a way for people who can’t attend Saturday to get involved. The Disability March, an official co-sponsor of the Women’s March on Washington, is an online movement that gives people with disabilities and chronic illnesses a way to actively participate in the event via the internet.
Disability March A screen grab from the Disability March's homepage.
The Disability March site includes prompts for interested participants to submit their names, photos and statements. The info will be uploaded to the website in time for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, creating a virtual archive of participants.
Disability March A screen grab of uploaded stories from the Disability March.
Sonya Huber, a disability activist and creative writing professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, conceived the virtual movement when she realized that going to the march in D.C. would be harmful to her health. Huber, 45, has rheumatoid disease and Hashimoto’s disease, among other autoimmune conditions, which affect her energy and cause chronic pain.
“My first reaction was, ‘I’m totally going to the march!’ And then I was like, ‘No, I actually can’t.’ That was a really hard moment,” Huber told The Huffington Post. “Just the march alone would be physically taxing, but the combination of a long bus ride to D.C. and then a quick turnaround to go back home — for somebody with an autoimmune condition, that could take a couple of weeks to a month to recover from.”
Huber created a Word Press blog and uploaded a few of her friends’ stories in order to bring visibility to those with invisible and physical disabilities whose health needs are often not met and sometimes stigmatized by society.
“People who can’t get to demonstrations are a real constituency.” - Sonya Huber, the activist who created the Disbaility March
“I felt I had to do something that’s about more than just me. I wanted to represent and share the stories of people whose healthcare is threatened,” she said. “I thought it was going to be just me and my 20 friends, but I’m looking at my inbox right now and there’s a submission coming in every other minute.”
At the moment, Huber has 10 volunteers checking emails and uploading people’s stories online.
“Just reading their stories makes me feel not alone,” she said.
Here's my entry in the online #disabilitymarch. Please join us: all it takes is an email to [email protected]... https://t.co/dXb1u4joTB — Sonya Huber (@sonyahuber) January 13, 2017
Huber also hopes that this online movement sheds some light accessibility issues.
“People who can’t get to demonstrations are a real constituency and they’re eager and desperate for ways to get involved,” she said. “They’re not seen as constituency for real organizing and they have a lot of very common, shared concerns. I think there needs to more virtual ways for people to participate actively in the future rather than passively watching a stream of others protesting.”
Huber hopes this event ― along with the Facebook group and Twitter account she started, will play a role in future activism.
“Now we have all these email addresses and this large, fiery Facebook group. There’s so much energy and skills that people have to offer. I feel like we can be really powerful,” she said.
Huber encourages people to keep submitting their stories and promises that all submissions will be uploaded to the site. She also suggests those who are disabled or would like to advocate for those who are to use the hashtag #DisabilityMarch on Saturday in order to share their thoughts and stories during the Women’s March on Washington. |
The Democratic sweep in Tuesday’s elections has raised the pressure on Republicans to make good on their campaign promises.
Republican senators downplayed any setback to their tax-reform push from the elections, but said the results drove home the need to deliver legislative wins before votes are cast in 2018.
“I do think, however, that it does speak to the need for us to get accomplishments. ... I think right now there's a general frustration in the country that even though we've gotten some things done on our agenda, that some of the big ticket items remain incomplete,” Sen. John Thune John Randolph ThunePolls: Hiking estate tax less popular than taxing mega wealth, income Will Trump sign the border deal? Here's what we know Key GOP senator pitches Trump: Funding deal a 'down payment' on wall MORE (R-S.D.), the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, told reporters.
Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) said he “predicted” the rough election night and that the party needs to make changes quickly before the midterms arrive.
"Unless we get our act together, we're going to lose heavily," he said.
Asked if Tuesday's elections showed the need for a "course correction," Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.), who has emerged as one of Trump's loudest critics, smirked before adding, "maybe that's potentially self-evident."
"I've certainly made some observations, but I'll keep them to myself," he said.
Democrats won victories up and down the ballot on Tuesday night, their first major election wins since the devastating results of 2016.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerBrennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview Harry Reid: 'I don't see anything' Trump is doing right MORE (D-N.Y.) and Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (Va.) and Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Addressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win MORE (Va.) took a victory lap on Wednesday, holding a press conference with reporters to talk about the election and tax reform.
“The combination of the embrace of policies that are so far away from where America is … the fact that President Trump is not leading but tweeting, and the fact that our Republican colleagues … are afraid to change course, when you put that all together, a wave, where Democrats are going to do really well in the House and Senate, is shaping up,” Schumer said.
Schumer added that when he took over the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2005 he was “smelling a wave” for 2006 and “I’m getting the same feelings now.”
Democrats on Tuesday held onto the Virginia governor’s mansion and made significant gains at the state legislature, with control of the House of Delegates still up for grabs, pending recounts.
Taking stock of the results, Republicans broadly agreed that voters are dissatisfied with what they’ve accomplished in Congress this year.
“We’ve got to be RINOs — Republicans in Need of Outcomes,” Sen. Thom Tillis Thomas (Thom) Roland TillisGOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump Don’t look for House GOP to defy Trump on border wall MORE (R-N.C.) told reporters, asked about Tuesday night’s elections.
Sen. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsHouse to push back at Trump on border Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE (R-Maine), appearing to point to exit polling, said it was “significant” that so many voters in Virginia named health care as a key issue.
"I think that it shows that Republicans need to put forth constructive legislation ... when it comes to health care. Rather than trying to completely repeal the [Affordable Care Act], we should be focusing on trying to fix its flaws,” Collins said.
Collins was one of three GOP senators who opposed the ObamaCare effort in July. She also helped sink legislation from GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamHouse to push back at Trump on border Trump pressures GOP senators ahead of emergency declaration vote: 'Be strong and smart' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (S.C.) and Bill Cassidy William (Bill) Morgan CassidyCongress must step up to protect Medicare home health care Ivanka Trump to meet with GOP senators to discuss paid family leave legislation Bipartisan senators ask industry for information on surprise medical bills MORE (La.) that would have turned ObamaCare’s mandates and exchanges into block grants to the states.
NBC News exit polling showed that 37 percent of voters in Virginia — more than one in every three — said health care was the most important issue to them.
Sen. Jerry Moran Gerald (Jerry) MoranThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Kan.) said the message to his colleagues is “more than just tax reform, more than just repeal and replace. We need to be working on issues that affect American citizens day in and day out."
"We ought to be paying attention to what transpired in Virginia. It’s nothing that Republicans can say, it’s irrelevant, it didn’t matter. There is a message out there and we need to take some time and discern what that is,” Moran told CNN.
Republicans have struggled to make good on their years-long campaign pledges despite having the first unified GOP government in a decade.
But not every senator appeared convinced that Tuesday's election results should be cause for alarm.
Sen. Mike Rounds Marion (Mike) Michael RoundsGOP senator: Trump thinks funding deal is 'thin gruel' Lawmakers put Pentagon's cyber in their sights Endorsing Trump isn’t the easiest decision for some Republicans MORE (R-S.D.) said that he didn't think there were a lot of "big surprises."
"Virginia has always been sort of a blue state to begin with," he said. "Traditionally, after you have a change in the White House, it’s been very difficult for the elections after that to follow with the president’s party necessarily winning.”
Sen. John Cornyn John CornynHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl MORE (R-Texas) said that Republicans were already feeling "significant pressure" on taxes and "midterm elections are always tough for the party in power."
"Certainly not in the 10 states that he carried that [Senate] Democrats are running for reelection in," Cornyn said when asked if he was worried about a broad Trump backlash. "He's still enormously popular in some of those places and that's how the Senate outcome is going to be determined." |
Saturday night will remain Hockey Night in Canada on CBC, at least for the next four years.
The National Hockey League confirmed Tuesday that CBC has secured English-language rights to games in a sub-licensing agreement with Rogers Communications. Rogers has signed a 12-year deal with the NHL.
Rogers retains three exclusive windows to broadcast any game involving a Canadian team on Wednesdays, Saturdays, including CBC, and Sundays.
"Hockey Night in Canada is an iconic brand," said Keith Pelley, president of Rogers Media, at Tuesday's news conference. "It is important to us that it will continue."
Pelley said the branding of Hockey Night was involved in all of Rogers' conversations with the CBC.
We will continue to build the partnership [with the CBC] beyond hockey. - Keith Pelley, president, Rogers Media
"It's such a strong and iconic brand. As Canadians we should all be proud of that," he said. "When you look at two conventionals [networks] now carrying Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday, it bodes really well for the consumers. It's very exciting.
"We will continue to build the partnership [with the CBC] beyond hockey," Pelley added, "and we hope that CBC is our partner for Hockey Night in Canada for many years to come."
The 12-year, $5.2-billion deal, which begins next season through 2025-26 between the NHL and Rogers, is the largest media rights agreement in league history and subject to approval by its board of governors at a meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif., on Dec. 9-10.
Hubert Lacroix, CBC president and CEO, said the broadcaster "was not in a position to spend taxpayers dollars in this game of high-stakes."
"The CBC was prepared to do a fiscally responsible deal to preserve hockey on Saturday nights and to help the NHL to build the hockey brand through a variety of significant events and outreach activities," he said in a statement.
"The ability to still have Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday is something important to us. This is what we get out of this: the ability to continue to promote some of our programs."
Future
Lacroix said the CBC likes being strategic with other partners, stating this is how the public broadcaster sees itself in the future, whether it's with Rogers or another broadcaster.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said the deal with Rogers came together very quickly, telling the CBC's Peter Armstrong that "it's never just about price. It's about brand of rights, it's about how the games are going to be distributed, scheduled and produced. It was an overall comfort level based on the circumstances as we found them."
Lacroix added the CBC's deal with Rogers "provides us with a high-traffic place to promote all of our other fantastic Canadian content during a broadcast that brings the nation together week after week."
Rogers president and CEO Nadir Mohamed said, "We've reached out and worked with the CBC to ensure that Canadians will get access to Hockey Night In Canada the way they have before. I think that's great. It's great for CBC … for all of us as Canadians. We're looking forward to working with CBC … to take the fan experience to the next level."
The CBC will not pay any rights costs for the broadcasting of hockey games on the main network, CBC said in a note to staff. Rogers will bear the monetary risk and reward of the broadcasts, too — they sell the ads, but keep the revenue derived from them.
CBC has been the home of Hockey Night since 1952. It is committed to 320 hours of prime-time hockey, including games in the choice Saturday night time slot and the Stanley Cup final for the next four years.
"Our goal is to get maximum reach to Canadians … for us to drive revenue," Pelley said.
Mohamed said the ability to partner with the CBC was a key part of the deal.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said the length of the deal speaks to the vibrancy of the game and the business of the game.
Cherry 'an iconic Canadian'
The pact also means that Rogers' broadcast rival TSN appears to be shut out of NHL broadcasting for the next decade.
The CBC personalities, from Jim Hughson to Bob Cole, are all legends. - Keith Pelley
When asked of the future of Hockey Night personality Don Cherry and his Coach's Corner segment, Pelley said programming and production will be evaluated over the next few months and years in consultation with the CBC regarding Hockey Night in Canada. "We're just celebrating today." Later he added that Cherry is "an iconic Canadian.
"We all have a common goal here to build the game. Stars, like Don Cherry, could appear on seven different networks. … The CBC personalities, from Jim Hughson to Bob Cole, are all legends. We haven't even started the discussion regarding editorial with CBC, but the idea is that the content and all of the profiles of the athletes and all the stories will go across all the networks."
Bettman added Cherry is "a good friend. Obviously, it's somebody we take seriously as part of the game and ultimately something we'll discuss. … We all love and respect Don. [Rogers] will have to discuss what is best going forward.
"I think it's helpful that everybody tries to stop viewing this through traditional glasses where the CBC, for example on Saturday night, would regionalize games. Think more about the evolution of the Olympics, that if curling's going on at the same time as ski jumping at the same time as cross-country skiing, they would be on different networks and you as a fan could watch what you want. … We're going to give the fans more options than they've ever had."
Pelley said the goal is to take all the games involving teams in Canada and the United States nationally on Saturdays on Hockey Night and televise them on, say, Sportsnet, Sportsnet One, Sportsnet 360 and City TV. "You can see the plethora of outlets we have to give consumers an unbelievable offering on Saturday, so Hockey Night in Canada will go through all our platforms in what is a real, true partnership for both networks and the fans."
The NHL was seeking to capitalize on a surge in popularity following a lengthy lockout that resulted in a 48-game season in 2013.
It signed a 10-year rights deal with NBC for U.S. broadcasts in 2011. |
In the first of a regular series of columns for BBC Sport, British and Irish Lions prop Adam Jones provides a look behind the scenes of the Lions' tour of Australia.
Wake up. Cryotherapy. Breakfast. Train. Cryotherapy. Lunch. Train. Cryotherapy. Dinner. Sleep.
That's pretty much what the average day has been like with the Lions so far as we prepare for the tour to Australia.
Getting up at 6.45am for the first session of the day in the portable cryotherapy chambers, which subject you to temperatures as low as -160C and speed up a player's physical recovery, is a bit of a shock to anyone who has not experienced it before.
But all the Welsh boys in the squad are used to them from our camps in Poland. Once you do 10 sessions, the theory is that a couple of weeks later your body will be feeling loads better.
The lads who are younger and faster than me swear by them, but I do feel fresher now and most of the niggles from the end of the season have gone.
It's been a brilliant couple of weeks with the squad, even if was a bit strange with only 22 or 23 of us, with the other players joining up after their club finals. Everyone has gelled really well, on and off the field, and the coaches have been excellent.
Jones's room-mate Mako Vunipola
The first day we met up in London we had to make sure we'd got all the right kit. There's a hell of a lot: six sets of Adidas training kit, eight T-shirts, a couple of pairs of shorts and tracksuits, a jacket to wear to the stadium for the anthems, two Thomas Pink blazers, six shirts, two pairs of shoes, underwear, you name it. Just as well we don't have to check all that in ourselves.
I was rooming with (England prop) Mako Vunipola during our first week down at the Vale of Glamorgan base we use with Wales, and I can confirm the rumours are true. He is a phenomenal snorer. I snore myself but I'm not a particularly deep sleeper so with Mako barely three feet away from me, the ear plugs were well and truly wedged in.
He's a lovely lad though. At 22 he's one of the younger ones in the squad, but has spent a lot of his life in Wales so we had a bit of a connection straightaway.
For our second week in Dublin I managed to get my own room. I think I was supposed to be sharing with Gethin Jenkins, but he was still involved with his club Toulon, so at least I didn't have to spend a week with the grumpy one. But it will be the same policy as the last tour in 2009 where we shared with someone different each time we changed hotels. It means you get to know people better.
We did manage to get out for some dinner together one night last week. We went to Jamie Heaslip's restaurant in Dublin. Let's just say there was a lot of meat eaten. It was a good chance to have a chat with everyone away from the hotel and training field.
Our first camp was probably around 70% fitness work - power, endurance, conditioning. At this time of the season there's not so much need to be running around; it's more grappling and pushing and strength work.
But on the Friday we trained against the Welsh squad who are preparing for their tour of Japan. It was good to have some live line-out practice. Everyone was getting used to the new calls and by the end of the week you could see it was getting better.
British and Irish Lions' schedule 1 June v Barbarians
v Barbarians 5 June v Western Force
v Western Force 8 June v Reds
v Reds 11 June v NSW-Queensland Country
v NSW-Queensland Country 15 June v Waratahs
v Waratahs 18 June v Brumbies
v Brumbies 22 June v Australia (first Test)
v Australia (first Test) 25 June v Melbourne Rebels
v Melbourne Rebels 29 June v Australia (second Test)
v Australia (second Test) 6 July v Australia (third Test)
We had briefings initially where the coaches outlined how the defence and attack are going to be set up and then we added bits as the week went on.
The coaches gave us a rundown of what we would be working on in each afternoon session, and the onus is then on you to get on your laptop and swot up. It is your responsibility to get up to speed, so you get it right first time when you get on the field.
Lions head coach Warren Gatland wants us to train as close to match intensity as possible with short, sharp sessions, and our analysts spend a lot of time preparing us for them, with different moves and calls, so everyone is pretty clued up.
There was obviously a familiarity working with a lot of Welsh boys, but there are a lot of different calls and everything has changed from what we do with our countries.
You can see in the weights room how the level of intensity goes up with the Lions. Everyone is trying to push a few kilos more. The likes of Dan Lydiate, George North and Sam Warburton are freaks in that area, but [Scotland lock] Richie Gray has impressed me. He is such a tall lad but phenomenally strong, dead lifting 200-odd kg straight off the floor. That is a fair old weight for someone who's 6ft 10in and he is obviously very athletic too.
Rugby-wise, (England fly-half) Owen Farrell is 21 going on 30. He obviously has a good understanding of the game and is very vocal. I am looking forward to playing with him.
Owen and I were one of five players - along with Paul O'Connell, Richie Gray and Sam Warburton - who got to choose which players will be on which committees throughout the tour. There are about eight - entertainment, laundry, joke of the day, announcements on the bus, tour guides, music for the bus, etc - and I didn't put myself on any of them!
I'm not sure how Owen managed to end up on the laundry committee but the youngest guys usually get that job. I remember when I started, myself and Gethin had to do it - collecting, taking it to the laundry, sorting out any problems. Thankfully there aren't too many in the sort of hotels we stay in.
Media playback is not supported on this device Paul O'Connell at Carton House in County Kildare
We left camp on Thursday and spent a few nights at home before returning to London on Sunday for a bit more training and then the farewell dinner. It's going to be hard to be so far from my amazing wife and two-year-old daughter. But they are coming out with my parents and in-laws for the last three weeks of the tour, which will make it 10 times easier knowing I will see them halfway through.
I had to make an emergency trip to the dentist while I was home. It was nothing to do with my teeth though. I lost my gumshield. I think I put it in my car after my last game for the Ospreys and it's disappeared.
So I had to get my mouth measured up to get a new one fitted, so they can send it out to me. A bit of a pain but probably just as well as I only had one spare, so I need some new ones.
This will be my first visit to Hong Kong. I don't know why I haven't been invited out to play in the Sevens before, but obviously I would love to start the first match against the Barbarians on Saturday.
Games like this don't come along very often. We are just looking forward to flying out now and getting on with the tour. |
Eastern Michigan University could be gearing up to crack down on smoking on campus with the passing of a tobacco-free resolution by the student senate Tuesday night.
Student Senator Keven Sommerville introduced a resolution to make EMU’s campus fully smoke-free.
The resolution itself encourages the Board of Regents at EMU to add “university grounds” to the university’s policy statement on tobacco use.
With the current policies at EMU, a person is not allowed to smoke within 25-feet of a building at the designated areas and are prohibited from smoking near vents and windows, but can smoke at the university’s designated locations.
At Tuesday’s Student Senate meeting, the initial vote on the bill tied at 11 for 11 opposed, but the chair and student body vice president Nino Monea cast his supporting vote to break the tie and pass the resolution.
In an email interview, Monea said that passing the bill is important because it will play a role in changing the culture of EMU’s campus to one that promotes healthy life choices.
Sommerville also said the bill isn’t looking to penalize anyone. He stressed that it is simply promoting a social push to end smoking on campus, not a legal push.
“You just have to enact little things like this, like it’s just socially unacceptable to smoke on campus. Over time it will evolve and it will just be a thing,” Sommerville said, “Maybe in five years you walk on Eastern’s campus and find that there’s no laws punishing people smoking on campus, you’ll just find no people smoking on campus.”
“It simply changes the culture, which has proven effective at other universities. Also, over 1,000 colleges over the nation have already passed such a policy,” Monea said.
Monea added that the bill will benefit the entire EMU community by ensuring clean and breathable air across the campus.
“It is particularly good for students with conditions such as asthma who may be especially bothered by smoke,” Monea said.
EMU political science major and creative writing minor, Samantha Snell, is a smoker and has considered transferring if a bill like the tobacco-free resolution was passed.
“We’re not trying to harm anyone,” Snell said of her smoking and the other smokers around campus, “It’s an addiction.”
Snell also said that it’s much too dangerous to go outside of campus to smoke and ridiculous to do so running in between classes. She added that even if people were penalized, that they would still find a way to smoke regardless of any resolution.
According to Monea, now that the resolution has passed through Student Government, it is up to go forward in front of the Board of Regents once it is signed by president Desmond Miller.
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The Baltimore Orioles have made a habit out of occupying the cellar in the American League East.
The O's are heading into 2012 with a string of four straight last-place finishes. They haven't won as many as 70 games since 2006.
So will things be any better this season? Are the O's on the cusp of a breakout?
