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The TTC is on pace to fall 10 million tokens — or Presto taps — short of its 2017 ridership goal, leaving the transit agency scrambling to boost the number of people riding the rocket.
That could prove difficult.
TTC officials will release the first part of the new ridership growth strategy at Monday afternoon's board meeting. In the report by customer development head Arthur Borkwood, the transit agency warns it is struggling to boost streetcar service due to Bombardier's slow delivery of new vehicles, while plans to expand the bus fleet are being hampered by a lack of storage space. The report also notes the streetcar woes are further straining the bus fleet.
"The unreliability of the aging streetcar fleet, coupled with the delayed deliveries of new accessible streetcars, is causing the TTC to pull buses from bus routes to replace failing legacy streetcars on streetcar routes," Borkwood's report states.
The crunch is causing the TTC to operate fewer hours of service than city council approved funding for. In September, it ran nearly 2,800 fewer hours of streetcar service than what was budgeted for, and some 4,800 fewer hours of bus service.
The result for riders: "pain points." That's the TTC's term for issues around service reliability and flexibility, which are driving riders away.
"The less frequently someone relies on the TTC, the more difficult it will be to encourage them to use the TTC more often," said the report.
Currently, the TTC estimates it has 850,000 unique customers in the city.
Ridership growth strategy includes 2-hour transfers
The TTC's King Street pilot project appears to be speeding up commute times for riders, but there are still concerns about the number of streetcars available. (John Rieti/CBC)
The new ridership growth strategy includes hop-on, hop-off two-hour transfers, which was already announced by TTC Chair Josh Colle and Mayor John Tory, along with a number of other measures. Borkwood's report says the three goals are: moving more customers more reliably, creating a "seamless" public transit system and making long-term innovations.
It estimates that solving service issues can draw a one per cent ridership increase, while major service upgrades and expansions — like the soon to be opened Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension — can deliver increases of five per cent.
A number of major upgrades are coming, including the McNicoll Garage, which will add 100-plus buses by 2020, and light rail lines on Eglinton and Finch West that are set to open in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
But the TTC will need some quicker solutions to address issues like declining adult ridership.
Borkwood's report says 16 million yearly adult rides have been lost since 2014, with 403,000 fewer adult Metropasses being sold during that same timeframe. |
By The Metric Maven
Bulldog Edition
When I was a boy, I read a number of books by Dr. Seuss. One that immediately captured my interest was On Beyond Zebra. I don’t recall much about the book at this point in my life other than the fact that it involved additional letters of the alphabet. Each new letter was introduced and illustrated by the author. The idea there might be unknown letters piqued my youthful interest. Here are the new letters that appeared in that book:
The first book I ever read by Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was: The Universe, From Flat Earth to Quasar, which I recently re-read. The two books may seem far apart, but I made a connection between them when I came across a section on how the sun generates its energy. The Sun uses nuclear fusion to convert mass to energy. This process is understood using the famous equation E = mc 2 developed by Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
The pressures at the center of the sun cause four hydrogen atoms to fuse into a single helium atom. After this process occurs there is a mass imbalance, the four hydrogen atoms have more combined mass than the resulting single helium atom, and the extra mass is converted into energy.
Dr. Asimov states that about 4.2 Tg (Teragrams) of mass is converted to energy every second inside of the sun. He uses pre-metric terms to describe this value as “4 600 000 tons of mass per second.” Unfortunately so does Wikipedia: “the Sun fuses about 620 million metric tons of hydrogen each second.” As I understand it 1 million is 106 and a “metric ton” is a Megagram or 106 grams for 4.2 x 1012 grams per second or 4.2 Tg per second. That’s a lot of grams. Dr. Asimov inquires: “Is it possible for the Sun to support this steady drain of mass at the rate of millions of tons per second? Yes, it certainly is, for the loss is infinitesimally small compared with the total vast mass of the sun.” The currently accepted mass of the sun is, approximately 2 x 1030 kg. This means it’s 2 x 1033 grams, and the proper metric prefix would be?—oh, well, there isn’t exactly a metric prefix for this value. The last magnifying metric prefix is Yotta, which allows the mass to be written as 2 000 000 000 Yg (Yottagrams). Which by current convention it appears there are about three extra metric prefixes needed to express the mass of the sun with a 2, and a minimum of two extra prefixes to use 2000 as a magnitude.
So what does “infinitesimally small” mean? Well the mass lost each second, divided by the total mass of the sun, is 4.2 x 1012 grams/2 x 1033 grams. This value is one divided by 476.19 x 1018 or 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 002 which is quite a tiny ratio. I believe this is indeed a small enough ratio to be “infinitesimally small.” Recall we are talking about 4.2 Tg per second of mass loss. Each gram has 90 TJ (Terajoules) of energy contained within it’s mass. If my computation is correct, then 378 x 1024 joules are released each second. This would be 378 YJ (Yottajoules) per second. We are approaching the limits of the metric prefix Yotta, and in only 1000 seconds we would have 378 000 YJ and see that a new prefix might be useful to describe the power released.
What is notable is that the mass of the sun is not readily expressed with a metric prefix, and it’s not all that massive for a star. It appears that the masses of stars are indeed astronomical. The most massive star is suspected to be R136a1 which is approximately 256 solar masses (a solar mass is the mass of the Sun). This means it has a mass of 512 x 1033 grams or 512 000 000 000 Yg. Clearly we are on beyond Yotta at this point. While I’ve made it clear in the past that astronomical distances are readily expressed with metric prefixes, this is not the case for stellar masses. One can see why R136a1 is described in terms of an equivalent number of solar masses and the metric system is not employed.
Asimov also makes this surprising statement:
Release of energy is always at the expense of disappearance of mass, but in ordinary chemical reactions, energy is released in such low quantities that the mass-loss is insignificant. As I have just said, 670,000 gallons of gasoline must be burned to bring about the loss of 1 gram (1/27 of an ounce). Nuclear reactions produce energies of much greater quantities, and here the loss of mass becomes large enough to be significant.
What I’ve been able find in my research on this subject is both minimal and contentious. It is mostly stated that the amount of mass lost in chemical reactions is “unmeasurable.” The few who venture to put numbers to paper (including a textbook example) end up with magnitudes on the order of 10-33 grams. One example computation has 70 x 10-33 grams as the amount of mass lost in the given chemical reaction. This would be 0.000 000 070 yg (yoctograms) and would indicate a possible need for at least two more metric prefixes. It appears that, at least in theoretical discussions, it might be useful to have two more metric prefixes on the dividing side of the prefixes.
Currently there are 20 metric prefixes from yocto to Yotta. Adding two more prefixes on the magnification side would be useful for some of this astronomical work. It would probably make sense to add a pair to the reducing prefixes also. This would increase the total number to 24 metric prefixes. This is a lot of prefixes, but is far less than the number of magnitudes scientific notation would allow, which would be 60. What I would propose is to consider adding the new prefixes, but at the same time remove the prefix cluster around unity: deca, hecto, deci and centi. They could be separated and relegated into a set of atavistic prefixes which are no longer considered proper modern usage. They would be included as an appendix to the modern prefixes for historical reference, but discouraged for modern use. This simplification would reduce the number of prefixes back to 20 and also provide a larger dynamic range for scientific description.
In early grades it makes sense to me that only the prefixes micro, milli, Kilo and Mega would be taught as the Common Set of Prefixes. These would be the prefixes that students would generally encounter in everyday life (if the US was metric and fully engaged). In Junior High and High School the new set of prefixes I’ve proposed could be taught as the Complete Set of Prefixes. I would argue that all students (and their teachers) should have to memorize and use all these metric prefixes (without the prefix cluster around unity) in their instruction. Textbook authors should not shy away from using Megameters for planetary dimensions, Gigameters for the solar system, and all the other appropriate uses of metric prefixes.
People have objected to my proposal that we teach all students to use all the metric prefixes. They employ the argument that the Common Set of Prefixes is all that is needed for an ordinary person, and the Complete Set of Prefixes is for engineers, scientists and technical people. I reject this view entirely. It produces a scientific apartheid that keeps the public from understanding the important issues of the day, which involve engineering and science more and more everyday. What I have discovered when working with large questions, such as how much the salinity of the ocean would change if we dumped all our fresh water into it, or how much carbon is being belched into our atmosphere over a given period of time, is that these problems are tamed using appropriate metric prefixes. They allow an ordinary citizen to comfortably work with the magnitudes involved. If one talks about hundreds of billions of tons, that is a metaphor, and is not information. If the goal of education in the US is to create the most numerate population on the planet, then a good command of the magnitudes of all the metric prefixes is essential.
I would like to see a song which fixes the order of the metric prefixes in a person’s mind from the smallest to the largest, something similar to Tom Lehrer’s Element Song. Some manner of meaningless acrostic or other method of recalling the order of the 1000 based prefixes should also be developed. With the prefix cluster around unity eliminated, all the magnitudes will be of 1000 and any parsed base unit can be determined. This would allow anyone to look at 1 000 000 000 000 000 grams and immediately relate it to the acrostic or song and “sound out” the size of the number as 1 Pg (Petagram), or conversely be able to take the 1 Pg and work out how many sets of three zeros one would need to express it. This would also be the case for 0.000 000 000 000 001 grams. It could be “sounded out” as 1 fg (femtogram).
When all the metric prefixes no longer apply, that’s when a modern student should viscerally realize they are discussing dimensions that are so large or so small they are mind blowing, and on beyond yocto and Yotta. These values truly exist in an amazing far distant realm.
If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page |
Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder lakes. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.
This question popped up in my brain the other day as I was doing the weekly shop in the supermarket. There were a few packets of white toilet rolls, but all the rest were pink. And, if you’ve been to France, you’ll know that it’s not a particularly nice shade of pink.
So – why?
Well, toilet paper (commonly known as PQ here – from pécu which is short for papier cul i.e. bum paper. Literally!) goes back to sixth century China. However, it only became widely used in France in the 1960s. Bit of a time lag there. It had been around since the beginning of the twentieth century but was most definitely a luxury item. Newspaper was used, and then for a time, that dreadful shiny stuff that was no good at all, if you remember!
At one time, toilet paper was made from virgin wood pulp. The WWF protested against this, and these days more recycled pulp is used. The vast majority of the toilet roll tubes are made from recycled paper. Recycled paper pulp tends to be a grotty grey so either needs more bleaching or dyeing a stronger colour to make it more appealing.
Pink is just a regional preference, although I can’t find out who started the craze for this colour in France. The idea behind coloured toilet paper was to make it match the décor in the bathroom. I cannot believe for a moment that anyone would paint their smallest room Grotesque Pink, so I’m not convinced that rule holds for France. Germans prefer paper with motifs I’m told, Americans plain white.
As often happens, the French are going against the general grain by sticking to dyed toilet paper when the worldwide trend is for white paper. It has been suggested that dyes cause irritation in sensitive areas, and of course there are the environmental concerns. Whether the pink dye is better than the bleaching that produces white toilet roll is debatable. It’s more expensive though. Sadly, unbleached toilet roll is not readily available anywhere since apparently consumers don’t like its brown tinge. Ironic really.
Toilet paper is evolving. There are now scented papers, 3 and 4 ply papers, quilted, even glow-in-the-dark paper. But the pace of evolution is slower here en France. We still like our pink PQ.
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I remember standing in line at the grocery store, a couple of months after I arrived here, and idly wondering what was missing. I watched the cashier swiping a woman’s bread and cheese at breakneck speed, the woman whip out her card, sign for everything and stride out. And as a man stepped up to repeat the process, I suddenly realised how silent everything was. Nobody was talking. We were in a speedy, efficient, well oiled queue that was designed to be ploughed through as rapidly as possible. Talking was too time consuming.
I raised the issue with my flatmate that night and her response (paraphrased) was classically German – ‘of course no one talks, we want to get out of there.’ It makes sense – most things in Germany, save for its collective obsession with paperwork do. Grocery shopping isn’t one of those things most people like to necessarily revel in, and no one likes a chatterbox holding the line up, nor do I expect a full blown conversation with the cashier/sales assistant to unfold when I am out and about partaking in my retail activities. But I don’t expect silence. The art of small talk is to make it last as long as you need it to – to fill time or space or silence – then swiftly exit when the time comes. A month or so later, half an hour into a great chat with a German perfume sales assistant who had lived in America and South Africa and was bemoaning the lack of meaningless chatter from Germans in social situations, I had one of my first (and most prevailing) revelations. English is based around small talk. And, as I have learnt, German isn’t. German, like the people who speak it and the culture it informs, is direct, honest and economical. They just don’t talk small.
Since moving in together, my flatmate and I have had numerous moments where things have sort of lost their way en route from mouth to mind. Her English is exceptional (and thank God, because given my German we’d never have a decent conversation, and we’re both verbal creatures) so it’s not at all a matter of your classic language barrier. It’s more subtle than that. English and German, despite both being Teutonic languages and predominantly those of western, first world countries, possess incredibly disparate nuances and intricacies. And, so often, they really don’t understand each other at all. One thinks the other is rude, and the other thinks one is dishonest in their constant chatter.
My flatmate, for example, still gives me a look of slight confusion when I ask her if she could do me a favour and, without waiting for a response, then ask if she would mind passing me the salt. To a German, it is the most senseless waste of words to achieve a simple action. To an English speaker, it doesn’t mean a thing more than ‘can you pass the salt.’ Same outcome, two very different ways of going about achieving it. She also, whenever I start whinging about potentially being trapped in a situation I want to get out of, just looks at me and says ‘you don’t have to do it. Just say no.’ I of course say ‘but I can’t, it’s rude’ at which point she just eyeballs me in a manner that smacks of ‘English speakers … weird.’
When I teach my students ‘Manners and Politeness’ the first thing I tell them is to never say ‘what’ if they can’t hear someone. To a German, to say ‘was’ if you didn’t understand someone isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the quickest, most logical way to get someone to repeat themselves. They also say ‘bitte’ which is ‘please’ but ‘was’ isn’t an issue. To an English speaker, it is. One of the first things we learn as a tot is, ’not what, I beg your pardon’. This drilled into my students, we move onto Direct and Indirect Questions which Germans find completely mind boggling. Why be indirect when you can be direct? Because, to an English speaker, the more indirect you are, the politer it is considered. This makes absolutely no sense to the Germans. It’s a waste of time and, because we don’t actually expect a negative answer to the majority of our indirect questions (’would you mind unpacking the dishwasher’, ’what do you think about hanging out the washing’, ’can you do me a favour and make me a cup of tea’) the beating around the bush can come across as being somewhat dishonest.
My father, master of the anecdote, told an interesting story over Christmas (which my Australian family and German family enjoyed together). Once upon a time, it was considered the height of aristocratic manners when one was dining, to go about asking someone to pass you something, by engaging in this simple dialogue;
‘Henry, would you like more chicken?’
‘No, Arthur, but would you like more chicken?’
‘Yes, I would Henry.’
‘Then I shall pass it to you.’
It is the zenith of indirectness and tickled the Germans pink. It tickled us pink too, to be fair, but we weren’t particularly surprised. No one does indirect like the Brits. They invented subtext.
The simple fact is, we use our words in entirely different ways and so much can get mixed up in the delicate ins and outs.
We love subtext. Implications and inferences are a sport. We often say ‘yes!’ when we mean ‘absolutely not and I am going to slide out of that as soon as I can’. If we ask if you’d mind doing something, we absolutely don’t expect you to say ‘yes I do mind’. Our ‘how are you/how you going/how’ve you been/how is everything/how’s it/alright’ is often attached to our ‘hello’ and actually doesn’t mean ‘tell me how you are’ it just means ‘hello’. We’ll get to the real ‘how are you’ later in the conversation and that’s when you can actually tell us how you are. For the first ‘how are you’ a ‘fine’ is suffice. Do not elaborate. We’re not interested. And even though we asked, we didn’t actually ask. Most of our small talk has expected answers that keep it flowing and eventually allows us to navigate smoothly into Proper Conversational Territory, should time and desire from both parties, permit. In the same vein as the Direct/Indirect Questions, Germans find our constant need to engage in small, essentially meaningless talk, dishonest. Most of what we’re saying is inconsequential and we actually don’t overly care about the response – our small talk isn’t designed to tackle the hard questions, it’s designed to enable longer, more pleasant and engaging social interaction.
Deliberating, as I do, over this divide and all the comedy that fills it, I was thrilled to come across this article the other day. I raced into the kitchen, boiled the kettle, and read it out loud to my flatmate. Sipping tea (me) and enjoying a cigarette (her) we both vehemently agreed with every word and rather proudly admitted to feeling like a successful linguistic experiment. It’s rather spot on. And at the end of the article, I think my flatmate finally understood the English purpose of prefacing everything with ‘would you mind.’
But she still thinks I should just say no. |
Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle's disturbing text messages were revealed through court hearing transcripts recently released by the U.S. District Court and obtained exclusively by Radar. Click ahead to see the ones we could print. less Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle's disturbing text messages were revealed through court hearing transcripts recently released by the U.S. District Court and obtained exclusively by Radar. Click ahead to see ... more Photo: Michael Conroy, Associated Press Photo: Michael Conroy, Associated Press Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Jared Fogle scores cafeteria job serving sandwiches in prison 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
Convicted pedophile Jared Fogle is slapping together sandwiches in his new post in the cafeteria at Federal Correctional Institution Englewood, TMZ reports.
This seems like the perfect post for the former Subway pitchman (though we have a feeling he's not making foot-long Spicy Italians).
TMZ reports that fellow inmates are snickering at the irony of it all and are a little jealous as Fogle likely would have gotten a promotion to score this position.
Read Full Article |
Image caption Spears is accused of making repeated, unwanted sexual advances towards Mr Flores
A former bodyguard for pop star Britney Spears has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her.
Fernando Flores has accused the singer of repeatedly parading around in the nude and having sex in front of him.
Mr Flores also claims Ms Spears caused him emotional distress by having violent quarrels with her boyfriend in front of her two children.
The singer's lawyer did not comment. A lawyer for her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, called the case "baseless".
According to papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Mr Flores alleges that Spears made repeated, unwanted sexual advances and summoned him to her room to expose her naked body.
He also claims that he witnessed the singer punish her young sons with his belt and act inappropriately in front of them.
However Mr Federline's lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan, told The Associated Press that Mr Flores' accusations had been looked into before the legal action was filed and warranted no action.
He added his client took allegations of abuse or wrongdoing regarding the former couple's children seriously.
"He is satisfied that the allegations are a product of economic motives. They are as baseless as they seem," Mr Kaplan said.
Mr Flores, who worked for Ms Spears from February to July this year, also accuses his security firm employers of ignoring or mocking his complaints over the singer's alleged actions . |
A New York Times article Wednesday charged that Energy Secretary-designate Rick Perry didn't comprehend the function of the Department of Energy when he accepted President-elect Donald Trump's offer to lead the department.
The article was immediately popular among some media figures and many Democrats who saw it as evidence of the former Texas Republican governor's lack of qualifications for the position and Trump's poor administrative decisions. It was shared and retweeted thousands of times on social media:
However, other observers began questioning the accuracy of the report, noting a lack of evidence to support the conclusions. Sean Davis of The Federalist remarked, "The lede on this garbage story is the epitome of fake news. NYT does not have a shred of evidence to support it."
The article is based largely on a quote from a former member of the Trump transition team. The fourth paragraph of the Times story states:
“If you asked him on that first day he said yes, he would have said, ‘I want to be an advocate for energy,’” said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who advised Mr. Perry’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked on the Trump transition’s Energy Department team in its early days. “If you asked him now, he’d say, ‘I’m serious about the challenges facing the nuclear complex.’ It’s been a learning curve.”
When the Daily Caller tried to get clarification from McKenna, he said the Times mischaracterized his statement:
McKenna, though, told TheDC that the “headline” and lede of the story “don’t really reflect what I said.” He added that “of course” Perry understood the role of the Department of Energy when he was offered the job. Two-thirds of the DOE’s budget is devoted to maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpiles. The nation’s primary site for the assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons is located in Amarillo, Texas, a state Perry was governor of for 15 years.
Perry is set to defend his qualifications at his confirmation hearing Thursday. The Times has not issued a correction or clarification and did not respond immediately to the Daily Caller's emails. |
Manchester United may have taken a step closer to luring Chelsea's Juan Mata, but may also have to resist an approach from Real Madrid for Wayne Rooney.
Manchester United target Arturo Vidal has told Sport Bild he is the "best in the world" in his position for Juventus.
• United hope to entice Juve's Vidal
• Cox: Why can't Mata and Jose get along?
• Okwonga: Moyes can think of Swansea
• Mitten: Pessimistic about United
• Lythell: Mata to Man United makes no sense
Vidal, 26, has emerged as a key player for Serie A champions Juventus since joining the club from Bayer Leverkusen in 2011.
In 20 league appearances this season the midfielder has scored 10 goals and tallied five assists, to help Juve open up an eight-point lead at the top of the table.
Vidal's form has seen him linked with a move away from the Old Lady, with United hopeful that the offer of a significant wage increase will entice him to Old Trafford.
"Why am I playing so well? Well that's simple," Vidal told Sport Bild, according to Football Italia. "Because in my role I am the best in the world.
"Many try to imitate my style, but I want to say one thing -- I'm the best in the world.
"In my role, no one defends like me or scores as many goals as me.
"I have won two Italian championships and am under contract until 2017. I want to win the Champions League with Juventus until then."
Pressed on the rumours of a transfer away from Juve, Vidal added: "I am not aware of them. I keep getting linked to other clubs, like Manchester United recently. That's just normal when you put in good performances at a top club." |
At a Glance
Nearly a quarter-century ago, we became the first nation on earth to comprehensively declare equality for its citizens with disabilities. With passage of the ADA, we enshrined into law the promise of equal access, equal opportunity, and equal respect for every American.
Today, 19 percent of Americans (56.7 million people) live with disabilities. President Obama and his Administration are dedicated to ensuring that people with disabilities have the same access to the American Dream as every other citizen.
That’s why this Administration has worked to toughen the protections against disability-based discrimination, increase accessibility in our communities, expand employment opportunities and increase financial independence for people with disabilities.
Take a tour of the White House in Sign Language
Expanding Educational Opportunities
Investing in access to education will best prepare our youth and young adults with disabilities to meet the needs of the 21st century.
President Obama supports improved educational opportunities for people with disabilities. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal will increase support for the inclusion and improved outcomes of students with disabilities, ensuring that teachers are prepared to meet the needs of diverse learners and that assessments more accurately and appropriately measure the performance of students with disabilities. President Obama also supports expanded funding and increased enforcement for programs like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that ensure all Americans have access to the tools to succeed.
The Department of Justice and Department of Education issued a joint Dear Colleague letter to schools reminding them that bullying is wrong and must not be tolerated – including against America’s 6.5 million students with disabilities.
Increasing Employment Opportunities
The Obama Administration is focused on providing Americans with disabilities with access to the resources and training necessary for them to succeed in the workplace.
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA)
President Obama signed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) into law, placing significant new responsibilities on several Cabinet-level agencies that have the responsibility for increasing the employment of individuals with disabilities, particularly the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. These agencies will take the primary lead in furthering various initiatives within their departments designed to advance employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities.
Section 503 Regulations
New rules under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act have taken effect and mandate that all federal contractors must take affirmative action to recruit, hire, promote, and retain individuals with disabilities. These regulations established a 7 percent utilization goal for individuals with disabilities and also require increased data collection and record keeping to improve employer accountability.
The Administration has launched the Curb Cuts to the Middle Class Initiative, a cross-agency effort focused on helping people with disabilities prepare to qualify for the array of jobs offered by federal contractors and provide federal contractors with the tools and resources they need to recruit, retain, and promote people with disabilities.
See also: "Advancing Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities" by Cecilia Muñoz
Executive Order 13548, on Increasing Federal Employment of Individuals with Disabilities
Recognizing that Americans with disabilities have an employment rate far lower than that of Americans without disabilities, and that they are underrepresented in the federal workforce, President Obama issued Executive Order 13548 to establish the federal government as a model employer of individuals with disabilities. After five years of implementation, OPM reports that the Federal Government has hired 154, 212 permanent and temporary employees with disabilities, with 109,575 of these being permanent career employees with disabilities. This major milestone exceeded the Administration’s goal to hire 100,000 people with disabilities and is more people with disabilities in Federal service, both in real terms and by percentage, than at any time in the past 35 years.
Strengthening Health Care
President Obama placed comprehensive health reform at the top of his domestic policy agenda. The President signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides many benefits for people with disabilities.
The ACA ends discrimination on the basis of pre-existing condition and bans caps on lifetime benefits.
The ACA bars insurance companies from discrimination on the basis of medical history or genetic information.
The ACA establishes the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, a self-funded and voluntary long-term care insurance choice that would help people with disabilities remain in their homes, communities, and jobs through cash benefits to pay for community support services.
The ACA advances community living by extending the Money Follows the Person program, improving the Medicaid home-and-community-based services (HCBS) option.
The ACA establishes the Community First Choice Option covering community-based attendant services and supports to help Medicaid beneficiaries with daily activities and health-related tasks.
The ACA enhances health care delivery by establishing standards for medical diagnostic equipment so people with disabilities can access vital preventative care.
Promoting Civil Rights and Access
President Obama’s Administration has vigorously enforced existing laws and promoted disability rights around the world.
Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is landmark legislation that has done much to protect people with disabilities from discrimination; however, President Obama continues to push for more consistent and effective enforcement of ADA, which can do more to prevent discrimination in employment, public services, and public accommodations. For example, in late 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted a Strategic Enforcement Plan, identifying certain emerging issues under the ADA as a national enforcement priority. In addition to its Olmstead enforcement actions, the Department of Justice has also focused its enforcement priorities under the ADA issues surrounding access to technology. The Department of Justice is working to ensure that technology improves access instead of creating new barriers for individuals living with disabilities.
Olmstead Enforcement
The Department of Justice entered into a first-of-its-kind settlement agreement with the State of Rhode Island that will provide relief to approximately 3,250 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have been, or who are at risk of, unnecessary segregation in sheltered workshops or facility-based day programs. Under the court-enforceable Consent Decree, individuals with disabilities will have access to an array of services, giving them the opportunity to receive meaningful employment in integrated community settings at competitive wages.
Supporting Development and Use of Accessible Technology
President Obama is committed to increasing innovation and access to technology for Americans with disabilities. As part of the President’s initiative to make government information available to all Americans through accessible electronic and information technology under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Chief Acquisition Officer and the Chief Information Officer issued a memo to make agencies aware of existing resources and direct agencies to improve the acquisition and implementation of accessible technology.
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Under President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adding America to the then-list of 141 countries signing the first new human rights treaty of the 21st Century. |
My hero of the week is star knitter Doris Godfrey who has bashing out jumpers for needy children for the last two years.
Doris, 89, of Chester-le-Street, has rattled off 300 jumpers for children in Boroudha, a little village in Bangladesh and home of the Wear Surma Clinic established by Sunderland health visitor Carole Elliott.
“I get a lot of enjoyment out of knitting these jumpers as I know they are going to a good cause and will help keep the children of Boroudha nice and warm,” says Doris.
Good for you Doris. While the cynics amongst you may question why children in a country where the average temperature is in the high 80s Fahrenheit would need woolly jumpers, I say good on you Doris.
“It’s a delight to see the smiles on their little faces,” she added.
And the delight on their faces is clear for all to see in the photograph of the youngsters in their fetching jerkins that accompanied the story in the Sunderland Echo this week.
Well done Doris, and we wish her well in her next venture in aid of the Inuit children eking out an existence on the fringes of the Arctic tundra. She’s making them Bermuda shorts.
* To donate cash to the great work being done at the Wear Surma Clinic log onto their website at http://www.thewearsurmaclinic.com
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A 79-year-old woman accidentally mailed her rent check to Xfinity Comcast along with her cable bill — only to have the telecom giant cash it and initially refuse to return the money.
According to CNET.com, Francis Wilson of Albuquerque, New Mexico accidentally put her $235 rent check into the envelope she uses to pay her $20 cable bill each month.
Comcast received the check and cashed it. When Wilson realized her mistake and contacted the cable provider, they initially offered her an account credit rather than returning the money.
“You’re stealing from an old woman like me?” Wilson said to KRQE. “How dare you? You didn’t even call me? Who gave you permission?”
Large companies use machines to process incoming payments. Oftentimes these machines simply scan the numbers on the checks without bothering with the name of the payee.
KRQE contacted Comcast, whose representative said that the company rushed to rectify the error as soon as it was brought to their attention.
“Our big focus was to correct the situation as soon as possible,” she said, but the company — the largest cable and home Internet provider in the country for more a decade — only agreed to return the money when it was contacted by KRQE.
CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk asked why Comcast generates so many of these types of customer service nightmare stories.
“In recent times, the company has called customers “A**hole” and “Super B****.” Yes, in writing. Its so-called retention specialists have been recorded treating customers to a certain hell of unwanted persistence,” Matyszczyk said.
Watch video about this story, embedded below: |
Matt Buntine is out for the season with an ACL injury
GREATER Western Sydney has been dealt another injury blow with defender Matt Buntine ruled out for the season due to an ACL tear that he may have been playing with for years.
Bunting walked off the training track with a slight niggle, but scans revealed he had a partially torn ACL, which was a pre-existing injury.
The 23-year-old will undergo a full conventional knee reconstruction next week.
It caps off a disastrous week for the premiership fancies after veteran midfielder Ryan Griffen and young gun Will Setterfield were both ruled out for 10 weeks with ankle injuries.
"After feeling some discomfort at training on Wednesday, Matt underwent scans to initially investigate what was thought to be a meniscus injury, but these scans revealed a partially torn ACL that appears to be a pre-existing injury," Giants general manager of football Wayne Campbell said.
"This is obviously quite a rare set of circumstances, given there has been no cause to investigate any injury in relation to Matt's knee before this and it appears he's been playing with it for a number of years.