Let's discuss the matter in depth. Read on for a full breakdown of how the Orioles are shaping up heading into the 2012 season.
2011 Record: 69-93
Key Arrivals (courtesy of BaseballProspectus.com): C Taylor Teagarden (from Texas), LHP Dana Eveland (from Los Angeles Dodgers), 3B Ryan Flaherty (waivers), LHP Tsuyoshi Wada (FA from Japan), LHP Wei-Yin Chen (FA from Taiwan), OF Antoan Richardson (FA), OF Lee Cruz (FA), OF Endy Chavez (FA), OF Jai Miller (from Oakland), RHP Willie Eyre (FA), RHP Ross Wolf (FA), 3B Wilson Betemit (FA), C Ronny Paulino (FA), RHP Pat Neshek (FA), RHP Armando Galarraga (FA), RHP Jason Hammel (from Colorado), RHP Matt Lindstrom (from Colorado), DH Nick Johnson (FA), RHP Greg Burke (FA), RHP Luis Ayala (FA).
Key Departures: RHP Randy Henry (to Texas), SS Pedro Florimon, Jr. (waivers), LHP Jarret Martin (to LAD), OF Tyler Henson (to LAD), 1B Brandon Snyder (to Texas), RHP Jeremy Guthrie (to Colorado), DH Vladimir Guerrero (FA), OF Luke Scott (FA), SS Cesar Izturis (FA).
Projected Rotation (per official site)
Jake Arrieta (10-8, 5.50 ERA, 1.46 WHIP) Tommy Hunter (4-4, 4.68, 1.36) Jason Hammel (7-13, 4.76, 1.43) Wei-Yin Chen (N/A) Zach Britton (11-11, 4.61, 1.45) Brian Matusz (1-9, 10.69, 2.11) Tsuyoshi Wada (N/A) Alfredo Simon (4-9, 4.90, 1.45) Dana Eveland (3-2, 3.03, 1.15)*
*Not listed as a starter on the team's official site.
Projected Starters
C: Matt Wieters (.262/.328/.450)
Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
1B: Chris Davis (.266/.305/.402)
2B: Brian Roberts (.221/.273/.331)*, Robert Andino (.263/.327/.344)
3B: Mark Reynolds (.221/.323/.583)
SS: J.J. Hardy (.269/.310/.491)
LF: Nolan Reimold (.247/.328/.453)
CF: Adam Jones (.280/.319/.466)
RF: Nick Markakis (.284/.351/.406)
DH: Wilson Betemit (.285/.343/.452)
*According to the Baltimore Sun, it's still unclear where Roberts is in his recovery from multiple concussions. It doesn't sound like he'll be ready for opening day.
Bullpen
Closer: Jim Johnson (R) (6-5, 9 SV, 18 HLD, 9 BLSV, 2.67 ERA, 1.11 WHIP)
Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
Kevin Gregg (R) (0-3, 22 SV, 7 BLSV, 4.37, 1.64)
Matt Lindstrom (R) (2-2, 2 SV, 15 HLD, 3 BLSV, 3.00, 1.22)
Brad Bergesen (R) (2-7, 5.70, 1.50)
Jason Berken (R) (1-2, 4 HLD, 3 BLSV, 5.36, 1.79)
Darren O'Day (R) (0-1, 3 HLD, 5.40, 1.32)
Troy Patton (L) (2-1, 2 HLD, 3.00, 1.00)
Alfredo Simon (R) (see above)
Zach Phillips (L) (0-0, 1.13, 1.00)
Pedro Strop (2-1, 4 HLD, 2 BLSV, 2.05, 1.14)
Scouting the Starting Pitching
It boggles the mind how awful Baltimore's starting pitching was last season. The numbers tell the whole story.
All told, Orioles starters posted a 5.39 ERA, the highest in baseball. They posted a 1.52 WHIP, also highest in baseball. They had a 1.77 K/BB, lowest in baseball. They gave up 134 home runs, most in the American League.
The best word I can think of is disgusting. Or maybe wretched. One of the two.
In an effort to improve their starting rotation, the Orioles traded away the only pitcher to log 200 innings last season, Jeremy Guthrie. They also brought in two foreign imports in Tsuyoshi Wada and Wei-Yin Chen, as well as Dana Eveland and Jason Hammel.
These are the kinds of names that are hard to get excited about.
Let it be noted that the rotation projected by the team's official website is probably not what Buck Showalter actually has in mind for this season. Truth be told, Showalter still has a lot of thinking to do when it comes to his rotation. It's his job to turn the Orioles' rabble of arms into a respectable rotation.
I'll be honest. I have no clue how he's going to do it.
Chris Trotman/Getty Images
There is no clear No. 1 in this group. Jake Arrieta is penciled into the No. 1 slot on the team's website, but he's not a No. 1. He walked nearly 4.5 guys every nine innings last season and he had a HR/FB rate of 15. That rate put him in the same company as Bronson Arroyo and A.J. Burnett last season, which is not a compliment.
There's slightly more upside when you look at Tommy Hunter. He's not an established starting pitcher by any stretch of the imagination, but he's a guy who won't walk the ballpark. He at least has a decent season under his belt, going 13-4 in 22 starts with the Rangers in 2010.
But the long ball is a problem for Hunter. In limited action last season, his HR/FB rate was over 10, and it was over 12 in 2010.
The O's got Hammel in the Guthrie trade, but he's not an upgrade. The O's can rest comfortably knowing that Hammel at least has the ability to give them 30 starts, but we're talking about a guy who is very hittable. In the last three seasons, Hammel has posted BAAs of .290, .287 and .270. He's another guy who will flirt with a HR/FB rate of 10.
I'm slightly more intrigued by the two foreign imports, if for no other reason than they don't have a track record of being mediocre in the majors. Chen had a 2.48 ERA in 117 games pitching in Japan's Central League, and he has a solid fastball and a slurve that is supposed to be pretty good. Wada is just as intriguing, but the bad news is that he's already dealing with a sore elbow.
We'll see what the Orioles get out of those two guys. But for me, the true hope for this rotation rests with Baltimore's two young lefties: Zach Britton and Brian Matusz.
Rob Carr/Getty Images
Britton was halfway decent in his rookie campaign last season. He broke down as the year went along, but nobody should forget that Britton had a respectable 5-3 record and 2.93 ERA at the end of May. It was pretty much all downhill from there, but Britton showed the O's that he has some upside.
Here's hoping that Britton doesn't go through what Matusz had to go through last year. A year after making 32 starts and posting so-so numbers, Matusz plummeted back to earth. He started walking the ballpark and giving up home runs at an absurd rate. By the end of the season, Matusz's HR/FB rate was an even 20, which is an absurdly high number.
The Orioles (and their fans) should look on the bright side. Matusz can only get better after a year like that. Better health will definitely help, and let's just say Matusz now knows what not to do when he's on the mound.
There's really not much more to say about this Orioles rotation. They have a lot of guys in the mix to make the rotation cut, but the overall ceiling for the group is pretty low.
Even if Baltimore's rotation isn't as bad as it was last year, it's looking like it will still be pretty bad.
Scouting the Bullpen
Orioles relievers weren't a whole lot better than the starters last season. Baltimore's bullpen posted a 4.18 ERA, the second-highest mark in the American League. The guys in the pen surrendered 76 home runs, easily the most in the AL.
Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
Jim Johnson ended the 2011 season as Baltimore's closer, and he's a strong candidate to continue on in that capacity in 2012. He's not a prototypical closer in the sense that he doesn't come in and blow hitters away, but he excels at getting ground-ball outs. His ground-ball rate last season was 61.5 percent, one of the highest marks in baseball.
One thing we can probably take for granted is that Kevin Gregg will not be Baltimore's closer again. That ship sailed last season. Gregg blew a few too many saves, and he basically couldn't get hitters out without making things way too interesting. Gregg's BB/9 was over six last season, and he gave up 58 hits in 59.2 innings pitched. He's just not fit to close games, and he spent the entire 2011 season proving that point.
Johnson's main competition for the closer's role is Matt Lindstrom, who has experience closing games for the then-Florida Marlins and the Houston Astros. He didn't excel as a closer with either club, but he definitely has closer stuff. He gets his fastball in the upper 90s and the word from MLB.com is that Lindstrom is developing a new slider.
We've seen fastball-slider closers succeed in the past, and Lindstrom could very well be the next guy in line.
Johnson is solid and Lindstrom has some upside, but beyond them Baltimore's bullpen leaves a lot to be desired. It still has a lot of the same guys who struggled to get hitters out last season. That just doesn't bode well at all for the Orioles heading into the 2012 season.
Teams can look forward to facing Baltimore's starting pitching, and they need not fear facing Baltimore's bullpen.
Scouting the Hitting
The Orioles were halfway decent swinging the bats last season. They finished seventh in the American League with 708 runs scored, and they hit .257 and slugged .413 as a team. Only three teams in the AL hit more home runs.
The long ball will be Baltimore's primary offensive weapon once again this season. At first glance, they have roughly seven guys in their projected order who are capable of hitting double-digit home runs. All of them could have played for Earl Weaver.
Christopher Pasatieri/Getty Images
Mark Reynolds led the team with 37 home runs last season, and my guess is that he will once again be the team leader in 2012. He's hit at least 32 home runs in three straight seasons, and his ISO (isolated power) over the last three seasons is an impressive .261.
Just as impressive, in an odd way, is Reynolds' strikeout rate. He's going to strike out in roughly 30 percent of his at-bats, and he's going to flirt with 200 strikeouts every season. The ball goes far when he makes contact, but making contact is an issue for Reynolds.
Beyond Reynolds, J.J. Hardy is a good bet to rack up home runs in 2012. He hit a career-high 30 of them in 2011, posting a career-best slugging percentage of .491. There's a train of thought out there that he's a regression candidate, but I view him as a perfect fit for Baltimore's home park. When he pulled the ball to left field in 2011, Hardy hit .424 with 26 of his 30 home runs.
Hardy's by no means an elite all-around hitter, but good things will happen when he pulls the ball, and that's what righty hitters want to do at Camden Yards.
Though he was billed as a potential superstar when he first broke into the majors, we probably saw the peak of Adam Jones' ability in 2011. He hasn't learned to take his walks, but he hit a career-best 25 home runs. Jones will be even better if he learns to be more selective at the plate, but the Orioles will gladly take a .280 batting average and 25 homers from Jones, even if those numbers come with a low on-base percentage.
Rob Carr/Getty Images
The O's can rest comfortably knowing that Matt Wieters is trending in the right direction. He upped his contact percentage last season, and that paid off in increased power numbers. Wieters hit a career-best 22 home runs and slugged a career-best .450. If Wieters continues to make strides in 2012, I wouldn't rule out a batting average close to .300 and about 25-30 home runs.
The one rock in this lineup is Nick Markakis. He's not hitting for as much power as he used to, but he brings a steady bat that the Orioles should be glad to have. I'll have more on him in just a minute.
Before you ask, Vladimir Guerrero's presence will be missed. His best days are well in the past, but he was pretty solid for the Orioles last season, particularly after the All-Star break. Going from him to Wilson Betemit will probably prove to be a downgrade.
Still, the Orioles have enough home run hitters in their lineup to ensure that there will be at least some rooting interest when it comes to this team. And since they have to compensate for such weak pitching, it suffices to say the Orioles are going to need to hit as many homers as possible.
Pitching Stud
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The Orioles don't have an ace. In fact, it's debatable whether any of their projected starters would be able to start on any other team.
But Zach Britton is the guy I like the most, if for no other reason than he hasn't been ruined yet. There is still hope for him.
As I mentioned above, Britton's major league career got off to a good start. We was 4-1 with a 2.84 ERA at the end of April, and he had an ERA of an even 3.00 in the month of May.
The only really bad months Britton had were July and September, in which he simply got knocked around. He clearly ran out of gas as the season wore along, which you can see reflected in the .298 BAA he posted after the All-Star break.
Britton will probably never be much of a strikeout pitcher, but he'll have plenty of success in his future as long as he keeps getting ground balls. His ground-ball rate was a solid 52.8 percent last season. If he can do that again while lowering his walk rate, Britton is a guy who could post an ERA in the low 4.00s over 180-200 innings.
The Orioles would like nothing more than to see that kind of production arrive this season. Goodness knows they could use it.
Hitting Stud
Rob Carr/Getty Images
Let's talk about Nick Markakis.
Markakis obviously doesn't have as much pop in his bat as some of Baltimore's other hitters, but he's far more reliable than any of them when it comes to getting on base and making solid contact.
Markakis had one season in which he had an on-base percentage over .400, but his track record suggests that his OBP is more likely to rest in the .350-.370 range. That's not elite, but something in that area will probably be good enough to lead the Orioles this season.
Markakis will probably end up leading the O's in hits as well. He's recorded at least 180 hits in each of the last five seasons, and he's able to do that because he keeps his strikeouts down and makes good contact to all fields. For example, Markakis hit over .300 hitting the ball to left, center and right field last season.
My hunch is that Markakis will be even more productive in 2012 than he was in 2011. I don't think we'll see his power numbers take a significant jump, but his BABIP was a curiously low .300 last season. Markakis is typically good for a BABIP around .320 or .330, which is the difference between an average in the .290s and an average in the .280s.
No matter how he does it, Markakis will continue to be a rock in this lineup. The O's would be a lot worse without him.
X-Factor
Leon Halip/Getty Images
Baltimore's rotation will get a huge, huge, huge lift if Brian Matusz can recapture his form from the 2010 season.
That year, Matusz had a respectable K/9 of 7.33 and a reasonable 3.23 BB/9. Despite the fact his fly-ball rate was an even 45, Matusz managed to keep his HR/FB rate pretty low at 7.9 percent. By all rights, he should have been giving up dingers left and right.
Matusz was giving up dingers left and right in 2011. That's thanks in large part to the fact he just wasn't throwing like himself after returning from a lengthy injury absence in June. His stuff was flat and it was up in the zone, and hitters teed off.
Better health should lead to better velocity and more crispness on his pitches this season, and that should in turn lead to a return to form. Matusz has a lot to prove in 2012, but we know from his 2010 season that he can at least be a serviceable starter when he's feeling right.
The Orioles need as many serviceable starters as they can get.
Prospect to Watch
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If Orioles fans are looking for something to be hopeful about, they should be hopeful about Manny Machado. He's a stud, and it won't be long before he's in the majors.
If you ask ESPN's Keith Law, Machado is the No. 5 prospect in all of baseball. He's a shortstop with above-average athleticism, and Law loves where his bat is headed. Machado is still far from being a perfect hitter, but he's making adjustments that he needs to make.
Machado hasn't even reached the Double-A level yet, so it goes without saying that he's still a few years away. In the meantime, he'll continue to make adjustments at the plate, ideally becoming a smart hitter with plus power.
There's no hurry. Machado is still only 19 years old.
What the Orioles Will Do Well
The Orioles are not going to hit as well as the Texas Rangers, the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, but they're going to score more than enough runs.
Most of them will come courtesy of the long ball. The O's have more power hitters than most clubs, and a couple of them are progressing as overall hitters. In all likelihood, they're going to have four guys hit at least 20 home runs, and a few more will cross the double-digit mark.
So despite the fact a series against the O's isn't going to scare anybody, their hitters will leave plenty of marks on opposing pitchers.
What the Orioles Won’t Do Well
This team's pitching just isn't very good.
The Orioles have made a lot of changes to their pitching staff over the last calendar year, but none of them have upgraded the staff in a significant way. It remains to be seen how Showalter is going to arrange his rotation, but no mix he comes up with is going to inspire confidence. Certain pitchers have upside, but as a whole the Orioles are doomed to have one of the weaker starting rotations in baseball.
Things aren't going to be a whole lot better in the bullpen. I like Johnson and I like Lindstrom, but the rest of the rabble leaves a lot to be desired. This bullpen will have trouble protecting whatever leads it gets in 2011.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, 2012 should end up being more of the same for the Orioles. Obviously, that's not a good thing.
I'll admit that there is some hope in certain areas of this team, but there are no reasons to think the O's will be able to compete in the American League East. It's a top-heavy division, and the Toronto Blue Jays are leaps and bounds ahead of the Orioles in talent.
It's looking like another last-place finish.
Projected Record: 67-95, fifth in AL East.
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Zachary D. Rymer is a lifelong baseball junkie with an impressive collection of Nomar Garciaparra rookie cards and a knuckleball that is coming along. He loves the Red Sox and hates the Yankees, but he has a huge man-crush on Derek Jeter and would like nothing more than to have a few beers with Nick Swisher. He's always down to talk some baseball, so feel free to hit him up on Twitter: |
The YAMS collective, which is made up of musicians, poets, actors, writers and visual artists from around the world and describes itself as mostly black and queer, is participating in the Biennial under the name HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican? and allowed its video “Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera“ to be screened in March. But in the letter, it asked the museum to cancel final screenings of the video at the show, which ends on May 25.
Image Sienna Shields of the art collective YAMS. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Mr. Scanlan said he had not encountered much opposition to the Donelle Woolford theme until it was selected for the 2014 Biennial, in which it is represented by two paintings and “Dick’s Last Stand,” a series of performances around the country. In the show, Donelle, played by the artist Jennifer Kidwell, appears in drag to re-enact a subversive stand-up routine recorded in 1977 by Richard Pryor for the last episode of his TV comedy show. (It was not included in the final NBC broadcast.)
“Dick’s Last Stand” was recently seen at the Kitchen in Chelsea and at Jack, a performance space in Brooklyn.
Mr. Scanlan said in a telephone interview that Donelle Woolford is a collaborative project and that two of the Donelle actors — Ms. Kidwell, who lives in Philadelphia, and Abigail Ramsay, based in New York — had shaped a substantial amount of the material. “It’s not just one person’s project anymore,” he said. “The three of us have worked together for the last seven years. I am surprised that people are not more willing to suspend disbelief for a moment.”
“I am not racially insensitive,” Mr. Scanlan said in an email. “I can understand how anyone could draw that conclusion from their first reaction to Donelle Woolford. But any deeper or more nuanced investigation into the project proves otherwise. The same would be true for anyone who looked at my career as an artist and educator.”
“We tend to lock artists into a certain type and insist that they stay that way, remain authentic,” he said. “We are interested in whether it is possible for a character like Donelle Woolford to not get locked in — to remain inauthentic, so to speak — despite the very strong pressure for her to declare herself.” |
Prime Minister Tony Abbott is not attending, despite planning to be in New York a day later for special UN talks on the escalating military situation in Iraq. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also skip the meeting. In an interview with Fairfax Media, Ms Bishop said Australia would use the summit to confirm its commitment to a new global agreement on climate change next year but it was "too early" to present plans for deeper emissions cuts beyond Australia's existing policies. Ms Bishop said she would reaffirm Australia's commitment to reduce emissions by 5 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. The government will also use the New York meeting to drum up support for an Asia-Pacific rainforest summit in Sydney in November and to join a global declaration to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, so-called "super greenhouse gases" used for refrigeration and air conditioning. An election commitment, the rainforest summit would focus on rainforest protection in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ms Bishop said the proposal was "an opportunity for governments, business and NGOs to commit to protective steps" for rainforests and preserve their environmental, economic and social benefits. Earlier this week Mr Ban said he expected Tuesday's summit to lay the framework for putting a price on carbon. The Abbott government became the first country in the world in July to abolish a carbon price and its alternative direct action policy is in limbo without support in the Senate. Ms Bishop said she would use the New York summit to talk up direct action's centrepiece, a $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund to pay polluters to reduce emissions, and she expected Australia's approach "will be respected for what it is" because there was "no one-size-fits-all way to reduce emissions". But the Foreign Minister said she would not lay down plans for targets beyond 2020.
"I will confirm that we are committed to a new global agreement," Ms Bishop said. "We're looking at what other countries are doing, we're in consultation with other countries … [but] this is too early to do it. "It doesn't arise at this summit." The Abbott government has promised to review Australia's emissions reduction targets early next year. But there is growing urgency from environmental groups for the government to define what its post-2020 target will be and how that will contribute to international efforts to keep global warming below two degrees, which scientists say would avoid the worst effects of climate change.
"Other countries have got their process going already to define their post-2020 targets," Climate Institute deputy director Erwin Jackson said. "The real tragedy in Australia is we're focusing on 2020 and not on 2050, which is where international negotiations are headed. Loading "We've got to be lifting our game beyond the short term." Follow us on Twitter |
On Tuesday’s Morning Edition on National Public Radio, they turned to a liberal media eminence to explain just how easily Hillary Clinton is winning this election. Washington Post assistant managing editor David Maraniss was just an “Author” in their online headline. NPR co-host Steve Inskeep began: “David Maraniss is with us next. He's an editor of The Washington Post, a biographer of Bill Clinton and a longtime observer of Hillary Clinton, here to talk about what the Clinton campaign does now that it has an advantage over Donald Trump.”