"This is obviously devastating news for Matt and we will now map out the best rehabilitation course for him to return to his best.
"Matt is a person of great integrity and character and has the full support of the entire club during this challenging time."
Buntine played the first two games of this year to bring his career total to 41 from his six years at the club. |
American Crystal Sugar has outsized influence in DC
American Crystal MPR Photo/Dan Gunderson
If you made a list of the Minnesota-based companies that spend the most money lobbying the federal government, you'd see some familiar names, with Medtronic and Target at the top. But there is one relatively small Minnesota company that has become a big political player.
American Crystal Sugar pulls in annual revenues of about $1.2 billion. The Moorhead-based cooperative of about 3,000 sugar beet farmers doesn't even crack the top 50 largest Minnesota companies. But when it comes to influence in Washington, Crystal is king.
"American Crystal Sugar, and the people associated with American Crystal Sugar, have actually donated millions upon millions of dollars to federal political interests, because at the end of the day, they do have a lot at stake," said Dave Levinthal, editor OpenSecrets.org, a website that tracks money in politics.
What does American Crystal Sugar have at stake in Washington?
Three words: The Farm Bill. The federal government runs a complex system that guarantees the price for American-produced sugar and limits foreign competition. American Crystal wants those programs maintained.
"The goal is to artificially raise the price of sugar," said Chris Edwards, who directs tax policy studies at the libertarian CATO Institute. "There's a small group of farmers who gain monopoly profits at the expense of consumers."
But, of course, there is another side to the story.
Other countries protect their sugar industries, too. If the United States drops its sugar protections unilaterally, American Crystal fears nothing short of annihilation.
"There are just some realities to the world of sugar and the world sugar market that would allow a lot of foreign, subsidized sugar to be dumped into the United States market," American Crystal Sugar lobbyist Kevin Price explained. "The price would collapse and we'd go out of business."
American Crystal Sugar spends between $1 million and $2 million a year on lobbying the federal government. That's about the same level as Cargill -- a company almost 100 times its size. American Crystal's political action committee spends another $1 million-plus every year on contributions to political campaigns.
Its PAC has quadrupled in size in the last decade. It is among the 20 largest in the country, and the largest in the agriculture sector.
According to data from OpenSecrets.org, American Crystal Sugar's PAC supported 32 U.S. Senate candidates and 218 candidates for the U.S. House during the last election cycle.
That money opens doors for Price on Capitol Hill.
"If you're a member of Congress, you're not just thinking of agriculture policy," he said. "You're thinking about health care and defense and education and transportation and international relations and military issues -- all kinds of different things all the time. And so that's one of the reasons we do what we do. It allows us to break through that clutter a little bit and have our voices heard."
Kevin Price, American Crystal Sugar MPR Photo/Curtis Gilbert
Price makes no apologies for his company's political contributions.
"We're very proud of it," he said. "It's certainly part of the political process that many people probably wish didn't exist, but it does. And you might as well be good at it, and that's what we try to do."
With the more free-market-minded Republicans back in control in the U.S. House, Price may face a somewhat more skeptical audience next time the Farm Bill comes up. But he said he's not worried. It just means he has a lot of new people to meet. |
Share. Two classic RPG remakes are coming to 3DS in 2015. Two classic RPG remakes are coming to 3DS in 2015.
Dragon Quest VII and VIII are coming to the west for the Nintendo 3DS. While this news was rumored back in July, today’s Nintendo Direct confirmed that the pair of classic RPGs will hit in 2016.
Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, will released in early Summer 2016. DQ VII originally released for PlayStation in 2001, with IGN praising the game for "deep gameplay, [a] massive quest, and sheer variety."
Exit Theatre Mode
Dragon Quest VIII: The Journey of the Cursed King for 3DS will be released in the west sometime in 2016. DQ VIII for the PlayStation 2 first released in Japan in 2004, and later in North America in 2005. We gave it a 9.0, saying that it, “...goes to show you that you don't always have to do something revolutionary to be great.” An Android and iOS port launched in Japan on December 2013 and worldwide on May 2014.
Marty Sliva is a Senior Editor at IGN. He once ate a whole blueberry. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty. |
A woman was behind the wheels of the car which hit the Emirati man who was waiting on the roadside near an electric pole.
As if he was destined to die, an Emirati man who survived a car crash was killed just after 10 minutes to the first incident in Dubai on Wednesday.
Brigadier Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, Director of the General Department of Traffic at Dubai Police, said that the victim who got injured in the first accident was waiting for the ambulance to come when he was hit by another car.
A woman was behind the wheels of the car which hit the Emirati man who was waiting on the roadside near an electric pole. He was en route to Sharjah when the accident happened.
According to preliminary reports, the woman's car hit the man when a pick up averted a collision with the woman's car which was coming in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, in a separate accident one man died and two others sustained moderate injuries in a collision involving a truck and car, Brig Al Mazroui added.
While the drivers of the both vehicles sustained the accidents with minor injuries, a man who was accompanying the truck driver was killed on spot in the accident which happened at 09am. Both the vehicles were on the Endurance Road on the direction of Abu Dhabi.
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She was born into the richest monarchy in the world, but Russia's last Romanov Grand Duchess ended her days in this unenviable semi in Toronto.
War and revolution drove Olga Alexandrovna, sister to Russia's Tsar Nicholas II, to flee her homeland and make way for the nascent Soviet Union while most of her family was executed.
The home, which is now for sale $539,000, was the final resting place where she died in 1960 at the age of 78.
Scroll down for video
Final home: This semi-detached property in Toronto, Canada, was the home where Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia died in 1960
Wealth and power: Grand Duchess Olga, left, was the youngest sister of Tsar Nicholas, right, who was the richest royal in the world
Grand Duchess Olga was born into a world of unimaginable luxury and was given a 200-room mansion and a domestic staff of 70 by elder brother, then the world's richest royal.
She would have moved in the most rarefied circles of Russian - and world - society, and frequently accompanied the Tsar's family to events of state, such as those held in St Petersburg's world-famous Winter Palace.
But her life of imperial splendor came to an abrupt and bloody end after her brother's forced abdication in 1917 to make way for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party, which would transform the Tsar's empire into the Soviet Union.
According to Nick Barisheff, whose family used to own the apartment where the Grand Duchess died, in her last year she stayed in bed and ate only ice cream,Canada's National Post reported.
Splendor: The Winter Palace in St Petersburg, pictured, was one of many Russian imperial residences where the Grand Duchess would have spent her youth
Grand: Grand Duchess Olga, who reportedly had 'no financial sense' started life with a 200-room mansion and 70 domestic staff at her disposal
She was driven to Canada via the Crimea, and then Denmark, where she and remaining Russian royals were hounded and killed by revolutionaries.
Eventually she took a ship to North America to get even further away from those who wanted her dead, and lived a humble existence alongside her second husband and their two children.
There she lived a life which hardly bears comparison to the grandeur of the imperial court, but occasionally received visitors from her past.
In 1959, the Post reported, her cousin Queen Elizabeth II of England, invited her aboard the royal yacht, Britannia, when she visited nearby Toronto.
Royal blood: Grand Duchess Olga was close with the family of her brother the Tsar (center), who was executed in 1918 along with the rest of his family, including Tsarevich Alexei (bottom left) and Grand Duchess Anastasia (right)
Despite rumors of a vast, hidden fortune, Grand Duchess Olga reportedly only took a few trinkets with her across the Atlantic - though she was not even careful of those.
Barisheff said: 'The Grand Duchess had no financial sense whatsoever. When people visited her house in Cooksville and admired her stuff she would ask, "Do you like it? That’s your gift for today."’
'These could be things passed down from Catherine the Great.' |
Job applicants who are cancer survivors are less likely to receive callbacks from potential retail employers than those who did not disclose their health history, according to a recent study by Rice University and Penn State University researchers.
The study, published recently in the Journal of Applied Psychology by the American Psychological Association, focused on retail employers and compared two groups of job applicants: applicants who ostensibly never had cancer and applicants who indicated on their resumes they were cancer survivors and wore a hat that read "cancer survivor" when applying for a job.
Applicants disclosing a cancer history received fewer callbacks from managers than the applicants who did not disclose a history of cancer. For the cancer survivor group, 21 percent received callbacks. For the control group, nearly 37 percent received callbacks, a statistically significant difference, according to the researchers.
"This is especially problematic as people with chronic and past illnesses are protected from discrimination by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and our findings indicate that cancer survivors do tend to disclose their cancer histories with interviewers at relatively high rates," said lead researcher Larry Martinez, assistant professor of hospitality management at Penn State.
Martinez, who earned his undergraduate degree, master's degree and Ph.D. at Rice University under the guidance of co-author Mikki Hebl, professor of psychology and management, began the research for this study as part of his graduate work.
"This study is based on this idea that Mikki has been working on for a while now," Martinez said. "Basically, people are more likely to discriminate in very subtle interpersonal ways. There's less eye contact. There are shorter interaction times when speaking with managers. There are more negative interpersonal behaviors from managers, like frowning, brow furrowing and less smiling -- fewer cues that communicate to applicants that they are interested in hiring them for the job."
Part of the study targeted 121 retail managers at three large shopping malls in a metropolitan area in the southern part of the United States. Five undercover researchers, two men and three women between ages 21 and 29, were assigned randomly to disclose a history of cancer or provide no information about a history of cancer. Prior to data collection, researchers confirmed each establishment was hiring. Researchers excluded employers who used a strict online-only application process. Only one applicant entered each store.
Participants presented managers with resumes that included their actual work experience; however, resumes were modified to fit the work history and job requirements for the retail position and to remove any experience that would make the applicant overqualified. Participants' resumes were also standardized for length, formatting and level of experience.
While researchers make clear that no hiring laws were broken, they found evidence of discrimination. "Despite the fact that cancer survivors are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, we did see this difference in callbacks between them and the general public, as well as the negative interpersonal treatment they received," Martinez said.
Also as part of the study, researchers conducted an online survey with 87 participants who were employed full time, most of whom had management experience or experience as an interviewer. Participants were asked to provide their opinions regarding how people feel about cancer survivors in the workplace. The results indicated that workers with a history of cancer were rated higher in "warmth" than in competency.
Researchers concluded that while diversity efforts have generally increased over the last decade, health characteristics are often not included in diversity programs.
"Managers and employees should be mindful of the fact that although societal attitudes toward cancer survivors are generally quite positive, with people often viewing them as champions who have successfully overcome a traumatic experience, we nonetheless might perceive them as being less desirable employees simply because of their history with cancer," Martinez said.
Next steps in this area could include training managers to be mindful of subtle biases they might have toward people with past and chronic health conditions, according to Martinez and Hebl. "We could train applicants who might be prone to experiencing discrimination how to present themselves in interviews in ways to reduce possible negativity they might experience," Martinez said. |
Good try, (insufficiently-)Evolved. Makes me think you, not every Trump hater (that would be to stereotype, surely unfairly to some),
think some people can't do with statistics whatever they like,
think the NYT, CNN, the three used-to-be major networks, and WaPo are as close to objective truth in everything they say as there is,
have no clue as to the range of Trump-voter views on evolution,
have idolized whatever your idea of free trade,
are a blind follower, not a thinker, where global warming is concerned,
don't understand what the founders and other early Americans understood "separation of church and state" to be and why they valued it as they did (you really should read a book like Thomas Kidd's God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution on this one),
would love the federal government to be able to usurp every power reserved to the states by the Constitution,
believe in politicians who think like you do or whose thinking you follow blindly, in gods of your own making who let you do what's right in your own eyes, and in political power whose exercise is certainly facilitated by much more than guns.
I won't try to sum up what that makes you, in other words, other than to say I think it makes you the kind of person who would've voted joyfully for HRC. |
Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE's campaign chairman on Sunday slammed Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE's vice presidential pick, contrasting the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets.
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"Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE is the one who should be concerned because, yes, 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 doesn't represent the progressive agenda of Sanders," Paul Manafort said on "Fox News Sunday."
"And once again the progressives in the Democratic Party have been cheated by the establishment. But then the WikiLeaks, leaks of Democratic emails over the last week, prove that that was always the plan."
A trove of emails was released by WikiLeaks last week that show top officials at the Democratic National Committee appearing to plan ways to undermine Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.
Manafort said Sunday that Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is the "ultimate status quo" choice and a "failed career politician." He added that Kaine has never held a job in the private sector and has no idea how to create jobs.
"We're the change candidate," Manafort added.
"Clinton and Kaine are the failed establishment candidates. Their record is what we're fighting against. And for them to say that they're going to bring change when all the problems are part of what was created during the Obama administration, frankly, is ludicrous." |
In 2008, the world’s media was captivated by a study apparently showing that cows like to align themselves with magnetic fields. But attempts to replicate this finding have left two groups of researchers at loggerheads, highlighting the problems faced by scientists working to replicate unusual findings based on new methods of data analysis.
Magneto-reception has been detected in animals from turtles to birds. Three years ago, Hynek Burda, a zoologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and his colleagues added cattle to the magnetic family with a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team used data from Google Earth to show that domestic cattle seem to prefer to align their bodies along Earth’s magnetic field lines1, and showed a similar phenomenon in field observations of deer.
E. ELISSEEVA/GLOWIMAGES.COM
A follow-up study by Burda and his colleagues showed no such alignment near electric power lines, which might be expected to disrupt magneto-sensing in cattle2.
Cow conundrum
Earlier this year, a group of Czech researchers reported their failed attempt to replicate the finding using different Google Earth images3. The Czech team wrote in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A: “Two independent groups participated in our study and came to the same conclusion that in contradiction to the recent findings of other researchers, no alignment of the animals and of their herds along geomagnetic field lines could be found.”
“When in 2008 the authors started to announce their surprising findings in [the] mass media, we got the impression that this is not the way science should be made and we took a closer look. We found out that it is not as fantastic as it was presented,” says Lukas Jelinek, a researcher in the electromagnetic-field department at the Czech Technical University in Prague and one of the authors of the replication attempt.
In response, Burda and his colleagues reanalysed the replication attempt by Jelinek and his colleagues4. Burda says that half of the Jelinek team's data should be excluded because some of the pastures are on slopes or near high-voltage power lines, for example, or because the images are too poor to make out cattle, or appear to contain hay bales or sheep instead. “One half of their data is just noise,” says Burda.
In addition, Burda's group looked at herds as a whole, whereas Jelinek’s team analysed individual cows. “Of the data that were useable, they looked only at 50% of the cows. It’s very subjective,” Burda adds. His team's reanalysis of the Jelinek data actually does support the theory that cattle can magneto-sense, says Burda.
Picture problem
In a response to the reanalysis, Jelinek and colleagues say that in some cases they suspect each team may have inadvertently looked at different pictures, owing to mistakes in coordinates5. The Jelinek team says that it only looked at cows far from power lines, and that the slopes are few and could not cause a statistical bias. They write: “Sheep, horses, hay bales, rocks, cows with unsatisfactory resolution, cows near a track, settlement or feeder, were not taken [in the analysis].”
Sönke Johnsen, who studies magneto-reception at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that at least some of the images in question should probably not have been analysed. He also suggests that the proper unit of evaluation is probably the herd, as the alignment of individual cows in herds is unlikely to be independent. Overall, he says that the original results, “while mysterious, still stand”.
Jelinek says that his team does not intend to pursue any more research on this topic. Meanwhile, Burda’s team is already looking at magneto-reception in other animals. |
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA ( 03 MARCH 2016 ) — On Sunday 28 February, following seven years of ongoing negotiations, the Federation of Gay Games Board of Directors voted to end further discussions with Gay & Lesbian International Sport Association ( GLISA ) to consider creating a new unified organization to present a singular quadrennial global LGBT+ sports, culture and human rights event.
The FGG released a statement on its website, Article Link Here , signed by co-presidents Joanie Evans of London, UK and Kurt Dahl of Chicago, USA. In it, the Federation Board explains its decision and its hope that GLISA and the Gay Games can remain engaged moving forward.
According to Evans, "The Federation and GLISA have developed a very cordial, positive working relationship over the past four years, which made this decision difficult. But given the due diligence we underwent, we concluded such a venture would be 'High Risk.' We could not justify the major investment required to launch a new organization now. Doing so would require valuable financial and human resources that could better be spent helping Gay Games 10: Paris 2018 be the best Gay Games ever."
Read more story below....
The Federation remains open to continue its work with GLISA. "For more than nine years, the Federation has offered GLISA an open invitation to become a Member Organization in our General Assembly," stated Dahl. "There are many other ways we can support our shared goals to create opportunities for LGBT+ athletes, artists and advocates around the world, too."
Gay Games 10 will take place in Paris 04-12 August 2018. Registration opens later this year. Further information can be found at https:// Article Link Here . GLISA will oversee its North America OutGames in St. Louis this May, a World OutGames in Miami in 2017, and another North America OutGames in 2020.
About the Federation of Gay Games
Built upon the principles of Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best™, since 1982 the Gay Games have empowered thousands of LGBT athletes and artists through sport, culture, and fellowship. The Gay Games was conceived by Dr. Tom Waddell, an Olympic decathlete, and was first held in San Francisco in 1982. Subsequent Gay Games were held in San Francisco ( 1986 ), Vancouver ( 1990 ), New York ( 1994 ), Amsterdam ( 1998 ), Sydney ( 2002 ), Chicago ( 2006 ), Cologne ( 2010 ), and Cleveland+Akron ( 2014 ). Gay Games 10 will be held in Paris 2018. Visit Article Link Here for more information.
"Gay Games," "Federation of Gay Games," the interlocking circles device, and the phrase "Participation, Inclusion and Personal Best" are trademarks of the Federation of Gay Games, Inc. Trademarks are registered in the USA, Canada, Benelux, the UK, Germany, and Australia.
Article Link Here
Article Link Here
Article Link Here
Article Link Here |
Huge outdoor acid house parties were held across the UK in the late 1980s
Margaret Thatcher tried to stop the "new fashion" of acid house parties after an all-night rave shattered the tranquillity of a Tory MP's uncle, newly released official papers show.
The Prime Minister asked to be briefed on what powers the police had to control the parties and months later legislation was introduced to tackle unlicensed gatherings.
However, she was warned by then Scotland Secretary Malcolm Rifkind that proposed laws should not affect "innocent events" such as barn dances.
Mrs Thatcher was alerted to the burgeoning rave culture after a party held in Bentley, Hampshire, in August 1989.
Image: Mrs Thatcher said the Government should 'preferably prevent' the spread of acid house parties
Archie Hamilton, MP for Epsom and Ewell, forwarded the Prime Minister a letter from his uncle Gerald Coke, who said he was "very disturbed" by the party which had lasted until 7.30am.
Mr Coke, a former magistrate, said there was a "feeling of collective anger and helplessness" that police could do nothing because it was a private party.
In a handwritten note on the letter, Mrs Thatcher was asked if the Home Office should provide a briefing on what powers police had to control the gatherings.
She replied: "Yes if this is a new 'fashion' we must be prepared for it and preferably prevent such things from starting."
The rise of acid house in the late 1980s saw huge outdoor raves take place across Britain - accompanied by the use of recreational drugs such as ecstasy.
Cabinet Office papers released by the National Archives show how, by the time of dance music's 'summer of love', concern about raves had spread to the highest level of Government.
But a memo in October 1989 from Carolyn Sinclair of the Number 10 policy unit showed officials were more concerned with "nuisance caused by the noise" than the growing use of ecstasy.
Image: A crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square, London, protesting against the poll tax in 1990
She said: "Drugs are not the main issue. The parties are a form of unlicensed public entertainment for which people buy tickets.
"What is needed is a way of hitting at the profits made by the organisers. This should discourage the craze."
By 1990 legislation was introduced heightening punishments for those organising parties without licences.
Changes to the law contributed to a shift in dance music culture that saw parties move from vast outdoor raves to clubs which could be more easily policed, licensed and monitored.
The newly released official documents also show how Mrs Thatcher was threatened with a fine for failing to register for the poll tax - despite it being her own highly controversial flagship policy.
In 1989 a bureaucratic wrangle between Westminster City Council and the Cabinet Office saw the council threaten to impose a penalty after a registration form for the new community charge was not filled in. |
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) will lead a $13.5 million (€12 million) multi-institutional research effort to improve sorghum as a sustainable source for biofuel production.
Funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), the five-year grant takes a comprehensive approach to better understand how plants and microbes interact and to learn which sorghum germplasm grows better with less water and nitrogen.
This research requires a range of expertise, and UNL is teaming with scientists at Danforth Plant Science Center, Washington State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Boyce Thompson Institute, Clemson University, Iowa State University, Colorado State University, and the DOE-Joint Genome Institute.
‘Only by collaborating across disciplines and institutions can we find solutions to complex challenges, especially those at the intersection of our food, water and energy systems,’ Prem Paul, UNL vice chancellor for research and economic development, says, commenting on the project.
According to project leader Daniel Schachtman, professor of agronomy and horticulture and director of UNL's Center for Biotechnology, most US biofuels are currently made from corn, but sorghum varieties create more biomass for cellulosic ethanol, which makes it a top contender to replace corn and relieve pressure on an important global food source
‘It's becoming more recognised that we need to move biofuel production to more marginal lands, so they don’t compete with food crops. You also don't want to use a ton of water or fertiliser to keep the system productive,’ Schachtman says.
To improve sorghum's productivity under resource-limited conditions, the team is taking a systems approach and will investigate sorghum genetics as well as the soil microbes that interact with plants.
The research should lead to strategies to increase plant biomass as well as more water use- and nutrient-efficient sorghum crop systems.
Geneticists will search for and study sorghum varieties that use water and nitrogen more efficiently under limited water or nitrogen conditions, while microbiologists will identify and characterise soil microbes that interact with and benefit sorghum by enhancing nutrient uptake, water-use efficiency, and disease protection.
Bringing both approaches together, the team will experiment to find the genetic and microbial combinations with the greatest productivity benefits and create an extensive catalogue and repository of sorghum-related soil microbes and their genetic sequences as a resource for the scientific community. |
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Tens of thousands of people have joined a Facebook group calling for a public inquiry to look into the holding of the G20 summit in Toronto.
As of this afternoon (July 2), Canadians Demanding a Public Inquiry into Toronto G20, started by a Toronto-based law firm, boasted more than 37,000 members.
The group’s wall is filled with links to stories and videos about the heavy-handed tactics that police employed during the G20 protests. Its events tab lists a few upcoming rallies that aim to keep the issue in the spotlight.
Of course, all it takes for someone join a Facebook group is clicking a button on the social-networking site.
Another way Facebook users, as well as people on Twitter, can show their support for a G20 inquiry is by adding a Twibbon to their avatar.
Only 38 supporters had adopted the #G20 Public Inquiry Twibbon, however, as of this afternoon.
The Twibbon overlays an upside-down Maple Leaf on your profile image.
For those who want an inquiry but aren’t satisfied with monkeying around with their social-networking profiles, Amnesty International has created an on-line form that makes it easy to send a message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association also has a petition calling for a G20 inquiry. Getting on that list involves sending the organization an e-mail.
The best way to stay in the loop on all things G20 is to keep an eye on the #G20 hashtag on Twitter.
You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui. |
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told the Mexican people on Friday that he sees a “new Mexico” emerging, with a deepening democracy and growing economy, and that Mexico and the United States should be viewed as equal partners.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Anthropology Museum during his visit to Mexico City May 3, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“I have come to Mexico because it is time to put old mindsets aside,” Obama said in a speech to university students. “It’s time to recognize new realities, including the impressive progress in today’s Mexico.”
Obama tried out a little Spanish on his audience, saying “Es un placer estar entre amigos” (It is a pleasure to be among friends) and struck a deferential tone in speaking about the United States’ southern neighbor.
Drug-fueled violence in Mexico is not entirely the fault of the Mexican people, he said. Instead, the United States shares the blame because much of the violence is centered around the Americans’ demand for illegal drugs and the fact that guns are smuggled into Mexico from the United States.
“In this relationship there is no senior partner or junior partner. We are two equal partners, two sovereign nations that must work together in mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama said.
Obama’s goal on a three-day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica is to emphasize the need for stronger commercial ties and broaden relations beyond the security partnerships that have dominated the past. He is to meet Central American leaders in Costa Rica later on Friday.
Obama’s effort is aimed at creating more jobs in the United States and reigniting stronger growth. The U.S. jobless rate for April dropped slightly to 7.5 percent but unemployment remains a problem.
The United States would like to join forces with Mexico to compete for the fast-growing markets for trade goods in the Asia-Pacific.
“Let’s do more to expand the trade and commerce that creates good jobs for our people,” Obama said.
Obama’s speech served to bolster Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who last year took over from close U.S. ally Felipe Calderon. The new government has embarked on ambitious reforms to make the economy more competitive and institutions more accountable to the people, he said.
It is clear that a “new Mexico is emerging,” said Obama.
“I see a Mexico that is deepening your democracy, citizens who are standing up and saying that violence and impunity is not acceptable, a courageous press working to hold leaders accountable,” he said.
Obama, whose second term got off to a ragged start amid struggles with the U.S. Congress, heard cheers of approval when he said he hoped to gain congressional passage of an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.
Many of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States are from Mexico, and Mexico remains an important jumping-off point for Central American migrants heading for the U.S. border.
Obama stands the best chance in years to see new laws that would create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“I’m optimistic that, after years of trying, we’re finally going to get this done,” he said. |
WaMu was seized by federal regulators in late September, the biggest bank failure in the nation’s history. It was sold to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion.
The shareholder complaint depicts WaMu’s mortgage lending operation as a boiler room where volume was paramount and questionable loans were pushed through because they were more profitable to the company.
When underwriters refused to approve dubious loans, they were punished, she says.
MS. COOPER started at WaMu in 2003 and lasted three and a half years. At first, she was allowed to do her job, she says. In February 2007, though, the pressure became intense. WaMu executives told employees they were not making enough loans and had to get their numbers up, she says.
“They started giving loan officers free trips if they closed so many loans, fly them to Hawaii for a month,” Ms. Cooper recalls. “One of my account reps went to Jamaica for a month because he closed $3.5 million in loans that month.”
Although Ms. Cooper couldn’t see it, the wheels were already coming off the subprime bus.
“If a loan came from a top loan officer, they didn’t care what the situation was, you had to make that loan work,” she says. “You were like a bad person if you declined a loan.”
One loan file was filled with so many discrepancies that she felt certain it involved mortgage fraud. She turned the loan down, she says, only to be scolded by her supervisor.
“She told me, ‘This broker has closed over $1 million with us and there is no reason you cannot make this loan work,’ ” Ms. Cooper says. “I explained to her the loan was not good at all, but she said I had to sign it.”
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The argument did not end there, however. Ms. Cooper says her immediate boss complained to the team manager about the loan rejection and asked that Ms. Cooper be “written up,” with a formal letter of complaint placed in her personnel file.
Ms. Cooper said the team manager told her to “restructure” the loan to make it work. “I said, how can you restructure fraud? This is a fraudulent loan,” she recalls.
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Ms. Cooper says that her bosses placed her on probation for 30 days for refusing to approve the loan and that her team manager signed off on the loan.
Four months later, the loan was in default, she says. The borrower had not made a single payment. “They tried to hang it on me,” Ms. Cooper said, “but I said, ‘No, I put in the system that I am not approving this loan.’ ”
Brokers often tried to bribe Ms. Cooper to approve loans, she says. One offered to pay $900 to send her son to football summer boot camp if she would approve a loan that had been declined by a host of other lenders. “I told him no and not to disrespect me like that again,” Ms. Cooper says.
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Hidden fees meant brokers could easily make between $20,000 and $40,000 on a $500,000 loan, Ms. Cooper says.
“WaMu was allowing brokers to get 6 to 8 percent off one loan,” she says. “If I had a loan where the borrower was already tight and then I saw the broker is getting $10,000 or $20,000, I would cut their fees back. They would get so upset with me.”
Ms. Cooper says that loans she turned down were often approved by her superiors. One in particular came back to haunt WaMu.
Vetting a loan one day, Ms. Cooper says she became suspicious when a photograph of the house being bought showed one street address while documents deeper in the file showed a different address. She contacted the appraiser, and recalls that he said that he must have erred and that he would send her the correct documents.
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“So then he sent me an appraisal with a picture of the same house but this time with the right number on it,” Ms. Cooper recalls. “I looked the address up in our system and could not find it. I called the appraiser and said, ‘Please investigate.’ ”
The appraiser came back, reporting that a visit to the California property had found everything in order and in agreement with the original appraisal. “I was so for sure that it was fraud I wanted to get on an airplane,” Ms. Cooper says.
The $800,000 loan was approved, but not by Ms. Cooper. Six months later, it defaulted, she says. “When they went to foreclose on the house, they found it was an empty lot,” she recalls. “I remember clear as day this manager comes over to me and asks, ‘Do you remember this loan?’ I knew just what she was talking about.”
Rejecting loan after loan, however, gave her battle fatigue. “The more you fight, the more you get in trouble,” she says. She was written up three or four times at WaMu.
After WaMu’s mortgage lending unit laid her off, she applied for work in its retail banking division. She was turned down, she suspects, because of the critical letters in her personnel file.
Ms. Cooper’s biggest regret, she says, is that she did not reject more loans. “I swear 60 percent of the loans I approved I was made to,” she says. “If I could get everyone’s name, I would write them apology letters.”
CHAD JOHNSON, a partner at Bernstein, Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, is lead counsel for shareholders in the suit. He said: “Killinger pocketed tens of millions of dollars from WaMu, while investors were left with worthless stock.” With WaMu gone, he added, “it is all the more important that Killinger and his co-defendants are held accountable.”
The lawyer representing WaMu and Mr. Killinger did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Ms. Cooper hopes to return to the mortgage business soon. “I loved underwriting because it’s about being able to put a person in their dream home,” she says. “But messing these borrowers around was wrong.” |
An Eastern Market slaughterhouse that has been illegally dumping rotting lamb carcasses inside a dumpster along Gratiot was shut down twice last year for animal cruelty and threatened with permanent closure in September.
A review of USDA inspection reports shows that Berry and Sons Islamic Slaughter House has a long history of problems that range from the “inhumane treatment of animals” to questionable purchasing decisions.
USDA inspectors temporarily halted operations at the Halal slaughterhouse in June and September following separate “egregious violations,” inspection reports show.
In June, an inspector spotted an employee grabbing a small lamb by the neck and tossing it “airborne until it landed on its side in the truck bed, staggered, and then stood.”
Just one week after the cruelty case was closed in September, an inspector observed the mishandling of two disabled sheep, at least one of which had been trampled by some of the other animals. According to the inspector, one of the sheep was so badly injured that employees thought it was dead. But after realizing the sheep was still breathing, employees tried to carry the animal “holding onto it only by the wool.”
“It has been determined that you have not designed, developed, and implemented a robust systematic approach for the humane handling of animals at your establishment and do not have a recent history of regulatory compliance,” the USDA wrote in a sharply worded letter. “Further, FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) has provided you with numerous opportunities to implement effective corrective and preventive actions to ensure compliance with Agency statutory and regulatory requirements, but these measures have proved inadequate. This indicates that your establishment may be unwilling or unable to execute the humane handling and slaughter of livestock procedures in a manner that ensures all animals received for slaughter at your establishment are handled humanely.”
The USDA said it was considering whether to permanently suspend operations at the slaughterhouse, which does big business and has been operating at the Eastern Market since 1973. USDA records indicate that Berry and Sons Islamic Slaughter House spends up to $2 million on nearly 20,000 animals to butcher a year.
Berry and Sons also has four butcher shops in metro Detroit. The slaughterhouse is at 2496 Orleans St. at the Eastern Market.
On Sunday, we published photos of rotting lamb carcasses in a dumpster plainly visible by motorists on Gratiot. The stench was so strong that it could be smelled blocks away.
The story has prompted a state investigation. The Bodies of Dead Animals Act of 1982 requires carcasses to be burned, buried or passed off to a licensed processor within 24 hours of being slaughtered. |
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Researchers investigated how quickly 32 different kinds of animals urinate—and big or small, it’s remarkably the same.
Even though an elephant’s bladder is 3,600 times larger than a cat’s—just under five gallons vs. about one teaspoon—both animals relieve themselves in about 20 seconds.
In fact, all animals that weigh more than 6.6 pounds urinate in that same time span.
“It’s possible because larger animals have longer urethras,” says study leader David Hu, an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).
[related]
“The weight of the fluid in the urethra is pushing the fluid out. And because the urethra is long, flow rate is increased.”
For example, an elephant’s urethra is just over a yard long. The pressure of fluid in it is the same at the bottom of a swimming pool three feet deep. An elephant urinates about 13 feet per second, or the same volume per second as five showerheads.
“If its urethra were shorter, the elephant would urinate for a longer time and be more susceptible to predators,” Hu explains.
The findings conflict with studies that indicate urinary flow is controlled by bladder pressure generated by muscular contraction. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Hu and graduate student Patricia Yang noticed that gravity allows larger animals to empty their bladders in jets or sheets of urine. Gravity’s effect on small animals is minimal.
“They urinate in small drops because of high viscous and capillary forces. It’s like peeing in space,” says Yang, a PhD student in the George Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “Mice and rats go in less than two seconds. Bats are done in a fraction of a second.”
Using gravity
The research team went to a zoo to watch 16 animals relieve themselves, then watched 28 YouTube videos. They saw cows, horses, dogs, and more.
The more they watched, the more they realized their findings could help engineers.
“It turns out that you don’t need external pressure to get rid of fluids quickly,” says Hu. “Nature has designed a way to use gravity instead of wasting the animal’s energy.”
Hu envisions systems for water tanks, backpacks, and fire hoses that can be built for more efficiency. As an example, he and his students have created a demonstration that empties a teacup, quart, and gallon of water in the same duration using varying lengths of connected tubes.
In a second experiment, the team fills three cups with the same amount of water, then watches them empty at differing rates. The longer the tube, the faster it empties.
“Nature has shown us that no matter how big the fire truck, water can still come out in the same time as a tiny truck,” Hu adds.
Source: Georgia Tech |
What the benchmark can't help you with:
Showing a great detail on how each card has improved.
Comparing between FGLRX (proprietary) and Radeon (FOSS).
Performance in extremely high intensive tasks beyond gaming.
What this benchmark can help you with:
Showing in good detail how performance has been increased in mesa as a whole.
What driver you should choose on your next update.
The general trend in progress, and how the acceleration of development has increased.
Hey people, got a really nice graph to show off today. On a follow up from my last article , loads more work has been done to Mesa and the Radeon driver, and the speed improvement from 10.0.3 to 10.2 is phenomenal.Before we begin here are the benchmark conditions:So with that out of the way, lets examine the results.These results are taken from the same demo files and settings with only the kernel version and mesa version being changed. You can also see the addition of Unigine Valley which did not actually run on the 10.0 drivers which is a big step up in itself. The other games ran from 46% increases all the way to 462% which I am pretty sure must be a bug in Portal or something because I did not believe my eyes even after running repeated tests :) .The majority of the source games ran with 2xAA so there is an increase to be seen there when it used to limit the games quite a bit but now it seems its no longer an issue as although not benchmarked here, I can comfortably run each game at a minimum of 40fps now. From these results, its no wonder that AMD wants to drop its catalyst driver for FOSS principles when you see results like this that catalyst just isn't getting on it's own.As with all Linux projects, 10.3 is already in full swing and will be benchmarked as soon as the arch repository's update with it. For those of you that want the action now need to make sure your kernel is as up to date as your distro can be while still being stable and some distributions have third party providers to newer mesa versions. Arch and its derivatives can download the latest mesa from its repositories along with the latest 3.15 kernel.In my own opinion we are accelerating at such a speed with these drivers, especially with the news that valve are now supporting its development If you would like to see the results, demo files for your own benchmarks, or the system specifications then visit this Google Docs page. |
Officials at Nato HQ have opened dialogue with Iran for the first time in years
An Iranian diplomat has held informal talks with Nato officials for the first time in 30 years.
Senior Nato negotiator Martin Erdmann said he had met Iran's ambassador to the European Union, Ali-Asghar Khaji, more than two weeks ago.
"This is another good step in engaging Iran in the international community," said Mr Erdmann.
A Nato spokesman, James Appathurai, said the talks with Mr Khaji had concentrated on Afghanistan.
Iranian diplomats have confirmed their attendance at a US-backed talks on Afghanistan taking place at The Hague next week.
'New step'
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, as well as delegates from more than 80 countries, are due to attend the conference.
"The fact that Iran has decided to go," said Mr Appathurai, "is good news and constitutes a new step."
In Washington, a spokesman at the State Department, Gordon Duguid, also welcomed the Iranian decision to go to The Hague talks.
"The Iranians will be around the table," said Mr Duguid. "We will hear their points of view and they will hear our points of view about Afghanistan."
Some news reports have suggested that Nato countries with forces in Afghanistan might have an interest in using Iran as a supply route.
Correspondents also point out that the opening of a dialogue between Nato and Iran comes as President Barack Obama has set new priorities for the United States in Afghanistan and weeks after he signalled a willingness to revitalise American relations with Tehran. |
Samsung Galaxy Mega 7-inch phone detailed for summer
If you thought the 6.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Mega was big, just wait until you get your hands on the Samsung Galaxy Mega 7.0. This device has just appeared in China as the newest in massive-sized smartphone from Samsung, moving through authentication in MIIT. This sort of authentication is generally followed by release several weeks later.
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 7.0 – as it’s being assumed to be called – will be a mid-range device, believe it or not. Like the Galaxy Megas that’ve come before, Samsung will release this device with specifications that do not overshadow their hero phones: Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy Note 3 and 4.
NOTE: Above you’re seeing the Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Galaxy S4 for AT&T. Below are images from MIIT in China.
The Galaxy Note 4 will come later this year, likely not too far away from the release of this beast. The Galaxy Mega we see here works with a 1.2GHz quad-core processor – Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 or MediaTek, quite likely – with 1.5GB of RAM.
With support for microSD card expansion, this Samsung device comes with just 8GB of internal storage right out for he box. It’ll be released with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean in China, and will have an 8-megapixel camera on its back, 2-megapixel camera on its front.
It is not yet known whether this device will be released in the United States. In China it will head to networks with support for 4G along TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE.
VIA: VR-Zone |
There is a proper international uproar over U.K. doctors winning the right in court to unilaterally remove the infant Charlie Gard from life support.
Some have commented on the case as if that is a product of the UK’s socialized medical system. It’s not. It is a product of utilitarian bioethics advocacy for the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment — called “futile care” — based on the doctor’s or a hospital bioethics committee’s values on the moral worth of the ill patient’s life and/or the high cost of care.
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Similar authoritarian care withdrawals as has been imposed on Charlie Gard have happened here too — and to very ill patients of all ages. I get into a few of these cases involving infants today over at First Things.
There was the Baby Ryan case in Seattle, in which a hospital actually reported a family for child abuse because they obtained an injunction against removing kidney dialysis. In the end, the doctors were wrong that death was imminent. The boy lived four years as a happy, if sickly child, who loved to give high-fives.
The parents of Baby Terry in Michigan were stripped of their parental rights for refusing to consent to withdrawing life support.
In Canada, doctors treating Baby Joseph insisted on the right to remove life support from a terminally ill baby and refused a tracheotomy that would have permitted the baby to go home to die with his family. Priests for Life eventually paid for the baby to be flown to the USA for the procedure, which was successful. Joseph died several months later in his parents arms.
The Charlie Gard case is unique in only one respect: It is the only futile care case I know of in which the hospital and the law is preventing discharge to another facility or allowing the patient to go home to die. From, “Whose Baby is Charlie Gard, Anyway?”
The refusal to allow Charlie’s parents to remove their baby boy from the hospital is an act of bioethical aggression that will extend futile-care controversies, creating a duty to die at the time and place of doctors’ choosing. And that raises a crucial liberty question: Whose baby is Charlie Gard? His parents’? Or are sick babies — and others facing futile-care impositions — ultimately owned by the hospital and the state?
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Again. This isn’t about socialism — although that issue is relevant. More, it is about cost containment — including in free-market systems — and the attempt by the bioethics movement and medical intelligentsia to replace the equality/sanctity of life ethic with a more utilitarian “quality of life” view.
For more on the danger posed by bioethics generally, hit this link. |
BREAKING NEWS: a study by the institute for distributed investigation of technologies (IDIOT) has found that all NoSQL technologies are essentially just a massive text file combined with the UNIX tool ‘grep’
NoSQL has risen in popularity in recent years as a hipster alternative to relational databases. Technology companies tend to move their entire data management system to a NoSQL backend, before moving it back to a relational database management system less than 12 months later.
“This is a huge shock!” said Dr Rick Slowman of the University of Birmingham. “We’ve all written shitty scripts that grep huge files to link them together, but noone thought an entire tech sector would be based on this!” he continued.
In a related report, IDIOT have confirmed that XML is totally shit.
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Former San Francisco 49ers, and current Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh said Friday that the only thing mutual about his departure from San Francisco was the fact that he didn't fight the decision. Harbaugh, on a podcast with Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, talked about his exit from the NFL, which the 49ers claimed was a mutual parting of ways following the conclusion of the team's 8-8 season.
"I didn't leave the 49ers. The 49ers hierarchy left me," Harbaugh said during the 30-minute interview. He said that he didn't want to put the 49ers in a bad spot, which is why the parting of ways was technically mutual. He also went on to confirm that he was told that he would be let go at the end of the season following a loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 15.
That loss eliminated the 49ers from the playoffs. Harbaugh went on to coach two more games while being the boss of the guy who would eventually take over, current head coach and then-defensive line coach Jim Tomsula. During the interview, Harbaugh said there were some awkward moments around Jim Tomsula near the end of his tenure with the team.
The other big shocker of the interview is that Harbaugh said that he didn't consider coaching for any other NFL teams, despite reports of multiple organizations being after his services following his ousting. "That was it, I was going to Michigan," he said.
The interview is a fascinating listen for anybody, and probably a frustrating one for 49ers fans. 49ers owner Jed York and general manager Trent Baalke have insisted that this was a mutual parting, almost hammering home the idea that nothing could pry Harbaugh away from returning to Michigan to coach there.
It also begs the question of whether the 49ers really conducted much of a head coaching search, if things between Harbaugh and Tomsula were awkward during the final weeks of the season. If Tomsula knew at that point that he was going to get the job, then what of the various interviews the 49ers conducted with top candidates after the season? |
The chief financial officer with Anglo Irish Bank in 2008 expressed surprise at the amount of interbank loans to Irish Life & Permanent, the trial of four senior bankers has heard.
The interbank loans allegedly involved money being transferred by Anglo to ILP and then being put back on deposit with Anglo via ILP's life assurance division.
Matt Moran, Anglo's chief financial officer at the time, told Paul O'Higgins SC, prosecuting, that on 30 September, he became aware that the interbank loans amounted to over €7bn.
He said he remembered Mr Bowe telling him at the time and that the amount was very significant. He said he expressed his surprise at the amount.
Mr Bowe told him that the government bank guarantee, introduced overnight on 29 September, had "given ILP comfort", the witness testified.
He said he did not become aware that the transactions were "cash for cash" until the end of January 2009.
He said the previous day there was a request from Anglo for emergency overnight funding. He said in the weeks before this there had been a significant outflow of cash from the bank.
Anglo's former head of finance Willie McAteer, 65, and former CEO of Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) Denis Casey, 56, and two others are accused of conspiring to mislead investors by using interbank loans to manipulate Anglo Irish Bank's balance sheets.
The transfer would allegedly appear as corporate deposits and not an interbank loan so the bank's corporate funding figure would appear bigger for the bank's year-end figures on 30 September, 2008.
ILP's former director of finance Peter Fitzpatrick, 63, of Convent Lane, Portmarnock, Dublin; John Bowe, 52, from Glasnevin, Dublin, who had been Anglo's head of capital markets; Mr McAteer of Greenrath, Tipperary Town, Co Tipperary; and Mr Casey from Raheny, Dublin have all pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to conspiring together and with others to mislead investors through financial transactions between 1 March and 30 September, 2008.
The trial continues before Judge Martin Nolan and a jury. |
The Supreme Court will soon hear Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, a case that could allow secular, for-profit corporations an unprecedented religious exemption from the Affordable Care Act's "contraception mandate," which requires all health insurance to cover preventive services like birth control without co-pays. A wide spectrum of scholars and experts have filed amicus briefs explaining that a ruling in favor of the corporate plaintiffs would not only rewrite First Amendment law, but also undermine decades of anti-discrimination and reproductive rights precedent.
This Attempt To Avoid Generally Applicable Law Based On A Religious Exemption Challenges Long-Established Precedent
Constitutional Accountability Center: Since The Ratification Of The First Amendment, "This Court Has Never Held That Secular, For-Profit Corporations May Assert Rights Under The Free Exercise Clause." The amicus brief of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a leading public interest think tank and law firm, pointed out that the First Amendment and the Free Exercise Clause have never been held to apply to non-religious and for-profit corporations like the craft store chain plaintiffs in the Hobby Lobby case, because the "protection of religious liberty has always been seen as a personal right, inextricably linked to the human capacity to express devotion":
The corporate plaintiffs' argument that they enjoy free exercise rights under the First Amendment and RFRA is in conflict with the text, history, and purpose of the First Amendment's free exercise guarantee. Amicus submits this brief to demonstrate that throughout our nation's history, corporations have been treated differently than individuals when it comes to fundamental, personal rights of conscience and human dignity. The First Amendment's free exercise guarantee has always been viewed as a purely personal liberty, guaranteeing the right of individuals to worship and exercise religion consistent with the dictates of their conscience. It has never been considered a right possessed by secular, for-profit corporations. Indeed, in the more than 200 years since the First Amendment's ratification, this Court has never held that secular, for-profit corporations may assert rights under the Free Exercise Clause. [...] History shows that the First Amendment's explicit protection for "the free exercise" of religion, was intended to protect a basic right of human dignity and conscience, one of the "characteristic rights of freemen," as George Washington put it. From the Founding until today, the Constitution's protection of religious liberty has been seen as a personal right, inextricably linked to the human capacity to express devotion to a god and act on the basis of reason and conscience. Business corporations, quite properly, have never shared in this fundamental aspect of our constitutional tradition for the obvious reason that a business corporation lacks the basic human capacities -- reason, dignity, and conscience -- at the core of religious belief and thus the free exercise right. To be sure, the owners of the corporate employers have their own personal free exercise rights, but those rights are not implicated by the contraception coverage requirement because federal law does not require the individuals who own a company to personally provide health care coverage or to satisfy any other legal obligation of the corporation. The law places requirements only on the corporate entities. [Brief of Constitutional Accountability Center in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
Corporate Law Professors: Exemption Requested By Hobby Lobby "Is Fundamentally At Odds With The Entire Concept Of Incorporation." A group of 44 corporate and criminal law professors filed an amicus brief in this case arguing that the point of incorporation is to create a legal entity separate from the individuals who own the company, but by trying to create a new religious exception, Hobby Lobby is trying to "have it both ways":
One of the most compelling reasons for a small business to incorporate is so that its shareholders can acquire the protection of the corporate veil. By incorporating a business, the founders and investors do not put their personal assets at risk. Absent significant misconduct and fraud, a shareholder in a corporation cannot lose any more than her original investment. If the corporation cannot pay its bills, the creditors -- not the shareholders -- bear the loss[.] [...] In the present cases, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga argue that they should be exempt from federal law because of the religious values of their controlling shareholders, while seeking to maintain the benefits of corporate separateness for all other purposes. These corporations have benefitted from their separateness in countless ways, and their shareholders have been insulated from actual and potential corporate liabilities since inception. Yet now they ask this Court to disregard that separateness in connection with a government regulation applicable solely to the corporate entity. Hobby Lobby and Contestega want to argue, in effect, that the corporate veil is only a one-way street: its shareholders can get protection from tort or contract liability by standing behind the veil, but the coirporation can ask a court to disregard the corporate veil on this occasion. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga cannot have it both ways. [Amicus Curiae Brief of Corporate and Criminal Law Professors in Support of Petitioners, 1/28/14]
Providing A Religious Exemption For The Corporate Plaintiffs Ignores The Interests Of Women, Children, And Families
Guttmacher Institute: The ACA's Guarantee Of Contraception Coverage Furthers "Women's Educational And Career Goals And Contributes To The Economic Stability Of Women And Their Families." As explained by the Guttmacher Institute, a leading women's health organization, low-cost or no-cost access to effective contraception "reduc[es] the need for and incidence of abortion" and improves "the economic stability of women and their families," a compelling interest of "enormous" societal benefit:
[T]he guarantee of coverage serves compelling societal and individual interests. Those who challenge these requirements suggest that because most women are already using contraception, the guarantee cannot be all that important. That assertion is fundamentally wrong. It fails to recognize the vastly different forms of contraception, the substantial degree to which cost determines which contraceptive methods are actually used, the health and social factors that affect a woman's method choice, and the resulting consequences for women's health, family well-being, and risk of unintended pregnancy and abortion. [...] Cost is a major factor in determining which contraceptives women choose. Almost one-third of American women report that they would change their contraceptive method if cost were not an issue. Initiating use of an implant or IUD can cost a month's salary for a woman working full time at minimum wage. [...] [A]ccess to the range of contraceptive methods without cost sharing can dramatically reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy, with profound consequences for women and society. Effective family planning facilitates women's educational and career goals and contributes to the economic stability of women and their families. ... Finally, reducing the rate of unintended pregnancy is by far the most widely accepted and effective means of reducing the need for and incidence of abortion. [Brief of the Guttmacher Institute and Professor Sara Rosenbaum in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
National Women's Law Center: Following The Institute Of Medicine's Recommendation To Cover Contraception Without Cost-Sharing "Promot[es] Gender Equality." As argued in the amicus brief filed by the National Women's Law Center, national advocates for improved educational and economic opportunities for women, the contraception mandate is a major step in bringing an end to gender discrimination:
[B]y addressing gender gaps in health insurance and remedying the sex disparities inherent in failing to provide health insurance coverage for contraception and related services, the contraception regulations advance the compelling governmental interest in ending gender discrimination and promoting gender equality. Indeed, in passing the ACA, Congress recognized that excluding coverage of women's preventive health services, including contraception, constituted discrimination against women. Providing contraceptive coverage without cost-sharing corrects gender gaps in the provision of health care by ensuring that women, like men, can meet their basic preventive health care needs. Before the ACA went into effect, women disproportionately bore the costs of reproductive health care, and these high costs negatively affected women's health and well-being, as women often lacked access to or forewent necessary health care to keep costs down. The contraception regulations address this disparity and advance equal opportunity in other aspects of women's lives, thus improving women's social and economic outcomes more generally. [...] Employers that exclude women's preventive health services from their health insurance plans while covering men's preventive services discriminate against women. Such exclusion means that women are denied the comprehensive preventive health coverage provided to men. Moreover, when effective contraception is not used, and unintended pregnancy results, it is women who incur the attendant physical burdens and medical risks of pregnancy, women who disproportionately bear the health care costs of pregnancy and childbirth, and women who often face barriers to employment and educational opportunities as a result of pregnancy. [Brief for the National Women's Law Center in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
American College Of Obstetricians And Gynecologists: "Employers Should Not Be Allowed to Interfere In The Provider-Patient Relationship" By Refusing To Provide Contraceptive Coverage. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists filed a brief that notes that allowing Hobby Lobby to exempt itself from the contraception mandate would "undermine the very nature of the patient-provider relationship" and could prevent patients from accessing vaccines, or other forms of medical treatment the employer finds morally objectionable:
Employers' refusal to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives would increase the cost of health care to women. Some women, particularly lower income women, would be unable to access the most medically appropriate method because of the additional expense. As a result, a private, medical decision that should be made by a woman in consultation with her health care provider would be unduly influenced by the employer. Employers should not be allowed to interfere in the provider-patient relationship in this way. Contraceptive access is critical to the health of women and women should not be denied coverage to which they are otherwise entitled by law based on the religious beliefs of their employer-corporation's owners. Moreover, allowing an employer a religious exemption to the ACA's mandated coverage requirements would have consequences that extend far beyond contraception. Employers who object to any medical treatment, device, or procedure on personal grounds could similarly exclude such services from the coverage they provide -- with potentially disastrous results. Employers could, for example, seek to exclude vaccinations that they deem offensive to their religious beliefs, forcing individuals to pay for objected-to vaccinations out-of-pocket or worse, forgo the medically-recommended vaccinations entirely. The public health implications of allowing a for-profit corporation to assert a religious exemption to the ACA's mandated coverages are self-evident. In short, health care decisions should be made by patients in consultation with their health care providers based on the best interests of the patient. ... To allow the personal view of a remote party -- the employer of a patient (or the patient's spouse or guardian) -- to play a role in a patient's medical treatment would undermine the very nature of the patient-provider relationship. [Brief of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
This Unprecedented Religious Exemption Would Unneccesarily Place An Unconstitutional Burden On Employees
Religious Scholars: Exempting Hobby Lobby "Would Shift The Cost Of Accommodating Hobby Lobby's Religious Exercise To Employees Who Do Not Share Its Beliefs." In the amicus brief from law professors with expertise in church-state legal issues, the professors argue that to let these corporations ignore the contraception mandate would unconstitutionally burden employees who do not share their employers' religious beliefs:
The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from shifting the costs of accommodating a religion from those who practice it to those who do not. As this Court has held, "The First Amendment ... gives no one the right to insist that in pursuit of their own interest others must conform their conduct to his own religious necessities." The Hobby Lobby respondents and the Conestoga Wood petitioners (collectively "Hobby Lobby") ask this Court to construe the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA") to allow them a religious exemption from covering certain forms of contraception under the contraception mandate (the "Mandate") of the Affordable Care Act ("ACA"). The Mandate would otherwise require Hobby Lobby to cover contraception at no additional cost to its employees. Granting the exemption would shift the cost of accommodating Hobby Lobby's religious exercise to employees who do not share its beliefs. Such cost-shifting violates the Establishment Clause. [...] [T]he Establishment Clause prohibits RFRA's application where -- as here -- a particular exemption would shift the costs of the accommodated religious practice to identifiable and discrete third parties in the for-profit workplace. [Brief for Amici Curiae Church-State Scholars in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
American Religious Organizations: For A Wide Range Of American Religions, Including Christian Denominations, "Application Of The Contraception Regulations ... Would Not Substantially Burden Religious Exercise." According to religious organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and Catholics for Choice, the requested religious exemption for these corporate employers would impermissibly disrespect "a pluralistic society with an 'increasingly diverse religious landscape'":
Plaintiffs' arguments would undermine -- not promote -- religious liberty, by allowing employers to impose their owners' religious beliefs on employees, many of whom will hold different moral and religious views on the use of contraception. This result would be especially unwelcome as the United States and its workforce become more religiously diverse. Nor is there any good reason to allow this result: application of the contraception regulations to Plaintiffs would not substantially burden religious exercise. First, Plaintiffs are under no obligation to provide their employees with health insurance. If they object to certain types of coverage that must be included in employee health policies, they may stop offering insurance and pay a modest tax to the government instead; this tax is likely to be much cheaper than the cost of buying health insurance. Plaintiffs could pass along the savings to their employees in the form of higher salary, and Plaintiffs' employees would be eligible to obtain health insurance -- including coverage for contraception -- on the public exchanges, often with government subsidies. What Plaintiffs may not do is hold their employees hostage: refusing to include coverage for contraception, but also blocking their employees from obtaining comprehensive, subsidized insurance elsewhere. Second, even if Plaintiffs wish to continue offering insurance to their employees as part of their compensation, the contraception regulations do not substantially burden religious exercise. For several reasons, any connection between Plaintiffs and contraception is incidental and attenuated - and thus fails to produce a burden that is "substantial" as a matter of law. [Brief of Religious Organizations Supporting the Government, 1/28/14]
This Case Has Dangerous Implications For Persons Of Color And LGBT People Who Could Face Increased Discrimination If Secular Corporations Are Considered Religious
Lambda Legal: Hobby Lobby's Requested Exemption Would Set The Stage For "Denials of Equal Compensation, Health Care Access, And Other Equitable Treatment For LGBT People." As Lambda Legal pointed out in its amicus brief, allowing religious employers to pick and choose which laws they want to follow based on their religious faith could "worsen circumstances" for LGBT employees and those living with HIV -- groups that already face significant discrimination:
The exemption the Companies seek here would mark a sea change -- not only in allowing business owners' religious views about family planning to burden decisions employees are entitled to make for themselves, but also in opening the door to similar denials of equal compensation, health care access, and other equitable treatment for LGBT people, persons with HIV, and anyone else whose family life or health need diverges from their employers' religious convictions. As this Court has recognized, our federal laws and traditions have "afford[ed] constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education." The Court's explanation of the "respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices," spotlights that the "person" whose autonomy is to be protected is the person herself -- not the owner of the for-profit company that employs her. [...] The Companies' proposed elevation of religious rights to the detriment of others' needs would, in addition to its adverse effects for women's health access and equality, worsen circumstances for LGBT people and people living with HIV that already are challenging. Responding to the request of the Department of Health & Human Services, Amicus Lambda Legal provided examples based on its litigation and the results of the first national survey to examine barriers to care confronting LGBT people and those with HIV. The survey results were shocking. Of the nearly 5,000 respondents, more than half reported that they had experienced at least one of the following types of discrimination at the hands of health care providers: Refusals to touch them or use of excessive precautions;
Harsh or abusive language;
Physical roughness or abuse;
Blame for their health status. [Brief of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
American Civil Liberties Union: Secular, For-Profit Employers Are "No More Entitled To An Exemption From Anti-Discrimination Laws Governing Commercial Activity." In its brief to the Court, the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argue that the Court has already rejected religious arguments similar to Hobby Lobby's in the context of race, because there is a "vital state interest in ending discrimination":
Religion is a powerful force that shapes individual lives and influences community values. Like other belief systems, it has been used at different times and in different places to support change and to oppose it, to promote equality and to justify inequality. Our constitutional structure recognizes the importance of religion by protecting its free exercise, a commitment to religious tolerance and pluralism that was reinforced by Congress when it enacted RFRA. Public debate can be and often is enhanced by those whose participation in that debate is informed by their faith. But once that debate is resolved through the democratic process, those who disagree with that resolution on religious grounds are no more entitled to an exemption from anti-discrimination laws governing commercial activity of the sort involved here than those who dissent on other ideological grounds. That is because the elimination of discrimination -- in the marketplace and outside the realm of constitutionally protected associations, religious or otherwise -- has long been recognized as a state interest of the highest order. [...] Slavery was once defended on religious grounds. So were Jim Crow laws. Even the courts embraced religion to justify continued segregation. ... Congress and the courts faced calls for exemptions to enable those objecting for reasons of faith to avoid compliance with evolving standards in employment, education, marriage recognition, and public accommodation. The courts rejected these claims, recognizing the vital state interest in ending discrimination in these public arenas and embracing a vision of equality that did not sanction piecemeal exemptions. The story of women's emerging equality follows a similar pattern. ... Religious beliefs were invoked to justify restrictions on women's roles, including in suffrage, employment, and access to birth control, and later inspired legislation purportedly to "protect" women, including their reproductive capacities. ... Again, as with race, Congress and the courts held firm to the vision embodied in newly passed anti-discrimination measures. [Brief of the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Support of the Government, 1/28/14]
See more on the corporate religion cases and right-wing media here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. |
Harvard researcher Herbert Benson, who has been studying a meditation technique known as “g Tum-mo” for 20 years, says that “Buddhists feel the reality we live in is not the ultimate one. There’s another reality we can tap into that’s unaffected by our emotions, by our everyday world. Buddhists believe this state of mind can be achieved by doing good for others and by meditation.” Benson is an associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He firmly believes that studying advanced forms of meditation “can uncover capacities that will help us to better treat stress-related illnesses.” Experiments with Buddhist monks practicing g Tum-mo produced dramatic results. Just using the power of their minds, the monks produced enough body heat to dry wet sheets placed on them as they relaxed in chilly rooms. |
As the old saying goes, there are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. In the Glamour piece about Congresswoman Katherine Clark, the lie appears already in the headline: "Women Are 27 Times More Likely to Be Harassed Online—and Congresswoman Katherine Clark Is Fighting Back."