Armed with all this authority, Maraniss proceeded to talk exactly like a hyperbolic MSNBC surrogate for the Clintons, claiming that Trump’s jail quip in the second debate proved Trump was “against everying about American democracy” and represented the view of a “tin-pot dictatorship in which politicians jail the other side.” This is the actual debate transcript:
HILLARY CLINTON: I told people that will be impossible to be fact checking Donald all the time. I'd never get talk about anything I want to do and how we’re going to really make lives better for people....you know, it is -- it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country. DONALD TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail. [Whoops, applause.]
As MRC’s Brent Baker told the Washington Examiner, “All Trump did was quip 'you'd be in jail' if he were president – simply suggesting that she would have been held accountable by a fair and impartial Justice Department.” Well, that’s not how it was seen inside the liberal NPR bubble:
STEVE INSKEEP: There were some people observing the debate on Sunday night who made the comment that they thought that Hillary Clinton could have gone after Trump more, could have been more devastating in that debate than she necessarily was. DAVID MARANISS: Well, you can make that argument. And she was criticized some for her performance in the debate, but her main objective had to be to just get through it and let Trump be Trump. So I think that all of the discussion about Hillary in that debate is almost irrelevant. The central point of that debate came when Trump said that if he were president, she would be in jail. It was against everything about American democracy and everything else in that debate should be sort of diminished in light of what - that particular statement. And so the discussion beyond that is almost useless. INSKEEP: Would you explain why you say that's against everything that American democracy stands for? MARANISS: Well, it's a tin-pot dictatorship in which politicians jail the other side - their opponents - without, you know - without going through the rule of law. Everything about the U.S. Constitution is based on the rule of law and that just sort of said I don't care about that.
At least Inskeep stepped outside the bubble to offer Maraniss an opposing view:
INSKEEP: And what would you say to Trump supporters who would flip that around and say, well, Hillary Clinton is the one who disregarded the law, Hillary Clinton is the one who did what she did with emails and other things? MARANISS: You know, you can make strong criticisms of Hillary Clinton's treatment of the emails, but it did go through the justice process. The FBI investigated it. The FBI director who is no friend of Hillary Clinton's decided not to prosecute, and in every case, that's the way the American system works -- or is supposed to work.
That is as close as NPR seems to be getting on why Clinton critics would be arguing that Hillary is the one in tinpot-dictator mode, with her team using “BleachBit” to cyber-shred her e-mails and taking hammers to cellphones so that Congress can't get information it requested. The FBI director, James Comey, is under new scrutiny, for his very generous grants of immunity to Clinton aides. If you put the names of top aides like Cheryl Mills or her server maintenance crew at Platte River Networks or the word “BleachBit” in a Nexis search of NPR transcripts, you get “No documents found.”
Somehow NPR has entirely forgotten the “tin-pot” echoes of former president Bill Clinton meeting at an airport with Attorney General Loretta Lynch just days before her department declined to prosecute Mrs. Clinton.NPR reported in July this meeting created a “real appearance problem,” but then the liberal amnesia sets in.
NPR’s “fact check” of this debate exchange carried this bit of analysis from legal reporter Carrie Johnson: “The FBI director said ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would bring a case against Hillary Clinton over her email messages. Law enforcement, traditionally, operates independently of the White House. When that barrier breaks, bad things can happen, like Watergate-era firings and resignations.” |
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses the audience during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, October 3, 2016. Picture taken October 3, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Berlin (Reuters) - Der türkische Staatspräsident Recep Tayyip Erdogan akzeptiert die Einstellung des Ermittlungsverfahrens gegen den Satiriker Jan Böhmermann nicht.
Sowohl bei der Staatsanwaltschaft Mainz wie auch bei der Generalstaatsanwaltschaft in Koblenz sei dazu eine Beschwerde eingegangen, teilte die Leitende Oberstaatsanwältin Andrea Keller am Montag im Mainz mit. Die Beschwerde sei durch den Rechtsanwalt des türkischen Präsidenten in dessen Namen erhoben worden. Die Akten würden nun der Generalstaatsanwaltschaft zugeleitet, die über die Beschwerde zu entscheiden habe.
Erdogan wirft dem Moderator vor, ihn mit einem in Vulgärsprache gehaltenen sogenannten Schmähgedicht beleidigt zu haben. Die Staatsanwaltschaft hatte das Ermittlungsverfahren vergangene Woche eingestellt, weil strafbare Handlungen “nicht mit der erforderlichen Sicherheit nachzuweisen” seien. So lasse sich etwa ein Vorsatz nicht mit dem “erforderlichen Maß an Gewissheit” feststellen. Böhmermann selbst hatte sich erleichtert gezeigt.
Erdogan beruft sich auf Paragraf 103 des Strafgesetzbuches, der die Beleidigung ausländischer Staatsoberhäupter unter Strafe stellt. Die dazu notwendige Ermächtigung der Bundesregierung hatte Kanzlerin Angela Merkel der Staatsanwaltschaft gegeben. Die große Koalition will den Paragrafen aber abschaffen.
Der Deutsche Journalisten-Verband (DJV) kritisierte die Beschwerde scharf. “Der türkische Präsident ist nicht nur ein praktizierender Feind der Pressefreiheit, sondern auch noch ein schlechter Verlierer”, sagte der Bundesvorsitzende Frank Überall. |
While Sprint continues — for now — to offer smartphone users unlimited data plans without overage charges or throttling, the company has announced that customers with unlimited 4G plans for mobile broadband and mobile hotspot devices will have very definite limits starting in November.
Currently, Sprint mobile broadband customers have choices of plans that offer unlimited 4G coupled with varying tiers of 3G access (3GB, 5GB and 10GB). Starting in November, those same limits will now apply to the total data used, regardless of whether it’s 3G or 4G.
As for hotspot users, the monthly data cap will be set at 5GB of data, again regardless of 3G or 4G.
Going over these limit kicks on the overage meter at $.05/MB.
In its announcement of the change, Sprint reiterates that this does not impact smartphone plans with unlimited data access: “[I]f your phone plan contains unlimited data, you will continue to enjoy unlimited data usage on your phone while on the Sprint network.”
Mobile Broadband Plan and Mobile Hotspot Add-on Changes starting November 2011 [Sprint] |
Farmer pressure
The proposals come at a time of rising global food prices and the need to stabilise the food market.
At the start of talks in Brussels on Monday, EU agriculture ministers agreed that food production needed to be increased.
But most of them spoke against dismantling the system of farm subsidies and regulation as demanded by Britain.
The commission also faces strong pressure from farmers not to cut their subsidies.
Gerd Sonnleitner, vice-president of COPA (committee of professional agricultural organisations), a farmers' lobby, defended the CAP.
Sonnleitner said: "We are a strong economic power, we offer citizens high-quality, cheap food, reasonably priced food and the CAP policy can insure that this will remain so in the future."
Traditional farming
The blueprint for reform needs to be approved by the EU's 27 member states and the European parliament before it can take effect.
More than 40 per cent of the EU's $155bn annual budget is spent on farm subsidies, traditionally a part of the budget that is set years in advance.
Currently, 20 percent of farmers receive 80 per cent of the direct farm subsidies in the EU's 27 member states, with France the biggest beneficiary.
Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU's agriculture commissioner, called for the EU to take a more hands-off approach to farming in Europe, doing away with production-linked subsidies, which would give farmers more freedom to chose what and how much to grow or produce.
The commission said it wanted to progressively cut subsidies to farms according to the sum they get and shift the money saved to protect and promote traditional family farms.
Gerda Verburg, the Netherlands minister of agriculture and food quality, said: "The European common policy can help to relieve the problems but that's not easy because we have negated too long the investments in agriculture." |
Your idea of the perfect house includes a secret passage bookshelf. Don’t tell me it doesn’t, you’d be a dirty liar. We compiled a round-up of 10 particularly kick-ass secret passage bookshelves at the beginning of November, and now we’re back with 10 more. So file these away for that day you become independently wealthy and can build the home of your (and my) dreams.
Peekabo. (via Book Line and Sinker)
https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/445363850635551356/
The fact that this reminds me of a Tardis doesn’t hurt. You know, it’s bigger inside, etc., etc. (via Cococozy)
The Pin
For when you have to hide your turret. (via Living Etc)
The Pin
Because no one likes looking at the bathroom (via BHG)
The Pin
Books hiding more books: you’re doing’ it right. (from Gast Architects)
The Pin
Feels like this one should be in a sauna. (via Deforest Architects)
https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/293859944410953392/
For your quick getaway. (via Bookshelf Porn)
The Pin
Small but functional (hold the that’s what she saids, pleaseandthankyou) (via NYT)
The Pin
Fancy shmancy. (via Books and Buildings)
The Pin
For when Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle win the lottery and upgrade their house. (via Apartment Therapy)
The Pin
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One question I frequently get asked is “how do I make arpeggios sound like jazz?”
This article presents 5 jazz guitar arpeggio rhythmic studies that have helped the students I teach use arpeggios to ‘sound like jazz’.
The most important concept to explore with any new chord, arpeggio, or scale is rhythm which is the prime focus in each of these 5 jazz guitar arpeggio studies.
This lesson features 5 different examples in notation, tab and audio to help you integrate some jazz rhythms when practicing arpeggios and better your jazz improv chops.
Each exercise can be applied to any type of arpeggio, such as major, minor, dominant.
Each exercise is in the key of C and based around the same position of the fretboard.
Try to practice each of the arpeggio studies in all 12 keys, applied on different areas of the neck as well as to the tunes and progressions that you are working on.
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Study 1
Syncopation is a big part of jazz which is why this first jazz guitar arpeggio studies example demonstrates the rhythmic idea of starting a phrase on an up beat of the bar.
Another way that you can sound musical when improvising with arpeggios is by starting on a different note besides the root. This exercise demonstrates starting on the 7th of the arpeggio.
Arp Ex 1
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Study 2
Triplets are frequently used by jazz musicians to add interest to scales, arpeggios, chords, and licks.
Jazz guitar arpeggio studies 2 uses the same harmony as the first example with different rhythms which proves how much mileage can be obtained from a phrase by changing it rhythmically.
Arp Ex 1
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Study 3
The next example examines a common jazz rhythm which also demonstrates how a triplet can be used.
Jazz guitar arpeggio studies 3 combines the two techniques shown in the first two examples; starting on an off beat and using a triplet to add interest to an arpeggio.
Practice alternating between the rhythms discussed so far using 1 single arpeggio type such major 7, then go through each rhythm.
Arp Ex 3
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Study 4
This next example features a common rhythm used by players such as Wes Montgomery that is particular effective to use with descending arpeggios.
Pay attention to the fingering on the minor arpeggio on the B and G strings.
Arp Ex 4
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Study 5
Here is a melodic pattern to finish off this jazz guitar arpeggios studies.
This jazz guitar arpeggio pattern starts with a triad pattern and finishes on the 7th of the arpeggio.
Unlike the other patterns, the exercise is only 1 bar, but you could easily reverse it to make it a two bar phrase.
Arp Ex 5
Once you can play each pattern from memory over the different arpeggio chord types try to mix and match the patterns together to create lines.
The example below shows how you can form a line using two examples from the studies.
Jazz Guitar Arpeggio Studies ii V I Lick
Each of the previous arpeggio studies might sound a little incomplete in its own right so I have included a lick to show you how that can sound fuller and more musical in the content of a full line.
This ii V I lick is totally based of arpeggios and uses all the material discussed in the article over a common jazz progression.
The lick starts with the pattern found in the 4th exercise which is followed by the second pattern reversed.
The lick finishes off with the second pattern again, only this time it’s ascending.
ii V I lick
Further Practice
Once you can play each one of the arpeggio studies, start to look at adding chromatic approach notes to arpeggios and eventually jazz guitar enclosures.
Practicing arpeggios in simpler rhythms such as quarter notes is recommended for technical study such as mapping out arpeggios over the neck, but different rhythms should be practiced as soon as the fingering is memorized. |
Junior forward Brandon Morris was dismissed from the Georgia basketball team, head coach Mark Fox announced Monday.
Morris was booked into Athens-Clarke County Jail at 3:21 a.m. Sunday on felony charges of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He was suspended for the first three games of last season, which was also for a violation of UGA’s marijuana-use policies, sources said.
“This program has a strong expectation of citizenship and every one of our players understands this,” Fox said in a news release distributed by UGA on Monday. “This expectation does not mean that mistakes will not happen. When they do I always deal with them appropriately. Brandon had a very clear understanding of our expectation. Unfortunately, I’ve had to dismiss him from our team.
“We’ve offered Brandon as much help as we can as he leaves, in hope that he can continue his career somewhere else.”
Morris was one of four starters set to return from last year’s 20-win team. A Lithonia resident and graduate of Miller Grove High, he averaged 8.6 points and 3.4 rebounds per game as a sophomore while playing 25.4 minutes per contest.
Cameron Forte, a 6-7 junior, and Kenny Paul Geno, a 6-6 sophomore, will likely see their playing time increase as a result of Morris’ departure.
According to the Athens-Clarke County incident report on Morris’ arrest, Officer N. McFaddin encountered the UGA player when he noticed his black 2014 Dodge Challenger parked in the motorcycle spaces at the corner of East Broad Street and North Jackson Street in downtown Athens. McFaddin reported that he stopped and approached the vehicle to investigate. The officer said he immediately smelled “green marijuana” from partially opened driver’s side window.
Morris was asked to step out of the vehicle and was handcuffed. At that time the officer reported that he noticed a book bag on the passenger side seat. Inside he found 18 grams of “high grade” marijuana and a digital scale with marijuana residue.
McFaddin reported that Morris was quickly detained and taken to police headquarters for processing because a “boisterous crowd” was gathering and “aggressively questioning the reason Morris was being contacted.” |
Another round of negotiations fell through between the Tau Kappa Chi (TKX) Fraternity and the United Nations concerning TKX’s uranium enrichment program Wednesday.
This most recent round of negotiations appears to be the last as neither side is willing to make concessions. The fraternity and the UN have been in talks since UN weapons inspectors found 32 grams of elemental Uranium during a routine inspection three months ago.
“Sure, we have a lot of Uranium. But if you divide the amount we have the amount of guys here, it’s barely anything,” TKX brother Andrew Goldman said.
The UN has placed TKX on social probation since the discovery and is threatening to pull their charter due to the amount of the element discovered.
“We consider under 31 grams of Uranium to be for personal use. One G more and someone is for sure trying to destroy the entire civilized world,” UN inspector Clyde Davenport said to critics calling the UN’s sanctions an “over-reaction” and “hella lame”.
TKX maintains the Uranium-238 is being enriched to only reactor grade for “a most dope Homecoming display that will glow for approximately 2,000 years.”
The UN counters that the fraternity will have “weapons grade uranium by the end of the month with missiles capable of delivering a city-flattening payload across continents by the end of this year.”
Despite fraternity claims that they have nothing to hide, TKX refuses to grant UN officials access to the sprawling underground enrichment facility underneath the TKX house, which was built by the spring ’04 pledge class.
“Get enough brothers together and a gaseous diffusion chamber essentially builds itself,” Pledge Class of ’04 member Dustin Combs said, “The puns were the trickiest part. I think at one time we tried to combine “hazing” and “Hazmat” together for humorous effect. Needless to say, it was easier to concentrate levels of U-235 than write a good joke.”
Combs stands behind his brothers’ decision to stand up to the UN and break the stereotypes he faces in his post-college life.
“Everyone knows the stereotypes about being in fraternity. It comes up that I went Greek in college and all my co-workers just assume I know where to get Uranium and crumble easily to pressure from international peace keeping organizations. I’m proud of my brothers for taking a stand,” Combs said.
The stigma of radioactive materials use continues to cloud the international debate over the legality of such substances.
“Most people over look the medicinal and practical use of Uranium. X-rays and nuclear power-plants are both boons to society,” Pro-Uranium Activist and Attorney Sandra Weekly said, “Historically, only the US government has abused Uranium in two high-profile cases. They have ruined radiation for responsible citizens everywhere.”
“I’m not going to bomb Japan again or anything. I just want some shit to glow,” Goldman said. |
It is with great sadness that we are sharing the tragic news that Jana Robeyst died on April 8th 2016, whilst pursuing a promising career dedicated to the study and conservation of wild forest elephants at Mbeli Bai, Nouabale-Ndoki National Park. Jana was an amazing scientist and a wonderful person who loved the work she was doing. She was living her dream by being out in the African rainforest each day observing her beloved forest elephants and western lowland gorillas in Mbeli bai.
Jana arrived in Congo to work at the Mbeli Bai Study in December 2013 as a volunteer research assistant for a period of one year. She remained an enthusiastic advocate of the site ever since, returning in September 2015 for three months to train new researchers at the bai. Finally she returned for a third time a few weeks ago to once again assist at the site, and share her knowledge of the elephants and gorillas that visit the bai with the new researchers. |
Under the Knife: Memorial Hermann Live Tweets ACL Surgery
Orthopedic surgeon Walt Lowe will be reconstructing the anterior curciate ligament of a 19-year-old athlete live on Twitter tomorrow morning starting at 7:30 a.m. The patient, a college student who is an avid runner, tore her ACL playing intramural football.
Using the hashtag, #MHKnee, Dr. Lowe will showcase a patellar tendon autograft – most often performed on athletes – and use live, up-close video, still photography and play-by-play tweets to inform and educate the audience from the time the patient arrives at the surgery center until she is wheeled into recovery.
Dr. Lowe is the medical director of the Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Sports Medicine Institute and Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UTHealth.
Dr. Steven Flores, a fellowship trained orthopedic surgeon also affiliated with the Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Sports Medicine Institute and assistant professor at UTHealth, will be answering questions in real time during the Twittercast. Russ Paine, a physical therapist at the Institute who helped Peterson get back to the gridiron following his ACL repair, will be taking questions on post-surgery rehabilitation.
You can follow along live here. The surgery starts at 7:30 a.m. when the patient is wheeled in, but the first incision is not expected until the 9 o’clock hour.
For more information check the IRONMAN Memorial Hermann web site. |
Lisa Larson-Walker
A couple of weeks ago, for the first time ever, I represented an undocumented worker in deportation proceedings. Or rather, I tried to. My attempts to navigate this system were not what I would call successful. Part of this may be due to the fact that, though I have been a practicing attorney for 10 years, this was my first go at immigration law. But another part of it—most of it, I’d venture—is due to the fact that the U.S. immigration system is designed to be opaque, confusing, and inequitable.
Under most circumstances, I would not wade into this kind of thing at all. I’m primarily a civil rights lawyer, and immigration is a highly specialized area of law with a unique set of risks awaiting unwary practitioners. I would not, for example, take someone’s bankruptcy case or file adoption papers. I would refer those to lawyers with experience in those areas. But the crisis of unrepresented detainees is too big and too pressing to leave to the few organizations and individual practitioners with expertise in immigration law. One recent study found that only about 14 percent of detainees have representation. That’s out of nearly 300,000 cases in the immigration courts every year.*
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If I killed someone on the street in broad daylight, I‘d be entitled to an attorney. But those summoned before the immigration courts, including infants who have been brought here by their parents, have no right to counsel. They can hire immigration lawyers, but only if they can pay for them. Most of them can’t, and volunteer lawyers are scarce. So children, parents, and grandparents are locked up for months, sometimes years, waiting for a day in court. When they show up in front of a judge, they do so alone and terrified. Those who don’t speak English are provided an interpreter who tells them what’s being said, but no one is there to tell them what’s really happening.
Undocumented people who live here in Louisville and southern Indiana are driven 90 minutes to the jail in Boone County, Kentucky. There, they are placed in the general population with locals who have actually been accused of crimes. That’s where my client, who was assigned to me by an overburdened immigration firm, was taken after he was scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the parking lot of his apartment building.
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Entering the United States, even without proper documentation, is a federal misdemeanor. But in my view, the only “crime” my client committed is trying to get his family away from the drug cartels that overtook his Central American village.* Unlike many who come here fleeing crippling poverty, he and his family were getting along fairly well in their home country. A little success, it turns out, can make you a target for violent extortionists. His wife, who fled the exact same situation in the exact same place, was apparently catalogued as an asylum-seeker, but her husband was not.