Where does that "27 times more likely" number come from?
And according to a 2015 report from the United Nations Broadband Commission, women are 27 times more likely than men to face harassment online.
That report, still available here, was retracted shortly after, because it was - as described by NY Mag - "mess of countless bulleted and numbered lists that include items seemingly plucked at random, grammatical errors, and bureaucrat-ese." It's not a proper report at all, and it seems to have been written by someone who is still a student at an American College.
Some sentences even lack internal consistency: “In Europe,” one bullet point notes, “sport has been used as a vehicle to engage youth and change entrenched attitudes on gender equality in a number of countries including Tajikistan, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.” Two of those three countries are in Asia — Georgia’s in between.
Among the many wrongs of that report are the 30% of dead source links in it, several linking directly to sources residing on the researchers own C-drive.
"This is an uninformed, misguided and unfortunate report. If the overall issue was not so serious, it would be laughable that the U.N. is citing this work. It is willful ignorance to utilize such incredibly outlandish and outdated data," said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of ESA in this press release.
"ESA strongly supports empowering women and minorities and creating an inclusive digital environment that welcomes all perspectives. However, the U.N. does this important issue a great disservice and undercuts its credibility by spreading ridiculous stereotypes and false opinions."
The report was in fact so bad, that the UN withdrew the report, and even apologised for the poorly sourced material. Meanwhile The Pew research center reports on online harassment shows that men and women experience different kinds of online harassment, with men somewhat more likely than women to experience online harrasment.
But when you're selling a Congresswoman, spin not accuracy, is key. Packaging her politics as a crusade against an issue that doesn't actually exist, Katherine Clark ensures that magazines like Glamour will interview her. All she has to do is tailgate on Trumps most recently discussed tweet. Trump's controversial Twitter account has blocked countless people, which lawyers representing these people argue violated these users constitutional rights. That sounds very similar to the argument we have in Sweden, where the Sweden account is run by a government entity, and blocking citizens from interacting with it, and labelling the people blocked "Nazis" violates our grundlag. Congresswoman Katherine Clark believes the Mika Brzezinski -tweets was a disgraceful instance of cyberbullying coming straight out of the White House.
"When the President uses his Twitter account to make comments like he did—and this is certainly not the first time that he has done this—he not only reinforces a message of misogyny, but it sends the far more dangerous message that this is somehow normal and acceptable behavior because it's coming from the Oval Office," Clark told Glamour. "He made a vow that he would be the President for all Americans. When he continues to spread this kind of hateful language about women, it is offensive and degrading. We cannot let this be seen as normal behavior for anybody, never mind the leader of the free world."
Clark believes that Trump's jab at host Mika Brzezinski focused on her physical appearance. One could argue that it focuses on her vanity because he pointed out she had a "bleeding" facelift. Even Trump's choice of blood descriptor caused countless articles, including this one at the Atlantic, which discusses the words symbolism at length. Say what you want about Trump as President of the United states, he's giving journalists countless things to write articles about using his Twitter as a distraction from what's actually happening in the world, which used to be reported on. Those were the days.... Back then a politician might focus on real issues, rather than tweets, but today she wouldn't be interviewed by Glamour magazine if she did. In that sense, Clark is just like those Twitter acconts that argue with @TheRealDonaldTrump's every tweet, she's ansuring that she will be seen by latching on to what he's saying.
I wonder at what point will the world realize that he's setting the agenda of what we talk about, every day, with his tweets? |
Often preparing articles on a new service or company working online, the Cointelegraph provides links on the corresponding smartphone applications. The reason behind this is very plain – many businesses and everyday activities are done not just online in front of desktop computers, but mostly in motion and on the run. Let us observe the most interesting and popular apps forming a must have of every Bitcoin and Android user.
EGGIFY – Bitcoin Classified
Times installed: up to 500
Rating: 4,9 (based on 18 votes)
The operating principle is very simple – You have Bitcoin and would like to spend it, or have a wallet that could be filled by some extra coins earned. The app lists cryptocurrency-friendly merchants and places in three cities - San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. All data provided by the software is classified and summed up in lists. The first one seen after loading is “Category list” – to choose places accepting Bitcoin to spend or earn some. Further lists include the nomenclature of available goods and products. Comfortable navigation and interface are the reason of success of the application. |
A travel photo was shared, and something happened:
The replies on this Tweet are peak East Coast. https://t.co/ldTgHNz1L3 — Robert Tracinski (@Tracinski) October 20, 2017
You can only imagine the kind of response this was going to get:
Just landed in Sioux Falls. THEY ARE SELLING GUNS IN THE AIRPORT. pic.twitter.com/l5REcfs2iy — Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) October 20, 2017
Naturally, many shared in the horror:
This is wrong on so many levels https://t.co/h0biNq15K9 — Gregg 3G (@oftenimitated21) October 20, 2017
I can’t bring a full size bottle of shampoo on the plane, but they can sell guns AT the airport? ? https://t.co/utfYhOKTdO — Lesley Beckworth (@lesbeckworth) October 20, 2017
South Dakota, a place I will never set foot. https://t.co/4HEtl6vku2 — Reclaiming My Time (@JesseRikart) October 20, 2017
1) THEY ARE SELLING GUNS IN THE AIRPORT
2) RIGHT NEXT TO A BOOTH FOR THE POLICE DEPARTMENT#UnitedStatesofHeadAss https://t.co/PTL8RHaqX7 — Racial Dolezal (@SirCoach) October 20, 2017
This is why the world is laughing at us…and a bit scared. https://t.co/gGgHO50je1 — Dmesh (@DmeshOnPS3) October 20, 2017
Nothing like providing arms for terrorist attacks on sight…. https://t.co/SqDRyHdCJJ — GirlPowerDon'tQuit (@growing0up0girl) October 20, 2017
Who in the world thinks this is normal? https://t.co/MNnTKLdq4L — Judith Rinker Öhman (@JudithROhman) October 20, 2017
But not everybody was triggered, and for good reason:
Pheasant season starts tomorrow, this is right before baggage claim not departure, the police are literally sitting next to this guy. https://t.co/AlOB2rrNnC — James ☠️ (@jscar1969) October 20, 2017
Tomorrow is the pheasant opener. Out of state hunters flying in this weekend is a giant chunk of the SD total economy. — NightOfTheLivingDave (@wx_dave) October 20, 2017
Not to interrupt the hyperventilating, but…
It’ll be ok. Deep breath. Guns are legal to sell. https://t.co/E0GUPJo2Aa — Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) October 20, 2017
Anybody got a paper bag they can breathe into?
Aaaaand Chelsea Handler crosses another destination off her list. https://t.co/MYAco9MnSq — David Edward (@_David_Edward) October 20, 2017
Oh look. Another greenhorn has wandered outside the concrete bubble again. https://t.co/cnI1yD91Uk — D.W.Robinson (@_DWRobinson) October 20, 2017
Right next to the "Sioux Falls Police Department" table. Oooh, really scary. Grow some balls, son. https://t.co/ufZY1e322y — MonBossyMothma-WR (@nowhere_nh) October 20, 2017
The most danger those guns pose to you is if someone grabs one off a rack & beats you with it. The same is true of a luggage cart. Grow up https://t.co/ufZY1e322y — MonBossyMothma-WR (@nowhere_nh) October 20, 2017
BRB going to Sioux Falls https://t.co/4K6uR1OZrN — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) October 20, 2017
Wtf I love whatever State Sioux Falls is in now — Tim Tyndall (@tyndall_tim) October 20, 2017
See if they sell blankies. https://t.co/kpAzfj04Qz — Will (@Oil_Guns_Merica) October 20, 2017
Maybe his outrage is real and he's just an idiot, but I doubt it. 1. Guns are useless without ammo. 2. 0% chance he could walk away with one https://t.co/5VBe0NBE9Z — Braden (@3rdGenAggie) October 20, 2017
Imagine the horror if the gun control crowd visited other areas of the country during hunting season! |
There was a time when Branndon Stewart knew Peyton Manning only as some quarterback from Louisiana. And yes, he realizes how that now sounds.
“I know it seems crazy," Stewart says, "but I wasn’t a football news junkie. I guess that’s the best way to put it.”
Stewart was, like Manning, a mega-recruit of a high school quarterback who, like Manning, committed to Tennessee in 1994.
Their freshmen year, when senior Jerry Colquitt tore his left ACL seven plays into the season, Stewart, Manning and junior Todd Helton all got a shot. Helton started until he sprained his knee in the fourth game.
And so the two freshmen, competing for the job, would put in extra time after dinner, watching film in coordinator David Cutcliffe’s office to learn the nuances of his offense. Coaches had badges to access the facility after hours. Players did not, so the coaches would place a rock in the doorway to leave it open.
Except a few times, the rock wasn’t there and the door was locked. Stewart would knock, but with Cutcliffe’s office on the third floor, nobody could hear him.
When he was eventually let in, he’d plead his case with Cutcliffe. Freshmen don’t win those battles, though. You’re late, you run. No excuses.Soon, Manning would run away with the job. In the spring, Stewart transferred to Texas A&M.Decades later, his football career long over, Stewart heard from a friend who had read Peyton Manning’s biography. What he learned: “Peyton bumped the rock out of the door so I couldn’t get in,” Stewart says.Now that’s crazy.**Before Manning carefully chose Tennessee in 1994, he strongly considered other schools, including the one that would sign Tom Brady a year later.“I’ll tell you what — at one time I thought he was going to Michigan,” his father, Archie Manning, was saying last month. “I thought the Ole Miss thing was weighing really heavy on him, and he’s thinking, ‘Alright, if I don’t go to Ole Miss, I don’t want to play against Ole Miss. I’m getting away from the whole thing.’ And I really think (Michigan) was his getaway.”“At some point,” Archie says, “the (Tennessee) coaches convinced him or he convinced himself that by going to the other side of the conference, he wouldn’t have to play (Ole Miss) every year.”Adds Cooper Manning, Peyton's older brother: “It’s funny — for a while there, I really thought he was going to go to Michigan. It was just kind of outside the box…I think he kind of liked that scene.”According to Archie, Peyton gravitated toward two coaches throughout the process: Cutcliffe , who served as the offensive coordinator under Phillip Fulmer at Tennessee, and Michigan’s Cam Cameron, then the Wolverines quarterbacks coach. As Archie says (in a way only Archie can), “Cam impressed the stew outta the whole family.”In 1993, Cameron videotaped a spring practice of Manning so he could provide a visual to accompany his six words of advice to the Wolverines coaching staff: “This is the guy we need.” When the practice was over, Manning threw for an additional hour-and-a-half with Cameron watching.Manning took an official visit to Michigan in December 1993 and Archie, who was already in Cleveland broadcasting a Saints game, decided to come along. They saw the campus and met Bo Schembechler. Rising senior Todd Collins was penciled in as the starter for 1994, but Peyton was fine with sitting his first year, Archie says. What made Michigan and Tennessee appealing is that both depth charts opened up in Year Two.A month after his visit, on the eve of Peyton’s decision, he and Archie spent the night at the Hilton Riverside hotel in New Orleans. The phone had been ringing non-stop at home, and Peyton felt he needed to leave the house to clear his mind. He told Archie before he fell asleep, “I’m going to call coach Fulmer in the morning.” He made it official on Jan. 25, 1994.On Feb. 7, Cam Cameron left Michigan for the Washington Redskins. Michigan took one quarterback, early commit Scott Dreisbach, in the 1994 class. The following fall, the staff sorted through the hundreds of recruit videotapes that it always received. Anything from California landed on Bill Harris’ desk.The Wolverines already had a ’95 quarterback — an in-state kid named DiAllo Johnson — but the tape of an additional quarterback intrigued Harris. He passed it to Kit Cartwright, Michigan's new quarterbacks coach. Cartwright signed off on it, as did head coach Gary Moeller.“So I went out there to investigate,” Harris says, “and to see if Tommy Brady was tall enough and smart enough to play quarterback.”The two greatest passers in history have spent 15 years on opposite ends of an absolutely epic NFL rivalry. They could have spent three in the same locker room.It’s purely hypothetical, but you can’t help but wonder: Would Tommy Brady have committed to Michigan if Manning was there? Would he have won an open competition against Manning? Would he have spent three years behind Manning and taken over the job in 1998 and 1999 (which, essentially, is how it played out in Ann Arbor anyway)? And if Manning's presence steered him elsewhere, someplace that didn’t create such adversity, would Brady have turned out the same?Of course, there are no answers to those questions. The real questions regarding Brady’s recruitment went unanswered, too, as the Patriots quarterback declined an interview request for himself and his father.As Bill Harris remembers, one of his major selling points during Michigan’s short pursuit of Brady, winning tradition aside, was location.“Peyton came to campus, Cam recruited him hard, and a lot of those kids, they come up to Michigan and it’s snowing and it’s cold, and a lot of them get a little afraid,” Harris says. “Tommy Brady, he said the same thing. I said, ‘Tommy, let me tell you something. You don’t know where you’re going to play pro ball, because you don’t choose. They choose you. Some team in New York could be choosing you to play. It’s going to be cold and it’s gon’ be rainy and it’s gon’ be windy. And then you’re going to be glad you came to Michigan.’”Ultimately, college recruitment is revealing not because of where someone like Brady or Manning goes, or considers going, but because of the process. It is a real-life translation of game preparation: Surveying the field; examining the details, analyzing every last one from every possible angle; and, finally, executing the plan.**Out west there was a class of ‘94 quarterback, Ryan Clement, who was heavily pursued by high-majors across the country. A strong-armed 6-foot-2 prospect out of Mullen High in Denver, Clement had home visits from Cutcliffe, Florida’s Steve Spurrier and Miami’s Dennis Erickson. He had phone conversations with those guys, too, plus others like Lou Holtz and Fulmer.He remembers one call, in particular, that came in the summer of 1993.“Ryan,” his mother said, “Peyton Manning is on the phone.”“And I was like, ‘The dude from New Orleans?’” Clement says. “Well, my whole family were huge football fans so we knew who he was before that. We knew he wasn’t just a dude from New Orleans.”They had never met, but Peyton knew Florida and Tennessee were also involved with Clement. Peyton knew recruiting could be a funny business, and that coaches weren’t always upfront. So Peyton knew he needed more information.“You’re almost always at a disadvantage with those recruiting scenarios,” Clement says, “but because of what Peyton was willing to do and thought of doing — it just didn’t cross my mind to pick up a phone and create this group of people that kept in touch — he did and I think he helped all of us. He was a great resource.”The group, according to Archie Manning, was Peyton, Clement, Josh Booty, and Hines Ward , a quarterback from Forest Park, Georgia.“One day I’m sitting at home and I get a phone call: ‘Hey Hines, Peyton Manning here, quarterback down in Louisiana,’” Ward recalls. “I’m like ‘wow, it’s kind of crazy that he’s doing his research.’”Over several months, Manning and the others exchanged long-distance calls and insight about each school and coach. They compared notes, decided which coaches were bluffing and which weren’t, enabling them to make more informed college choices.Ward remembers John Chavis, the Tennessee defensive coordinator, telling him: “Hey, if you sign right now we’ll stop recruiting Peyton Manning.” Ward, laughing, recalls his reaction: “You’re a damn liar. I’m getting the hell out of Tennessee.”When Ward received his first call from Manning, they were strangers. He had only read about Manning in magazines. He knew Manning would be special, though. And Clement knew he wanted no part of going to the same school as Manning. Yet there was something neither of them knew.“To this day,” Clement says, “I have no idea how he got my phone number.”Even Archie found it interesting, and a little funny, that his son had set up this network. But, hey, that was Peyton. Every detail mattered. Everything needed to be in place.As Cooper Manning hilariously puts it, “Growing up, if we got in a fight or a real, you know, tiff — and I don’t know what people do now to their brothers to get back at them — but if I went in his room and took his chair and put it on the ground or put his pillows on the ground or messed up his room, that would be equally as harmful as going over there and punching him in the stomach. You could really get him riled up by disheveling his stuff.”During high school, Peyton’s stuff included media guides from college programs. He studied them. He attacked recruiting, Archie says. By November of Peyton’s senior year, Archie estimates his son was still in contact with 35-40 schools. That’s when Archie gave Peyton the only advice he’d provide during the process: “Don’t waste people’s time.” That’s when Peyton whittled it down to actual contenders, including Tennessee, Ole Miss, Michigan and Florida.Outside of that, Archie let Peyton handle the whole thing on his own.**Twenty football seasons have passed, and time with the two iconic quarterbacks of this generation has grown more treasured.Take Bill Harris. He last saw Brady in 2000, at the old Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit. It was the first preseason game of Brady’s professional career, a game in which he was sacked on his first snap by former college teammate James Hall. Harris, in attendance, met Brady afterward.“I was glad that he was with New England and had Drew Bledsoe there and I told him maybe Drew would teach him a thing or three,” Harris says. “And you know Tommy gave me a big hug and said, ‘Coach, let me tell you: I can teach him something, too.’”Harris has never been to the Hall of Fame, but he’s intent on “getting these old bones to Canton” when Brady is inducted.Some of those who crossed paths with Manning during his recruitment remain in high-profile football circles: Hines Ward, obviously, and Cam Cameron, who in 2012 was fired as Baltimore’s offensive coordinator six days before his Ravens faced Manning and the Denver Broncos in Week 15.Others, like Clement, faded from the game. Clement enjoyed a successful college career at Miami, where Peyton once randomly called the ‘Canes football office to wish him luck against Florida State. He finally met Manning at the 1998 NFL Draft combine, went undrafted, played some Arena League, went to law school and wound up back in Denver.He was down the street from the Broncos' practice facility, waiting for his daughter to get out of gymnastics practice, when he shared these old Manning stories.His 6-year-old son, Lane, is a “little flag football quarterback.” Walks around calling himself Peyton Manning. Lane’s football memory will probably begin with Manning’s Broncos."He doesn’t realize yet that his dad was, at one point, at least in the same conversation," Clement says.
But time has passed, and so prolifically has the dude from New Orleans, setting records that even Lane will see last a while. |
A 17-year-old is dead and another is facing charges after the victim was accidentally shot by his friend while the two played with guns Saturday afternoon.
In a press release, University City police said they found the 17-year-old victim lying in a vacant lot and bleeding from the mouth when they responded to a sick call in the 6600 block of Bartmer at around 1:45 Saturday afternoon. The victim was rushed to the hospital, where he died from his injuries.
The press release said two other people were on the scene when police arrived, and they were taken to the station for questioning. During the investigation, one of those people brought to the station — Dashon Gavin, a 17-year-old friend of the victim — said he and the victim were playing with guns when his gun fired a shot that struck the victim in the face.
The case was presented to the prosecuting attorney, who filed one count of first-degree involuntary manslaughter. His bond was set at $50,000.
The press release said the case will be presented to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. |
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of 'The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity'.
Upon his return from Asia, President Trump announced that he planned to work “as fast as possible” to reduce the U.S. trade deficits with the nations he visited. He later tweeted out his excitement about working with fellow Republicans to pass their “GREAT Tax Bill!”
Left hand, meet right hand. Those two goals stand in stark opposition to one another.
The Republican tax cut plan has been justly criticized for worsening both income inequality and the national debt, but the plan has another big problem: It’s likely to lead to more outsourcing of U.S. jobs and a larger trade deficit. That’s obviously a negative for factory jobs and net exports, but it’s also precisely the opposite of what Trump continues to promise to many of his working-class supporters.
First, the tax plan moves to what’s called a territorial system of international taxation, which means the U.S. tax rate on the overseas earnings of U.S. foreign affiliates would become zero. While it’s true these firms can defer taxes on these earnings for as long as they like, they cannot “repatriate” them tax-free to invest domestically or to pay dividends to their shareholders (instead, they invest them in financial markets).
Would not the lower corporate rate proposed by the GOP’s tax plan — 20 percent — preclude this incentive? Unfortunately not, because our multinationals have perfected the art of “transfer pricing:” booking, if not producing, their overseas profits in tax havens with single-digit tax rates, while booking deductible expenses in high-tax countries. Under the new regime, they’d be able to keep up this tax avoidance with the added bonus of sending earnings back home tax free. As international tax expert Ed Klienbard puts it: “Territorial tax systems … reward successful transfer pricing gamers as “instant winners” by enabling the successful U.S. firm to recycle immediately its offshore profits as tax-exempt dividends paid to the U.S. parent.”
Of course, if they invested those earnings here at home instead of using them for share buybacks or dividend payouts, that would help boost domestic production, and perhaps some of that will occur. I doubt it, for two reasons.
For one, firms are already flush with retained earnings — corporate profitability is near record highs — and borrowing is cheap. If they wanted to invest more in productive equipment, plants, or their workers, they could do so. Yet, current investment is lackluster, and that’s not likely to change due to the tax cut (as Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn learned firsthand). A recent survey that asked corporate executives what they’d do with a tax windfall found their top three uses of the money were to pay down debt, buy back their stocks (to boost the price), and do more mergers.
In fact, we’ve tried this experiment. Back in 2004, we allowed multinationals to repatriate deferred earnings at a sweetheart rate of 5 percent. They said they’d invest and create jobs with the money, but instead, they laid workers off and shared the tax break with their shareholders.
In other words, the shift to territoriality does not dampen the existing incentives in our corporate code to offshore jobs. It exacerbates them, which will lead to more overseas production and the loss of jobs here at home. As tax professor Rebecca Kysar observed: a “pressing goal of tax reform is to reduce the incentives for companies to move their operations overseas. [This] bill does the opposite.”
Interestingly, the tax writers recognized the problem and tried to fix it with a tax penalty for transfer pricing. The alleged patch incentivizes even more offshoring, creating, according to New York Times reporter Patricia Cohen, “new opportunities for small and medium-size firms to use tax havens to slice their tax rate in half.”
Next, if you’ve followed this debate, you’ve heard about the administration’s implausibly large estimates of economic growth allegedly triggered by their plan. What you may not have heard — they don’t like to talk about this part — is these growth effects depend on large capital inflows leading to larger trade deficits.
The big corporate tax cut is expected to raise the after-tax return on capital investment, and this is expected to draw in capital from abroad. These flows increase the U.S. capital account — basically, investments from outside the country — whose the flip side is the trade deficit. For every dollar the capital account goes up, the trade deficit must get a dollar more negative.
To be clear, a higher trade deficit doesn’t have to be a drag on growth if other parts of the economy are picking up the slack. It will unquestionably hurt our manufacturers, as the capital flows put upward pressure on the dollar, making our exports less price competitive. If you believe the magnitude of these flows as implied by an estimate from the conservative Tax Foundation, their impact would lead to trade deficits twice as large as today’s, implying the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs.
For the record, most economists, myself included, do not believe these magnitudes. But especially given the tax plan, by significantly raising the budget deficit, is sure to reduce national savings, the basic dynamics of the above scenario — increased capital inflows and a larger trade deficit — will likely occur.
We are thus left with a plan that lavishes most of its benefits on the wealthiest households, including the heirs of the richest estates, raises taxes on millions in the middle class, adds over $1 trillion to the debt, increases the trade deficit, and, relative to the current system, ratchets up the incentives to offshoring production and jobs. In its latest iteration, it could also now lead to 13 million people losing health coverage.
It should escape no one that President Trump, who assures us the plan is a “middle-class miracle,” was elected in part by working class voters who believed he would find policies to achieve the opposite of every one of those outcomes, especially regarding trade deficits and manufacturing jobs. In other words, it’s impossible to exaggerate the extent of the betrayal of the working class embedded in this plan. |
Black Lives Matter protest. (AP photo)
(CNSNews.com) -- A new think tank report takes aim at the Black Lives Matter movement’s contention that law enforcement’s use of lethal force unequally targets blacks compared to other racial or ethnic groups.
According to the report by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, not only are a higher percentage of whites and Hispanics killed by police, the greater threat to blacks comes from violent criminals within their own communities.
“The evidence does not support the conclusion that American police are waging a racist war against blacks,” Manhattan senior fellow Heather Mac Donald writes.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has been a counterproductive distraction from the real violence problem facing black communities: violence from criminals, not the police,” the report concludes.
“Law enforcement could end all use of lethal force tomorrow, and it would have, at most, a negligible effect on the black death-by-homicide rate, which is driven overwhelmingly by murders committed by other black civilians,” Mac Donald notes in Reality Check: Violent Criminals, Not the Police. Pose Real Threat to African-Americans, which was published Jan. 21.
Mac Donald’s research, which is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, contradicts claims by the Black Lives Matter movement that police unfairly single out blacks when they use lethal force.
In an interview, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza is quoted as saying: “It’s also pretty callous, in my opinion, to say ‘all lives matter’ when black folks are being killed every 28 hours by police or vigilantes.”
But Mac Donald points out that blacks actually face a lower level of lethal force by police than either whites or Hispanics.
“Police shootings account for a much smaller share of homicides in the black community than in other communities: 4 percent of black homicide victims are killed by the police, compared with 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide victims,” she states.
“The actual data on police shootings tell a different story from the one being promulgated by Black Lives Matter. Police shootings will never be randomly distributed throughout the population; they will occur where the police interact with violent criminals, armed suspects, and those resisting arrest,” Mac Donald writes.
“Unfortunately, blacks represent a dramatically disproportionate share of those populations. In fact, police use deadly force against blacks at a lower rate than would be predicted by black crime and black use of force against the police.”
Using data compiled by the Department of Justice, Mac Donald writes that though they made up 15 percent of the population, “in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of all murder defendants, 45 percent of all assault defendants.”
Mac Donald also refers to comparable statistics from New York City that highlight the fact that a disproportionate number of perpetrators of violent crimes are black.
“In New York City in 2014, blacks committed 75 percent of shootings and 70 percent of robberies — as reported by the victims of and witnesses to those crimes — but represented only 23 percent of the population,” she writes, citing data from the New York City Police Department.
In contrast, “whites committed less than 2 percent of shootings and 4 percent of robberies in New York City in 2014, though they are 34 percent of the city’s population.”
Using data compiled by the Washington Post, Mac Donald highlights how the number of black victims of police homicide — 4 percent — compares to the number of black civilians killed by other black civilians — 90 percent, according to Justice Department data she cites.
“Disproportionately high black crime rates mean that police—if they are deploying their resources where they are most needed — will be called disproportionately to minority neighborhoods in response to violent incidents,” Mac Donald explains.
However, she writes that “fewer than a third of police killings of civilians have black victims. From 2003 to 2009, blacks made up 32 percent of all arrest-related homicides, according to the Justice Department — far less than what black violent-crime rates would predict. According to the Washington Post, in 2015, blacks made up 26 percent of police homicide victims.”
Mac Donald believes that more policing coupled with community requests for assistance from police will reduce the incidence of violent crime in black communities and therefore the number of arrest-related homicides will also drop.
But she warned that the media’s “incessant charge” that police unfairly target blacks could ironically result in more police shootings of blacks.
“According to the Justice Department,” she writes, ‘use of force typically occurs when police are trying to make an arrest and the suspect is resisting.’
“But the media’s incessant charge that the police are racist increases the chance that a black suspect, convinced that he is being singled out because of his race, will resist police authority,” Mac Donald asserts. |
Build with Static in Clojure © 2011-2018
Benedikt Terhechte
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They occupy a small space between Structs and Arrays. In addition, there's no comparable construct in Objective-C (or many other languages). Finally, the use of tuples in the standard library and in Apple's example code is sparse. The following guide tries to give a more comprehensive overview of tuples with best "}, :content "<div id=\"table-of-contents\">
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<div id=\"text-table-of-contents\">
<ul>
<li><a href=\"#org6ab2617\">1. The absolute basics</a>
<ul>
<li><a href=\"#org0d93045\">1.1. Creating and Accessing Tuples</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orgd04d000\">1.2. Tuples for pattern matching</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org2d6db9e\">1.3. Tuples as return types</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org6cea3e6\">1.4. Tuple Destructuring</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=\"#org8050dfb\">2. Beyond the basics</a>
<ul>
<li><a href=\"#org09d2ea6\">2.1. Tuples as anonymous structs</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orge42ad7f\">2.2. Private State</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orgc671b7e\">2.3. Tuples as Fixed-Size Sequences</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orgde0c6e0\">2.4. Tuples for Varargs Types</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=\"#orgf881831\">3. Advanced Tuples</a>
<ul>
<li><a href=\"#org06df462\">3.1. Tuple Iteration</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org5e6cddb\">3.2. Tuples and Generics</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orgcc3ccdf\">3.3. Define a Specific Tuple Type</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org0bc394d\">3.4. Tuples as function parameters</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#orgda0ede1\">3.5. Tuples to reorder function parameters</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=\"#org2aee4c2\">4. Tuple impossibilities</a>
<ul>
<li><a href=\"#org27733ac\">4.1. Tuples as Dictionary Keys</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org159b3d1\">4.2. Tuple Protocol Compliance</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=\"#org8bc7213\">5. Addendum</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org9655ad2\">6. The code, suitable for use in a playground</a></li>
<li><a href=\"#org3af435a\">7. Changes</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<h6><a href=\"http://swift.gg/2015/10/10/tuples-swift-advanced-usage-best-practices/\">An older version of this post is also available in <b>🇨🇳Chinese</b></a><span> Thanks to </span><a href=\"http://swift.gg/tags/APPVENTURE/\">SwiftGG</a></h6>
<p>
Tuples are one of Swift's less visible language features. They occupy a small space between Structs and Arrays. In addition, there's no comparable construct in Objective-C (or many other languages). Finally, the usage of tuples in the standard library and in Apple's example code is sparse. One could get the impression that their raison d'être in Swift is pattern matching, but I disgress.