The Kentucky facility doesn’t allow a phone call, even for an attorney, without an appointment. Requests to call your client must be made by fax. Sometimes the jail will call you to say your 2 p.m. time slot has been changed to 6 p.m., and sometimes you won’t get any notification at all. The visitation restrictions for families are no more accommodating. Visitation amounts to 45 minutes a week, tops. If my client’s wife, daughter, or grandkids want to visit him, they have to drive 90 minutes and hope for the best.
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My first step was to figure out if my client was eligible for bond; if I could get him out of detention, he could return to his full-time job and support his family rather than sit in jail for months waiting on a hearing. Since time was of the essence, I started drafting a bond motion without knowing whether he was eligible or not. My firm got the necessary materials together: letters from his wife, employer, and pastor; his car title; his lease; information about the extreme violence and corruption he’d escaped. Given that he’d told ICE about the situation in his home country, he should’ve been entitled to what’s called a “reasonable fear” interview and maybe—just maybe—been allowed to stay in the country. But I didn’t know if such an interview had been scheduled. Neither did my client.
The only way to determine his eligibility for bond, or whether he would be granted that interview, was to talk to an ICE agent.* ICE, though, won’t talk to you without a form signed by the client. We faxed the form to the jail; it was never returned, and the ICE agents wouldn’t return my repeated calls. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out where the bond motion should be filed, because in this nonsense world you can file in the immigration court in Memphis (five hours from the client) or Chicago (six hours away) or somewhere else.
All the while, I was trying to get sworn in to practice immigration cases. A bureaucrat in Memphis told me I should go to the court in Louisville on a certain date. When I showed up on that date, the court was closed and the building shuttered. My assistant called Memphis for a new appointment. This time, a different bureaucrat said he needed more information from me—that I couldn’t just show up in court. What kind of information? He wouldn’t say. When I called back, the bureaucrat was gone, apparently forever. He never called me back. I later found out that you can, in fact, go to the court to get sworn in at any time.
I faxed another request to speak to my client about getting the form returned. This time, I was told that he was no longer in the Kentucky jail. Where was he? They didn’t know.
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For a short time, I operated under the assumption that my client had been shipped to Chicago, which is where the Department of Homeland Security sends just about everyone from Kentucky. I called Chicago. A creepy robot answered the phone. I left a message, because that’s all I could do. Then he showed up in the computer as having been moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Why? No one knows. At that point he had been locked up for a month.
Attorneys aren’t permitted to call the Wisconsin facility; the detainee must call collect at a designated time. They didn’t tell me when that would be. If it was unfeasible for his relatives to visit before, it was impossible now. They might as well have moved him to the moon.
As I didn’t know when the calls were going to happen, I couldn’t guarantee I’d have an interpreter on hand every time I talked to him. I was often left to rely on my college Spanish, which would have been enough if I were trying to talk about the weather or make a hotel reservation. But when it came to explaining legal concepts I barely understand in English, or expressing basic human empathy, I came up short.
Almost two weeks after being shipped to Wisconsin, my client disappeared from both the Kenosha facility and the database that tracks detainee whereabouts. The family, concerned about the myriad health problems he’s experienced since his detention, wanted to know if he was dead. I didn’t know. Eventually, one of the family’s advocates from their church got a one-line email from a bureaucrat in Chicago. He’d been moved to “Alexandria,” which, as it turns out, is in Louisiana. Why? No one could say. If we could get ahold of the facility in Louisiana, maybe we could find out. But no one knew quite how to do that, including dedicated immigration attorneys on the ground in Louisiana.
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It is not uncommon for detainees in this situation, after months of being surreptitiously shuttled all over the country, to sign voluntary deportation orders. It’s a way to exert some control over a situation that is heinously inexplicable, even for an English-speaking lawyer who grew up in America. Locking up accused criminals indefinitely is a tried-and-true way of getting them to plead guilty, whether they actually committed a crime or not. The same principle applies to immigration detainees. And criminal defendants, even those accused of the worst crimes imaginable, don’t get sent to three different states in a two-month period as part of their pretrial detention.
At long last, my client was allowed to make a tearful, five-minute collect call to his wife, in which he confirmed that he was alive and that he would be deported the next day. I can’t say with absolute certainty whether he ever actually signed a voluntary deportation order. No one, including my client, seems to know for sure. If ICE knows, it isn’t telling. All I know is that he made it back to his home country and is safe, for now.
Locking up human beings in jail for months to coerce them into submission is maddeningly unjust.
I’m sure I could have done some things differently in this case. But I had good advisers every step of the way, and I have never been afraid to ask even the most basic questions. The problem is that many of those questions had no real answers. Would I have been better off with years of experience navigating the system? Definitely. Would that experience have made any practical difference for my client? Probably not. Even the most seasoned practitioners recognize that the system is designed to deprive people of representation, due process, and humanity itself.
What happened to my client and his family wasn’t anomalous. It wasn’t even unusual. It happens all over the country, every single day. Part of what makes our immigration system so reprehensible is that it’s so easy to ignore. Most of us don’t ever have to deal with it in any meaningful way or even think about it. But stop and consider that this practice of moving detainees from place to place randomly, with no notice given to their families or their attorneys, is indescribably cruel. Stop and consider that locking up human beings in jail for months to coerce them into submission is maddeningly unjust. And then consider the possibility that the whole system is not just dysfunctional, but utterly diabolical.
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Further consider that the practice of breaking up families and making people disappear into black holes is the result of a set of loosely defined policy goals that are in no way based on reality. There’s no real evidence to support the notion that undocumented immigrants are any more dangerous than anyone else, or that they “steal” jobs from Americans, or that they do anything but contribute to the economy overall. There is no policy reason for inflicting this misery on people. It’s just cruel.
Lest anyone think this is just more liberal railing against the Trump administration, this system pre-dates the orange guy. The Obama administration sucked more than three million people into the lungs of this administrative monster and spit them out all over the world. Having seen up close what this system does to families, it’s hard to forgive that, especially when you consider that American trade policies contributed to the collapse of Latin America. But hell, we’re all complicit in this. We let it happen every day.
I’m going to suggest something I have never suggested to any working person: If you are part of this machine—if you are a guard, an agent, a janitor, or anything in between—quit. Walk off your job. Right now. You’ve got bills to pay? A family to support? I get it. So do the people who come here looking for a better existence. The system you are contributing to is preposterously evil. It separates mothers from their children. It kills innocent people. It exists only to make easy punching bags out of those damned by their circumstances, some of whom have already lived through unspeakable horrors.
For everyone else: If you’ve never thought about your tacit support for this system, start thinking about it. Start resisting it. Start demanding its abolition. A Kafkaesque bureaucracy needs participants, both willing and unwilling. We have the power to dismantle it. |
To explain Benjamin Netanyahu's frenzied reaction to the Geneva agreement on Iran's nuclear program, let me begin with the stack of brown cardboard boxes under my wife's desk.
Each of the five cartons contains a gas mask and related paraphernalia for a member of my family to use in the event of a chemical-weapons attack. They were delivered last January, as part of the gradual government effort to prepare every household in Israel for a rain of Syrian missiles. I suppose that having "defense kits" in the house could be macabre, but what we usually notice is that they're a nuisance: another thing on which to bang your toe in an overstuffed city flat.
What's more, they're apparently an obsolete nuisance. A couple of weeks ago, the usual nameless military sources told the local media that the Defense Ministry would recommend ending production of gas masks for civilians. According to the leaks, intelligence assessments said that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was successfully reducing Syria's poison-gas arsenal. In other words, the U.S.-Russia agreement on Syria's chemical weapons is working, and one result is a significant improvement in Israeli security.
To put it mildly, this isn't what Prime Minister Netanyahu expected in September when President Barack Obama opted for a diplomatic solution rather than a punitive attack on the Assad regime for using chemical arms. Back then, Netanyahu barely concealed his view that American weakness was both a catastrophe and a betrayal that would encourage Iran to develop nuclear arms. At a military ceremony, he proclaimed that Israel could depend only on itself. "If I am not for myself, who is for me?" Netanyahu said, quoting the first half of an ancient Jewish maxim, without the second part, which says that someone who is only for himself is nothing. "We are for ourselves!" he declared. A nameless senior official, making the prime minister's warning more explicit, said that "a diplomatic failure in Syria without [an American] military response" might force Israel to attack Iran. The failure of diplomacy was virtually a given; the only question was what would come after.
The Syria agreement was the warm-up act for the interim accord with Iran. This time the hostile Middle Eastern state is a greater regional power, and the weapon of mass destruction to be tamed is nuclear rather than chemical. Pressure was exerted through American-led economic sanctions, rather than deployment of American forces for a military offensive. No one can yet be sure that the interim deal will lead to a full agreement to keep Iran from getting a bomb. But the immediate steps promise an improvement in Israeli security. Among other measures, Iran has obligated itself to a complete halt in developing the Arak reactor, which potentially could produce plutonium, and has agreed to tight inspections to insure that it is keeping the deal.
Instead of toasting Obama's success, Netanyahu has responded with public fury perhaps unprecedented in the Washington-Jerusalem relationship. "What was achieved last night in Geneva is not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake," he said, in a public statement before television cameras. He concluded with a renewed threat, "Israel is not bound by this agreement…. Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. As prime minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability."
The link between Netanyahu's reactions in September and now is what could be called Agreement Anxiety Disorder (AAD): a reflexive certainty that any time an antagonist is willing to make an agreement to end or manage a conflict, the deal is a deception. The only safe agreement would be one in which you make no compromises or concessions, so that you are ready to fight the inevitable next round. Since agreements sans compromises are rare, the very thought of making a deal ignites something between panic and fury, and any friend who advises you to accept the agreement is betraying you.
To be fair, some agreements are tricks, and some well-intentioned agreements just come undone. AAD is a political expression of post-traumatic stress: Past experience is so terrible that you have to be ready for every new event to repeat it. Trauma can build a filter in the mind: Anything that confirms you are under attack registers. The experience of safety doesn't. If you're an Israeli, you might have a hard time noticing that the peace treaty with Egypt has held up for over 30 years. The suicide bombings of the Second Intifada are entirely, horribly visible, and either prove that the Oslo Accord of 1993 was a Palestinian trick—or, at best, that the best intentions fail. My point here is not a political analysis of how Oslo broke down, which would include Israel's role in the collapse. I'm talking about gut feelings. If you are an older Israeli of an older generation, you remember that the United Nations pulled its peacekeeping troops out of the Sinai in 1967 just because Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser asked it to. Expect perfidy.
As this train of thought indicates, Israelis come by post-traumatic stress honestly. But not everyone is equally affected; far from it. Some people learn from war that you should make peace. For Netanyahu, the Munich Pact reveals where all peace agreements will lead, and the British shutting the doors of Palestine to Jews in 1939 shows great powers must never be trusted. His AAD is so intense it should disqualify him from public office, and at the same time resonates with a significant portion of voters.
A realistic analysis of the agreement with Iran acknowledges risks and potential achievements, and compares them to the risks and potential of alternative policies. An Israeli military strike, or even an American one, would slow but not stop Iran's effort to become capable of building a nuclear bomb. It would also confirm Iran's fear that only a bomb would make it safe.
With an effort at empathy, one can understand Netanyahu's anxiety. But Agreement Anxiety Disorder does not lead to good analysis. It doesn't produce advice that American senators or representatives should accept when choosing their own response to the Iran deal. He knows how to speak your fears, but the poor man is not thinking clearly. |
Space Impossible is an Early Access game currently in its Alpha phase. Complete with creation, destruction and everything in between, the Universe is procedurally generated, providing endless combinations of Universes to explore.
Start out in a small Venture class ship, but soon move on to larger and more sophisticated ships, all the while upgrading ship components like engines, reactors and weapons. Manufacture, steal or buy kits, or find floating-in-space wrecks of an ill-fated crew and take it for your own.
Meet different human and alien factions, each with their own cultures, and ships and stations to express it. Take sides in on going struggles, or stay neutral and attempt to play both sides. Meet with tradeships and stations and buy and sell for materials, or go out and mine it for yourself.
Take combat to a whole new level never seen before, selecting from hundreds of weapon configurations as you slice, blast and explode through anyone foolish enough to stand in your way.
Play on a LAN or across the Internet with friends or strangers as you play together, or attempt to dominate each other in a vivid, ever changing universe. Complete with customized content and community run dedicated servers, the stars the limit for playing Space Impossible your way. |
Full Preseason Poll
AUBURN, Ala. -- The Auburn soccer program finished the 2015 season exactly where it will start 2016. The Tigers will open the upcoming campaign ranked at No. 12, according to the National Soccer Coaches Association of America's (NSCAA) annual preseason poll.
Auburn earned its ranking after producing a stellar 16-6-1 record, highlighted by its first trip to the Sweet 16 in last year's NCAA Tournament.
The Tigers have reached the NCAA Tournament 13 times since 2000 and capped last season with its highest ranking to finish a season ever at No. 12.
Auburn roars into the 2016 season on the backs of quality leadership through the senior class, including sisters Brooke and Casie Ramsier in the midfield. C. Ramsier made her way onto the MAC Hermann Trophy Watch List a week ago, following a season where she paced the Tigers with 12 goals, the second-most all-time in program history.
Auburn is set to tackle one of the toughest slates in all of college soccer, including five teams ranked in the preseason poll. The Tigers open the season against No. 14 Clemson on Aug. 19 at the Auburn Soccer Complex.
The other ranked non-conference foe is just one spot higher in No. 11 USC. Auburn welcomes the Women of Troy Sept. 4 in part of the Auburn Soccer Classic that also features Georgia and Iowa State.
In conference, the Tigers are set to face No. 24 South Carolina at home before travelling to No. 7 Florida and No. 8 Texas A&M.
South Alabama and LSU -- two opponents on Auburn's 2016 slate -- were just outside the Top 25, but received votes.
Auburn begins preparation for the season on Wednesday when practice is officially open for all programs. |
THEY say you wait ages for a bus and then three come along at once – but at one city bus stop, you might well be waiting forever.
A brand new bus shelter has been installed on Saughton Road in the west of the city, despite no services using the route.
The baffling move, part of the multi-million-pound roll-out of new shelters by council contractor JCDecaux, has been branded a “complete waste of money” and left community leaders scratching their heads.
A council spokeswoman insisted the bus stop had been installed at no extra cost to the council, but that city chiefs were “in discussion with JCDecaux about the location of this shelter”.
It is understood the facility was installed to replace a disused shelter dating back to when buses regularly went down the road.
JCDecaux liaised with the council before replacing the old shelter and was told the bus route was no longer used – but still went ahead with construction.
The advertising giant, which has a contract with the council to install new shelters, declined to comment.
Last year, the Evening News revealed one in 20 of the Capital’s new bus stops need to have their seats replaced because they are too high.
City chiefs said around 20 of the 400 shelters being rolled out needed to be “retro-fitted” with new seating after being installed at the wrong height by JCDecaux. Complaints have also been made over shelters installed in the wrong positions – with pedestrian pressure group Living Streets Edinburgh previously branding the rollout “clearly flawed”.
Lothian Conservative MSP Cameron Buchanan said the latest bungle followed a long line of mistakes.
He said: “Who are the clowns who are putting up these shelters? It’s just a complete waste of money. Somebody must have given the instruction as to where these are going.”
One bemused resident added: “Perhaps the planners are considering how they could provide an integrated transport system and run a bus service from the Saughton tram stop along Saughton Road and into Longstone, serving the large catchment area in Parkhead and Longstone. Then again, perhaps not!”
A spokeswoman for Lothian Buses confirmed no services go down Saughton Road.
But she insisted the city’s bus stops were managed by the council, which also has responsibility for erecting new shelters.
Betty Milton, chairwoman of Sighthill/Broomhouse and Parkhead community council, said: “What we’ve got to find out is how much it cost to take the old shelter down and put the new one up. And how many more is there [not being used] that we don’t know about?”
A council spokeswoman said: “JCDecaux have installed this bus shelter at no cost to the council, replacing an existing advertising shelter which had been in place for some time, as part of a contract. We are currently in discussion with JCDecaux about the location of this shelter.”
[email protected] |
A meeting between the NBA players’ union and wearable tech firm Whoop is reportedly happening on Tuesday, according to ESPN, in a move to educate the union on the benefits of wearable use during matches.
It comes after Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Matthew Dellavedova was warned for using Whoop’s biotracker in multiple games last month. He has since removed the tracker, but received no fine for using it.
See Also: What happened when the NFL found IoT?
If Whoop is able to convince the players’ union of the benefits its wearable could bring to the game, it might change the NBA’s opinion and open the doors for more wearables. The Associated Press published a report last week that said the NBA may approve two wearable devices for the next season — the Motus arm sleeve and Zephyr Bioharness. The devices received MLB approval for matches last week, but real-time data viewing is not permitted.
While there are obvious questions as to the advantages one team could have against another, Whoop argues that wearable devices will improve the league, and said “the data is not steroids.”
NBA allows wearables now…but not in play
The capability to read your heart-rate, stress levels, and other factors that can improve or degrade performance might make NBA athletes perform better, but there’s not enough data to back this claim up one way or the other. Either way, if the NBA ever approves wearables, we assume it will force all teams to use the same brands, to avoid giving an advantage to one team.
Some teams in the NBA already invest in high-tech wearables that can track a multitude of different health metrics, but these are not currently allowed in games. Even if they were, the NBA might employ the MLB rule, in which neither team can look at the data during the match.
Technology is becoming more prevalent in sports than ever before, but until the rule makers start to allow wearables and other devices in live games, we’re still not seeing the full picture of how dramatic a piece of technology can be to a team, player, or coach. |
If you were an avid newspaper reader in 1966, you might have seen a strange little story from United Press International. Under the headline “Stout Scot Peels Off 293 Pounds,” it told the story of 26-year-old Angus Barbieri eating breakfast. In his case, it was literally a broken fast, one that had begun more than a year before.
“Apart from feeling a wee bit weak, I feel no ill effects,” he told a reporter.
The doctor who supervised Barbieri’s 382-day fast published a case report in 1973, describing not only his 276-pound weight loss—from 456 to 180 pounds—but also the many vitamins and minerals they used to keep him alive, and the fact his patient went “37 to 48 days between stools.”
(So you've never gone that much trouble going #2—but if you're feeling constipated, learn How to Make Yourself Poop.)
Reading the study today, it’s hard to decide which is more appalling: the doctor’s conclusion that “starvation therapy can be completely successful, as in the present instance”; his expression of gratitude to Barbieri for his “cheerful cooperation and steadfast application to the task in attaining a normal physique”; or the paragraph describing “five fatalities coinciding with the treatment of obesity by total starvation.”
“I don’t think you could ethically publish a study like that today,” says Krista Varady, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and author of The Every-Other-Day Diet, who has studied fasting for the past decade.
Varady says that a starvation study would violate the Declaration of Helsinki, which established guidelines for human experimentation with an emphasis on the welfare of the subject.
Although Barbieri’s doctor, William K. Stewart, clearly thought he was doing his patient a service by helping him attain that “normal physique,” no modern-day university would overlook the obvious risk of open-ended starvation.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons to consider fasting for both weight loss and long-term health.
Life in the Fast Lane
You may think, as I did when I read the study, that “the treatment of obesity by total starvation” would by definition be considered so horrible and barbaric that no doctor would ever consider it. But according to “Fasting: The History, Pathophysiology, and Complications,” a study published in 1982, fasting and starving are the same thing, medically.
The only difference is semantic. When someone fasts, we assume he’s doing it voluntarily.
Throughout history, fasting was mostly a religious practice, and still is for Muslims during Ramadan. For weight loss, though, the story probably begins with Bernarr Macfadden in the early 20th century.
Macfadden was an influential health and fitness guru who was often far ahead of his time. He advocated strength training for both men and women, condemned white bread for its empty calories, and argued that tobacco caused both lung cancer and heart disease.
But when he was wrong, he was spectacularly, insanely wrong.
He rejected the germ theory of disease, for example, and opposed vaccinating children. Here’s an actual quote, recounted in Weakness Is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden, by Robert Ernst: “Medicine has had its day. It belongs to the ignorance of the distant past.”
When it came to fasting, Macfadden had a firm belief, based first on observations of farm animals and later on a lifetime of self-experiments, that fasting helped the body heal itself.
Macfadden was never confused about whether to starve a fever or cold. He believed in fasting for any reason, or no reason at all.
We now know he was right on many counts. Today fasting is considered a mild form of stress that can ramp up the process of autophagy—the cells scrubbing themselves of metabolic waste. It also helps generate a hormone called BDNF, for brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is crucial for the survival of brain cells.
And it obviously has a benefit for weight loss. If you eat less often, you’ll probably end up eating less food. (Learn The Real Truth about Fasting for Weight Loss.)
Varady’s studies use alternate-day fasting, or ADF. Subjects eat about 25 percent of the amount of food they would need to maintain their weight on “fast” days, and anything they want on “feed” days.
“Our research shows that people only eat about 110 percent of their energy needs on their feed day,” she says. “They don’t binge, and that’s why they lose weight.”
They average a daily calorie deficit of about 25 to 35 percent over time, Varady says. For an average overweight guy, that’s probably 500 to 750 calories less per day than he’s used to.
Which leads to the next logical question: Is there any benefit to achieving that deficit by fasting, versus eating less food on a daily basis?
Less Is Less
In his terrific new book, Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying), Bill Gifford recounts the story of Luigi Cornaro, a wealthy 16th-century Italian who, in his late 30s, began to suffer what we now know as type 2 diabetes.
“His doctors immediately pinpointed the cause of his distress in his ‘intemperate’ lifestyle,” Gifford writes.
Cornaro eventually restricted himself to a single daily bowl of soup—just 12 ounces—with a little bread, washed down with three glasses of wine. He went on to live a full and surprisingly healthy life, culminating with the publication, in 1558, of what Gifford describes as the world’s first bestselling diet book.
He was 81 at the time, and revised it multiple times before his death at 98. Remember, this was a guy whose doctors didn’t think he’d make it past 40.
Cornaro’s plan is what we now call calorie restriction, or CR, and it’s been the template for both weight loss and life extension ever since.
There are two basic ways to achieve it, says Spencer Nadolsky, a family physician who specializes in weight loss:
1. Track daily calories, usually with the goal of cutting about 500 a day.
2. Choose a low-fat or low-carb diet, “which ends up cutting those calories without having to track directly."
Either way, the goal is to cut about a quarter of daily calories, similar to the deficit created by alternate-day fasting. Is there any reason to think one is better than the other?
“We found people lose the same amount of weight,” Varady says, based on the results from a just-completed yearlong study. “We thought that with ADF they’d lose more weight, since they have every other day off.”
The study did show one potential advantage to fasting: “It may be better for weight maintenance,” she says. The subjects who fasted didn’t gain back any weight during the 6-month maintenance phase, whereas the CR group regained 3 to 4 pounds, on average.
“Probably all these diets work,” Varady says. “We’re just trying to figure out viable options for people.”
Eating less, and subsequently weighing less, is what drives all the beneficial effects of any diet, she adds. “It doesn’t really matter how you do it, as long as it’s not unhealthy.”
That brings us back to Angus Barbieri and his 382-fast. If nothing else, it landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records. But was it healthy? Nobody today would think so.
William Stewart, his doctor, says Barbieri regained just 16 pounds in the next 5 years. And Barbieri himself told a reporter at the time that he felt good.
I hope he went on to live a long and healthy life, like Luigi Cornaro, but I couldn’t find any evidence that he did or didn’t.
As for Bernarr Macfadden, his lifelong enthusiasm for fasting leaves us with a cautionary tale, described by Robert Ernst in Weakness Is a Crime: “Early in October 1955, Macfadden developed a digestive disorder, which he tried to cure by fasting for 3 days.” A hotel manager found him passed out in his room and had him rushed to a hospital, “where his malady was diagnosed as jaundice, complicated by his fast.”
He died a few days later, at 87 years old.
Lou Schuler is an award-winning journalist and the author, with Alan Aragon, of The Lean Muscle Diet.
RELATED VIDEO: |
Why I am learning Rust now
From its inception, I have always been vaguely aware of this new language called Rust. It has been developed up to this point, mainly by and for the Systems Programming community. Some say that it will replace C.
For me, I am no hardliner, and will accept that the old gods will continue to exist, prosper, and torment their followers. Though, thankfully, I have never been tied to these larger communities. I grew up with Forth, Prolog, SML , Haskell, and some C when in need of an escape from the walled gardens.
Before learning Rust, I had viewed it with apprehension: due to a lack of sane functional programming. Even today, after several months of attunement, I fear that multithreading is much higher on the list of priorities compared to anything that smells like old books.
This is precisely why I am hopeful for the future of FP in Rust. Traditionally there has been a rift between academic and practiced programming. The Ivory tower has always held the “good answers” while everyone else just uses the “bad workarounds”. Rust can change this.
The type system in Rust, with all of its obsession with object lifetimes, has created something so paranoid, that it almost resembles the Calculus of Constructions. This is the next best thing that a Programming Theory practitioner could ask for next to a Lambda. Currently lambdas/closures in Rust are very scary things: you can use an FnMut or a closure and “move” to copy all of the scoped variables. This contextual information forms the environment of the CoC logic. All that is necessary now would be a formalization of Rust’s type system and then we would have a language that can be formally manipulated.
There are a few other things that Rust incorporates that have a history in published journals of Functional Programming. Rust Exception Handling is exceptional in the respect that it does not require a specific stack structure or long jumps into distant code paths. All of the basic categorical operations have been implemented. I have started to suspect that Rust will become a darling language, until I keep programming in it and get the bad taste in my mouth.
From all that I can gather from the state of the language. One, the language community is growing. Two, the language maintainers are open to experimentation. Three, there is a growing area of common structure linking Rust to the PLT community. When more people get to influence the direction of a language, as a linguist, I believe that it creates a better end product, or at least it smooths down the rough edges; and that is what Rust needs right now the most: a good polishing.
My Rust escapades are available open source here.
— Student
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If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our latest tech stories and trending tech stories. Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! |
Foto: kapitalac.wordpress.com
AKO STE porezni obveznik u Hrvatskoj, odnosno ne primate plaću iz državnog proračuna već radite za privatnika (ili ste sami privatnik), dajem vam na znanje sljedeće
Da ste pripadnik manjinske skupine građana. Poreznih obveznika u Hrvatskoj je manje od milijun, a stanovnika je 4,3 milijuna.
Od 3,7 milijuna glasača samo je 28% poreznih obveznika. Ostatak od 72% glasača svoje prihode bazira na državnom proračunu odnosno na novcu kojeg država oporezuje poreznim obveznicima i daje njima. Oni se nazivaju porezni konzumenti.
Porezni konzumenti su predstavnici Vlade RH, saborski zastupnici, birokrati, javnosektoraši, primatelji poticaja iz državnog proračuna (kronisti, nevladine organizacije itd.) i mnogi drugi.
Porezni konzumenti pišu zakone!
Odbor za Ustav RH je na prijedlog sindikata i “nevladinih” organizacija predložio zabranu referenduma koji se odnose na pitanja o državnom proračunu i porezima
Sabor je u petak podržao prijedlog Odbora za Ustav RH (točka 5.)
U Ustav će se ugraditi zabrana referenduma o porezima
Pitanje za razmišljanje: Nakon što se poreznim obveznicima Ustavom zabrani da referendumom odluče o manjoj poreznoj presiji što će ih više štititi od mogućnosti da ih proračunski korisnici ne eksploatiraju do mile volje?
A kako je do svega toga došlo? Što se događalo prije nego je Sabor izglasao izmjene Ustava
Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa
Nije prošlo niti mjesec dana otkako sam komentirao prijedlog sindikata i nevladinih organizacija (na papiru nevladinih, u praksi vladinih produženih ruku), udruženih u prijedlozima upućenima na javnoj raspravi o promjenama Ustava u dijelu referendumskih pitanja, a Odbor za Ustav Sabora RH već je prihvatio njihov prijedlog i to u cijelosti onako kako su ga je skrojila družba interesnih skupina.
Pitanja o kojima se uskoro više neće moći odlučivati referendumom:
koja se odnose na ograničavanje ili smanjivanje ljudskih prava i temeljnih sloboda sadržanih u Glavi III. Ustava,
koja se odnose na obveze koje proizlaze iz međunarodnih ugovora, osim potvrđivanja, otkazivanja ili povlačenja iz tih ugovora,
koja se odnose na donošenje i izvršenje proračuna i porezni sustav,
koja se odnose na obranu i nacionalnu sigurnost,
koja se odnose na izbore i imenovanja u djelokrugu Hrvatskoga sabora.
Referendumskih inicijativa u dogledno vrijeme možemo očekivati više jer je potreban broj za raspisivanje referenduma smanjen sa 10% ukupnog broja birača (oko 370.000) na 200.000. Dakle biti će lakše inicirati referendum jer će za to biti potrebno 45% manje potpisa nego danas. Ipak, referendum može proći tek ako se odazove definiran postotak ukupnog broja birača na biračkom popisu, ovisno o prirodi promjene koja se traži.
Među gomilom nevladinih organizacija koje su uputile prijedlog ograničenja referendumskih pitanja pred Odbor našao se i GONG, a u Odboru se našao glavom i bradom izvršni direktor GONG-a g. Dragan Zelić.
Na zasjedanju odbora proteklog tjedna, gdje se diskutiralo o predloženim ograničenjima, i došlo do zaključka da su ograničenja blagotvorna za slobodu građana i proces demokratskog odlučivanja, manifestirala se zanimljiva nakana. Naime predsjednik Odbora Peđa Grbin predložio je da se za odluke koje Sabor donosi dvotrećinskom većinom, traži natpolovična većina od svih upisanih u popis birača, za organske zakone 40 posto, a za izmjenu tzv. običnih zakona 30 posto. Na to je reagirao g. Zelić: Bojimo se da će uz ovakve uvjete, gdje se, na neki način, olakšava pokretanje referenduma, biti puno pokrenutih referenduma, ali da će se odluka na referendumu vrlo teško donositi. Novac će otići u zrak i vjetar. To će biti jedna zanimljiva igračka građanima od koje neće biti nikakve koristi
… pa predložio da se prag za ove “obične” zakone spusti na 25%. Nakon Zelićeve ingeniozne argumentacije Odbor je prihvatio prijedlog, a što god da oni sami sebi predložili ionako im ne može ići na štetu. Niži prag prolaznosti znači tek da će se putem referenduma češće trgovati idejama na štetu poreznih obveznika i za korist interesnih skupina.
Koliko god se ovo prezentiralo kao pozitivna stvar u demokratskom sazrijevanju u cijeloj priči radi se o predstavi iza čijih kulisa interesne skupine trguju slobodama građana i njihovom imovinom. Vidimo to u slijedećem:
GANG-u i ostatku parazita ne odgovara da porezni obveznici, koji čine tek 28% biračkog tijela, imaju pravo odlučivati o tome u kojoj mjeri će ih porezni konzumenti eksploatirati stoga su to pitanje ograničili prijedlogom u trećoj točki (pitanja koja se odnose na donošenje i izvršenje proračuna i porezni sustav). Naime kada bi porezni obveznik mogao postaviti referendumsko pitanje o smanjenju porezne presije nad njime tada bi to značilo da parazitska gomila ostaje zakinuta za svoje pravo da ih putem države eksploatira. 72% birača su porezni konzumenti i žive na račun oporezivanja imovine 28% poreznih obveznika. Porezni konzumenti su zakonodavac, državna uprava, javni sektor, nevladine organizacije i mnogi drugi koji svoje prihode temelje i ostvaruju iz državnog proračuna. Njima je važno da je državni proračun velik i stabilan jer to im jamči stabilnost osobnih prihoda. O tim pitanjima oni jednostavno ne žele raspravljati sa onima koje eksploatiraju, štoviše oni će zabraniti eksploatiranoj skupini da se na ikoji način odupre toj ideji.
Nažalost, porezni obveznici takvi kakvi jesu, uglavnom nezainteresirani za političku borbu, jer se nastoje baviti produktivnim aktivnostima vjerujući da će od toga imati koristi, propustili su prije mjesec dana pobuniti se na prijedlog ograničenja referendumskih pitanja koja se tiču njihovih osobnih sloboda i imovine, tobože zaštićenih glavom III Ustava RH. Propustili su isto učiniti i prekjučer kada su mediji izvjestili o zasjedanju i odluci Odbora za ustav koji je podržao ograničenje njihovih elementarnih prava i sloboda. U trenutku kada će saborski zastupnici podići ruke u znak prihvaćanja izmjena Ustava na vrata Sabora neće pokucati niti jedan porezni obveznik i suprotstaviti se donošenju odluke na njegovu štetu.
kapitalac.wordpress.com (preuzeto uz dozvolu) |
Updated 11:23 a.m. ET
It's lunchtime in Shanghai, and for many, it's time to visit the Colonel ... Colonel Sanders, that is.
There are few things in American culture Chinese people love more than that finger-lickin' good mixture of herbs, spices, and chicken.
"In China, young people have really caught on to KFC," explains one customer.
From McDonald's to Burger King and Cold Stone, America's food chains are doing all they can to tempt Chinese taste buds.
But so far, it's KFC's estimated $3.4 billion Chinese empire that's capturing the holy grail of the new global economy: Chinese customer loyalty.
Sam Su has headed the China wing of KFC's parent company, Yum Brands, since KFC first came to Beijing in 1987.
"The timing was perfect, and we were just opening up so we were not just chicken, we were a piece of Americana," said Su.
This version of Americana's clearly a hit. Yum Brands' 3,900 restaurants in China earned more revenue last year than all 19,000 Yum! Brands restaurants in the U.S. including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
That's because in China, the company doesn't need to split its profits with franchise owners like it does in the States.
Former company executive Warren Liu literally wrote the book on KFC in China.
"Ninety percent of KFC restaurants in China are owned, invested and directly managed by Yum Brands," said Liu.
So, what's KFC's secret recipe for making all that money in the first place? A successful mixture of Kentucky's finest with Chinese classics.
A typical Kentucky Fried Chicken meal in the U.S. features original, extra crispy and a Pepsi.
And what do you get at a KFC in China? Chicken with Sichuan spicy sauce and rice, egg soup, a "dragon twister" (KFC's take on a traditional Beijing duck wrap), all washed down with some soybean milk.
Some worry these mountains of food are quickly translating into super-sized obesity rates. And KFC has its own concerns that continual inflation and recent salary hikes will force the restaurant's rising prices even higher.
But no doubt about it: For now, this restaurant chain has struck gold - battered, crispy gold.
"China is pretty much the best for every industry in the world, and every major company cannot think of a strategy without China," said Su.
With a new location opening its doors in China every 18 hours, few here can conceive of a world without KFC. |
Street Fighter V is just around the corner, and it’s one of Capcom’s biggest, if not most important, releases of 2016. As the company’s flagship title, it’s crucial that Capcom finds a way to mold Street Fighter around modern trends, and that means adopting new ways of monetizing the series.
We’re no longer in the arcade-heavy days, when updates were primarily funded by route operators who put machines on location. Retail updates to console releases are also slowly becoming a relic, especially as the downloadable content philosophy roots itself deeper into the distribution channel.
Going 3 Rounds with Street Fighter V Round 1: How producer Yoshinori Ono’s energy drives Street Fighter
With Street Fighter V, Capcom is taking a hybrid approach to its release strategy, offering the game itself as a purchasable product but presenting all follow-up content under a freemium economy system. Players will have the choice to either purchase new characters and costumes with real money or with virtual currency earned by playing the game. This will also include any major updates to the Street Fighter V line of titles.
While talking with Street Fighter series producer Yoshinori Ono (you can catch part one here), we were joined by Matt Dahlgren, the director of marketing and esports at Capcom.
GamesBeat: Capcom hinted that you are moving away from the traditional content structure of previous Street Fighters. Could you go a little bit into what that means?
Matt Dahlgren: We have a very exciting new strategy for Street Fighter V and a long-term content plan in place. We’re moving away from our previous model. We have a brand new model that will be a lot more player-friendly.
First off, I’d like to talk about the core values of this new service-based model. All the [gameplay] adjustments will be available free of charge through the lifetime of the product. [What] we’ve found, from our previous strategy, is that every time we released a content pack, only a certain percentage of the audience would purchase that. It punished players for taking a break.
[This is definitely true on my end. I had stepped away from Street Fighter IV after Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, and when I returned and found I had to drop down a chunk good chunk of cash to update, I wound up procrastinating playing the game again.]
Now, even if you stop playing for a few years, you can come back and play with all the content available and the largest player base with the latest balance adjustments. This also means we’ll have a more consistent release of content, with less time players have to wait before getting new characters. Sometimes that was one or two years before [under the traditional Street Fighter model].
It’s hard to keep players engaged without new content. This time around, we want to reward players who remain engaged with the product. That’s how we came up with our fight money system.
One of the most important core values is that all post-launch gameplay content is going to be earnable with fight money or delivered to the player for free.
Players are going to be able to earn fight money through playing single-player content that’s available. If you complete any of the character stories, you’ll earn fight money. If you complete survival mode with different characters, you’ll earn fight money. If you level up individual characters, every time you reach a new level, you’ll get some fight money.
On top of that, if you just play online in a ranked battle, every time you get a win, you’ll be able to generate some fight money. If you play through all of the single-player content, or just a majority of it, you should be able to earn enough money to get the first DLC character for free, if not more money on top of that.
Our in-game story will launch in March. This gives our players about a month’s time frame to play through the single-player content and earn enough fight money before content becomes available.
Street Fighter V does not have any day-one DLC. No content is going to be available on day one, with fight money or zenny [Street Fighter V’s in-game currency]. Once the store opens, content will be added, and we’ll also be adding our daily challenges. [Those are] specific goals that players need to accomplish on a daily or weekly basis, which will also give them a boost of fight money. That’s coming with the in-game store because this is a model that’s there to provide long-term sustainability and a way to earn fight money in the long term.
GamesBeat: There’s obviously a monetization side to this as well. People who don’t want to play as much can pay to get the unlocks. Do you have any prices worked out yet?
Dahlgren: Yes. We’ll have basic pricing details when we get our season pass. General cost of a character is going to be around $6, or 600 zenny. Premium costumes will be around $4, or 400 zenny.
There will be a variety of other options. Some costumes will be available to earn with just fight money. Some costumes will be available just for zenny. But anything that’s could affect the outcome of a match needs to be earnable with fight money.
GamesBeat: About how much gameplay do I have to put in to earn, say, the first character?
Dahlgren: In the beginning there’s definitely a large influx of fight money through all of the single-player content. It should be relatively easy for players to earn a new character in that first month.
In the long term, it depends on the player’s skill, but we’re trying to make a system that’s fair and balanced to reward players of all types. We don’t want to make it too grind-heavy on top of that. That’s part of the reason we developed the daily challenges. It’s supposed to be about remaining engaged.
If you log in on a daily basis, or every other day, and complete the challenges, you should be able to get the new characters as they come out.
GamesBeat: Street Fighter has always had chapter updates, like a Championship Edition, which is a system that was born from arcade operators trying to entice players to spend more quarters.
But that system carried over to later games and platforms as well. That seemed to be how Capcom monetized the series up until now. Did you bring anyone in to help work that out? Because this all seems very new for both Capcom and Street Fighter.
Dahlgren: It is all new. I can’t speak to a specific person that we brought on board for this model.
We’ve definitely done our research, though. Street Fighter is an esport, so we’ve been looking at other popular esports and how they handle their products. We’re confident in how it works, but we’re trying to roll things out in a very safe manner, because it’s brand new to Street Fighter. We want to make sure that we maintain a good sense of balance within our economy.
That can be quite tricky.
Ono: It’s kind of a generational gap, too, in terms of how things have been handled in the past.
As you mentioned, we used to roll things out in disc updates. All we could do to communicate with fans and learn about was going on in the community was through magazines. That was a huge time lag.
Now we’re in the Esports era. Things happen in real time. We have an opportunity with this new business model to really speed up that type of communication. That’s also why were giving out these balance updates for free as part of our new business model.
This is a service, so you can expect new characters to be rolling out. People are going to be building up fight money and zenny to get these characters. That’s how we start having that kind of business interchange with our fans. |
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved
LOS LUNAS, N.M. (KRQE) - It's official, Facebook is coming to New Mexico. The internet giant announced Wednesday it's building a sprawling server farm in Los Lunas and New Mexico politicians are hoping other companies will follow.
This deal has been in the works for about a year. Los Lunas had been competing against a city in Utah for the project.
Village residents say they're thrilled with the news.
"It'll be good for the housing market. There will probably be a lot of new houses going in and there will be more stores and businesses and restaurants. It'll be a big boast for the Los Lunas economy," said Susan Cox.
"I'm hoping it will bring some pretty good jobs to the area and hopefully get some local people to start working and get Los Lunas going again," said Rene Gutierrez.