</p>
<p>
Most tuple explanations concentrate on three tuple use cases (pattern matching, return values, destructuring) and leave it at that. The following guide tries to give a more comprehensive overview of tuples with best practices of when to use them and when not to use them. I'll also try to list those things that you can't do with tuples, to spare you asking about them on stack overflow. Let's dive in.
</p>
<div id=\"outline-container-org6ab2617\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org6ab2617\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">1</span> The absolute basics</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-1\">
<p>
You probably already know most of this, so I'll keep it concise.
</p>
<p>
A tuple can combine different types into one. Tuples are value types and even though they look like sequences they aren't sequences, as there's no direct way of looping over the contents. We'll start with a quick primer on how to create and use tuples.
</p>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org0d93045\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org0d93045\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">1.1</span> Creating and Accessing Tuples</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-1-1\">
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">// Constructing a simple tuple
let tp1 = (2, 3)
let tp2 = (2, 3, 4)
// Constructing a named tuple
let tp3 = (x: 5, y: 3)
// Different types
let tp4 = (name: \"Carl\", age: 78, pets: [\"Bonny\", \"Houdon\", \"Miki\"])
// Accessing tuple elements
let tp5 = (13, 21)
tp5.0 // 13
tp5.1 // 21
let tp6 = (x: 21, y: 33)
tp6.x // 21
tp6.y // 33
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgd04d000\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orgd04d000\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">1.2</span> Tuples for pattern matching</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-1-2\">
<p>
As already mentioned above, this feels like the strongest use case for tuples.
Swift's <code>switch</code> statement offers a really powerful yet easy way to define complex conditionals without cluttering up the source code. You can then match for the type, existence, and value of multiple variables in one statement:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">
// Contrived example
// These would be return values from various functions.
let age = 23
let job: String? = \"Operator\"
let payload: Any = [\"cars\": 1]
</pre>
</div>
<p>
In the code above, we want to find the persons younger than 30 with a job and a Dictionary payload. Imagine the payload as something from the Objective-C world, it could be a Dictionary or an Array or a Number, awful code somebody else wrote years ago, and you have to interact with it now.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">
typealias AnyDictionary = Dictionary<AnyHashable, Any>
switch (age, job, payload) {
case (let age, _?, _ as AnyDictionary) where age < 30:
print(age)
default:
break
}
</pre>
</div>
<p>
By constructing the switch argument as a tuple <code>(age, job, payload)</code> we can query for specific or nonspecific attributes of all tuple elements at once. This allows for elaborately constrained conditionals.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org2d6db9e\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org2d6db9e\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">1.3</span> Tuples as return types</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-1-3\">
<p>
Probably the next-best tuple use case. Since tuples can be constructed on the fly, they're a great way to easily return multiple values from a function.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">func abc() -> (Int, Int, String) {
return (3, 5, \"Carl\")
}
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org6cea3e6\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org6cea3e6\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">1.4</span> Tuple Destructuring</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-1-4\">
<p>
Swift took a lot of inspiration from different programming languages, and this is something that Python has been doing for years. While the previous examples mostly showed how to easily get something into a tuple, destructuring is a swifty way of getting something out of a tuple, and in line with the <code>abc</code> example above, it looks like this:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let (a, b, c) = abc()
print(a)
</pre>
</div>
<p>
Another example is getting several function calls into one line:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let (a, b, c) = (a(), b(), c())
</pre>
</div>
<p>
Or, an easy way to swap two values:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">var v1: Int
var v2: Int
(v1, v2) = (5, 4)
(a: v1, b: v2) = (a: v2, b: v1) // swapped: v1 == 4, v2 == 5
(v1, v2) = (5, 4)
(a: v1, b: v2) = (b: v1, a: v2) // swapped: v1 == 4, v2 == 5
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org8050dfb\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org8050dfb\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">2</span> Beyond the basics</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-2\">
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org09d2ea6\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org09d2ea6\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">2.1</span> Tuples as anonymous structs</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-2-1\">
<p>
Tuples as well as structs allow you to combine different types into one type:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let user1 = (name: \"Carl\", age: 40)
// vs.
struct User {
let name: String
let age: Int
}
let user2 = User(name: \"Steve\", age: 39)
</pre>
</div>
<p>
As you can see, these two types are similar, but whereas the tuple exists simply as an instance, the struct requires both a struct declaration and a struct initializer. This similarity can be leveraged whenever you have the need to define a temporary struct inside a function or method. As the Swift docs say:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
Tuples are useful for temporary groups of related values. (…) If your data structure is likely to persist beyond a temporary scope, model it as a class or structure (…)
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
As an example of this, consider the following situation where the return values from several functions first need to be uniquely collected and then inserted:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">func zipForUser(userid: String) -> String { return \"12124\" }
func streetForUser(userid: String) -> String { return \"Charles Street\" }
let users = [user1]
// Find all unique streets in our userbase
var streets: [String: (zip: String, street: String, count: Int)] = [:]
for user in users {
let zip = zipForUser(userid: user.name)
let street = streetForUser(userid: user.name)
let key = \"\\(zip)-\\(street)\"
if let (_, _, count) = streets[key] {
\tstreets[key] = (zip, street, count + 1)
} else {
\tstreets[key] = (zip, street, 1)
}
}
// drawStreetsOnMap(streets.values)
for street in streets.values { print(street) }
</pre>
</div>
<p>
Here, the tuple is being used as a simple structure for a short-duration use case. Defining a struct would also be possible but not strictly necessary.
</p>
<p>
Another example would be a class that handles algorithmic data, and you're moving a temporary result from one method to the next one. Defining an extra struct for something only used once (in between two or three methods) may not be required.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">// Made up algorithm
func calculateInterim(values: [Int]) -> (r: Int, alpha: CGFloat, chi: (CGFloat, CGFloat)) {
return (values[0], 2, (4, 8))
}
func expandInterim(interim: (r: Int, alpha: CGFloat, chi: (CGFloat, CGFloat))) -> CGFloat {
return CGFloat(interim.r) + interim.alpha + interim.chi.0 + interim.chi.1
}
print(expandInterim(interim: calculateInterim(values: [1])))
</pre>
</div>
<p>
There is, of course, a fine line here. Defining a struct for one instance is overly complex; defining a tuple 4 times instead of one struct is overly complex too. Finding the sweet spot depends on various factors.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orge42ad7f\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orge42ad7f\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">2.2</span> Private State</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-2-2\">
<p>
In addition to the previous example, there are also use cases where using tuples beyond a temporary scope is useful. Following Rich Hickey's \"If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?\", as long as the scope is private and the tuple's type isn't littered all over the implementation, using tuples to store internal state can be fine.
</p>
<p>
A simple and contrived example would be storing a static UITableView structure that displays various information from a user profile and contains the key path to the actual value as well as a flag noting whether the value can be edited when tapping on the cell.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let tableViewValues = [
(title: \"Age\", value: \"user.age\", editable: true),
(\"Name\", \"user.name.combinedName\", true),
(\"Username\", \"user.name.username\", false),
(\"ProfilePicture\", \"user.pictures.thumbnail\", false)]
</pre>
</div>
<p>
The alternative would be to define a struct, but if the data is a purely private implementation detail, a tuple works just as well.
</p>
<p>
A better example is when you define an object and want to add the ability to add multiple change listeners to your object. Each listener consists of a name and the closure to be called upon any change:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">typealias Action = (_ change: Any?) -> Void
func addListener(name: String, action: @escaping Action) { }
func removeListener(name: String) { }
</pre>
</div>
<p>
How will you store these listeners in your object? The obvious solution would be to define a struct, but this is a very limited scope, and the struct will only be internal, and it will be used in only three cases. Here, using a tuple may even be the better solution, as the destructuring makes things simpler:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">
class ListenerStuff {
typealias Action = (_ change: Any?) -> Void
var listeners: [(String, Action)] = []
func addListener(name: String, action: @escaping Action) {
\tlisteners.append((name, action))
}
func removeListener(name: String) {
\tif let idx = listeners.index(where: { $0.0 == name }) {
\t listeners.remove(at: idx)
\t}
}
func execute(change: Int) {
\tfor (_, listener) in listeners {
\t listener(change as Any?)
\t}
}
}
var stuff = ListenerStuff()
let ourAction: ListenerStuff.Action = { x in print(\"Change is \\(x ?? \"NONE\").\") }
stuff.addListener(name: \"xx\", action: ourAction)
stuff.execute(change: 17)
</pre>
</div>
<p>
As you can see in the <code>execute</code> function, the destructuring abilities make tuples especially useful in this case, as the contents are directly destructured into the local scope.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgc671b7e\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orgc671b7e\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">2.3</span> Tuples as Fixed-Size Sequences</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-2-3\">
<p>
Another area where tuples can be used is when you intend to constrain a type to a fixed number of items. Imagine an object that calculates various statistics for each month in a year. You need to store a certain Integer value for each month separately. The solution that comes to mind first would of course be:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">var monthValuesArray: [Int]
</pre>
</div>
<p>
However, in this case we don't know whether the property indeed contains 12 elements. A user of our object could accidentally insert 13 values, or 11. We can't tell the type checker that this is a fixed size array of 12 items<sup><a id=\"fnr.1\" class=\"footref\" href=\"#fn.1\">1</a></sup>. With a tuple, this specific constraint can easily be put into place:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">var monthValues: (Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int)
</pre>
</div>
<p>
The alternative would be to have the constraining logic in the object's functionality (say via a <code>guard</code> statement); however, this would be a run time check. The tuple check happens at compile time; your code won't even compile if you try to give 11 months to your object.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgde0c6e0\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orgde0c6e0\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">2.4</span> Tuples for Varargs Types</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-2-4\">
<p>
Varargs i.e. variable function arguments are a very useful technique for situations where the number of function parameters is unknown.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">// classic example
func sum(of numbers: Int...) -> Int {
// add up all numbers with the + operator
return numbers.reduce(0, +)
}
let theSum = sum(of: 1, 2, 5, 7, 9) // 24
</pre>
</div>
<p>
A tuple can be useful here if your requirement goes beyond simple integers. Take this function, which does a batch update of <code>n</code> entities in a database:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">func batchUpdate(updates: (String, Int)...) {
self.db.begin()
for (key, value) in updates {
\tself.db.set(key, value)
}
self.db.end()
}
// We're imagining a weird database
batchUpdate(updates: (\"tk1\", 5), (\"tk7\", 9), (\"tk21\", 44), (\"tk88\", 12))
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgf881831\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"orgf881831\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">3</span> Advanced Tuples</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-3\">
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org06df462\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org06df462\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">3.1</span> Tuple Iteration</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-3-1\">
<p>
In the above descriptions, I've tried to steer clear of calling tuples sequences or collections because they aren't. Since every element of a tuple can have a different type, there's no type-safe way of looping or mapping over the contents of a tuple. Well, no beautiful one, that is.
</p>
<p>
Swift does offer limited reflection capabilities, and these allow us to inspect the elements of a tuple and loop over them. The downside is that the type checker has no way to figure out what the type of each element is, and thus everything is typed as <code>Any</code>. It is your job then to cast and match this against your possible types to figure out what to do.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let t = (a: 5, b: \"String\", c: Date())
let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: t)
for (label, value) in mirror.children {
switch value {
case is Int:
\tprint(\"int\")
case is String:
\tprint(\"string\")
case is NSDate:
\tprint(\"nsdate\")
default: ()
}
}
</pre>
</div>
<p>
This is not as simple as array iteration, but it does work if you really need it.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org5e6cddb\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org5e6cddb\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">3.2</span> Tuples and Generics</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-3-2\">
<p>
There's no <code>Tuple</code> type available in Swift. If you wonder why that is, think about it: every tuple is a totally different type, depending on the types within it. So instead of defining a generic tuple requirement, you define the specific but generic incarnation of the tuple you intend to use:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">func wantsTuple<T1, T2>(_ tuple: (T1, T2)) -> T1 {
return tuple.0
}
wantsTuple((\"a\", \"b\")) // \"a\"
wantsTuple((1, 2)) // 1
</pre>
</div>
<p>
You can also use tuples in <code>typealiases</code>, thus allowing subclasses to fill out your types with details. This looks fairly useless and complicated, but I've already had a use case where I need to do exactly this.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">class BaseClass<A,B> {
typealias Element = (A, B)
func add(_ elm: Element) {
\tprint(elm)
}
}
class IntegerClass<B> : BaseClass<Int, B> {
}
let example = IntegerClass<String>()
example.add((5, \"\"))
// Prints (5, \"\")
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgcc3ccdf\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orgcc3ccdf\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">3.3</span> Define a Specific Tuple Type</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-3-3\">
<p>
In many of the earlier examples, we rewrote a certain tuple type like <code>(Int, Int, String)</code> multiple times. This, of course, is not necessary, as we could define a <code>typealias</code> for it:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">typealias Example = (Int, Int, String)
func add(elm: Example) { }
</pre>
</div>
<p>
However, if you're using a certain tuple construction so often that you think about adding a typealias for it, you might really be better off defining a struct.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org0bc394d\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org0bc394d\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">3.4</span> Tuples as function parameters</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-3-4\">
<p>
<a href=\"https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0029-remove-implicit-tuple-splat.md\">Swift 3 removed the tuple splat feature</a>, which used to be described in this section.
</p>
<p>
If you pass a tuple as a parameter to a function, it always works as you would expect: the tuple is available as an immutable variable in the function.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-orgda0ede1\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"orgda0ede1\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">3.5</span> Tuples to reorder function parameters</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-3-5\">
<p>
<a href=\"https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0029-remove-implicit-tuple-splat.md\">Swift 3 removed the tuple splat feature</a>, which was the basis for tricks discussed in this section.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org2aee4c2\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org2aee4c2\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">4</span> Tuple impossibilities</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-4\">
<p>
Finally, we reach the list of some of the things that are impossible to achieve with tuples.
</p>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org27733ac\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org27733ac\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">4.1</span> Tuples as Dictionary Keys</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-4-1\">
<p>
If you'd like to do the following:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">let p: [(Int, Int): String]
</pre>
</div>
<p>
Then this is not possible, because tuples don't conform to the Hashable protocol. Which is really a bummer, as the example above has a multitude of use cases. There may be a crazy type checker hack to extend tuples of varying arities to the Hashable protocol, but I haven't really looked into that. If you happen to know if this works, feel free to contact me via <a href=\"http://twitter.com/terhechte\">twitter</a>.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org159b3d1\" class=\"outline-3\">
<h3 id=\"org159b3d1\"><span class=\"section-number-3\">4.2</span> Tuple Protocol Compliance</h3>
<div class=\"outline-text-3\" id=\"text-4-2\">
<p>
Given the following protocol:
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">protocol PointProtocol {
var x: Int { get }
var y: Int { get }
}
</pre>
</div>
<p>
You can't get the type checker to accept the tuple <code>(x: 10, y: 20)</code> as implementing that protocol.
</p>
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">func addPoint(point: PointProtocol)
addPoint(point: (x: 10, y: 20) as PointProtocol) // doesn't work.
</pre>
</div>
<p>
The compiler complains,
\"'(x: Int, y: Int)' is not convertible to 'PointProtocol'; did you mean to use 'as!' to force downcast?
(Answer: no.)
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org8bc7213\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org8bc7213\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">5</span> Addendum</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-5\">
<p>
That's it. I probably forgot one or another thing. Things may also be wrong. If you find a factual error, or if there's something else I forgot, feel free to <a href=\"http://twitter.com/terhechte\">contact me</a>.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org9655ad2\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org9655ad2\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">6</span> The code, suitable for use in a playground</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-6\">
<div class=\"org-src-container\">
<pre class=\"src src-Swift\">import AppKit
// * Creating and Accessing Tuples
// Constructing a simple tuple
let tp1 = (2, 3)
let tp2 = (2, 3, 4)
// Constructing a named tuple
let tp3 = (x: 5, y: 3)
// Different types
let tp4 = (name: \"Carl\", age: 78, pets: [\"Bonny\", \"Houdon\", \"Miki\"])
// Accessing tuple elements
let tp5 = (13, 21)
tp5.0 // 13
tp5.1 // 21
let tp6 = (x: 21, y: 33)
tp6.x // 21
tp6.y // 33
// * Tuples for pattern matching
// Contrived example
// These would be return values from various functions.
let age = 23
let job: String? = \"Operator\"
let payload: Any = [\"cars\": 1]
typealias AnyDictionary = Dictionary<AnyHashable, Any>
switch (age, job, payload) {
case (let age, _?, _ as AnyDictionary) where age < 30:
print(age)
default: ()
}
// * Tuples as return types
func abc() -> (Int, Int, String) {
return (3, 5, \"Carl\")
}
// * Tuple Destructuring
let (a, b, c) = abc()
print(a)
func f1() -> Int { return 1 }
func f2() -> Int { return 2 }
func f3() -> Int { return 3 }
let (r1, r2, r3) = (f1(), f2(), f3())
var v1: Int
var v2: Int
(v1, v2) = (5, 4)
(a: v1, b: v2) = (a: v2, b: v1) // swapped: v1 == 4, v2 == 5
(v1, v2) = (5, 4)
(a: v1, b: v2) = (b: v1, a: v2) // swapped: v1 == 4, v2 == 5
// * Tuples as anonymous structs
let user1 = (name: \"Carl\", age: 40)
// vs.
struct User {
let name: String
let age: Int
}
let user2 = User(name: \"Steve\", age: 39)
func zipForUser(userid: String) -> String { return \"12124\" }
func streetForUser(userid: String) -> String { return \"Charles Street\" }
let users = [user1]
// Find all unique streets in our userbase
var streets: [String: (zip: String, street: String, count: Int)] = [:]
for user in users {
let zip = zipForUser(userid: user.name)
let street = streetForUser(userid: user.name)
let key = \"\\(zip)-\\(street)\"
if let (_, _, count) = streets[key] {
\tstreets[key] = (zip, street, count + 1)
} else {
\tstreets[key] = (zip, street, 1)
}
}
// drawStreetsOnMap(streets.values)
for street in streets.values {
print(street)
}
// Made up algorithm
func calculateInterim(values: [Int]) -> (r: Int, alpha: CGFloat, chi: (CGFloat, CGFloat)) {
return (values[0], 2, (4, 8))
}
func expandInterim(interim: (r: Int, alpha: CGFloat, chi: (CGFloat, CGFloat))) -> CGFloat {
return CGFloat(interim.r) + interim.alpha + interim.chi.0 + interim.chi.1
}
print(expandInterim(interim: calculateInterim(values: [1])))
// * Private State
let tableViewValues = [
(title: \"Age\", value: \"user.age\", editable: true),
(\"Name\", \"user.name.combinedName\", true),
(\"Username\", \"user.name.username\", false),
(\"ProfilePicture\", \"user.pictures.thumbnail\", false)]
class ListenerStuff {
typealias Action = (_ change: Any?) -> Void
var listeners: [(String, Action)] = []
func addListener(name: String, action: @escaping Action) {
\tlisteners.append((name, action))
}
func removeListener(name: String) {
\tif let idx = listeners.index(where: { $0.0 == name }) {
\t listeners.remove(at: idx)
\t}
}
func execute(change: Int) {
\tfor (_, listener) in listeners {
\t listener(change as Any?)
\t}
}
}
var stuff = ListenerStuff()
let ourAction: ListenerStuff.Action = { x in print(\"Change is \\(x ?? \"NONE\").\") }
stuff.addListener(name: \"xx\", action: ourAction)
stuff.execute(change: 17)
// * Tuples as Fixed-Size Sequences
var monthValuesArray: [Int]
var monthValues: (Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int, Int)
// * Tuples for Varargs Types
// classic example
func sum(of numbers: Int...) -> Int {
// add up all numbers with the + operator
return numbers.reduce(0, +)
}
let theSum = sum(of: 1, 2, 5, 7, 9) // 24
print(theSum)
func batchUpdate(updates: (String, Int)...) {
//self.db.begin()
for (key, value) in updates {
\tprint(\"self.db.set(\\\"\\(key)\\\", \\(value))\")
\t//self.db.set(key, value)
}
//self.db.end()
}
// We're imagining a weird database
batchUpdate(updates: (\"tk1\", 5), (\"tk7\", 9), (\"tk21\", 44), (\"tk88\", 12))
// * Advanced Tuples
// ** Tuple Iteration
let t = (a: 5, b: \"String\", c: Date())
let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: t)
for (label, value) in mirror.children {
switch value {
case is Int:
\tprint(\"int\")
case is String:
\tprint(\"string\")
case is NSDate:
\tprint(\"nsdate\")
default: ()
}
}
// ** Tuples and Generics
func wantsTuple<T1, T2>(_ tuple: (T1, T2)) -> T1 {
return tuple.0
}
let tr1 = wantsTuple((\"a\", \"b\")) // \"a\"
let tr2 = wantsTuple((1, 2)) // 1
class BaseClass<A,B> {
typealias Element = (A, B)
func add(_ elm: Element) {
\tprint(elm)
}
}
class IntegerClass<B> : BaseClass<Int, B> {
}
let example = IntegerClass<String>()
example.add((5, \"\"))
// Prints (5, \"\")
// ** Define a Specific Tuple Type
typealias Example = (Int, Int, String)
func add(elm: Example) { }
// ** Tuples as Dictionary Keys
// let p: [(Int, Int): String] // doesn't compile
// ** Tuple Protocol Compliance
protocol PointProtocol {
var x: Int { get }
var y: Int { get }
}
func addPoint(point: PointProtocol) {
print(point)
}
// addPoint(point: (x: 10, y: 20) as PointProtocol) // doesn't work.
// The compiler complains,
// \"'(x: Int, y: Int)' is not convertible to 'PointProtocol'; did you mean to use 'as!' to force downcast?
</pre>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"outline-container-org3af435a\" class=\"outline-2\">
<h2 id=\"org3af435a\"><span class=\"section-number-2\">7</span> Changes</h2>
<div class=\"outline-text-2\" id=\"text-7\">
<p>
<b><b>07/23/2015</b></b> Added section on tuples as function parameters
</p>
<p>
<b><b>08/06/2015</b></b> Updated the Reflection example to the latest Swift beta 4. (It removes the <code>reflect</code> call)
</p>
<p>
<b><b>08/12/2015</b></b> Updated the <b>Tuples as function parameters</b> with a couple more examples and more information.
</p>
<p>
<b><b>08/13/2015</b></b> Fixed a couple of bugs..
</p>
<p>
<b><b>10/28/2015</b></b> Fixed bugs and added a new section on parameter reordering.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"footnotes\">
<h2 class=\"footnotes\">Footnotes: </h2>
<div id=\"text-footnotes\">
<div class=\"footdef\"><sup><a id=\"fn.1\" class=\"footnum\" href=\"#fnr.1\">1</a></sup> <div class=\"footpara\">Interestingly, something that C can do just fine</div></div>
</div>
</div>", :keywords "swift tuples generics feature", :title "Tuples in Swift, Advanced Usage and Best Practices", :filename "2015-07-19-tuples-swift-advanced-usage-best-practices.org", :id -132652514, :url "/2015/07/19/tuples-swift-advanced-usage-best-practices/", :javadate #inst "2015-07-18T22:00:00.000-00:00", :keyword-keywords (:swift :tuples :generics :feature)}] |
Christmas is almost here and Patheos is hosting a special conversation about it called “Modern Magi on the Meaning of Christmas” featuring me, Scot McKnight, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Kyle Roberts. As an introductory post I thought I would share a few little known facts about Christmas that I think can make a big difference in how we experience the season today.
1. Advent is an older Christian practice Than Christmas Is
As many are certainly aware, we are now deep into Advent. Advent is a time of year when the Church prepares itself for the coming of Christ both in the Christmas celebration of the Nativity and in the hope of the Christ’s return. What you may not know is that the Church was doing Advent before the development of a Christmas feast. Although there is no consensus among scholars to exactly how advent came about, one thing is sure; expectation of the Parousia (coming of Christ) in Early Christianity was palpable. A kind of proto-advent seems to have emerged in the early years of the faith, where Christians would fast and pray that their hope of restoration would come to completion in Christ’s reappearance. This period was eventually attached to Christmas.[1]
What this means for us: It is easy just to think of advent as a time to prepare for Christmas. That, however, is not the point. The reason we look to Christmas during advent is because it reminds us to be alert. God is at work in the world, Christ shows us that; and advent is an affirmation that that work is not yet complete. As Jesus states in Revelation 21:5, “behold I am making all things new.” Are we open to the renewal of God in our own lives? Have we set our eyes on becoming holy? In my life the answer to that question is often, “no.” Thankfully we have Advent, which refocuses our lives on the great hope we have, and the call to love that beckons us each day.
2. The Christmas story tells the life story of Jesus, in miniature
Both Matthew and Luke mirror the life of Jesus in their birth accounts. Luke uses his birth account to reflect themes that are included throughout the rest of the Gospel, for example Luke offers three travel narratives toward Bethlehem/Jerusalem in chapter 2. [2] These accounts mirror the travel narrative that guides the central part of Luke’s Gospel, from Luke 9:51 up into his entry into the city at Holy Week. Similarly Matthew offers his own gospel-in-miniature. In his infancy narrative, the leaders in Jerusalem receive the word and reject it (Matt 2:1-7) mirroring (Matthew 26:1-5). Matthew then includes a proto-passion (2:16-18), and even a resurrection account (2:20a) which ends with Jesus in Galilee (2:22-23).[3]
What this means for us: This theme of seeing the whole of the Pascal mystery in the birth narrative is powerful. These stories were told to help the Church better understand the work of God, manifested in Christ. The Christmas stories open our hearts to live out God’s love in the kingdom of God. We are now in a time of year where images of Christ’s birth surround us. Look beyond the diaphanous soft-focus cast upon the synthetic holiday paraphernalia, these over-played motifs have a deeper well. In each Christmas image the melody of salvation is softly being hummed.
3. The Story of Jesus Birth was Propaganda (and that’s awesome)
Luke opens his formal birth narrative by giving an explanation of how it came to be that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He situates the impetus for travel within a census which is said to have been conducted throughout the whole world, or at least that portion which was under control of the Romans. The use of the “whole world” image employed by Augustus creates a subtle parallel. This Caesar, by making this demand, has made a claim at being the lord of the whole world. This is contrasted with all the royal language which had just been attributed to Christ in the Magnificat and Canticle of Zechariah. Caesar is the lord of the world through temporal subjugation. Christ, on the other hand, is positioned to be the lord of the world through heavenly mercy (1:54).
When Mary and Joseph finally arrive in “the city of David”, the birth narrative is centered around a manger. This detail by seems to be very important, since Luke mentions it three times (2:7, 12, 16). This image is probably rooted in Isa 1:3 which states, “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people does not understand” (NRSV).[4] Luke is challenging his hearers to recognize their master’s crib, and the master contained within. It’s not Ceaser, but the Christ child.
It’s also interesting that Luke brings shepherds instead of Magi to honor Jesus. Luke focuses again and again on David, a former shepherd. This makes the focus on shepherds of messianic significance. If this was Luke’s intended connection, however, it didn’t last long. They soon became a representative to commentators as God’s grace to the lowly rather than to the religious elite.[5] Although this is a beautiful notion, the messianic connotations make more sense with the rest of the symbols used by Luke in this pericope. They remind us of the shepherd King, who established a new dynasty in Israel.
Another element that is often forgotten is the military and imperial connotations of the description of the angels and the angels’ message. They are essentially God’s army, which is promoting a form of counterpropaganda. They are stating that “this day” marks a new eschatological shift. They tell the shepherds that there is a new imperial birth. The messianic lord is here, and he is born in the city of David. For a Jewish audience this announcement would be a validation of the beliefs of many that Roman power was illegitimate. For an imperial audience this would be nothing short of high treason.
What this means for us: The Christmas story was a reminder to the Early Christians of where their true allegiance was. They were citizens of a kingdom without borders, and were under a ruler without lands. Their banner was love, their mission was sacrifice, their constitution was proclamation. Let Christmas remind you to build the kingdom of God, and let it free you from our contemporary monarchies of xenophobia, materialism, covetousness, and waste.
4. Christmas isn’t about celebrating the Birth of Jesus
Don’t get me wrong, Jesus’ birth is a significant part of Christmas, but it’s not the primary point. This can be seen in the Gospel reading for Christmas day, which is John 1:1–18. This passage nowhere mentions Jesus birth account but instead is an account of the eternal generation of Christ and the advent of his light in the world. Christmas is not simply Jesus’ birthday, but a feast of the incarnation. Christmas is a sacrament; it is a time in which we remember the highest outward sign of the inward grace God offers to the world. God gives expression of his love in the universal language of flesh and blood, and offers the world a grace that communicates the totality of human existence – humanity itself.
What this means for us: As we are often overwhelmed with the waves of humanity running franticly to prepare for the holiday, it is easy to forget that each person we encounter – from the rude cashier, to the exasperating relative – is a reminder of God’s preferred philological form. God didn’t abandon humanity for their deficiencies instead God entered into the tumult with us.