Mayor Richard J. Berry offered congratulations on Wednesday: "Getting Facebook to choose New Mexico did not happen overnight," said Mayor Berry. "This was achieved due to a concerted effort by the State and our Governor, the City of Los Lunas, PNM, and many others. This is a huge economic opportunity for the surrounding area as we continue to make the Albuquerque Metro and New Mexico a hub for the high tech industry."
Facebook's investment will be about $250 million. Facebook is planning to build the 250-acre facility in an industrial area off I-25 near the Walmart Distribution Center.
The first phase of the project is expected to provide hundreds of construction jobs then 30 to 50 full-time jobs.
Facebook says they will be looking to hire engineers of all kinds and site managers.
The state and village were able to lure Facebook to Los Lunas with a 30-year deal. The company won't pay any taxes during that time but Los Lunas officials believe the village will reap the benefits.
"This is great for the village. Individuals who work for the company and who are involved with the construction jobs will shop, buy homes, go to hotels and spend money in our town for the gross receipt taxes," said Los Lunas Economic Development Manager Ralph L. Mims.
Facebook also liked New Mexico because of the agreement they reached with the PRC to work with PNM to power the facility with 100 percent renewable energy using solar or wind or a combination of the two.
Facebook plans to start construction as early as next month and the facility should be online in 2018.
New Mexico's inability to attract good jobs over the past decade is well-documented. But state officials hope this will send a message to other marquee companies to follow Facebook's lead.
"This was an incredibly intense national search, in which to locate their facility, and the fact that New Mexico won this, speaks volumes about where we have come in the last six years," said Jon Barela, New Mexico Economic Development Department Cabinet Secretary.
Governor Susana Martinez released this statement on the decision:
"Facebook is a stellar, cutting-edge, high-tech company, and it's an honor to welcome them to New Mexico," said Governor Martinez. "Making our state more competitive for jobs and new investment is critical to growing our private sector and diversifying our economy. With the improvements we've made over the past several years, New Mexico is finally competing again, and in this case, it's a big win for the people of our state and our economic future. When we first sat down with Facebook executives 13 months ago, we weren't even on their radar. But we made a strong case and laid out how competitive we have become," continued Governor Martinez. "Two months later, we got the call and went straight to work. We competed. And, by working together at all levels of government, and with private partners like PNM, we have helped make New Mexico a home for one of the largest tech companies in the world." |
Think everyday, interpersonal racism is a thing of the past? In progressive politics, most of the action has moved on from the Civil Rights struggles of the past to a focus on societal or “structural” racism. But, wait, not so fast — there’s a new word on the street that the old-style social racism is still with us, 24/7. That word is: microaggression. And you’re about to start hearing it everywhere.
A student at McGill University recently had to apologize publicly for the “microaggression” of “emailing a doctored video of President Obama kicking open a door” as part of a joke about midterms. Campus newspapers have begun denouncing the evils of such small, apparent slights.
Here’s what they are: The concept of microaggression has leapt from the shadows of academic writing into the bright light of general conversation, especially in the wake of widely consulted work by professors Derald Wing Sue and Madonna Constantine over the last seven or so years. Microaggressions, as these academics describe them, are quiet, often unintended slights — racist or sexist — that make a person feel underestimated on the basis of their color or gender.
The idea is that whites should now watch out for being micro-aggressors, in the same way that they learned long ago not to be racist in more overt ways.
The idea is that whites should now watch out for being microaggressors, in the same way that they learned long ago not to be racist in more overt ways. Importantly, the microaggressor is quite often a “goodly” person, of the kind we assume is too enlightened to pop off with racist or sexist insults.
The black journalist Toure has recounted, for example, being in a writer’s program and being asked by a prominent literary critic “So why are you here?” The critic didn’t ask in a hostile way, but the question itself carried an implication that there was some reason that his presence was unusual, and it was obvious what the factor was. The critic likely had no idea how that came off, and of course Toure went on to have a fine life. But this was, nevertheless, a microaggression.
As was when a middle school teacher praised a feminist friend of mine for having made the highest math score of any girl in the class. Or when I once asked a linguist a question about their presentation, only for him to repeatedly give me an answer I wasn’t seeking. The problem was that he spontaneously assumed I wasn’t familiar with the basic grammatical topic he was covering, when I, as familiar with it as any linguist of 25 years’ standing, was interested in a more specific matter. This man was not a “racist” by any stretch of the imagination, but he was spontaneously assuming that a black linguist must only be interested in societal issues rather than the wonky mechanics of grammar.
Of course, I’ve been just fine since, too. In fact, some might see this whole microaggression concept as just a way to keep grievance going in an America where it gets ever harder to call people on naked bigotry. “Life is tough for everybody,” you might think. “When does all of this ‘poor me’ stuff stop?” One need not be a racist or sexist to have that sentiment, especially given that the nature of microaggressions — subtle, unintended, occurring in the hustle and bustle of social interaction — is such that they will never cease to exist entirely.
Perhaps there is value in fostering an awareness of such things, in the name of our society becoming ever more enlightened. It’s comforting that the term is at least microaggression. It acknowledges that change has occurred, that we are dealing with something smaller and less starkly egregious than name-calling and formal exclusion. That’s better than just calling all of it, from cross-burning to asking a black person if you can touch their hair, “racism” (which has always been sloppy and counterproductive).
However, there is something equally counterproductive about the microaggression concept, at least as it is currently being put forth. The scholars promoting this concept claim that it is a microaggression even when someone says “I don’t see you as black,” or claims to be colorblind, or purports not to be a sexist, or in general doesn’t “acknowledge” one’s race membership or gender.
But let’s face it — it’s considered racist for whites to treat any trait as “black.” If we accept that, then we can’t turn around and say they’re racists to look at black people as just people. That particular aspect of the microaggression notion seems fixed so that whites can’t do anything right.
One can’t help sensing a notion that this would be perhaps “payback” for whites and the nasty society they stuck us with. But all it does is create endless conflict, under an idea that basically being white is, in itself, a microaggression.
That, however, is neither profound nor complex — it’s just bullying disguised as progressive thought. Let’s call it microaggression when people belittle us on the basis of stereotypes. Creating change requires at least making sense.
Contact us at [email protected]. |
They want us out of our cars, that’s the bottom line.
“They” being the California General Assembly – which just passed a bill (SB 350, the “Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015,” see here) that mandates a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use statewide by 2030. The legislation empowers the California Air Resources Board – a literally dictatorial entity that can simply issue decrees that have the force of law, without any person in California ever having voted yea or nay – to achieve this reduction by any means it considers necessary.
What means might be considered necessary?
The California Driver’s Alliance believes CARB will decide that driving restrictions are necessary: “… regulators now have a plan to monitor and collect your personal driving data,” the group said in an advertisement against the bill. “This will enable state regulators to penalize and fine motorists who use ‘too much’ gas or drive ‘too often’… .“
If that sounds like crazy talk, consider that the state of Oregon has already implemented a “tax by mile” program (see here) that uses you car’s ability to receive and transmit data to monitor, in real time, how often and how long you drive (as well as how fast you drive) and taxes you accordingly.
Cue the intro to The Six Million Dollar Man.
They have the technology.
And odds are, they’re going to use it.
It’s already feasible to simply “turn off” most new cars remotely. GM’s OnStar system, for example. An operator in another part of the country can send a signal to the car’s computer, telling it to turn the engine off. Most other-brand new cars have similar telematics systems.
This is touted as – and could be useful as – a way to curb auto theft and end high-speed chases before anyone gets hurt. But it can also be used to keep your car in your driveway – in order to “save gas” or “reduce global warming.” Also to track your mileage – and transmit the data in real time to a government bureaucracy with police powers, like CARB. When you reach the allowable limit, a signal is transmitted – and your car becomes 3,500 pounds of driveway sculpture.
Perhaps we’ll see a return to “no drive” days – as happened in the ’70s.
But on a much higher-tech basis.
Punitive taxes on gas could be imposed, too. California already has among the highest taxes on motor fuels in the country. A gallon of fuel currently (as of mid-September) costs about $1 more per gallon in the Golden State than in other states (see here).
Now, the California lawmakers pushing this legislation will denounce such talk as “scare tactics” – but we live in scary times. Things that used to be inconceivable are now depressingly routine. From crotch frisks at the airport to Tazerings of elderly people in their own homes to “lock downs” of entire towns to apprehend a single suspect.
The fact is cars – our driving – can be monitored. It’s not yet mandatory. But the insurance mafia (especially the Progressive “family”) has been pushing aggressively for that and if the “safety” excuse doesn’t cut the mustard, perhaps curbing “climate change” will.
The fact is most new cars already have the necessary technology – hardware and software – embedded within them to be kept track of without your even being aware of it.
It merely needs to be activated.
The fact is, states are already implementing “real-time” monitoring of our driving.
It has merely to go nationwide.
Which – given Califiornia’s (and CARB’s) historic role as a “leader” when it comes to such is by no stretch of the imagination a paranoid fantasy. California (and CARB) “led the way” when it came to draconian emissions standards that became national standards simply because the automakers could not afford to build “California” cars and cars for the other 49 states.
All cars became California compliant.
There is an element – not confined to California – that despises the personal automobile, under our personal control.
Because it is not under their control.
That people are free to travel when, where – and how – they wish rubs a certain set the wrong way. In the same way that “allowing” ordinary citizens to own firearms rubs them the wrong way.
The core issue here is not – and has never been – conservation.
It is – and always has been – control.
What Lenin styled Who Does What to Whom.
If you doubt this, reflect on the fact that the controllers will not themselves be controlled. Just as Dear Leader will not exchange his 6,000 pound/V8-powered (and 6 MPG) armored limo for a Prius, neither will the lesser Dear Leaders be subject to hoofing it – or “public” transportation.
They will continue to have their cars.
Just as they continue to have their guns.
Under their control.
It’s our cars, our guns – our freedom – that they’re after.
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The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Hawaii's Big Island is slated to be one of the world's largest, most powerful telescopes. But the $1.4-billion project is now in jeopardy in the aftermath of protests on social media and across Hawaii that brought construction to a halt.
The site of the proposed project on the summit of Mauna Kea is a sacred location for many Native Hawaiians, and demonstrations have sparked broader discussions about both respect for indigenous cultures and the meaning of scientific progress.
Here's everything you need to know to understand the multi-faceted issue:
Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.
From seafloor to summit, it's the highest mountain in the world at 32,000 feet. Because of dry, clean air at the summit, which rises 13,796 feet above sea level, and its distance from light pollution, the telescopes on Mauna Kea are able to view the faintest galaxies.
Scientists love Mauna Kea.
The summit is home to the world's largest astronomical observatory, with 13 working telescopes operated by astronomers from 11 different countries. The combined light-gathering power of the instruments at Mauna Kea Observatories is 60 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
But Native Hawaiians love Mauna Kea, too.
Many Native Hawaiians believe Mauna Kea is the origination point of the Hawaiian islands, according to Mana magazine. There is a confirmed burial site on Mauna Kea, and Native Hawaiians have also been known to bury their umbilical cords on the mountain as a way of connecting themselves back to the sacred land.
Opposition to building on Mauna Kea is nothing new.
According to Mana, "This may be the most vocal (and viral) protest of them all, but lawsuits, opposing testimonies and 'sleep-ins' against the development of telescopes on top of Mauna Kea have been happening consistently for decades."
TMT is especially controversial because of the scope of the project.
Although the TMT site on Mauna Kea was selected because it is largely hidden and there are no archeological finds or ancient burials in the immediate area, the project is significantly larger than anything already built there. The telescope would be 18 stories tall with structures spanning 1.44 acres.
The $1.4 billion project has received funding from a number of private and public organizations, including the University of California system, the California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. The United States, Japan, India, Canada and China have all contributed as well.
An artist concept illustrating the TMT Observatory (bottom left) at the proposed site on Mauna Kea.
To some Native Hawaiians, the Thirty Meter Telescope would desecrate a very sacred location.
"Our stance is not against the science," protester Lanakila Mangauil told the Associated Press earlier this month. "It's not against the [telescope] itself. It's against their choice of place."
Some conservationists and environmentalists also oppose the telescope.
Some argue that the telescope would obstruct the scenic viewplane, while others are concerned that the construction will cause ecological damage, particularly to the Mauna Kea aquifer. In 1998, a judge found that the University of Hawaii was putting scientific research on Mauna Kea ahead of protecting the site's natural resources. Some activists are hesitant to trust the university now, even though the school says extensive research shows that TMT is no risk to the aquifer.
The view from the summit of Mauna Kea.
In terms of scientific research, TMT provides unparalleled opportunities.
TMT would allow astronomers to see 13 billion light-years away and the "forming galaxies at the very edge of the observable Universe, near the beginning of time," according to the project's website.
An artist's rendering of a new planet forming around a star. Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea found the planet, which is 450 light years away from Earth and is being built by dust and gas.
TMT would also benefit the University of Hawaii and the state of Hawaii.
While the state owns the land, the University of Hawaii has a 65-year lease for most of the area above an elevation of 12,000 feet. While UH doesn't benefit financially from the telescopes, its Institute for Astronomy enjoys a global reputation because of the Mauna Kea Observatories. The project is also expected to create 300 construction jobs and up to 140 permanent jobs on the island.
An artist concept illustrating the TMT Observatory.
But even some scientists feel conflicted about the current debate.
Using the hashtags #DecolonizeSTEM and #DecolonizeAstronomy on Twitter, many scientists weighed in about their conflicted emotions regarding TMT. The project “is predicated on this idea that we have some permission to take over these spaces and use them for scientific research,” Adam Burgasser, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego, told BuzzFeed. “Even though I benefit greatly from that professionally, I don’t think we can make that assumption that we have rights to this mountain," he added.
Astronomer and professor Emily Rice, a resident research associate in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, weighed in from New York City.
"It's hard to admit something you've benefited from is harmful to others," she wrote on Twitter. "But once you know, it's wrong to minimize or ignore it."
Protesters first made news when they intervened in October of 2014.
The Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources officially approved the site for TMT in April of 2013, but nonviolent protesters showed up to block the access road at the site's groundbreaking ceremony in October, 2014.
Protesters on Friday, April 10, 2015.
Protests then picked up again in March of 2015, when construction was set to begin.
Demonstrators blocked access again when construction crews showed up to begin work. By the beginning of April, thousands of protesters had gathered across the Hawaiian islands and more than 30 people were arrested at the Mauna Kea summit.
The conflict had an emotional impact on many in Hawaii, including some of those making the arrests.
This is hard to swallow... Just before being "arrested" during a PeacefulProtectionAct FreedomOfSpeech CulturalSpiritual... Posted by Kauhane Lee on Thursday, April 2, 2015
Soon after, celebrities like Jason Momoa, Kelly Slater and Ian Somerhalder helped make the protests go viral.
Using the hashtag #WeAreMaunaKea, several celebrities have helped the demonstration go viral across social media. Many in opposition are writing "We Are Mauna Kea" on their bodies and posting photos on social media, asking friends to sign a Change.org petition. So far, more than 40,000 people have signed the petition to Gov. David Ige (D) to "stop TMT Construction and Arrests of Mauna Kea Protectors."
University of Hawaii Manoa students also organized a protest on campus.
Hundreds of students gathered to build an ahu, or shrine, out of stones. UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl said the university is respecting the demonstration and has no plans to remove the ahu.
The opposition is nuanced and part of a larger dialogue in Hawaii.
After statehood, there was unprecedented development in Hawaii, and as a result, many residents don't trust the state government to protect or preserve the land (in Hawaiian, the 'aina).
Moreover, while many protesters object on religious and spiritual grounds, some see the issue as part of a continuing struggle to regain Hawaiian sovereignty.
And not all Native Hawaiians see the telescope as sacrilege.
Some Native Hawaiians are pointing out that their Polynesian ancestors are best known for being celestial navigators -- and that a device that allows Hawaii to see the stars better than anyone else is a fitting tribute to their culture.
"I'm one of the Hawaiians that really believes that this is something that we should really take over," said astrophysicist and Native Hawaiian Paul Coleman.
The Hokulea is a replica of ancient Polynesian sailing canoes; it has no modern instrumentation.
The project has already been through a seven-year public vetting process.
The back-and-forth over the TMT project has been extensive. In the end, the process ensured there would be strict conditions imposed for future telescope projects on Mauna Kea and that TMT will be the last new telescope constructed on Mauna Kea, with future telescopes limited to the footprint of existing facilities. Additionally, the TMT project has committed $1 million per year for developing a local workforce through financial aid and research opportunities and another $1 million per year for Hawaiian-specific programs.
Nevertheless, the recent protests reached such a fever pitch that Gov. David Ige called a "timeout" on April 7.
The governor paused construction for one week "to give us some time to engage in further conversations with the various stakeholders that have an interest in Mauna Kea and its sacredness and its importance in scientific research and discovery going forward," he told local reporters. On Saturday, April 11, Ige extended the moratorium until Monday, April 20.
Protesters at the TMT construction site on the summit of Mauna Kea on April 10, 2015.
So what's next?
The protesters are hoping the case makes it to the State Supreme Court, but TMT organizers argue that they have full legal authority to continue construction.
The project is slated to be completed by 2024, at roughly the same time as the 39-meter European Extremely Large Telescope being built in Chile. |
Fauré in 1907
Gabriel Urbain Fauré ( French: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe];[1] 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)[n 1] was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane,[4] Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and impassioned.
Biography [ edit ]
Early years [ edit ]
Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées, in the south of France, the fifth son and youngest of six children of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène Lalène-Laprade (1809–87).[5] According to the biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the Fauré family dates to the 13th century in that part of France.[6] The family had at one time been substantial landowners, but by the 19th century its means had become reduced. The composer's paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher whose son became a schoolmaster.[7] In 1829 Fauré's parents married. His mother was the daughter of a minor member of the nobility. He was the only one of the six children to display musical talent; his four brothers pursued careers in journalism, politics, the army and the civil service, and his sister had a traditional life as the wife of a public servant.[5]
The young Fauré was sent to live with a foster mother until he was four years old.[8] When his father was appointed director of the École Normale d'Instituteurs, a teacher training college, at Montgauzy, near Foix, in 1849, Fauré returned to live with his family.[9] There was a chapel attached to the school, which Fauré recalled in the last year of his life:
I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. ... But the only thing I remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. Every time I could get away I ran there – and I regaled myself. ... I played atrociously ... no method at all, quite without technique, but I do remember that I was happy; and if that is what it means to have a vocation, then it is a very pleasant thing.[10]
Fauré as a student, 1864
An old blind woman, who came to listen and give the boy advice, told his father of Fauré's gift for music.[8] In 1853 Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, of the National Assembly,[n 2] heard Fauré play and advised Toussaint-Honoré to send him to the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse (School of Classical and Religious Music), better known as the École Niedermeyer de Paris, which Louis Niedermeyer was setting up in Paris.[15] After reflecting for a year, Fauré's father agreed and took the nine-year-old boy to Paris in October 1854.[16]
Helped by a scholarship from the bishop of his home diocese, Fauré boarded at the school for 11 years.[17] The régime was austere, the rooms gloomy, the food mediocre, and the required uniform elaborate.[11][n 3] The musical tuition, however, was excellent.[11] Niedermeyer, whose goal was to produce qualified organists and choirmasters, focused on church music. Fauré's tutors were Clément Loret for organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for counterpoint and fugue, and Niedermeyer for piano, plainsong and composition.[16]
When Niedermeyer died in March 1861, Camille Saint-Saëns took charge of piano studies and introduced contemporary music, including that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner.[19] Fauré recalled in old age, "After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to the piano and reveal to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of study kept us at a distance and who, moreover, in those far-off years, were scarcely known. ... At the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment ... the immense admiration, the unceasing gratitude I [have] had for him, throughout my life."[20]
Saint-Saëns took great pleasure in his pupil's progress, which he helped whenever he could; Nectoux comments that at each step in Fauré's career "Saint-Saëns's shadow can effectively be taken for granted."[21] The close friendship between them lasted until Saint-Saëns died sixty years later.[2] Fauré won many prizes while at the school, including a premier prix in composition for the Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, the earliest of his choral works to enter the regular repertory.[16] He left the school in July 1865, as a Laureat in organ, piano, harmony and composition, with a Maître de Chapelle diploma.[22]
Organist and composer [ edit ]
On leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré was appointed organist at the Church of Saint-Sauveur, at Rennes in Brittany. He took up the post in January 1866.[23] During his four years at Rennes he supplemented his income by taking private pupils, giving "countless piano lessons".[24] At Saint-Saëns's regular prompting he continued to compose, but none of his works from this period survive.[25] He was bored at Rennes and had an uneasy relationship with the parish priest, who correctly doubted Fauré's religious conviction.[26] Fauré was regularly seen stealing out during the sermon for a cigarette, and in early 1870, when he turned up to play at Mass one Sunday still in his evening clothes, having been out all night at a ball, he was asked to resign.[26] Almost immediately, with the discreet aid of Saint-Saëns, he secured the post of assistant organist at the church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, in the north of Paris.[27] He remained there for only a few months. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he volunteered for military service. He took part in the action to raise the Siege of Paris, and saw action at Le Bourget, Champigny and Créteil.[28] He was awarded a Croix de Guerre.[29]
Staff and students of the École Niedermeyer, 1871. Fauré in front row second from left; André Messager in middle row second from right
After France's defeat by Prussia, there was a brief, bloody conflict within Paris from March to May 1871 during the Commune.[29] Fauré escaped to Rambouillet where one of his brothers lived, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he took up a teaching post at the École Niedermeyer, which had temporarily relocated there to avoid the violence in Paris.[29] His first pupil at the school was André Messager, who became a lifelong friend and occasional collaborator.[30] Fauré's compositions from this period did not overtly reflect the turmoil and bloodshed. Some of his colleagues, including Saint-Saëns, Gounod and Franck produced elegies and patriotic odes. Fauré did not, but according to his biographer Jessica Duchen, his music acquired "a new sombreness, a dark-hued sense of tragedy ... evident mainly in his songs of this period including L'Absent, Seule! and La Chanson du pêcheur."[31]
When Fauré returned to Paris in October 1871, he was appointed choirmaster at the Église Saint-Sulpice under the composer and organist Charles-Marie Widor.[30] In the course of his duties, he wrote several canticles and motets, few of which have survived.[32] During some services, Widor and Fauré improvised simultaneously at the church's two organs, trying to catch each other out with sudden changes of key.[31] Fauré regularly attended Saint-Saëns's musical salons and those of Pauline Viardot, to whom Saint-Saëns introduced him.[16]
Fauré was a founding member of the Société Nationale de Musique, formed in February 1871 under the joint chairmanship of Romain Bussine and Saint-Saëns, to promote new French music.[33] Other members included Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Jules Massenet.[34] Fauré became secretary of the society in 1874.[35] Many of his works were first presented at the society's concerts.[35]
Fauré in 1875
In 1874 Fauré moved from Saint-Sulpice to the Église de la Madeleine, acting as deputy for the principal organist, Saint-Saëns, during the latter's many absences on tour.[36] Some admirers of Fauré's music have expressed regret that although he played the organ professionally for four decades, he left no solo compositions for the instrument.[37] He was renowned for his improvisations,[38] and Saint-Saëns said of him that he was "a first class organist when he wanted to be".[39] Fauré preferred the piano to the organ, which he played only because it gave him a regular income.[39] Duchen speculates that he positively disliked the organ, possibly because "for a composer of such delicacy of nuance, and such sensuality, the organ was simply not subtle enough."[40]
The year 1877 was significant for Fauré, both professionally and personally.[41] In January his first violin sonata was performed at a Société Nationale concert with great success, marking a turning-point in his composing career at the age of 31.[41] Nectoux counts the work as the composer's first great masterpiece.[42] In March, Saint-Saëns retired from the Madeleine, succeeded as organist by Théodore Dubois, his choirmaster; Fauré was appointed to take over from Dubois.[41] In July Fauré became engaged to Pauline Viardot's daughter Marianne, with whom he was deeply in love.[41] To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in November 1877, for reasons that are not clear.[43] To distract Fauré, Saint-Saëns took him to Weimar and introduced him to Franz Liszt. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel, which he indulged for the rest of his life.[43] From 1878, he and Messager made trips abroad to see Wagner operas. They saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at the Cologne Opera; the complete Ring cycle at the Hofoper in Munich and at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; and Die Meistersinger in Munich and at Bayreuth, where they also saw Parsifal.[44] They frequently performed as a party piece their joint composition, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth. This short, up-tempo piano work for four hands sends up themes from The Ring.[45] Fauré admired Wagner and had a detailed knowledge of his music,[46] but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come under Wagner's musical influence.[n 4]
Middle years [ edit ]
In 1883 Fauré married Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor, Emmanuel Fremiet.[48][n 5] The marriage was affectionate, but Marie became resentful of Fauré's frequent absences, his dislike of domestic life – "horreur du domicile" – and his love affairs, while she remained at home.[48] Though Fauré valued Marie as a friend and confidante, writing to her often – sometimes daily – when away from home, she did not share his passionate nature, which found fulfilment elsewhere.[49] Fauré and his wife had two sons. The first, born in 1883, Emmanuel Fauré-Fremiet (Marie insisted on combining her family name with Fauré's), became a biologist of international reputation.[50] The second son, Philippe, born in 1889, became a writer; his works included histories, plays, and biographies of his father and grandfather.[51]
Contemporary accounts agree that Fauré was extremely attractive to women;[n 6] in Duchen's phrase, "his conquests were legion in the Paris salons."[53] After a romantic attachment to the singer Emma Bardac from around 1892,[54] followed by another to the composer Adela Maddison,[55] in 1900 Fauré met the pianist Marguerite Hasselmans, the daughter of Alphonse Hasselmans. This led to a relationship which lasted for the rest of Fauré's life. He maintained her in a Paris apartment, and she acted openly as his companion.[56]
Fauré and Marie in 1889
To support his family, Fauré spent most of his time in running the daily services at the Madeleine and giving piano and harmony lessons.[57] His compositions earned him a negligible amount, because his publisher bought them outright, paying him an average of 60 francs for a song, and Fauré received no royalties.[58] During this period, he wrote several large-scale works, in addition to many piano pieces and songs, but he destroyed most of them after a few performances, only retaining a few movements in order to re-use motifs.[16] Among the works surviving from this period is the Requiem, begun in 1887 and revised and expanded, over the years, until its final version dating from 1901.[59] After its first performance, in 1888, the priest in charge told the composer, "We don't need these novelties: the Madeleine's repertoire is quite rich enough."[60]
As a young man Fauré had been very cheerful; a friend wrote of his "youthful, even somewhat child-like, mirth."[61] From his thirties he suffered bouts of depression, which he described as "spleen", possibly first caused by his broken engagement and his lack of success as a composer.[16] In 1890 a prestigious and remunerative commission to write an opera with lyrics by Paul Verlaine was aborted by the poet's drunken inability to deliver a libretto. Fauré was plunged into so deep a depression that his friends were seriously concerned about his health.[62] Winnaretta de Scey-Montbéliard,[n 7] always a good friend to Fauré, invited him to Venice, where she had a palazzo on the Grand Canal.[63] He recovered his spirits and began to compose again, writing the first of his five Mélodies de Venise, to words by Verlaine, whose poetry he continued to admire despite the operatic debacle.[64]
Emma Bardac
About this time, or shortly afterwards, Fauré's liaison with Emma Bardac began; in Duchen's words, "for the first time, in his late forties, he experienced a fulfilling, passionate relationship which extended over several years".[65] His principal biographers all agree that this affair inspired a burst of creativity and a new originality in his music, exemplified in the song cycle La bonne chanson.[66] Fauré wrote the Dolly Suite for piano duet between 1894 and 1897 and dedicated it to Bardac's daughter Hélène, known as "Dolly".[16][n 8] Some people suspected that Fauré was Dolly's father, but biographers including Nectoux and Duchen think it unlikely. Fauré's affair with Emma Bardac is thought to have begun after Dolly was born, though there is no conclusive evidence either way.[67]
During the 1890s Fauré's fortunes improved. When Ernest Guiraud, professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, died in 1892, Saint-Saëns encouraged Fauré to apply for the vacant post. The faculty of the Conservatoire regarded Fauré as dangerously modern, and its head, Ambroise Thomas, blocked the appointment, declaring, "Fauré? Never! If he's appointed, I resign."[68] However, Fauré was appointed to another of Guiraud's posts, inspector of the music conservatories in the French provinces.[69] He disliked the prolonged travelling around the country that the work entailed, but the post gave him a steady income and enabled him to give up teaching amateur pupils.[70]
In 1896 Ambroise Thomas died, and Théodore Dubois took over as head of the Conservatoire. Fauré succeeded Dubois as chief organist of the Madeleine. Dubois' move had further repercussions: Massenet, professor of composition at the Conservatoire, had expected to succeed Thomas, but had overplayed his hand by insisting on being appointed for life.[71] He was turned down, and when Dubois was appointed instead, Massenet resigned his professorship in fury.[72] Fauré was appointed in his place.[73] He taught many young composers, including Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin, Louis Aubert, Jean Roger-Ducasse, George Enescu, Paul Ladmirault, Alfredo Casella and Nadia Boulanger.[16] In Fauré's view, his students needed a firm grounding in the basic skills, which he was happy to delegate to his capable assistant André Gedalge.[74] His own part came in helping them make use of these skills in the way that suited each student's talents. Roger-Ducasse later wrote, "Taking up whatever the pupils were working on, he would evoke the rules of the form at hand ... and refer to examples, always drawn from the masters."[75] Ravel always remembered Fauré's open-mindedness as a teacher. Having received Ravel's String Quartet with less than his usual enthusiasm, Fauré asked to see the manuscript again a few days later, saying, "I could have been wrong".[76] The musicologist Henry Prunières wrote, "What Fauré developed among his pupils was taste, harmonic sensibility, the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations; but he never gave them [recipes] for composing according to his style and that is why they all sought and found their own paths in many different, and often opposed, directions."[77]
Fauré's works of the last years of the century include incidental music for the English premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) and Prométhée, a lyric tragedy composed for the amphitheatre at Béziers. Written for outdoor performance, the work is scored for huge instrumental and vocal forces. Its premiere in August 1900 was a great success, and it was revived at Béziers the following year and in Paris in 1907. A version with orchestration for normal opera house-sized forces was given at the Paris Opéra in May 1917 and received more than forty performances in Paris thereafter.[n 9]
From 1903 to 1921, Fauré regularly wrote music criticism for Le Figaro, a role in which he was not at ease. Nectoux writes that Fauré's natural kindness and broad-mindedness predisposed him to emphasise the positive aspects of a work.[16]
Head of Paris Conservatoire [ edit ]
In 1905 a scandal erupted in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome. Fauré's pupil Ravel had been eliminated prematurely in his sixth attempt for this award, and many believed that reactionary elements within the Conservatoire had played a part in it.[79] Dubois, who became the subject of much censure, brought forward his retirement and stepped down at once.[80] Appointed in his place, and with the support of the French government, Fauré radically changed the administration and curriculum. He appointed independent external judges to decide on admissions, examinations and competitions, a move which enraged faculty members who had given preferential treatment to their private pupils; feeling themselves deprived of a considerable extra income, many of them resigned.[81] Fauré was dubbed "Robespierre" by disaffected members of the old guard as he modernised and broadened the range of music taught at the Conservatoire. As Nectoux puts it, "where Auber, Halévy and especially Meyerbeer had reigned supreme ... it was now possible to sing an aria by Rameau or even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls".[82] The curriculum was broadened to range from Renaissance polyphony to the works of Debussy.[82]
Fauré's new position left him better off financially. However, while he also became much more widely known as a composer, running the Conservatoire left him with no more time for composition than when he was struggling to earn a living as an organist and piano teacher.[83] As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend the two months until early October in a hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate on composition.[84] His works from this period include his lyric opera, Pénélope (1913), and some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle La chanson d'Ève, Op. 95, completed in 1910) and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11, written between 1906 and 1914).[16]
Fauré at the turn of the century
Fauré was elected to the Institut de France in 1909, after his father-in-law and Saint-Saëns, both long-established members, had canvassed strongly on his behalf. He won the ballot by a narrow margin, with 18 votes against 16 for the other candidate, Widor.[85][n 10] In the same year a group of young composers led by Ravel and Koechlin broke with the Société Nationale de Musique, which under the presidency of Vincent d'Indy had become a reactionary organisation, and formed a new group, the Société musicale indépendante. While Fauré accepted the presidency of this society, he also remained a member of the older one and continued on the best of terms with d'Indy; his sole concern was the fostering of new music.[85] In 1911 he oversaw the Conservatoire's move to new premises in the rue de Madrid.[84]
During this time, Fauré developed serious problems with his hearing. Not only did he start to go deaf, but sounds became distorted, so that high and low notes sounded painfully out of tune to him.[87]
The turn of the 20th century saw a rise in the popularity of Fauré's music in Britain, and to a lesser extent in Germany, Spain and Russia.[88] He visited England frequently, and an invitation to play at Buckingham Palace in 1908 opened many other doors in London and beyond.[89] He attended the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony, in 1908, and dined with the composer afterwards.[90] Elgar later wrote to their mutual friend Frank Schuster that Fauré "was such a real gentleman – the highest kind of Frenchman and I admired him greatly."[91] Elgar tried to get Fauré's Requiem put on at the Three Choirs Festival, but it did not finally have its English premiere until 1937, nearly fifty years after its first performance in France.[91] Composers from other countries also loved and admired Fauré. In the 1880s Tchaikovsky had thought him "adorable";[92] Albéniz and Fauré were friends and correspondents until the former's early death in 1909;[93] Richard Strauss sought his advice;[94] and in Fauré's last years, the young American Aaron Copland was a devoted admirer.[2]
The outbreak of the First World War almost stranded Fauré in Germany, where he had gone for his annual composing retreat. He managed to get from Germany into Switzerland, and thence to Paris.[95] He remained in France for the duration of the war. When a group of French musicians led by Saint-Saëns tried to organise a boycott of German music, Fauré and Messager dissociated themselves from the idea, though the disagreement did not affect their friendship with Saint-Saëns.[n 11] Fauré did not recognise nationalism in music, seeing in his art "a language belonging to a country so far above all others that it is dragged down when it has to express feelings or individual traits that belong to any particular nation."[98] Nonetheless, he was aware that his own music was respected rather than loved in Germany. In January 1905, visiting Frankfurt and Cologne for concerts of his music, he had written, "The criticisms of my music have been that it's a bit cold and too well brought up! There's no question about it, French and German are two different things."[99]
Last years and legacy [ edit ]
In 1920, at the age of 75, Fauré retired from the Conservatoire because of his increasing deafness and frailty.[16] In that year he received the Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur, an honour rare for a musician. In 1922 the president of the republic, Alexandre Millerand, led a public tribute to Fauré, a national hommage, described in The Musical Times as "a splendid celebration at the Sorbonne, in which the most illustrious French artists participated, [which] brought him great joy. It was a poignant spectacle, indeed: that of a man present at a concert of his own works and able to hear not a single note. He sat gazing before him pensively, and, in spite of everything, grateful and content."[87]
hommage to Fauré, 1922. Fauré and Nationalto Fauré, 1922. Fauré and President Millerand are in the box between the statues
Fauré suffered from poor health in his later years, brought on in part by heavy smoking. Despite this, he remained available to young composers, including members of Les Six, most of whom were devoted to him.[87][n 12] Nectoux writes, "In old age he attained a kind of serenity, without losing any of his remarkable spiritual vitality, but rather removed from the sensualism and the passion of the works he wrote between 1875 and 1895."[16]
In his last months, Fauré struggled to complete a string quartet. Twenty years earlier he had been the dedicatee of Ravel's String Quartet. Ravel and others urged Fauré to compose one of his own. He refused for many years, on the grounds that it was too difficult. When he finally decided to write it, he did so in trepidation, telling his wife, "I've started a Quartet for strings, without piano. This is a genre which Beethoven in particular made famous, and causes all those who are not Beethoven to be terrified of it."[101] He worked on the piece for a year, finishing it on 11 September 1924, less than two months before he died, working long hours towards the end to complete it.[102] The quartet was premiered after his death;[103] he declined an offer to have it performed privately for him in his last days, as his hearing had deteriorated to the point where musical sounds were horribly distorted in his ear.[104]
Fauré died in Paris from pneumonia on 4 November 1924 at the age of 79. He was given a state funeral at the Église de la Madeleine and is buried in the Passy Cemetery in Paris.[105]
After Fauré's death, the Conservatoire abandoned his radicalism and became resistant to new trends in music, with Fauré's own harmonic practice being held up as the farthest limit of modernity, beyond which students should not go.[106] His successor, Henri Rabaud, director of the Conservatoire from 1922 to 1941, declared "modernism is the enemy".[107] The generation of students born between the wars rejected this outdated premise, turning for inspiration to Bartók, the Second Viennese School, and the latest works of Stravinsky.[106]
In a centenary tribute in 1945, the musicologist Leslie Orrey wrote in The Musical Times, "'More profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d'Indy, more classic than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master par excellence of French music, the perfect mirror of our musical genius.' Perhaps, when English musicians get to know his work better, these words of Roger-Ducasse will seem, not over-praise, but no more than his due."[108]
Music [ edit ]
Manuscript page of the Requiem
Aaron Copland wrote that although Fauré's works can be divided into the usual "early", "middle" and "late" periods, there is no such radical difference between his first and last manners as is evident with many other composers. Copland found premonitions of late Fauré in even the earliest works, and traces of the early Fauré in the works of his old age: "The themes, harmonies, form, have remained essentially the same, but with each new work they have all become more fresh, more personal, more profound."[2] When Fauré was born, Berlioz and Chopin were still composing; the latter was among Fauré’s early influences.[109] In his later years Fauré developed compositional techniques that foreshadowed the atonal music of Schoenberg,[110] and, later still, drew discreetly on the techniques of jazz.[111] Duchen writes that early works such as the Cantique de Jean Racine are in the tradition of French nineteenth-century romanticism, yet his late works are as modern as any of the works of his pupils.[112]
Influences on Fauré, particularly in his early work, included not only Chopin but Mozart and Schumann. The authors of The Record Guide (1955), Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, wrote that Fauré learnt restraint and beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his development sections abound, and those codas in which whole movements are briefly but magically illuminated."[113] His work was based on the strong understanding of harmonic structures that he gained at the École Niedermeyer from Niedermeyer's successor Gustave Lefèvre.[16] Lefèvre wrote the book Traité d'harmonie (Paris, 1889), in which he sets out a harmonic theory that differs significantly from the classical theory of Rameau, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant".[n 13] By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Fauré anticipated the techniques of Impressionist composers.[114]
In contrast with his harmonic and melodic style, which pushed the bounds for his time, Fauré's rhythmic motives tended to be subtle and repetitive, with little to break the flow of the line, although he used discreet syncopations, similar to those found in Brahms's works.[16] Copland referred to him as "the Brahms of France".[2] The music critic Jerry Dubins suggests that Fauré "represents the link between the late German Romanticism of Brahms ... and the French Impressionism of Debussy."[115]
To Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, Fauré's later works do not display the easy charm of his earlier music: "the luscious romantic harmony which had always been firmly supported by a single tonality, later gave way to a severely monochrome style, full of enharmonic shifts, and creating the impression of several tonal centres simultaneously employed."[116]
Vocal music [ edit ]
Fauré is regarded as one of the masters of the French art song, or mélodie.[16] Ravel wrote in 1922 that Fauré had saved French music from the dominance of the German Lied.[117] Two years later the critic Samuel Langford wrote of Fauré, "More surely almost than any writer in the world he commanded the faculty to create a song all of a piece, and with a sustained intensity of mood which made it like a single thought".[118] In a 2011 article the pianist and writer Roy Howat and the musicologist Emily Kilpatrick wrote:
His devotion to the mélodie spans his career, from the ever-fresh "Le papillon et la fleur" of 1861 to the masterly cycle L'horizon chimérique, composed sixty years and more than a hundred songs later. Fauré's songs are now core repertoire for students and professionals, sung in conservatories and recital halls throughout the world.[119]
In Copland's view, the early songs, written in the 1860s and 1870s under the influence of Gounod, except for isolated songs such as "Après un rêve" or "Au bord de l'eau", show little sign of the artist to come. With the second volume of the sixty collected songs written during the next two decades, Copland judged, came the first mature examples of "the real Fauré". He instanced "Les berceaux", "Les roses d'Ispahan" and especially "Clair de lune" as "so beautiful, so perfect, that they have even penetrated to America", and drew attention to less well known mélodies such as "Le secret", "Nocturne", and "Les présents".[2] Fauré also composed a number of song cycles. Cinq mélodies "de Venise", Op. 58 (1891), was described by Fauré as a novel kind of song suite, in its use of musical themes recurring over the cycle. For the later cycle La bonne chanson, Op. 61 (1894), there were five such themes, according to Fauré.[120] He also wrote that La bonne chanson was his most spontaneous composition, with Emma Bardac singing back to him each day's newly written material.[69]
Cantique de Jean Racine A shorter choral work by Fauré Problems playing this file? See media help.