5. The Magi offer us a Star to Follow
Matthew 2:1-12 focuses on how the gentile’s come to Christ. They first are observant to the natural world, which tells them of a royal birth through a star (2:2).[6] Next they turn to the Hebrew Scriptures for clarification on what God is doing (2:5-6). Finally they encounter Christ and respond with worship and gifts (2:11). This trajectory offers a foreshadowing of the great commission – the “world” hears the message of natural revelation given by the star, then is taught by the Old Testament, and finally accepts a kind of proto-gospel by indicating that they accept Christ as their kingly lord.[7]
What this means for us: The Magi remind us of the universal mission of the Gospel. As Psalm 19 reminds us, even the sky proclaims the glory of God.The Magi discovered that. Keep your eyes open for God’s life at work all around you and follow it. Open the scriptures and see what new life emerges. Above all seek Jesus as your king.
Grace and Peace!
Notes:
[1]See Thomas J. Talley, The Origins Of The Liturgical Year: Second, Emended Edition, 2nd edition (Collegeville, Minn: Pueblo Books, 1991), 81–83.
[2] Luke collapses these neighboring towns into a unified “City of David.” For more on this see Raymond Browns excellent treatment of the birth of Christ in Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Updated Edition (New York: Doubleday, 1993). The three travel narritives in chapter 2 are the Travel to Bethlehem (2:4), the presentation (2:22), and Jesus as a boy in the temple (2:41).
[3] The Greek word, egeirō, often translated here as “arise” or “get up,” is used throughout Matthew’s account as a way of talking about raising the dead and resurrection. See Mt 10:8; 11:5; 14:2; 16:21; 17:9, 23; 20:19; 26:32; 27:52.
[4]Ibid., 419.
[5] Take for example what Pseudo-Dionysius says about them “[they are] being purified by their separation from the multitude, and their quiet life.” The fathers saw their humility as first and foremost see: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, ed. John Parker, vol. 2 (London: James Parker and Co., 1899), 20.
[6] For background on the significance of the star as a herald of royal birth see: R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007), 68. And John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 110.
[7] The gifts which are brought are fit for a king. By offering these gifts and worshipping they are receiving the star as an evangelist in the purest sense of the word. The word gospel, or euangelion, was used in the ancient Greek to describe a message of imperial significance. This was often an indication of a royal birth. See James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002), 24. |
The Confederate flag flies on the Capitol grounds on June 22, 2015. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The group that “informed” Dylann Roof’s deeply racist beliefs, and writings, is the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). Roof even cited the group’s website when talking about his arrival at a white supremacist viewpoint. In the aftermath of the shooting, after some digging found the group’s leader, Earl Holt III, contributed to a handful of GOP Presidential hopefuls, the candidates quickly distanced themselves from the group the Southern Poverty Law Center called a “modern reincarnation” of a network of white supremacist groups that fought against desegregation in the 1950s.
The CCC, which decries “race mixing,” doesn’t even remotely approach acceptable or even mainstream American thought on race. Even so, as the Center for Public Integrity reported on Tuesday, the Council of Conservative Citizens is listed as a “nonprofit organization that promotes social welfare, also known as a 501(c)(4)” and therefore pays no federal taxes—making the hate group essentially subsidized by American taxpayers.
Here’s more from the Center for Public Integrity:
Tax-exempt social welfare groups are supposed to “primarily promote the common good and general welfare of the people of the community as a whole,” according to IRS documents. Groups that espouse hate can be stripped of their tax-exempt status, said Marcus Owens, who ran the IRS’s exempt organizations division in the 1990s. That happened to the neo-Nazi group National Alliance in 1982… However, Owens says Republicans in Congress have made it virtually impossible for the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of political groups after the recent, so-called Tea Party scandal. Republicans criticized the IRS for what they said was inexcusable targeting of conservative 501(c)(4)s.
The CCC has been tax exempt for 20 years and in its most recent tax filing reported revenues of just $67,000, another potential reason the IRS hasn’t pursued revoking the group’s tax-exempt status. A spokesman for the CCC, looking to deflect responsibility for Roof’s murderous rampage, said it was “a big mistake” to say the group’s racist beliefs “inspired” Roof—rather, they “informed” him.
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the Charleston shooting. |
Alcohol limit dropped for driving on US bases in Japan
A servicemember reaches for a pack of bottled beer March 28, 2016 at Yokota Air Base, Japan. Starting April 4, U.S. Forces Japan will drop the blood alcohol concentration limit for drinking and driving on base to match Japan's legal limit. People who are caught with a blood alcohol concentration between 0.03 and 0.079 face a mandatory 60-day suspension of driving privileges.
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — The U.S. military is dropping the limit for drinking and driving on base to match Japan’s ultra-low standard. U.S. Forces Japan said Monday that the move is not related to recent alcohol-related incidents involving servicemembers.
Starting April 4, the on-base driving limit for blood alcohol concentration will match the 0.03 percent that applies off-base, USFJ spokesman Lt. Col. Ken Hoffman said by email.
“Currently, there are varying policies on-base that range from a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .03 -.05, which creates confusion for servicemembers stationed in Japan,” Hoffman said. “Setting a standard policy across Japan for all servicemembers will eliminate any confusion.”
BAC limits in the states are typically about 0.08 percent, allowing people to legally operate vehicles after consuming a couple of standard-size alcoholic beverages.
The new policy means that people who are caught with a BAC between 0.03 and 0.079 face a mandatory 60-day suspension of driving privileges, and commanders have the discretion to impose additional penalties. Military drivers who are caught with a BAC at or above 0.08 are subject to action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Hoffman said.
Punishment for driving off-base in Japan after imbibing as little as a single alcoholic drink – depending on body weight – can be much more severe: a jail sentence and/or thousands of dollars in fines.
Hoffman said the policy change is not a response to the alleged rape of an Okinawa woman by a U.S. sailor or the alleged assault of a Japanese woman on a Tokyo-bound flight by a Navy officer this month. Alcohol was a factor in both incidents, according to Japanese police.
U.S. personnel in Japan are already subject to a curfew that was imposed following the rape of an Okinawa woman by two U.S. sailors in 2012.
The drink-driving policy change has been under review for several months, Hoffman said.
“There is no relation to recent incidents,” he said.
The change is being made to avoid confusion among U.S. personnel about drink drive limits on various bases, he said.
On Yokota Air Base, the USFJ headquarters, for example, people have been permitted to drive with a BAC below .05, according to the base website.
USFJ was unable to provide data on rates of drink driving or accidents caused by impaired drivers on its bases. However, Hoffman said the number of alcohol-related driving incidents on U.S. installations is very small and that the new policy will probably not result in much change.
“The point… is to standardize the policy across Japan and to bring it in-line with our host nation,” he said.
Customers at a Yokota shopette said they didn’t have an issue with the new limit.
“I drink but I stay at home and drink and don’t drive,” said Air Force spouse Hazel Alde, 29, who was gassing up her Subaru Forester.
Kevin Sorenson, a civilian manager at the Tama Hills Recreation Area for U.S. personnel in Tokyo, said the policy change sounded like a good idea to him, since it means less confusion about the rules.
“Otherwise people will think they can drive on-base and then they will be breaking the law when they get off-base,” he said.
Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Powell, a nondrinker, questioned the timing of the policy change.
“From a political standpoint, we have to have a positive relationship with the Japanese and any incidents cause problems,” he said.
The stricter limit should mean fewer off-base incidents but on-base shuttle services should run longer to help people cope with it, Powell said.
Hoffman said people will have to reevaluate how and when they drink and what strategies they use to get home safely.
“Servicemembers and their families will need to develop plans, just as they would for off-base driving. We expect everybody to behave responsibly whether they are on or off-base. If you drink, don’t drive. If you drive, don’t drink. It’s that simple,” he said.
Any type of alcohol-related driving incident, from a mere violation up to a major accident involving serious injuries or death, results in consequences much more serious than an inconvenience, Hoffman added.
There are no plans to provide additional transport options for people living on-base once the new policy is in place. Various installations have programs to provide safe on-base transport for personnel, he said.
On Yokota, for example, people can call 225-RIDE for free on-base transport by volunteer drivers, he said.
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Twitter: @SethRobson1 |
Former All-Star point guard Deron Williams is in talks with the Brooklyn Nets about securing his potential release this offseason to clear the way for Williams to sign with his hometown Dallas Mavericks, according to league sources.
Sources told ESPN.com that the Nets, whose well-chronicled hope is moving out both Williams and fellow former cornerstone Joe Johnson before the start of next season, have opened buyout talks with Williams on the remaining two years and $43.3 million of his contract.
A buyout, if Williams' representatives and the Nets can come to terms, would be Brooklyn's preference compared to outright waiving the 31-year-old. The Nets have been adamant since the end of the season that they do not want to simply release Williams via the stretch provision, even though it would allow them to pay out his remaining salary over the next five seasons and reduce their luxury-tax bill, as long as such a measure is executed before the Aug. 31 deadline.
Deron Williams passed on a chance to join the Mavs in 2012 but is now angling to secure his release from the Nets to join his hometown team as a free agent, according to league sources. Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
But Brooklyn's attempts to trade Williams have gone nowhere, with what is a very limited trade market seemingly getting thinner. The Sacramento Kings pondered a trade for Williams last season, but it's believed the Kings are no longer interested after striking a one-year, $9.5 million deal in free agency with another former All-Star, Rajon Rondo.
Sources say the Mavericks, by contrast, are very motivated to sign Williams after being spurned in free agency by DeAndre Jordan, provided Williams can extricate himself from the Nets and get to the open market.
The Mavericks, sources said, are not pursuing a trade for Williams because of salary-cap space such a move would eat up.
The Mavs famously lost out to the Nets in a heated recruiting battle for the Dallas-area native in the summer of 2012, but Williams' stock as a Net has declined considerably since he inked that five-year, $99 million deal to stay with Brooklyn. Sources say there is strong mutual interest now, though, between Williams and the Mavericks to come together to try to help each other, provided he becomes a free agent. Dallas has a significant hole at point guard after its failed Rondo experiment, while sources say Williams is eager for a fresh start after four long seasons.
Although there have been steady rumblings in league circles in recent weeks that a return to the Utah Jazz is also a possibility for Williams, sources say Dallas has emerged as his preferred destination, in part because he could reunite with new Mavs guard Wesley Matthews, his former Jazz teammate.
"It's 60 to 70 percent that [Williams] winds up in Dallas," one source told ESPN.com.
Williams averaged just 13.3 points and 6.6 assists per game last season while shooting a career-worst 38.7 percent from the field. But the Nets have to explore every avenue they can to avoid paying luxury tax at the end of the coming season and thus dodge the dreaded "repeater tax."
The Nets have been a luxury-tax payer each of the past two seasons and will have to pay an extra dollar for every dollar spent beyond the league's new $84.7 million tax threshold for next season if they can't move out Williams and/or Johnson to get under.
As ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst reported earlier this month, Brooklyn and the Cleveland Cavaliers have discussed a Johnson trade to the Cavaliers for Brendan Haywood's fully non-guaranteed contract and veteran big man Anderson Varejao. But Cleveland has to date balked at the immense luxury-tax bill it would incur -- inching above the $100 million mark -- by adding Johnson to its stacked roster. |
Girl group 4L (Four Ladies) debuted with a teaser video alluding to lesbian acts.
"Wow... actual underwear... going a bit too far here."".....?""This is wrong..""Hul... I hope it doesn't work out for them, this is getting out of hand..""Are you sure it's not a lingerie pictorial...""I feel bad for girl groups.. They have to expose more skin and go with more sexual images to get the public's attention... I doubt they want this 100% for themselvesㅠ""But they have to do all of that for the public to even care, that's the reality of our country's industry... What a shame..""Could be the one thing that prevents them from getting popular.""Can they even get on broadcast?""Doubt they'll be allowed to perform on music shows..""Stellar was plenty shocking enough...""I'm sure they didn't become singers to do concepts like these..." |
When LA Finfinger and her husband, Paul Wetzel, both certified yoga teachers, moved to Baltimore in January 2015, they decided they wanted to figure out a way to offer studio-level yoga classes for free—and in a nontraditional environment.
Last July, Free Baltimore Yoga (FBY) was born. To date, it offers three classes per week, each in a different setting. Tuesdays are at Patterson Park Youth Sports and Education Center, Wednesdays are at Pixilated Photo Booth’s headquarters in Southwest Baltimore, and Thursdays are at the Parks & People Foundation’s building in Druid Hill Park.
The idea is to bring the practice to those who typically don’t do yoga. And Finfinger encourages novice and skilled yogis alike to attend her classes. “Just show up. You don’t even have to have a yoga mat,” she says. “We have yoga mats. So just take the first step. Don’t be afraid, because we all are.”
FBY is hoping to grow and offer even more classes in the coming months. Finfinger’s goal is to inspire class attendees to become teachers themselves. “The endgame would be training people and then putting them back into the community to teach,” she says.
She would love to add more nights to FBY’s schedule, as well as new locations and different types of yoga, while still keeping it free and fun. “For it to grow, I want it to be something that supports the community, and for that, it has to be people in the community helping and teaching.” |
The third lane in the Victoria Park Tunnel is now open. When using the Victoria Park Tunnel please:
stay a safe distance from the vehicle in front
avoid changing lanes
keep moving.
We have also opened a peak lane, operated by moveable lane barriers, between Fanshawe Street and the Auckland Harbour Bridge. This is the fifth northbound lane through St Marys Bay. It opens by 3.30pm on weekdays and can be accessed from both Fanshawe and Beaumont streets. Watch a video animation showing how the peak lane operates at the Fanshawe Street motorway on-ramp.
The Victoria Park flyover is in a new permanent layout. You need to be in the correct lane for your destination: check our video animation before you drive.
On your drive, be guided by the big green overhead signs. And get into the right lane early – preferably on your approach to the harbour bridge. |
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The supreme court has shown, with it's overturning of a 100 year old Montana law preventing corporate intervention in elections that it is systematically making elections in the US meaningless. When corporations can outbid the people in buying media coverage, when the richest candidate can buy his way into a primary, as Romney did, when foreign money can flood into elections, the supreme court has become an enemy of democracy.
We must fight this every way we can, non-violently.
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Chris Hedges says the way to do it is with protests and civil disobedience. He and Kevin Zeese say, and I totally agree, that electoral politics are a distraction that don't work anymore. Sure, go vote for the lesser of two evils-- there are very few people in America who do not see their vote as such-- but also engage in non-electoral activism.
that's a start. We have to figure out a way to end this reign of terror against democracy, honest voting and the middle class. We cannot stand helplessly, idly by while total scum-- Alito, Scalia, Thomas-- routinely sell out the American people.
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Opednews will do what it can to keep exposing the wrongs, the injustices as well as the courageous acts of activism, protest and civil disobedience. We'll bring new approaches to activism and protest, new ways to share messages and build power. |
The president said new healthcare plan may not arrive until 2018 despite prior timelines, as Republicans face pressure to present alternative before repealing
Donald Trump’s comments on Sunday suggesting that a replacement for Obamacare may not arrive until 2018 coincides with crowds turning out to pressure Republicans not to scrap the system too hastily.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised one of his first actions as president would be to simultaneously repeal and replace the landmark healthcare legislation – a plan that was heartily endorsed by Republican lawmakers.
And as recently as mid-January he told the Washington Post he was near completing a plan which would provide “insurance for everybody”, without revealing details.
How Obamacare could be dismantled by Republicans Read more
But in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday night, Trump said of replacing Obamacare: “In the process and maybe it will take till sometime into next year, but we are certainly going to be in the process. It’s very complicated.”
He continued to say it would “statutorily take a while” to get a new healthcare plan.
“We’re going to be putting it in fairly soon, I think that, yes, I would like to say by the end of the year at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year,” Trump said.
Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of dismantling the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one of Barack Obama’s signature achievements, hours after taking office. But as the government works to tear down the law, polls have shown it is becoming more popular the closer it gets to being repealed.
Joe Antos, a healthcare scholar for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said it was difficult to know whether Trump’s comments were a response to those polls, but he viewed his statements as a positive sign the administration is realizing how long it could take to implement campaign promises.
“I’m taking the more optimistic view that they’ve been talking about what it takes to change the existing law and it’s beginning to become clearer to him and everybody else that it’s just going to take some time,” Antos said.
Last month, Trump said a plan to repeal and replace the health law would be implemented once his pick for health and human services secretary, Georgia representative Tom Price, was sworn in.
“It will be essentially simultaneously,” Trump said on 11 January. “The same day or the same week ... could be the same hour.”
But as that hour approaches – Price could take the office as early as this week – Trump has now steered from his plan to immediately repeal and replace.
In recent weeks, Republican enthusiasm for repealing Obamacare has faced increasing backlash, reflected in the polls and on the streets.
Democrats turn to American people to protect Obamacare from looming repeal Read more
Over the weekend, Republican lawmakers faced jeering crowds at town halls in California and Florida, where constituents voiced their concerns about repealing Obamacare without a substantive alternative in place.
California congressman Tom McClintock had to be escorted out of a town hall meeting for constituents just outside of the state’s capitol, Sacramento, after facing tough questions about the health law.
McClintock had raised his own concerns about his party’s plans in secret recordings obtained by news outlets, including the Guardian.
Repealing key provisions of the ACA would leave 32 million people without health coverage over the next decade, according to an analysis released last month by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Top Senate Republicans such as Lamar Alexander, chairman of the health committee, have hesitated to support an aggressive repeal.
On Monday, Alexander said Congress would vote to repeal and replace the ACA this year, but echoed Trump’s claims that it would be a slow process.
“While we will vote to repeal Obamacare this year, the repeal will take effect when concrete, practical alternatives are in place,” Alexander wrote in a blogpost.
He did not reference Trump’s comments to Fox News in the post. Last week he said: “It is more accurate to say ‘repair Obamacare’.”
Republicans have sought to repeal the health law, which has give 20 million Americans health insurance, since it first debated seven years ago.
“Nobody has any doubt that Trump wants to repeal Obamacare – the key is what is Congress doing about it?” said Dan Holler, vice-president of communications and government relations for Heritage Action for America, a conservative advocacy group.
He said there has not been a strong push by Republicans to get a repeal bill on Trump’s desk, but the delay doesn’t mean repeal won’t happen.
“The repeal is going to happen, but the longer it drags out, the more emboldened the left becomes and the more people in the media write about how Obamacare [replacement] is being delayed,” Holler said. “None of that is good in terms of actually getting good conservative health care policy that actually empowers patients through the congressional process and onto president Trump’s desk.” |
Image caption The government has warned that up to 500,000 Australians are at risk of becoming, or are, problem gamblers.
Australia has unveiled plans to ban television and radio broadcasts of betting odds during live sports matches in a bid to curb problem gambling.
Gambling advertisements will no longer appear during live events and around sporting venues, the government said.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australians had become "increasingly frustrated" with the promotions.
The broadcasting industry is expected to submit a revised code to Australia's media watchdog reflecting the changes.
"From the moment that the players step onto the field, to the moment that they leave the field, there will be no live odds," Ms Gillard told a press conference.
"This is good news for families, because families I think have become increasingly frustrated about the penetration of live odds into sporting coverage."
Under the new rules, advertisements would only be allowed before or after a game, or during a scheduled break in play, such as quarter-time and half-time.
'Focus of game'
Promotion of betting odds by bookmakers who appear to be part of broadcast teams will also be banned.
The National Rugby League, which in the past has allowed bookmakers to give odds during broadcasts, said it agreed with the government's plan.
"The overwhelming sentiment is that we do not want to see betting as the primary focus of our game," NRL chief executive Dave Smith said.
"Fans, and particularly young fans, should not be subject to excessive promotion of betting during matches.
"We want young kids to be enjoying the skills of their favourite team, not quoting the odds."
The broadcasting industry is expected to submit a revised code to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, said the government.
It estimates that up to 500,000 Australians are at risk of becoming, or are, problem gamblers. |
The Navy has successfully tested a laser weapon, with a warship successfully crippling a smaller boat by burning through its engine and igniting it. The test, conducted by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), is an important step toward mounting high-energy lasers on ships as weapons.
Wednesday's test saw the USS Paul Foster take aim at a motoboat and then hit it with a 15-kilowatt (kW) pulse from a solid-state high-energy laser (HEL). Despite four-foot waves and high humidity (which can degrade laser output), the laser managed to hit the boat's engine and ignite it (see video of the test below).
"This is the first time a HEL, at these power levels, has been put on a Navy ship, powered from that ship, and used to defeat a target in a maritime environment," says Peter Morrison, program officer at the ONR, in a press release. "We are learning a ton from this program—how to integrate and work with directed energy weapons."
Such ship-mounted laser cannons could be helpful to ships in situations that require more finesse than today's armaments allow. While typical explosive munitions can be messy and possibly more destructive than necessary, a laser has the advantage of precise targeting and more control over the amount of damage. That could be potentially useful when facing small targets like pirates and aircraft.
The HEL will need to be more powerful for it to be truly effective, though, and the goal of the program is to eventually mount lasers on ships with a destructive output of 100 kW. But for larger targets, like opposing navies, there are even more ambitious plans. The Navy is working on a megawatt laser that's intended to cut through an incredible 2,000 feet of steel per second. The first prototype of that monster won't be ready until 2018, the ONR says.
Unlike the solid-state laser in the recent test, the megawatt laser would be a free-electron design, a much more flexible technology. So far, though, the Navy has only demonstrated an electron injector for the design, which is said to be as large as a football field— making it impossible to mount on any vessel smaller than an aircraft carrier.
Ultimately, the ONR says lasers will serve to complement a warships other weapns, not replace them. In addition, entirely new battle tactics will have to be developed for ship captains to use them effectively.
"From a science and technology point of view, the marriage of directed energy and kinetic energy weapon systems opens up a new level of deterrence into scalable options for the commander," says Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Nevin Carr. "There is still much work to do to make sure it's done safely and efficiently."
For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag. |
“Begin with the end in mind,” is a powerful and simple concept. It’s also frequently misunderstood.
The phrase has been in our cultural lexicon for a few millennia, but Dr. Stephen Covey was (perhaps) the first great popularizer of the concept. It’s one of the key habits in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and, in his framework, the cash value of the principle is that it keeps you future-focused and allows you to script your actions to match the future you’re trying to create.
Dr. Covey uses the phrase in two distinct ways. Here’s the first use:
The most fundamental application of “begin with the end in mind” is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined.
Here’s the second, simpler use: “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination.”
In both cases – and especially in the second case – it’s clear that he’s using end as a terminal end. I’ll refer to this use as “ends as endings.”
With no disrespect to Dr. Covey, this way of understanding “begin with the end in mind” is over-simplistic. Ends are about more than endings – the more accurate way to understand ends is that they’re about the principles behind why you do things.
To see this, consider another common use of the word end. We often ask “do ends justify the means?”, and in this case, it’s quite clear what’s meant: does the reason behind doing what we’re doing justify what we’re doing? This phrase is normally invoked when it seems that we’re doing some unethical action to advance some ethical principle or effect, but it can be asked in contexts outside of ethics just the same. For instance, I’ve often asked you to think about whether the juice is worth the squeeze when you’re trying to save time – it’s the same basic idea that I’ve wrapped in metaphor.
What’s Wrong With “Ends As Endings”?
While I think semantics are important, there are three important reasons why it’s better to understand end in its more complete sense:
“Ends as endings” fails when we can’t see the end. This is especially important for us creatives, because we have the unique and sometimes frustrating capability to change the course of our lives, and, on a larger scale, history. I honestly don’t know what the end of 2013 will look like – I can set intentions, goals, and visions, but the reality is that there’s no end to begin with. I’m busy creating it right now. If we loosen it up a bit, we can ask the question of “what would we like to see happen as a result of this action?,” which may be closer to what Dr. Covey meant. Then we can work backwards so that we have a future-driven plan and that’s quite useful. In some ways, though, understanding “ends as endings” thwarts the very exercise that “begin with the end in mind” is attempting to prompt; at a certain point, we understand that endings are beginnings, so we don’t know where to put a stake in the ground. “Ends as endings” doesn’t account for the many reasons we do things. This is a more critical problem with understanding “ends as endings.” We have many reasons for doing most of the things that matter to us, and focusing on the end (singular) prevents us from seeing possibilities for synergy. An example would be helpful here. Most days, Angela and I eat lunch together, and there are several ends for us doing this: 1) we’re hungry, 2) we want to spend time with each other, 3) we need to take a break from working, and 4) we need to have a mid-day huddle. We can understand “end” here in Dr. Covey’s sense by imagining what we wanted to have accomplished by the end of the meal, as if it were a picture. In that picture, Angela and I would have a shared vision for the rest of the day and be sated physically, socially, and mentally. That sounds like a completely organic way of understanding eating lunch with your spouse, no? As foreign as that description might sound, it’s a powerful way of setting the intention for what we want to happen at our lunches. It’s relatively easy for me to do it now because of the way that I’m wired, but it’s not something that a lot of people can do. Notice that I used the multiple ends to generate the ending, rather than using the ending to generate the ends. In my experience, that’s where people fall down with the end as ending model – since they can’t imagine the ending (#1 above) they can’t imagine the ends. “Ends as endings” focuses on outcomes rather than processes. Starting with “ends as endings” focuses on some outcome of our actions rather than the processes that generate outcomes. When you look at peak performers, what you notice is that they tend to be process-driven rather than outcome-driven, and there’s no coincidence here. You have much more control over what you do than what happens, and if you continue to do processes that lead to success over time, you’ll have a tendency to be more successful. That, by the way, is why strategists almost always win the long game if they can make it through the short game. Their habits, principles, and foundation set the stage for them to build momentum, whereas those without strategy are more subject to the whims of fate, luck, and timing. (Don’t worry, I’ll be writing more on this.)
As a habit (process), “begin with the end in mind” works beautifully. As an understanding, not so much. This distinction is subtle but important.
A New Beginning For Ends
To understand “begin with the end in mind” in its most powerful form, we need to drop “ends as endings” and understand “ends as principles or reasons.” When we do, we can create the beautifully-layered visions and plans that are synergistic, effective, and much more representative of the complexity of our lives.
Since I use “ends” all the time in my natural language and writing, you now know what I mean. When I use begin with the end in mind, I always mean “start with purposes and principles before considering means,” or, less abstractly, “start with the reasons why you’re wanting to do something before moving to the hows, whats, and whens of the matter.”
I hope this helps you get a fresh start with ends. |
Additive manufacturing has been hyped for years. But in 2017 much of its promise materialized: 3-D printing took a series of big steps out of the realm of niche prototyping and into the world of mass manufacturing. Here’s a look at some of the most impressive things 3-D printers made this year, as well as what their creations portend for the future.
Running shoes
Adidas
Through a partnership with additive-manufacturing company Carbon (one of our 50 Smartest Companies of 2017), Adidas has imbued its “speed factories” with the ability to print shoes 90 times faster than before. Carbon’s fast printing technology is being used to manufacture elastomer midsoles for the company’s custom athletic shoes. When the doors of the second speed factory open in Atlanta in 2018, Adidas will be poised to manufacture one million shoes a year using the technique.
Eyeglasses, a bevel gear, and a miniature replica of the MIT dome
MIT
Actually, these small plastic tchotchkes are not particularly impressive—but the speed at which they were created is. MIT researchers made them on a new machine that prints items so fast you’d swear a video of it in action has been sped up. Items that would once have taken hours to make are now down to minutes. The team published the details of its machine, which uses a heat-generating laser and a high–pressure screw mechanism, in the journal Additive Manufacturing in November.
Jet-engine combustion liner
GE
In November GE unveiled its newest metal 3-D printer, as well as a part, called a jet engine combustion liner, printed on the beta version of the machine. Like most metal printers, it uses lasers to transform powder into a solid metal form, but this printer was made with the goal of overcoming size limitations that have dogged previous designs. The combustion liner showed off the size capabilities of the machine: it can print metal parts up to one meter in diameter. When it debuts in 2018, the printer figures to be a centerpiece of the company’s push for 3-D printing to fuel the future of its business. In December, GE also used 3-D-printed metal parts to help set an efficiency record for a natural-gas turbine.
Stronger steel
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
There’s long been a problem with 3-D-printed steel: you have to trade off strength for ductility. This year, though, a team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed an approach that uses a regular laser-sintering printer to control the microscopic grain structure of the metal. This makes it possible to create components with similar ductility to regular stainless steel but twice the strength, and three times that of some previous 3-D-printed types.
Quickly made metal parts
GRANT CORNETT
In April, we reported on Desktop Metal’s revolutionary machines that figure to increase the rate at which metal parts can be printed by a factor of 100. The hydraulic manifold pictured above, which cannot be made through traditional methods, is being processed inside a microwave furnace, which uses temperatures up to 1,400 °C to finish off parts after printing. Printers meant for churning out parts in large-scale production runs are expected to ship in 2018.
Want to explore more about the future of 3-D printing? Check out our recent interactive conversation with entrepreneur Greg Mark. |
One thing I have said for a number of years now is that the disconnect between city and country has grown so wide that you could almost describe it as chalk and cheese. Those in our rural and farming areas know that not much has changed apart from the advancement of technology to make their jobs less laborious. Meanwhile, in the cities, it seems to be a case of me, me, me.
Many people have been drawn to the cities over time due to work, school, etc and therefore only know the city and suburbs. In the cities it seems to be a case of ‘how can I advance myself and get a better outcome for me/ my family?’ as compared to the country, where the general idea is ‘a mate needs a hand, I’m off to help, they’d do the same for me.’
Not that long ago, a great many people that lived in the city still had connections to rural land. “Pack your bags kids, we’re going to the farm this weekend.” Today, it’s the reverse, or at best, “Let’s go glamping!” What the bloody hell is that? You want a five star hotel in the bush?
The gap has grown so wide that city people have no idea where their food actually comes from or what kind of troubles a farmer faces when it comes to stock or crops.
For some of us that live in the city or suburbs, we love getting out and going bush. It’s cathartic to us and we love it. Not all of us that enjoy this are shooters, but the shooters sure do help. We take out feral species that threaten our native fauna and we’re proud to do our bit for the country’s ecology and remove anything from rabbits up to camels. We save farmers and the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum and usually at our own expense.
That’s what I call ‘giving back’!
Meanwhile, back in the cities, where the ‘sanitised’ youth have been raised – they have no idea. The ongoing insanity over the Adler 110 being a prime example. Recently in The Daily Telegraph, they did their ‘Street Talk’ section where they asked random (yeah, right) people their thoughts on the Adler:
Do you notice the average age of these ‘random’ people? Looks to me like 19-24, would that sound right? How much rural contact have they had do you think? How much do you think they know about the plight of landholders? City-centric people have no idea about the issues surrounding farmers. It is no concern for them. Coles & Woolworths stock everything they need!
Let’s have a look at Louise’s comment. “unnecessary trouble” you say? Can you be more specific? Are you aware that the 5 shot version is legal and can also be legally modified? Who will cause this “trouble?” Law Abiding Firearms Owners? I don’t think so. A fact 100% backed up by the Senate Inquiry last year, of which Paul Murray was the only Australian journalist to bother to go and check these facts.
Max says “we haven’t had a massacre in 16 years!” I hope Max isn’t at university, he can’t even count!
Alexis: “This specific gun”? Oh, you mean the Adler? Is it because it’s black? The IAC, Pardus, Uzkon and Chiappas don’t count though, do they?
Dennis was almost close. He said “Why don’t you just leave it as it is?” All shooters would be happy with that, but then, like the ‘sanitised’ people I mentioned earlier, has no bloody idea and states “I just don’t think we need guns.”
All of these people are uneducated in firearms and this is unfortunately often what sways public opinion. People who know nothing, but feel compelled to have a very loud opinion. When was the last time they ‘went bush’?
We have all heard recently that ‘only farmers need these guns’ or ‘farmers & professional shooters have a legitimate reason.’ Sorry, that doesn’t fly with me. As I mentioned earlier, it’s the recreational hunter, who at their expense, assists landholders without reward. Sure, the SSAA run culls occasionally, but that alone won’t do much. The Government reducing the amount of funding to combat pests does less and less each year.
I say to you: who is the most beneficial group of people when it comes to assisting our farmers and country? Who gives the most in return? It is the recreational hunter, who does it for free. To continue to do our job (at no cost) we need the Adler and others of its’ ilk in our arsenal. In fact, we could even go further and demand that Category C firearms be returned to us. The first to whinge in the next rabbit plague will be the Government. “The farmers didn’t do enough!” they’ll cry as the environmentally deleterious 1080 poison is rolled out across affected areas. This in turn will take out many non-target species and our precious fauna will be again at risk.
The above is one possible scenario. Should any firearms owner let the Government get their way because of mass media hysteria?
You know the answer.
Written by a bloke who lives in the suburbs, but loves going bush.
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A pool cue even robots would love
When you play pool, one of the things that screws up your shot is “cue deflection” — when the cue hits the ball so hard it adds unwanted spin. Pros know how to control their shots so well they can avoid this; the rest of amateurs, not so much. To help out us lamers, the folks at Predator decided to make a cue that has a tip so slight in mass that when you take a hard shot, the ball’s mass pushes the cue aside — and not vice versa. They spent a huge amount of time engineering the cue, including splicing it together out of 10 pie-shaped wedges.
Then they built a robot. As the New York Times reports:
To test the Z Shaft’s novel shape, Predator enlisted the aid of Iron Willie, the company’s 70-pound robot. Equipped with an elbow that never tires, Iron Willie was charged with shooting a cue ball toward a piece of carbonless copy paper, moving five millimeters to the right or left and then shooting again - and again and again - until Predator determined exactly how much taper could virtually eliminate cue ball deflection without making the shaft susceptible to fracturing. The shaft is so slender that it produces a fair amount of tactile feedback when it meets the cue ball. After a few hundred games, Z Shaft users can sense the pleasant vibration that indicates a perfectly struck cue ball, versus the rough twitter that accompanies an uneven stroke.
Disqus |
Keeper Commander SDK Gives Developers More Control Over Password Security
Toolkit Provides API / Command-Line Access for Password Rotation, Automation & More
CHICAGO, IL [November 12, 2015]-- Keeper Security, Inc., creator of Keeper, the world's most downloaded password manager and digital vault, announced today the launch of Keeper Commander, a comprehensive open source toolkit that provides IT administrators and developers with command-line and API-level access to their Keeper Enterprise account.
In addition to command-line and API access, Keeper Commander provides password rotation plugins across common platforms such as Active Directory, Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle and more. Keeper Commander's open source plugin architecture provides developers the ability to integrate password rotation into any target system.
By implementing automatic password rotation into key systems, IT admins and developers can prevent passwords from being leaked and used by rogue employees, contractors or anyone with previous access. When a password is rotated in a target system, Keeper distributes the new password to privileged users through a secure, zero-knowledge architecture with multi-factor authentication and native application access.
“Changes made through Keeper Commander instantly propagate to the Keeper users who have access to that specific credential,” said Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security. “When you grant and revoke access or rotate a password it instantly updates to users on their mobile and desktop devices. This control access to highly secure systems by rotating passwords and pushing those credentials to users all happens within the Keeper ecosystem.”
"We wrote the SDK in Python and open-sourced the project on GitHub to make Keeper Commander accessible for IT admins and software developers at all programming skill levels,” said Craig Lurey, CTO and co-founder of Keeper Security. “Developers will appreciate that we’ve wrapped the complex underlying cryptography and provided a simple interface to integrate Keeper into their existing systems. It takes just a few minutes to set up and make use of plugins that have been contributed to the project."
About Keeper Enterprise
Keeper Enterprise is a software platform that provides both password management and secure digital file storage. The platform ensures that employees utilize Keeper to protect the enterprise's most sensitive assets. Keeper Enterprise is a zero-knowledge platform that utilizes the industry's strongest security protocols including 256-bit AES encryption, two-factor authentication and PBKDF2 key generation while also having the industry's strongest certifications -- SOC 2, TRUSTe, Qualys and HIPAA. The newest version of Keeper Enterprise (v2.0) enhances functionality around file sharing, user provisioning, auditing, reporting and delegated administration to serve the needs of Global 2000 organizations. Over 3,000 businesses now use Keeper Enterprise to protect and safeguard their most confidential and sensitive information. To learn more, visit https://keepersecurity.com/enterprise.html. |
In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations in which the public has become largely numb to new surveillance disclosures, the Canadian reports over the past week will still leave many shocked and appalled. It started with the Ontario Provincial Police mass text messaging thousands of people based on cellphone usage from nearly a year earlier (which is not government surveillance per se but highlights massive geo-location data collection by telecom carriers and extraordinary data retention periods), continued with the deeply disturbing reports of surveillance of journalists in Quebec (which few believe is limited to just Quebec) and culminated in yesterday’s federal court decision that disclosed that CSIS no longer needs warrants for tax records (due to Bill C-51) and took the service to task for misleading the court and violating the law for years on its metadata collection and retention program.
The ruling reveals a level of deception that should eliminate any doubts that the current oversight framework is wholly inadequate and raises questions about Canadian authorities commitment to operating within the law. The court found a breach of a “duty of candour” (which most people would typically call deception or lying) and raises the possibility of a future contempt of court proceeding. While CSIS attempted to downplay the concern by noting that the data collection in question – metadata involving a wide range of information used in a massive data analysis program – was collected under a court order, simply put, the court found that the retention of the data was illegal. Further, the amount of data collection continues to grow (the court states the “scope and volume of incidentally gathered information has been tremendously enlarged”), leading to the retention of metadata that is not part of an active investigation but rather involves non-threat, third party information. In other words, it is precisely the massive, big data metadata analysis program feared by many Canadians.
The court ruling comes after the Security Intelligence Review Committee raised concerned about CSIS bulk data collection in its latest report and recommended that that inform the federal court about the activities. CSIS rejected the recommendation. In fact, the court only became aware of the metadata retention due to the SIRC report and was astonished by the CSIS response, stating that it “shows a worrisome lack of understanding of, or respect for, the responsibilities of a party [SIRC] benefiting from the opportunity to appear ex parte.”
There is little no reason to believe that the issues raised by the court or the revelations regarding surveillance on journalists – an act that undermines the freedom of the press and its ability to hold government to account – are isolated incidents. In fact, this is not the first time the federal court has felt misled about the activities of Canadian intelligence agencies. Justice Richard Mosley, a federal court judge, issued a stinging rebuke to Canada’s intelligence agencies and the Justice Department in 2013, ruling that they misled the court when they applied for warrants to permit the interception of electronic communications. While the government steadfastly defended its surveillance activities by maintaining that it operated within the law, Justice Mosley, a former official with the Justice Department who was involved with the creation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, found a particularly troubling example where this was not the case.
This week’s metadata case involves CSIS, but this year’s report from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) commissioner uses legal language seemingly designed to obscure an otherwise clear admission that there are ongoing metadata violations within the CSE. The report notes that metadata activities were “generally conducted in compliance with operational policy” and that the “CSE has halted some metadata analysis activities” that were the subject of previous criticisms. The use of words like “generally” and “some” are no accident. The CSE Commissioner could have just as easily written that the CSE still does not conduct its metadata activities in full compliance with the law and that it has refused to stop some activities that were the subject of complaints. Yet the soft framing turns what should be a major story and source of concern into something largely ignored by the general public.
Moreover, Snowden has made it clear that Canadian securities agencies have been enthusiastic participants in numerous surveillance initiatives. Canadians played a lead role in projects focused on tracking travellers using airport Wi-Fi networks, monitoring millions of daily uploads and downloads to online storage sites, aggregating millions of emails sent by Canadians to government officials, and targeting mobile phones and app stores to implant spyware.
Meanwhile, all Canadian telecommunications companies still do not release transparency reports (Bell being the notable outlier), securities agencies won’t disclose their own breaches, and the federal government is consulting on the expansion of interception capabilities within Canadian networks and the revival of lawful access rules.
There are no silver linings here. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale responded to the court ruling by stating:
“In matters of security and intelligence, Canadians need to have confidence that all the departments and agencies of the government of Canada are being effective at keeping Canadians safe, and equally, that they are safeguarding our rights and freedoms.”
In light of what we now know, Canadians simply cannot be confident that security intelligence agencies are safeguarding and respecting our rights and freedoms. This government was elected on a mandate of real change. It must now put those words into action by overhauling legal oversight and enacting real change to Canadian surveillance programs and their agencies. |
Pininfarina unveiled their new prototype electric car today, called the Nido EV the car is designed to be a modular test bed for future electric vehicles. The Nido EV was designed at Pininfarina’s Style and Engineering Centre in Cambiano, Turin (Italy) and is designed to be a highly modular vehicle that can be re-jigged from a 2 door city car, to a 2+2 hatchback, into a light van and everything else in between.
The Nido EV features a 30Kw electric motor, a 21kWh battery system giving the car about a 87 mile (140 kilometer) range on a full charge. The little blue car can manage 0-60mph in 6.7 seconds (actually pretty good for the vehicle genre). With obvious similarities to the Smart Car and the Mitsubishi MiEV the Nido EV is clearly targeting the short range city mobility market.
This would probably be a perfect car for someone who either lives in a large city or within 50 miles of one, long range driving wouldn’t be an option but cars like the Nido EV would probably cover the overwhelming majority of most peoples day to day driving needs.
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Via Treehugger
Official Pininfarina Nido EV Press Release
Source: Pininfarina
Class: PRESS RELEASE
SYNOPSIS: Tubural steel frame esigned to adapt to four different, completely electric or hybrid vehicles: 2-seater, 2+2, pickup and light van.
To mark the celebrations of its 80th anniversary, Pininfarina unveils the Nido EV, the first running prototype of the “Nido Development Programme”, the project for an electric car conceived, designed and built entirely by the Pininfarina Style and Engineering Centre of Cambiano (Turin). The Nido EV bears witness to the skills and experience that Pininfarina has built up in the development of electric vehicles, paying particular attention to the Segment A city cars that will populate the streets of the future to make our towns more pleasant to live in.
The Nido EV is one outcome of the pioneering, far-sighted decision taken by Pininfarina three years ago, to focus on sustainable mobility, approaching it from various angles: not only the adoption of a hybrid or electric driveline, but also research focusing on reducing consumption and “wheel to wheel” emissions, the use of alternative materials that are lighter and recyclable, active and passive safety, and IT, which will have to combine the sustainable use of means of transport with intelligent traffic management.
The exterior design of the Nido EV takes up and updates the lines and volumes that won the Nido of 2004 the award for the Most Beautiful Car in the World in the Prototypes and concept cars category, the Compasso d’Oro 2008 and a place in the temple of modern art, the MoMA of New York. On the other hand, the interiors of this first Nido EV project are still those of a technical prototype, with no attempt at stylistic research.
The Nido EV is a veritable laboratory designed both to explore the electrification of a small city car and to develop a modular floorpan. The body structure of this first prototype is a tubular steel frame, while the final version will have an aluminium space frame. The structure was designed to adapt to four different, completely electric or hybrid vehicles: 2-seater, 2+2, pickup and light van.
The Nido EV, a small city car (marginally larger than a Smart), has 2 seats and a permanent magneto rear engine. The “Nido Development Programme” also envisages the development of two more, slightly larger versions: the first will be a hybrid with an endothermic engine positioned at the front and an electrical engine at the rear; the second will be electric with a front engine. In both cases, the position of the engine makes it possible to increase roominess to seat 4, and to improve weight distribution. The Nido EV prototype is powered by a Zebra Z5 Ni-NaCl battery, which guarantees very high levels of safety and reliability. When fully charged, it has a range of 140 km and a top speed of 120 km/h (limited electronically), and accelerates 0-60 km/h in 6.7 seconds. The environmental compatibility of the Zebra Z5 battery is enhanced by the total absence of harmful or polluting chemical substances and the fact that it is 100% recyclable at the end of its life, in fact the batteries are recycled in the foundry and used to produce stainless steel. The prototype is also equipped with “green” tyres, developed by Pirelli paying particular attention to safety, environmental sustainability and saving.
Where climate control is concerned, the “Nido Development Programme” will use an AC electrical compressor and a high voltage electric heater making it possible to implement automatic control strategies which will help to reduce consumption in most conditions. The Programme will also cover research into solutions and light-weight components with a high mechanical/electrical efficiency, and energy saving solutions (batteries with outstanding charging performance) and braking systems specifically for hybrid/electrical applications.
Pininfarina aims to become the benchmark in Italy, and further afield, for sustainable mobility, just as it has been a global benchmark for style for the last 80 years, always investing in research and development programmes to tackle problems as they emerge in the motor industry rapidly and methodically.
During the energy crisis of the 1970s, for example, the industry concentrated on aerodynamics and alternative sources of energy to reduce petrol consumption. Pininfarina replied by developing the CNR Energetica 1 prototype, with ideal aerodynamic bodywork. Those years also produced the Ecos, the first electric car developed by Pininfarina, underlining that it was on the cutting edge in an area that the motor industry had only begun to reassess recently. In the 1980s, Pininfarina research into the application of light materials resulted in the Audi Quartz and Lancia Hit prototypes, which explored the use of new and lighter metallic and compound materials. The 1990s brought greater understanding of environmental problems, more research in the field of recyclable materials and ergonomics, and a more efficient concept of how to “package” the vehicle. Pininfarina offered new solutions with the Ethos macro-project, a family of 3 cars with an aluminium chassis, recyclable resin bodywork and an innovative combustion engine with reduced emissions, building up to the Ethos 3EV in 1995, another zero emissions car. More recently, Pininfarina has focused its research on hybrid vehicles, with the Eta Beta and Metrocubo projects, two small cars with modular cabins that also tackle the problems of driving in town and on medium hauls. Then, in 2004, Pininfarina returned to the issue of safety, which it had touched on with the Sigma, Alfa Romeo P33 and Sigma Grand Prix prototypes, and in 2008 it proposed the Sintesi, a futuristic concept car powered by 4 fuel cells (one per wheel).
Today, with the new global crisis and the need to curb emissions and consumption, the opportunities offered by zero emissions urban mobility have grown significantly: the world is increasingly aware of the environment, and Pininfarina was the first industrial company in Italy, and one of the first in Europe, to propose a project for a 100% electric car, the BlueCar, developed jointly with the Bolloré company. Today, when all the large carmakers view the electric car as an opportunity, Pininfarina takes another step forward, promoting a new philosophy that incorporates the choice of individual and collective electric transport in the context of a new lifestyle that everyone should adopt in order to increase energy saving, and protect the planet. This is why sustainable mobility has become one of the pillars underpinning the Group’s activities. And it is also why the new Nido EV project is now being launched, in parallel with the BlueCar.
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This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the final employment situation report of Barack Obama’s term as president, revealing that the American economy added a net of 156,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis. It was, like most of the past several years’ worth of jobs reports, a pretty thoroughly average one — one that is in many ways entirely unworthy of the tumultuous political situation that serves as its backdrop.
It means that as Donald Trump takes over the steering wheel of the ship of state, he finds himself in an unusual position for a new president: The economy is fine.
It’s not great, it’s not amazing, it certainly features lots of pockets of serious problems, and it’s certainly possible to raise concerns about generations-long trends. But in a basic, brass tacks, short-term sense, it’s fine. Obama took office in the middle of a three-alarm economic emergency, featuring hundreds of thousands of net job losses a month. George W. Bush took office in the midst of a stock market crash, a series of unraveling fraud scandals, and a recession that, while relatively mild, was nonetheless quite real and painful. The unemployment rate when Bill Clinton got elected was 7.4 percent — up 0.4 percentage points from where it had been a year ago — and it was 7.5 percent when Ronald Reagan won.
You have to look to George H.W. Bush (5.3 percent and falling) to see a comparably benign climate greeting the election of a new president. But, of course, Bush ran and won largely promising continuity with his Republican Party predecessor whereas Trump has promised a sharp break with Obama’s policies.
One reason that it’s unusual to see a new party take over during such a relatively benign economic climate is that it’s also unusual for the candidate who wins the election to get 2.5 million fewer votes than his main opponent and have an underwater favorable rating. But there are also a lot of black flies in the chardonnay of the Obama economy — which added jobs at a decent clip but never experienced strong “bounce back” from a disastrous recession, featured consistently sluggish wage growth, and saw a broad decline in labor force participation.
Trump says he can do better. Here’s a look back to help set a baseline and see if he can do it.
The Obama labor market by the numbers
Economic data is collected on a month-by-month basis, and presidents take office inconveniently in the middle of January. But since January 1, 2009, the United States has:
Added an average of 66,000 jobs per month, a distinctly unimpressive number due to the massive job losses in the first 18 months of his tenure. In Obama’s second term, the economy added 211,000 jobs per month.
Increased average hourly wages by $4.
Had the unemployment rate fall from 7.8 percent to 4.7 percent.
At the same time, the employment to population ratio — the share of employed people relative to the overall population — fell 1 percentage point and remains well below where it was before the Great Recession and even further below where it was at the height of the 1990s stock market boom.
A very large share of this, however, is accounted for by demographics. Older people are much less likely to work, and the population is getting older. If we restrict attention to “prime age” workers between the ages of 25 and 54 we see that the ratio has risen somewhat under Obama, though it still remains below where it was when the recession first struck.
The United States is, of course, a very large country, and there has been a considerable amount of unevenness in the state of the economy. Regional variation surely plays into the political system somehow or another. But contrary to some post-election myth-making, there’s little sign that the labor market is especially weak in states that were crucial to Trump’s election.
The 5.7 percent unemployment rate in Pennsylvania, for example, might have something to do with his narrow victory in a key Hillary Clinton firewall state, but the place with the strongest Obama-to-Trump swing was Iowa, whose 3.8 percent jobless rate is well below average.
Trump will struggle to surpass Obama’s rate of job creation
The upshot of all of this is that as long as present trends roughly continue, Trump is set to easily surpass Obama’s levels in terms of American living standards.
On the campaign trail, he made a lot of hay out of the factoid that inflation-adjusted median household income was still below the 1999 peak, arguing that this meant Americans “hadn’t had a raise” in almost 20 years. In fact, the Census Bureau definition of income that this talking point is based on suffers from a variety of flaws (notably including the way it ignores the rising share of retirees in the population) and the typical family is almost certainly better off today than it was in 1999. But statistical quibbles aside, it would only take a very small improvement in the Census numbers for Trump to be able to announce later this year that median household income has reached an all-time high.
Meanwhile, little attention was paid this fall when median wages for full-time workers reached their all-time peak, a level from which they have subsequently continued improving, but getting people to pay attention to flattering information seems like the kind of thing Trump will likely be very good at.
Where Trump is going to struggle is to match the rate at which the economy has been improving since the labor market bottomed-out in 2010. And this matters a lot politically. The closer an economy gets to full employment, the slower we would expect to see it add jobs.
The Obama White House’s Council of Economic Advisors has a chart that shows this in action already, with the 12-month moving average of job creation trending downward throughout the past year.
Of particular note in this regard is the Federal Reserve. The Fed dropped interest rates down to zero during the financial crisis, and then proved willing — but, crucially, somewhat reluctant — to engage in additional extraordinary measures like quantitative easing to boost the economy.
Under those zero interest rate conditions there was an opportunity for things like fiscal stimulus or trade policy to boost aggregate demand and create jobs. At the moment, however, though interest rates remain low, the Fed is in the process of raising them in response to an improved labor market. In effect, this means Janet Yellen and her colleagues are putting a ceiling on demand-side job creation.
To accelerate growth, Trump would need to improve the economy’s overall productivity. That certainly might happen, but nobody is really sure how to pull it off, and Trump is committed to ideas like trade wars with China and Mexico and a stepped-up pace of deportations that are likely to accomplish the opposite.
Wage gains are the great hope
Employment gains will likely slow down as the economy reaches full employment. On the flip side, workers who already have a job should see greater bargaining power. That could mean more rapid growth in the average hourly wages that employers need to pay.
Indeed, a trend in that direction already seems to be underway, with wage growth picking up over the past year.
The Fed is a constraint here, too, in terms of how much faster they will allow wages to rise. But Obama’s average on this score is fairly dismal, and all Trump needs is steadiness to outdo the Obama average.
Of course, there might be a recession
On the other hand, as Josh Zumbrun argued in a pair of Wall Street Journal articles published in October, there are decent odds that Trump will find himself presiding over a recession.
The current expansion cycle, which began in June of 2009, is the fourth-longest on record. If it were to extend all the way until Election Day 2020, it would be the longest one ever. Which is exactly why most economists surveyed by the Journal expect it won’t happen.
That’s not because the economic expansion will necessarily “die of old age” simply for having gone on a long time. The issue is simply that in any given year there is some chance of a recession, and the economy isn’t going to dodge those odds forever.
Specifically, according to the San Francisco Fed, there’s about a 23 percent chance of a recession in any given year. That adds up to a 65 percent chance of a recession happening at some point during any given four-year span. That math tells us nothing about the likely depth or severity of any such recession or the speed with which the economy might bounce back. But the risk that one could happen, though largely neglected at the moment, is very real — and if it does, it would likely ruin Trump’s chances of improving on his predecessor’s economic record. |
Just as I love reading cookbooks I also love going into grocery stores frozen sections and looking at their prepackaged meals for ideas. I recently found a package of Polenta Provencale with Peas and Spinach in a Spicy Cream Sauce. I took a picture of the ingredients which included creme fraiche and cheese and set out to make my own. Not sure what it should have tasted like but it turned out delicious. This is not a low-fat meal by any means but if you have friends that think they couldn’t live without dairy this dish might change their mind!
I had made extra so I would have left overs for lunch but Hubby wasn’t going to let that happen. He has been craving Alfredo sauce for a long time and this definitely filled that void. I had this butterfly pasta for a while that the Little Vegan had really wanted to use so I opted for that instead of the polenta.
Notes:
*The little vegan liked the blended raw portion of the sauce and ate it over her pasta.
*If you don’t want the spice leave out the cayenne.
*As is the spice was very mellow, adding flavor rather than bite. If you want more of a bite add more but I would recommend doing it a little at a time.
*I would recommend sticking with garlic powder rather than fresh garlic for its subtle flavor.
Ingredients:
2 cups heavy cashew cream
1 roma tomato
1 tbs miso
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 cup Braggs liquid aminos (tamari would work)
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced sweet onion
1 carrot thinly sliced
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp basil
1/4 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp or more of cayenne (optional)
1/2 cup diced red, yellow or orange bell pepper
1 cup frozen peas – defrosted
1 cup frozen spinach – defrosted
2 tbsp vegan butter
1 tbsp flour
1 lb pasta
Directions:
Put ingredients from cashew cream to Braggs in blender and blend until creamy. Set aside.
In a large frying pan saute onion, carrot, garlic, basil, thyme, salt and cayenne until carrot is tender and onion is translucent (about 10 minutes.)
Start water for pasta and cook once it is ready.
Add bell pepper, peas, spinach and butter to the onion mixture. Once butter has melted add flour and stir in gently as to not smash the peas. Cook for 10 minutes on medium-low. After 10 minutes reduce heat to low and add cashew cream mixture and stir gently until well blended. Once pasta is finished serve with sauce.
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Charles de Gaulle, president of France and architect of the country's Fifth Republic, has been revealed as a surprise contender for the 1963 Nobel prize for literature.
The Swedish Academy keeps all information about nominations and selections for the literature Nobel secret until 50 years have passed. Newly opened archives in Sweden show De Gaulle was one of 80 individuals suggested for the 1963 honour, alongside more obvious candidates including Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett and WH Auden.
Also in the running were the Greek poet – and eventual winner – Giorgos Seferis, the Japanese novelist, poet and playwright Yukio Mishima, the Jewish German poet Nelly Sachs and the Danish-born novelist Aksel Sandemose, the Swedish Academy has revealed. Seferis, Auden and Neruda were the three final contenders, with Seferis the unanimous choice of the judges that year.
The archives show that the Academy's permanent secretary, Anders Österling, felt "that there now was an opportunity to pay a beautiful tribute to modern Hellas, a language area that so far had been waiting too long [to be] honored in this context", and Seferis's eventual citation praised the poet's "eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture".
Beckett had drawn concerns from judges over whether his writing "corresponds to the idealistic intentions of the Nobel prize in literature" – the award is intended to go to "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction". Österling, an article in Svenska Dagbladet reveals, felt Beckett's work was negative and nihilistic, writing that he "would almost consider a Nobel prize for him as an absurdity in his own style". He also rejected nominee Vladimir Nabokov, according to Svenska Dagbladet, citing Lolita as an "immoral" work.
The Waiting for Godot author went on to win the Nobel prize for literature in 1969, and Neruda was named laureate in 1971, but Auden and Nabokov never won the award. Neither did De Gaulle, author of a trilogy of war memoirs. But "don't laugh too hard" at the French general's nomination, advised MA Orthofer at literary blog the Complete Review: "just a decade earlier they'd ridiculously awarded the prize to … Winston Churchill", citing his "his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". |
THIS IS NDPR'S LAST REVIEW FOR 2014.
WE WILL RESUME PUBLICATION ON JANUARY 11, 2015
BEST WISHES FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON TO ALL OUR READERS!
Bad news: much of what you say as a philosopher is concretely empty. Yes, you, even if you do not work in metaphysics: Peter Unger's target is 'mainstream philosophy' of the past fifty years and, whilst he sets aside wholly normative claims, he makes plain their prospects are also dim (24). So a reviewer must establish what Unger means by 'concretely empty', before examining his reasons for thus classifying most of what philosophers-these-days say.
An idea or thought (something expressed by a sentence) is concretely empty iff it is concretely insubstantial, i.e., it doesn't say anything substantial about concrete reality. Such a thought 'doesn't delineate any ways for concreta to be from any other such ways' and is 'empty of import for, or as regards to, concrete reality' (6). Mathematical thoughts, likewise, are concretely empty. But mathematics is nevertheless worthwhile, for a couple of reasons: unlike philosophy, mathematics has never aspired to concrete substantiality, and moreover mathematics is synthetic, rather than analytic.
For Unger, conceptual truths and conceptual falsehoods are analytic, and they are 'conceptually empty' (so, very roughly, a thought is concretely empty iff it is not about concreta, but it is conceptually empty iff it is about concepts . . . ). He claims that many philosophical thoughts are concretely empty because they are conceptually empty.
Other philosophical claims are concretely substantial, but only because they are 'utterly parochial'. I infer from Unger's examples that these claims are typically, perhaps always, about the proper use of natural language words (or maybe about concepts). So it is concretely substantial yet utterly parochial to note that if someone says 'I believe there is a table in front of me', she may be correct even if there is no table in front of her, and to note that 'perceive' is used differently. But if we use these words (or concepts), rather than mention them, we easily tip over into conceptual emptiness. So the thought that someone can believe there is a table in front of her even if there is no table in front of her is an empty thought; likewise the thought that perception differs from belief in this regard. And these are the sort of empty thoughts which dominate mainstream philosophy.
All is not lost, however. There is an area of philosophy in which we find non-parochial yet concretely substantial thoughts: metaphysics of the most ambitious type. For example,
subjective idealism, (at least something like) a Berkeleian idea, delineates a certain way for concrete reality to be from certain other ways, saliently from any way that a materialist thesis would favour, with the former favouring ways where every concrete item is mental and non-material, and with the latter delineating things quite differently. (19)
Another example: the Lewisian thought that there are concrete entities not spatio-temporally related to one another. The category of concretely substantial thoughts also includes some (by no means all) of Unger's previously-published thoughts, e.g., his Interactionist Dualism (40), a.k.a. 'Dualist Interactionism' (41). As Unger makes clear, 'concretely substantial' does not mean 'empirically verifiable'. His call is not for us to abandon philosophy, but for us to get back to our concretely substantial roots.