The Requiem, Op. 48, was not composed to the memory of a specific person but, in Fauré's words, "for the pleasure of it." It was first performed in 1888. It has been described as "a lullaby of death" because of its predominantly gentle tone.[121] Fauré omitted the Dies irae, though reference to the day of judgment appears in the Libera me, which, like Verdi, he added to the normal liturgical text.[122] Fauré revised the Requiem over the years, and a number of different performing versions are now in use, from the earliest, for small forces, to the final revision with full orchestra.[123]
Fauré's operas have not found a place in the regular repertoire. Prométhée is the more neglected of the two, with only a handful of performances in more than a century.[124] Copland considered Pénélope (1913) a fascinating work, and one of the best operas written since Wagner; he noted, however, that the music is, as a whole, "distinctly non-theatrical."[2] The work uses leitmotifs, and the two main roles call for voices of heroic quality, but these are the only ways in which the work is Wagnerian. In Fauré's late style, "tonality is stretched hard, without breaking."[125] On the rare occasions when the piece has been staged, critical opinion has generally praised the musical quality of the score, but has varied as to the dramatic effectiveness of the work. When the opera was first presented in London in 1970, in a student production by the Royal Academy of Music, Peter Heyworth wrote, "A score that offers rich rewards to an attentive ear can none the less fail to cut much ice in the theatre. ... Most of the music is too recessive to be theatrically effective."[126] However, after a 2006 production at the Wexford Festival, Ian Fox wrote, "Fauré's Pénélope is a true rarity, and, although some lovely music was anticipated, it was a surprise how sure the composer's theatrical touch was."[127]
Piano works [ edit ]
Fauré's major sets of piano works are thirteen nocturnes, thirteen barcarolles, six impromptus, and four valses-caprices. These sets were composed across the decades of his career, and display the change in his style from uncomplicated youthful charm to a final enigmatic, but sometimes fiery introspection, by way of a turbulent period in his middle years.[2] His other notable piano pieces, including shorter works, or collections composed or published as a set, are Romances sans paroles, Ballade in F♯ major, Mazurka in B♭ major, Thème et variations in C♯ major, and Huit pièces brèves. For piano duet, Fauré composed the Dolly Suite and, together with his friend and former pupil André Messager, an exuberant parody of Wagner in the short suite Souvenirs de Bayreuth.[128]
The piano works often use arpeggiated figures, with the melody interspersed between the two hands, and include finger substitutions natural for organists. These aspects make them daunting for some pianists. Even a virtuoso like Liszt said that he found Fauré's music hard to play.[44][n 14] The early piano works are clearly influenced by Chopin.[131] An even greater influence was Schumann, whose piano music Fauré loved more than any other.[132] In Copland's view, it was with the sixth Nocturne that Fauré fully emerged from any predecessor's shadow.[2] The pianist Alfred Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."[2] The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the charming earlier piano works, such as the Impromptu No. 2, rather than the later piano works, which express "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy.[133] In his piano music, as in most of his works, Fauré shunned virtuosity in favour of the classical lucidity often associated with the French.[114] He was unimpressed by purely virtuoso pianists, saying, "the greater they are, the worse they play me."[134]
Orchestral and chamber works [ edit ]
Fauré was not greatly interested in orchestration, and on occasion asked his former students such as Jean Roger-Ducasse and Charles Koechlin to orchestrate his concert and theatre works. In Nectoux's words, Fauré's generally sober orchestral style reflects "a definite aesthetic attitude ... The idea of timbre was not a determining one in Fauré's musical thinking".[135] He was not attracted by flamboyant combinations of tone-colours, which he thought either self-indulgent or a disguise for lack of real musical invention.[16] He told his students that it should be possible to produce an orchestration without resorting to glockenspiels, celestas, xylophones, bells or electrical instruments.[136] Debussy admired the spareness of Fauré's orchestration, finding in it the transparency he strove for in his own 1913 ballet Jeux; Poulenc, by contrast, described Fauré's orchestration as "a leaden overcoat ... instrumental mud".[137] Fauré's best-known orchestral works are the suites Masques et bergamasques (based on music for a dramatic entertainment, or divertissement comique), which he orchestrated himself,[138] Dolly, orchestrated by Henri Rabaud,[139] and Pelléas et Mélisande which draws on incidental music for Maeterlinck's play; the stage version was orchestrated by Koechlin, but Fauré himself reworked the orchestration for the published suite.[136]
In the chamber repertoire, his two piano quartets, in C minor and G minor, particularly the former, are among Fauré's better-known works.[140] His other chamber music includes two piano quintets, two cello sonatas, two violin sonatas, a piano trio and a string quartet. Copland (writing in 1924 before the string quartet was finished) held the second quintet to be Fauré's masterpiece: "... a pure well of spirituality ... extremely classic, as far removed as possible from the romantic temperament."[2] Other critics have taken a less favourable view: The Record Guide commented, "The ceaseless flow and restricted colour scheme of Fauré's last manner, as exemplified in this Quintet, need very careful management, if they are not to become tedious."[140] Fauré's last work, the String Quartet, has been described by critics in Gramophone magazine as an intimate meditation on the last things,[141] and "an extraordinary work by any standards, ethereal and other-worldly with themes that seem constantly to be drawn skywards."[142]
Recordings [ edit ]
Fauré made piano rolls of his music for several companies between 1905 and 1913.[n 15] Well over a hundred recordings of Fauré's music were made between 1898 and 1905, mostly of songs, with a few short chamber works, by performers including the singers Jean Noté and Pol Plançon and players such as Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot.[144] By the 1920s a range of Fauré's more popular songs were on record, including "Après un rêve" sung by Olga Haley,[145] and "Automne" and "Clair de lune" sung by Ninon Vallin.[146] In the 1930s better-known performers recorded Fauré pieces, including Georges Thill ("En prière"),[147] and Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot (Violin Sonata No. 1 and Berceuse).[148] The Sicilienne from Pelléas et Mélisande was recorded in 1938.[149]
By the 1940s there were a few more Fauré works in the catalogues. A survey by John Culshaw in December 1945 singled out recordings of piano works played by Kathleen Long (including the Nocturne No. 6, Barcarolle No. 2, the Thème et Variations, Op. 73, and the Ballade Op. 19 in its orchestral version conducted by Boyd Neel), the Requiem conducted by Ernest Bourmauck, and seven songs sung by Maggie Teyte.[150] Fauré's music began to appear more frequently in the record companies' releases in the 1950s. The Record Guide, 1955, listed the Piano Quartet No. 1, Piano Quintet No. 2, the String Quartet, both Violin Sonatas, the Cello Sonata No. 2, two new recordings of the Requiem, and the complete song cycles La bonne chanson and La chanson d'Ève.[151]
In the LP and particularly the CD era, the record companies have built up a substantial catalogue of Fauré's music, performed by French and non-French musicians. Several modern recordings of Fauré's music have come to public notice as prize-winners in annual awards organised by Gramophone and the BBC.[n 16] Sets of his major orchestral works have been recorded under conductors including Michel Plasson (1981)[152] and Yan Pascal Tortelier (1996).[153] Fauré's main chamber works have all been recorded, with players including the Ysaÿe Quartet, Domus, Paul Tortelier, Arthur Grumiaux, and Joshua Bell.[154] The complete piano works have been recorded by Kathryn Stott (1995),[155] and Paul Crossley (1984–85),[156] with substantial sets of the major piano works from Jean-Philippe Collard (1982–84),[157] Pascal Rogé (1990),[158] and Kun-Woo Paik (2002).[159] Fauré's songs have all been recorded for CD, including a complete set (2005), anchored by the accompanist Graham Johnson, with soloists Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Felicity Lott, John Mark Ainsley and Jennifer Smith, among others.[160] The Requiem and the shorter choral works are also well represented on disc.[161] Pénélope has been recorded twice, with casts headed by Régine Crespin in 1956, and Jessye Norman in 1981, conducted respectively by Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht and Charles Dutoit.[162] Prométhée has not been recorded in full, but extensive excerpts were recorded under Roger Norrington (1980).[163]
Modern assessment [ edit ]
A 2001 article on Fauré in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians concludes thus:
Fauré's stature as a composer is undiminished by the passage of time. He developed a musical idiom all his own; by subtle application of old modes, he evoked the aura of eternally fresh art; by using unresolved mild discords and special coloristic effects, he anticipated procedures of Impressionism; in his piano works, he shunned virtuosity in favor of the Classical lucidity of the French masters of the clavecin; the precisely articulated melodic line of his songs is in the finest tradition of French vocal music. His great Requiem and his Élégie for Cello and Piano have entered the general repertoire.[114]
Fauré's biographer Nectoux writes in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that Fauré is widely regarded as the greatest master of French song, and that alongside the mélodies, the chamber works rank as "Fauré's most important contribution to music".[16] The critic Robert Orledge writes, "His genius was one of synthesis: he reconciled such opposing elements as modality and tonality, anguish and serenity, seduction and force within a single non-eclectic style, as in the Pelléas et Mélisande suite, his symphonic masterpiece. The quality of constant renewal within an apparently limited range ... is a remarkable facet of his genius, and the spare, elliptical style of his single String Quartet suggests that his intensely self-disciplined style was still developing at the time of his death".[164]
Notes and references [ edit ]
Notes
References |
The National Capital Commission’s (NCC) request for proposals to redevelop part of Ottawa’s long-barren LeBreton Flats calls for a “memorable capital landmark” of the “highest quality of architecture and sustainable design.” One bidder had “proposed multiple cultural institutions around a grande allée as its anchor attraction,” the Ottawa Citizen reported recently. But mysteriously enough, sources tell the paper that proposal now revolves around “an NHL-calibre arena” — as does the only other bid submitted, by a consortium that includes the company that owns the Ottawa Senators.
Assuming an arena could meet those terms of reference and the NCC is willing to choose amongst just two options, the table could be set for the Senators to move from the Canadian Tire Centre in suburban Kanata, Ont., to a location on a planned light rail line that’s a mere 25-minute walk from Parliament Hill. And that could be news for hockey fans (assuming they don’t live in Kanata).
But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redevelop prime, long-neglected land in the nation’s capital. It is perplexing that it should come to only two proposals — and the fact the non-Senators bid now suddenly proposes an NHL arena smacks of motives rather different than architectural excellence.
If would be one thing if the Senators’ current building were falling down. But on Jan. 15, the Canadian Tire Centre will celebrate its 20th birthday. If it went to a Senators game at Madison Square Garden, it would be too young to buy a beer. Lots of NHL teams manage to tolerate arenas of that vintage — and even older, if you can believe it. The Senators do not “need” a new arena. They sell plenty of tickets where they are. It is perfectly understandable that they wish not to be in Kanata, a legendary game-night traffic jam away from the city centre, and if private interests want to blow several hundred million dollars remedying their buyer’s remorse, then it’s none of anyone else’s business.
LeBreton Flats is owned by the Canadian taxpayer, though. Any deal that might sign it over to a billionaire for the use of his millionaire hockey players must be closely scrutinized both for below-market favouritism and for the opportunity costs of forsaking a different kind of redevelopment.
Subsidizing Canadians’ leisure activities is a perennial debate. Doctrinaire conservatives would turn up their noses at any, be it a symphony or an art gallery or a hockey team. Others might distinguish among them: the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra is a registered charity, and flautists aren’t known for flamboyant wealth. ESPN estimated the Ottawa RedBlacks 2014 payroll at just $4.1 million. Perhaps the sort of grassroots Canadiana the CFL offers deserves a hand if it needs it.
If there is one policy that ought to unite Canadians across the time zones and the political spectrum, however, it should be not subsidizing megabucks league like the NHL in any way, shape or form. It should be thumbs down to any undeserved perks for the Senators, on the ice just as in the upper chamber. The prudent course for the NCC is probably to consider why its RFP yielded such little interest, seek some more diverse and creative bids — and then choose.
National Post |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Russian military might be investigating ways of disrupting subsea cables
Russia could be developing plans to sever key internet communications during future wars, according to a report in the New York Times.
The article reports that various military sources are concerned about a spike in Russian naval activity near the locations of undersea cables.
Such cables are vital to the internet's daily running and constantly ferry huge amounts of data between continents.
There are many thousands of miles of them, snaking under the world's oceans.
But could Russian submarines really be investigating ways of cutting these crucial cords?
Russia watchers have long been aware of the threat, says Keir Giles, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at think tank Chatham House.
However, he added that cutting the US off from the web would probably be impossible because of the number of connections going in and out of the country.
"I very much doubt that anyone would think of cutting off the US," he comments. "It is only going to work in locations where the internet geography is going to create a vulnerability in communications."
But, Mr Giles adds that there are parts of the world where such action might be considered viable.
Crimea connection
Ukrainian telecoms providers reported disruptions to a key internet exchange point and cable connections during Russian military activity in the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
The incident is mentioned in a Chatham House report on Russian information war tactics which is being published later this year.
"They can interfere with internet infrastructure in order to gain [complete] control of [the information available in] specific regions," says Mr Giles, who adds that while much information about current naval activity in this vein is highly classified, the tactic does seem plausible.
"It does make sense given the intense programme of submarine building, including some very specialised vessels," he says. "It wouldn't be surprising that they would want to do this."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption More and more cables are being laid as worldwide demand for internet access grows
Some states are known to have developed capabilities to tap cables in undersea locations, and the US is reported to have done this in the 1970s.
What's more, documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden allege that intelligence agencies like GCHQ and the NSA can intercept data communications at listening sites such as Bude in Cornwall, where a major transatlantic cable comes ashore in the UK.
Severing cables entirely, however, would be a somewhat different tactic.
The internet was designed to be a "resilient" network - one which does not rely on the operation of all connection points to remain functional.
This means that while shutting down certain links or connections might be disruptive to some, there are often ways in which traffic can be routed through other cables and still reach the intended destination.
That said, there are plenty of points at which the internet would be more vulnerable to an act of cable severing than others.
Fibre optic cables traversing entire oceans, for example, carry disproportionately large swathes of the world's internet traffic. Some of the heightened Russian naval activity is said to have been detected in these deep sea locations.
Anchor trouble
Accidents in which fishing equipment, anchors or even earthquakes cause disruptions to cabling are relatively frequent occurrences.
Most are quickly repaired without internet users ever being aware of a problem.
In 2008, a series of cable disruptions were detected in the Middle East which were subsequently attributed to clumsily dropped anchors in the Mediterranean and seas off the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
A few years later however, in 2013, Egypt arrested three divers who were found cutting through a major internet cable servicing parts of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Russia has been building many new warships and submarines
Some kind of cable-cutting equipment, perhaps attached to a submarine, could in theory work, according to Jeremy Hartley, owner of subsea cabling consultancy ETA.
He adds, though, that nearer to shore, cables are often buried and protected by extra layers of casing.
"The protection they have is they're generally buried to about a metre and that's intended to protect them against anchors and fishing which would of course make it not straightforward to damage by a submarine but not impossible either," he says.
Cable care
Burying the cables further off shore at deeper depths to protect them from cutting attacks would be possible, he adds, but it would also be expensive.
Mr Hartley did comment that the threat of terrorist or military action against such infrastructure was "certainly considered" by network providers, but that most protections would likely be done via routing traffic through other means.
"At the moment my perception has always been that military or terrorist action is a lower level threat - it's more likely cables would be damaged by anchoring," he comments. "So, that's how the protections are designed."
The physical presence of military personnel or assets at places where cables are vulnerable might be considered as a suitable protection during times of conflict, suggests Mr Giles.
But whatever measures are developed, it's clear that the internet is worth safeguarding.
"Internet infrastructure needs the same kind of protection at times of crises as other strategically important infrastructure," Mr Giles added. |
As every musician knows, to have a great band you need a great drummer.
It's true. Try to imagine The Beatles without Ringo Starr. Or The Rolling Stones without Charlie Watts. The Police without Stewart Copeland. Metallica without Lars Ulrich. Rush without Neil Peart. Unthinkable, right?
Even so, drummer jokes abound. But we're going to let you in on a little secret: We drummers love the jokes. We trade them and e-mail them to one another. The more the merrier. And so, with that in mind, MusicRadar has compiled the 23 best drummer jokes of all time.
Why 23 you ask? What, you expect us to actually count to a normal number?
How do you tell if the stage is level?
The drummer is drooling from both sides of his mouth.
How can you tell a drummer's at the door?
The knocking speeds up.
What's the last thing a drummer says in a band?
"Hey, how about we try one of my songs?"
An Indian chief and a cavalry captain climb to the top of a tall hill and look out upon the entire Indian tribe. The captain says worriedly, "I don't like the sound of those drums." The chief says, "I know. It's not our regular drummer."
What do you call a drummer that breaks up with his girlfriend?
Homeless.
What do Ginger Baker and black coffee have in common?
They both suck without Cream.
How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Five: One to screw the bulb in, and four to talk about how much better
Neil Peart could've done it.
An amateur drummer died and went to heaven. He was waiting outside the pearly gates when he heard the most incredible fast and furious drumming coming from within. Immediately he recognized the playing and rushed to ask St. Peter if that was Buddy Rich playing drums inside the gates. St. Peter responded: "No, that's God. He just thinks he's Buddy Rich."
How do you get a drummer off of your porch?
Pay him 10 bucks for the pizza.
Why didn't the Little Drummer Boy get into heaven?
Because he woke up the baby, for Christ's sake!
What do you call a drummer with half a brain?
Gifted.
What does a drummer use for contraception?
His personality.
What do you say to a drummer in a three-piece suit?
"Will the defendant please rise?"
"Hey buddy, how late does the band play?"
"Oh, about half a beat behind the drummer."
Hey, did you hear about the drummer who finished high school?
Me neither.
Why do guitarists put drumsticks on the dash of their car?
So they can park in the handicapped spot.
How is a drum solo like a sneeze?
You know it's coming, but there's nothing you can do about it.
What's the first thing a drummer says when he moves to LA?
"Would you like fries with that, sir?
What is the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?
One will mature and make money.
Why do drummers have lots of kids?
They're not too good at the Rhythm Method.
What do you do if you accidentally run over a drummer?
Back up.
What did the drummer say to the band leader?
"Do you want me to play too fast or too slow?"
Deep in the African jungle, a safari was camped for the night. In the darkness, distant drums began a relentless throbbing that continued until dawn. The safari members were disturbed, but the guide reassured them: "Drums good. When drums stop, very bad." Every night the drumming continued, and every night the guide reiterated, "Drums good. When drums stop, VERY bad." This continues for several days until one morning the drumming suddenly stops and all the natives panic and run screaming. The man asks the guide what's the matter? The guide looking very frightened says: "When drums stop, VERY, VERY bad," he said. "Why is it bad?" asked a member of the safari. "Because when drums stop, bass solo begin!" |
It would just be so awesome if he hadn't. With so much money bet against bitcoin I would like to see him lose it all.
It would just be so awesome if he hadn't. With so much money bet against bitcoin I would like to see him lose it all.
It would just be so awesome if he hadn't. With so much money bet against bitcoin I would like to see him lose it all.
It would just be so awesome if he hadn't. With so much money bet against bitcoin I would like to see him lose it all.
The order book looked convincing that we werent going to see $7 any time soon so he probably figured he had time to cancel his order. Even if he was rapidly clicking liquidate during this it wouldnt make one bit of difference because the site wouldnt be able to liquidate his position in time. Hopefully an expensive lesson learned. Next time buy and sell the coins directly without leverage and you will never have 0.
It would just be so awesome if he hadn't. With so much money bet against bitcoin I would like to see him lose it all.
My personality type: INTJ - please forgive my weaknesses (Not naturally in tune with others feelings; may be insensitive at times, tend to respond to conflict with logic and reason, tend to believe I'm always right) If however you enjoyed my post: 15j781DjuJeVsZgYbDVt2NZsGrWKRWFHpp
There is no real liquidating on the graph, look at the volumes, i have 20 000 short possition.the total volume on the "liquidating candle" was 20 000. So there is no real liquidation. bitcoinica didnt liquidate my possition. they need 20 000btc to buy up to 7.0but where is another 20 000? to liquidate ?
This is can be funny, i dont care about money.but this is a cime, and people who do the crime should go to jail.this is the screen with volume of the trade which liquidated me.there is just 20 000 volume.exactly what you need to move price to 7.0If i was liquidated, where is another 20 000?the same situations was herePossition :Liquidation (point in point) at 6.75 +spread 3 = 6.78 look at the price...Real liquidation :what do you think now ?this guy is an offender. Tommorow i go to police.Who has the same situation please contact me. |
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