There have been a number of recent critiques of contemporary metaphysics in particular (Callender 2011 is unusually illuminating). One type of critique begins with the thought that metaphysicians who deny, e.g., the everyday truth that there are tables are confusedly trying to speak a specially revelatory 'language of the seminar room'. Another type of critique begins with the allegedly culpable neglect of contemporary science by contemporary metaphysicians. These critiques can pull in different directions: the metaphysics we are likely to get from modern physics will not straightforwardly vindicate everyday truths. But in places, Unger seems to have some sympathy with each of these lines of attack, as applied to a wider swathe of philosophy.
Regarding the former, Unger allows that amongst the conceptually empty thoughts, some are correct, and others incorrect. (I don't think anything hangs on 'correct/incorrect' versus 'true/false'.) At several points, Unger engages in what looks like standard philosophical argumentation for or against a claim he regards as conceptually and concretely empty. For example, he advocates incompatibilism about free choice and determinism, argues that coincident statue and lump are two distinct objects, and seems to reject externalism about the content of language and thought. As I read him, Unger takes his views to be something like the commonsense position. This would fit with the idea that such debates concern our ordinary concepts free choice, statue, talking about and thinking about. Indeed, if you are happy to conceive of your philosophical method as conceptual analysis, or perhaps some kind of conceptual examination, then there isn't much in this book to disturb you (beyond the disparaging 'empty' coinage), although Unger will be saddened by your lack of ambition and your break with pre-positivist philosophical tradition.
Regarding the latter type of critique, Unger suggests that, 'during the next century or so', if there is to be any prospect of novel concretely substantial philosophical thoughts then
some of the most intelligent and philosophically talented young people must become serious scientists, contributing a great deal to the science in which they are involved and, what's more, contributing at least about as much to science as they contribute to philosophy. (239)
(For now, approximately only Tim Maudlin has any hope of doing anything worthwhile.)
The key question is whether Unger manages to establish that the mainstream philosophical claims he discusses are merely conceptual truths (or falsehoods), in a sense which would entail that they lack substantial consequences for concrete reality, in a sense which would have negative consequences for our practice of philosophy. And the reviewer's key difficulty is that, beyond the 'delineation' idea, we get little detail about the notion of concrete (in)substantiality. After just a few lines of introduction, Unger writes 'As I expect, you'll have gotten the hang of what I'm after' (6).
And of course we can get a rough picture of what he has in mind. But if we are to engage properly, reflectively, fruitfully, if we are to compare Unger's views with other critiques of contemporary philosophy, then we need more than just a rough picture. Any precision has to be extrapolated from what Unger says, and cannot just be read off his pages. After all, plenty of the 'concretely empty thoughts' mentioned are at least prima facie about the concrete world (if they were literally about concepts, they'd be substantive but parochial), some of them are existence claims, and Unger acknowledges that some are true and some are false. What are the grounds for thinking they are merely analytic and lack 'import' for the concrete world? And do we need to be concerned about lack of import in this sense anyway? For Unger, mathematics has no import for concrete reality, presumably because its subject matter is abstract reality. But I'm guessing he accepts that mathematics often has practical utility, indeed more so than the speculative metaphysics which he regards as concretely substantive.
For what follows I'll engage with what struck me as some interesting ideas, but with little confidence that these are the ideas Unger wants us to engage with. In truth, I think he simply finds it obvious that most contemporary philosophy is nothing but sophistry and illusion, and so assumes that he only need show the reader some examples of such philosophy in order to persuade her to commit them to the flames.
In earlier work, Unger discusses and rejects the doctrine of Scientiphicalism, a kind of microphysicalism which can be spelt out in a range of different ways. In the present book, the doctrine is described as both 'orthodoxy' and 'concretely substantial' (32), so serves as an illustration of non-empty philosophical thought. And, although Unger doesn't quite say this, he can be read as making a deeper point, that mainstream philosophers' adherence to Scientiphicalism explains why so many of their other philosophical thoughts are concretely empty. Scientiphicalism entails that my microphysical duplicate (e.g., Swampme) does not differ in any significant way from me -- the differences between us are empty of import, one might say. So the thoughts that my duplicate cannot remember my college days, that Swampme cannot desire water when first created, and that my Twin Earth duplicate does not think about water -- all these thoughts are themselves empty of import, concretely empty, as Unger claims. And the negations of those thoughts are apparently equally empty.
If this really is Unger's point, then it's a very interesting one. (If I were pursuing it myself, I'd think about supervenience, reduction and elimination, and about more and less fundamental layers of reality -- maybe to delineate reality, to say something of import, something substantial, is to say something about what's fundamental? -- though I suspect my thoughts would then be empty by Unger's lights.) But at the same time it undermines the project of the book: the philosophical thoughts of semantic externalists, and of semantic internalists, are empty if Scientiphicalism is true. But the truth of Scientiphicalism is a concretely substantial issue. So whether Putnam's, Davidson's and Kripke's philosophical thoughts are concretely empty is a concretely substantial matter. And of course Unger thinks that Scientiphicalism is false. So perhaps I have misread the significance of the discussion of Scientiphicalism.
Unger's discussion of compatibilism and incompatibilism is also suggestive. Here are two concretely substantial claims: present events are fully determined by events which occurred long ago (Determinism); we choose amongst actually available options for action (Choice). Here is a concretely empty claim: if we choose our actions, then they are not fully determined by events long ago (Incompatibilism). According to Unger, 'Though it's concretely empty, philosophers do, and should, seriously consider this Incompatibilism . . . [which is an] interesting empty thought' (31). (An interesting empty thought!) Is Incompatibilism empty because it is a conditional, not a categorical claim? If so, then emptiness may not be such a bad thing. After all, we can combine a substantive claim like Determinism with a conditional like Incompatibilism, to derive another substantive claim, i.e., the negation of Choice: thus Incompatibilism together with Determinism seem to delineate a way for concrete reality to be, even if we think that a conditional cannot have import for reality in isolation. Another group of concretely empty thoughts are also conditionals, of the form 'if there are particles arranged tablewise, then there's a table' (chapter 6). But not all empty thoughts are conditional, it seems, so conditionality can't be crucial.
Sometimes emptiness seems to reflect a kind of conceptual contingency: we use a certain concept, but could easily have used a nearby, somewhat different concept to express truths, so (?) the truths we express using our actual concept are not of great significance. This line can be read into chapter 5, where Unger discusses persistence conditions for material objects, and points out the great variety of persistence conditions and thus types of 'extraordinary' objects we might be concerned with, but in fact ignore. This reminded me of Ernest Sosa (2005) on conceptual and ontological relativity, and to some extent the work of Eli Hirsch and Alan Sidelle; but again this can't quite be right, since although Unger rightly praises both Hirsch and Sidelle, he unequivocally classes Sidelle's work as 'empty'.
At points, I wondered whether scepticism about the possibility of philosophical explanation -- and thus scepticism about inference to the best explanation in philosophy -- lay behind Unger's critique. After a lengthy quotation from Kit Fine on the importance of explaining sortal differences, he says, 'How might I help those enamored of such ideas abandon them?' (120, see also 125) And later: 'I see no reason to think that a more economical or more unified theory (of these concretely empty matters) is more likely to be correct.' (168). Those who take philosophical explanation more seriously might well think that explaining some feature of concrete reality was one way of having import for concrete reality.
Finally, Empty Ideas has many aspects the reader will experience as endearingly entertaining quirks, or as irritatingly privileged indiscipline, depending on mood. (UK readers may be reminded of Russell Brand.) The repeated references to the thoughts of leading philosophers (Lewis, Kripke, Davidson, Putnam, Fine) as 'empty' don't really grate, since Unger also takes much of his own earlier work -- and stretches of this very book -- to be empty. But the verbiage is wearying. For example, the well-known puzzle case about a statue and a piece of copper which coincide throughout their lifespans is introduced with a full page about the sculptor Art Garfinkel, Art's dealer who takes a 50% cut, the billionaire art collector in his penthouse apartment, and the nuclear explosion which triggers the denouement (110-11). Footnotes read like dictaphone notes-to-self: 'Already given in this chapter's first notes, I'll remind us of this book's publication details' (63 n22); 'on my desk now is a fairly new book [on this topic]' (57); 'Several sections of [this paper] are reprinted in the anthology used for metaphysics courses I've taught' (193); 'As all the world knows, Reasons and Persons was first published by Oxford University Press in 1984' (194).
Emails from NYU colleagues are quoted at length. Nineteen different Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles are mentioned, often merely as a vehicle for Unger's apparent bemusement at the sheer volume of 'empty' literature those articles cite. In the gobsmackingest footnote, this bemusement gets fatally entangled with the issue of gendered citation practices. Unger announces he 'will now do [his] bit to cite some very able women' (we're at page 124 n13), then discusses survey articles by two female authors. Concluding that 'it is not because almost all the most prominent mainstreamers are male philosophers that recent and current mainstream philosophy is so terribly replete with empty ideas' (125), the note finishes by listing, counting, and comparing citations to women within these two survey articles. As I expect, you'll have gotten the hang of what I'm after.
REFERENCES
Callender, Craig (2011): 'Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science' The Continuum Companion to Philosophy of Science, edited by Steven French and Juha Saatsi, Continuum: 33-54.
Sosa, Ernest (2005): 'Ontological and Conceptual Relativity and the Self', Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, edited by Michael J. Loux and Dean W. Zimmerman, Oxford University Press: 665-89. |
When we tried out Acer's C7 Chromebook, we liked the price, but some aspects of the build let it down. Now, the firm's updated the line with a new model -- the C710-2605. This time the price goes up to $299, but for your money you get twice the RAM (4GB) a bigger hard drive (500GB) as well as an improved battery (now 5,000 mAh). The form factor remains the same -- at 11.6 inches -- along with the same 1,366 x 768 display and 1.10GHz Celeron chip as before. Other features include WiFi in a/b/g and n flavours, a built in webcam, three USB ports, HDMI, VGA and Ethernet LAN. Of course, Chrome OS was designed for the cloud, so you'll get 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years thrown into the deal as well. Surprised by the stealth release? So were we, but the good news is, it looks like you can pick one up right away for the afore mentioned asking price, just head on over to the source. |
Despite making progress on "bread and butter" issues, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said differences remain between Canada and the U.S. on a number of key chapters of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Speaking to reporters as the fifth round of negotiations concluded in Mexico City, the Toronto-area minister said "significant" sticking points include the U.S. push to change the rules of origin — which could be detrimental to the Canadian auto industry — and demands for a five-year sunset clause in the deal.
"There are some areas where some extreme proposals have been put forward, and these are proposals that we simply cannot agree to," she said, while adding the U.S. position of these contentious issues, which were introduced in earlier rounds of negotiations, are largely unchanged.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer issued a statement expressing similar pessimism Tuesday, saying he remains concerned with the "lack of headway" on some issues.
"Thus far, we have seen no evidence that Canada or Mexico are willing to seriously engage on provisions that will lead to a rebalanced agreement. Absent rebalancing, we will not reach a satisfactory result," he said in the statement.
When asked if Canadians should prepare for life without NAFTA, Freeland said Canada's position is to "hope for the best and prepare for the worst and Canada is prepared for every eventuality."
Freeland said the addition of a sunset clause would be redundant as there is already an exit mechanism — by simply giving six months' written notice — that any of the three countries could invoke to leave NAFTA. Indeed, U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to do so on a number of occasions, although, despite the rhetoric, he has kept his negotiators at the table through successive rounds of talks.
For Canada, the sunset clause is one of its so-called "red lines," at least as it is currently written.
Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to reporters just before Question Period 2:03
"I've been married for 19 years, when my husband asked me to marry him he didn't say every five years we're going to check whether we want to get divorced or not. We don't think that's a good foundation for a lasting relationship," Freeland told reporters in the foyer of the House of Commons ahead of question period.
Canada is reluctant to plunge the partners into protracted talks every five years, which would add a generous dose of uncertainty to the continental economy.
Another area of disagreement is a U.S. proposal that would alter rules around autos. The Trump administration wants half of the content of all North American-built autos be produced in the United States and the broader, North American allotment to be increased to 85 per cent from 62.5 per cent. There is currently no rule governing U.S.-only production.
The U.S. also wants to expand an existing "tracing list" to demand more products — including all steel — originate in North America.
Trump has continually rallied against the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico and has proposed these stringent requirements to reverse the flow of work to the lower-wage jurisdiction and rebalance the country's large automotive trade deficit with its southern neighbour.
But the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group of car makers operating in the U.S., including GM and Ford, has warned such requirements are too onerous and would actually lead to further job loss as companies could simply move manufacturing offshore to China — use whatever parts they want — and then export the car back to the U.S. paying a relatively marginal tariff of just 2.5 per cent.
Freeland said both Canada and Mexico feel the plan is entirely unworkable, and would damage an already deeply integrated North American auto manufacturing market. "The net result would be negative for both of our countries," she said.
Much of the "good progress" achieved at the latest negotiations in Mexico were on areas highly technical in nature. She said the three parties agreed to provisions on anti-corruption and good regulatory practices, telecommunications, areas relating to sanitation, and customs and trade facilitation. |
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Overall rating:
Title: Erskine BRIDGE, the
Reference number: 2254
Date: 1972
Director: d. Laurence Henson
Sponsor: Films of Scotland and the Erskine Bridge Joint Committee
Production company: IFA (Scotland) Ltd.
Sound: sound
Original format: 35mm
Colour: col
Fiction: non-fiction
Running time: 21.00 mins
Description: The building of the Erskine Road Bridge.
See production file.
Credits: p. Laurence Henson
ph. David Lewis
nar. John Shedden
Shotlist: Brief scenes on river Clyde - ship being towed by tug, bridges over river, ferry crossing from Renfrewshire to Dunbartonshire, talking heads, intercut with shot of ferry (2.08) gvs site at Erskine for road bridge with shot of ships passing down river (3.10) gvs construction of bridge piers (3.59) gvs liner Queen Elizabeth 2 being towed down river after launch, passing construction site of bridge with shots of spectators on banks of river (4.53) shots of launching of vessel "Gold Star" at dock on lower Clyde (5.35) gvs construction site and men at work on bridge, intercut with model of construction design of bridge (9.25) [end of reel 1] brief l/s of Alexandria and Vale of Leven and c/u shots of some of light industries found there - photographs being developed (10.02) a sewing machine at work (10.16) tanning and cutting of leather and sewing a fleece (10.34) clocks being made (10.52) c/u of kegs of Walker & Sons whisky (11.08) gvs tankers on Loch Long with tugs alongside (11.45) gvs cars driving off Erskine ferry beside construction work on bridge (12.00) shots of men at work on bridge and gvs site (13.13) brief shot of seafront at Ayr (13.31) gvs boats on Loch Lomond (13.51) visuals Highland landscape (14.13) gvs men working on pipes on bridge (14.33) brief l/s partially constructed bridge (14.40) gvs Hunterston Power Station (15.15) brief shot furnace (15.26) brief shot ship passing under partially constructed bridge (15.32) shots of bridge in final stages of construction (16.14) brief shot man busking by queue of cars for ferry (16.30) gvs launching of last box on construction of bridge [in thick fog] and c/u of engineers making final adjustments and l/s of completed bridge (18.06) shot of engineers drinking a toast of whisky to mark completion (18.45) shot of Princess Anne officially opening the bridge (20.00) brief l/s of Erskine ferry and gvs traffic going over new bridge (20.29) ecs (20.42) |
Oh, those were the days... when figuring out how to build an entire city out of building blocks was the only thing on your mind. Enjoy the nostalgia of your early construction toys with Building Block Soaps. These hand-made and scented "brick" soaps are packaged in a set of six. You'll get two each of red strawberry, blue blueberry, and yellow lemon. Set is packaged together in a cello bag tied closed with a ribbon.
Colorful guest soaps are great for parties or everyday fun
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Shaped after the iconic construction toys, Building Block Soaps feature bright colors and fruity scents. They're slightly translucent, so they look pretty cool when stacked on top of each other in a soap dish.
Slightly larger than a LEGO® for easy handling
A "typical" LEGO® (4x2 pegs) is about 1.25" long. Our Building Block Soaps are slightly larger (approximately 1.5" long) to make them a bit easier to hold while washing your hands (soap tends to get quite slippery!).
Packaged in a set of six
Each package of Building Block Soaps includes six bricks. You'll get two each of blueberry-scented blue, strawberry-scented red, and lemon-scented yellow.
Please note that the colors of the bricks may vary slightly from what is shown below due to the hand made nature of these soaps. |
Biofilms: Using Bacteria for new Designer Nanomaterials
For most people biofilms conjure up images of slippery stones in a streambed and dirty drains. While there are plenty of “bad” biofilms around – they are even the same stuff that causes pesky dental plaque and a host of other more serious medical problems – a team of researchers sees biofilms as a robust new platform for designer nanomaterials that could clean up polluted rivers, manufacture pharmaceutical products, fabricate new textiles, and more.
In short, they want to give biofilms better PR, and have developed a novel protein engineering system called BIND to do so. Using BIND (which stands for Biofilm-Integrated Nanofiber Display) the team said biofilms could be tomorrow’s living foundries for the large-scale production of biomaterials that can be programmed to provide functions not possible with existing materials.
“Most biofilm-related research today focuses on how to get rid of biofilms, but we demonstrate here that we can engineer these super tough natural materials to perform specific functions — so we may want them around in specific quantities and for specific applications,” said Neel Joshi, Ph.D., the study’s senior author.
Biofilms also self-assemble and self-heal.
“If they get damaged, they grow right back because they are living tissues,” said lead author Peter Nguyen, Ph.D.
Biofilms are communities of bacteria ensconced in a slimy, but extremely tough, matrix of extracellular material composed of sugars, proteins, genetic material and more. During biofilm formation individual bacteria pump out proteins that self-assemble outside the cell – creating tangled networks of fibers that essentially glue the cells together into communities that keep the bacteria safer than they would be on their own.
Interest in biofilm engineering is skyrocketing, and while several other teams have recently developed genetic tools to control biofilm formation, Joshi’s team altered the composition of the extracellular material itself – essentially turning it into a self-replicating production platform to churn out whatever material they wish to produce.
“Until recently there was not enough cooperation between synthetic biologists and biomaterials researchers to exploit the synthetic potential of biofilms this way. We are trying to bridge that gap,” Joshi said.
The team genetically fused a protein with a particular desired function – for example, one known to adhere to steel – onto a small protein called CsgA that is already produced by E. coli bacteria. The appended domain then went along for the ride through the natural process by which CsgA gets secreted outside the cell, where it self-assembled into super tough proteins called amyloid nanofibers. These amyloid proteins retained the functionality of the added protein – ensuring in this case that the biofilm adhered to steel.
Amyloid proteins traditionally get a bad rap for their role in causing tremendous health challenges such as Alzheimer’s disease, but in this case their role is fundamental to making BIND so robust. These amyloids can spontaneously assemble into fibers that, by weight, are stronger than steel and stiffer than silk.
“We are excited about the versatility of the method, too,” Joshi said.
The team demonstrated an ability to fuse 12 different proteins to the CsgA protein, with widely varying sequences and lengths. This means in principle that they can use this technology to display virtually any protein sequence – a significant feature because proteins perform an array of impressive functions from binding to foreign particles to carrying out chemical reactions, transmitting signals, providing structural support, and transporting or storing certain molecules.
Not only can these functions be programmed into the biofilm one at a time, but they can be combined to create multifunctional biofilms as well. The concept of the microbial factory is not a new one, but for the first time it is being applied to materials, as opposed to soluble molecules like drugs or fuels.
“We are essentially programming the cells to be fabrication plants,” Joshi said. “They don’t just produce a raw material as a building block, they orchestrate the assembly of those blocks into higher order structures and maintain that structure over time.” “The foundational work Neel and his team are doing with biofilms offers a glimpse into a much more environmentally sustainable future where gargantuan factories are reduced to the size of a cell that we can program to manufacture new materials that meet our everyday needs – from textiles to energy and environmental clean-up,” said Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D.
For now the team has demonstrated the ability to program E. coli biofilms that stick to certain substrates, such as steel, others that can immobilize an array of proteins or promote the templating of silver for construction of nanowires. Really the sky’s the limit to what could come next and really that is an exciting prospect.
Sources:
Peter Q. Nguyen,, Zsofia Botyanszki,, Pei Kun R. Tay,, & Neel S. Joshi (2014). Programmable biofilm-based materials from engineered curli nanofibres Nature Communications : 10.1038/ncomms5945 |
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President Donald Trump browbeat Russia on Thursday for its 'destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes including Syria and Iran' and urged Vladimir Putin's government to join the U.S. and its allies in the global fight against terrorism.
Trump had refused earlier in the day to pin election hacking last year in the U.S. on the Kremlin, saying he thinks it was Putin's government, but it 'could have been other people in other countries.'
And he did not mention Russia by name in his remarks to the Polish people when he committed the U.S. to making sure Warsaw is 'never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.'
But turning to threats against the West later in his speech in front a memorial to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Trump railed against 'the steady creep of government bureaucracy,' along with 'radical Islamic terrorism' and 'powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence and challenge our interests.'
'To meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes and cyber warfare, we must adapt our lives to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields,' he said in a direct reference to Moscow's meddling.
Speaking to thousands of cheering Poles, Trump called their nation 'the geographic heart of Europe' and praising their countrymen for shaking off both Nazi oppressors and Russian occupiers in the last century.
'That's trouble. That's tough,' he exclaimed.
'In those dark days, you have lost your land but you never lost your pride.'
President Donald Trump questioned if the West has the 'will to survive' in a landmark speech in Warsaw on Thursday afternoon. He spoke at Krasinski Square in front of a monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. The Warsaw Uprising was the largest act of resistance by any nation under the German occupation during World War II and the heroism of the insurgents remains a defining element in Polish national identity
Trump spoke in front of a crowd at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Thursday
Trump participates in a wreath laying ceremony before delivering a speech at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle
Trump waves next to First Lady of the United States Melania Trump, Polish President Andrzej Duda and First Lady of Poland Agata Kornhauser-Duda before his public speech
People cheer as Trump delivers his landmark speech at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle on Thursday morning
Ahead of his speech on Thursday, First Lady Melania Trump welcomed the crowd and introduced her husband
Trump delivered his address in Krasinski Square, at the foot of a statue commemorating the 1944 Polish uprising against German occupiers. He and first lady Melania Trump laid a wreath at its base.
Speaking behind bullet-proof glass, the president said Poles are 'a people who truly know the value of what you defend.'
He urged them to uphold 'a future in which good conquers evil.'
They repeatedly chanted 'USA, USA' and 'Donald Trump! Donald Trump!'
Trump had earlier met the Polish president and warned that the future of the West is in doubt.
In a speech to the public he praised Poland's 'will to survive' because they 'have never, ever forgotten who they are.'
'The Polish experience reminds us – the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail,' Trump said.
'Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken.'
First Lady Melania Trump warmed up the crowd in Poland's capital city ahead of her husband's speech, saying that all people should be allowed to 'live their lives without fear'
The first lady said Thursday that guaranteeing the 'security' of the American people is the centerpiece of Trump's administration
During her introduction speech at Krasinski Square on Thursday Melania Trump said she hoped all around world could share in that safety
First Lady Melania walked alongside President Trump as they arrived at Krasinski Square on Thursday ahead of Trump's speech
Melania Trump, who is taking a prominent role in her husband's key overseas trip, also saluted the Polish people and their 'beautiful country'
Melania donned a navy blue dress with pink and blue stripes for the event on Thursday. She wore purple heels to finish off the outfit
And Trump projected his fight against Middle Eastern terrorism onto the template of Poland's historic struggles, saying, 'We are fighting hard against radical Islamic terrorism, and we will prevail.'
'America and Europe have suffered one terror attack after another. We are going to get it to stop,' he said. 'While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.'
The president urged European nations to commit more of their money to NATO, as he said the organization's 'Article 5' commitment to mutual defense is an ironclad guarantee.
'Words are easy but actions are what matters,' he urged. 'Europe must do more. Europe must demonstrate that it believes in its future by investing its money to secure that future.'
At a press conference following his private talks with Andrzej Duda, Trump said North Korea would face 'consequences' for its intercontinental ballistic missile test.
He also admitted that Russia 'could have' interfered with the 2016 election and vowed to work with Poland on addressing threats from the country
Ivanka was beaming as she arrived at the speech hand-in-hand with husband Jared Kushner. The couple arrived in Warsaw on Air Force One with the president and first lady
Ivanka Trump smiles as she arrives in Krasinski Square, in Warsaw, with her husband Jared Kushner, senior adviser of Trump
Ivanka, who has taken a prominent role in her father's White House administration, arrived in Warsaw on Wednesday evening ahead of Trump's speech
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump took seats in the front row in Krasinski Square ahead of Trump's speech, for which Poles from around the country traveled to see
The pair held hands as they listened to the president made his speech, in which he Poland as the 'geographic heart of Europe'
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump applauded as they listened to Trump's speech, which he made from behind bulletproof glass
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw came just before a meeting with Putin. He will travel next to Germany for Friday and Saturday's G20 summit, where he will sit down for talks with the Russian leader for the first time since taking office.
Trump's appearance alongside the Polish president will go down badly in Russia.
Trump's visit to Warsaw was coordinated with the Three Seas Initiative, which is a new 12-nation trade and economic bloc organized in part to limit Russia's power, especially in ways that diminish its dominance in the region's energy markets.
'To the citizens of this great region, America is eager to expand our partnership with you. We welcome stronger ties of trade and commerce as you grow your economies,' Trump said in his Krasinski Square speech. 'And we are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.'
North Korea's ballistic missile test the day the day before Trump left the U.S. moved the threat posed by Kim Jong-un's illicit nuclear activity up to the top of the American president's list of shared threats.
Trump spoke from Krasinski Square, the site of a monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis
The Warsaw Uprising (its monument pictured above) was the largest act of resistance by any nation under the German occupation during World War II, and the heroism of the insurgents remains a defining element in Polish national identity
During World War II, the Germans suppressed the rebellion brutally, destroying most of Warsaw and killing around 200,000 people, most of them civilians. Pictured above, Trump and Melania observed the monument for the Warsaw Uprising
Donald Trump shake hands with veteran as dozens of others look on after delivering a speech in Krasinski Square in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday
Dozens of veterans watched Trump's speech from behind the stage on Thursday, sitting next to a monument for the Warsaw Uprising
At his joint press conference with Duda, Trump called on the global community to ensure there are 'consequences' for Pyongyang's belligerence and warned that he is considering a 'severe' response.
'I call on all nations to confront this global threat and publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences for their very, very bad behavior,' he declared.
'I have pretty severe things that we're thinking about,' Trump said, addressing a question from DailyMail.com, but added: 'That doesn't mean that we'll do them.'
Trump later said that he was working with Poland on addressing threats from Russia and reiterated his calls for NATO members to meet their financial obligations.
Trump said that 'as a result' of his administration's pushing, 'billions of dollars' have begun to pour into NATO.
'In fact, people are shocked. But billions and billions of dollars more are coming in from countries that, in my opinion, would not have been paying so quickly.'
Trump commemorated Polish and Jewish history in his speech as dozens of veterans looked on. Pictured above, Melania, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda listen to Trump's speech
Trump shook hands with several veterans who listened to the speech as he left Krasinski Square and headed for Germany
Crowds waving US, confederate and Polish flags gathered in and around a Warsaw square where Trump delivered his first public speech in Europe
Some Trump supporters tied a 'Make America Great Again' banner to a barrier fence ahead of the speech. Nearby attendees wore hats bearing the same slogan
While some people carried flags, some banners on display in Krasinski Square featured the right-wing, pro-government Gazeta Polska newspaper.
One man kept his supportive sign straight and to the point: He simply carried around a photo of President Donald Trump to the rally
'To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words but with its actions that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment,' he said, checking an important box in his remarks for European leaders who have worried about that his warnings to pay up or else meant the U.S. was rethinking its involvement in the international organization.
Trump heaped praise on Poland for paying up.
He told the Polish people, 'You were supported in that victory over communism by a strong alliance of free nations in the West that defied tyranny. Now, among the most committed members of the NATO Alliance, Poland has resumed its place as a leading nation of a Europe that is strong, whole, and free.'
'A strong Poland is a blessing to the nations of Europe, and they know that. A strong Europe is a blessing to the West and to the world.'
As Krasinski Square filled with people, crowds are gathered in neighboring streets, where screens have been set up for viewing
In the center of the square, several rows of seats were set up for guests while others sat in nearby bleachers and behind barriers
Former president Lech Walesa is among the special guests in the VIP section. Poland's leaders promised Trump a warm welcome before he heads to Germany later Thursday for a summit of the world's developed and developing nations
Trump's speech came just days after Independence Day in the United States and ahead of his appearance at the G20 Summit in Germany
There were so many attendees at the event that some crowded into a glass-enclosed bus stop to watch Trump deliver his speech
Trump addressed thousands of Poles from Krasinski Square, site of the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation. More than 150,000 Poles died during the struggle to overthrow oppression
Some supporters in the crowd made T-shirts reading 'Make Poland Great Again' a phrase that played on Trump's 'MAGA' campaign slogan
Noting the 100th anniversary of America's entry into World War I, which he will celebrate formally next week in Paris, France, Trump said' the transatlantic bond between the United States and Europe is as strong as ever and maybe, in many ways, even stronger.'
'This continent no longer confronts the specter of communism. But today we’re in the West, and we have to say there are dire threats to our security and to our way of life,' he said. 'You see what’s happening out there. They are threats. We will confront them. We will win. But they are threats.'
Duda for his part said he believed Trump took Poland's security seriously.
'We see ourselves as loyal partners who cooperate on a number of issues, among others on security,' Duda said at the news conference.
POLAND'S FIGHTING SPIRIT THROUGHOUT HISTORY As Donald Trump delivered his speech in Warsaw, he praised Poland's history of fighting for survival, including against Nazi rule during the Second World War. The President told listeners: ‘Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken.’ In fact, Poland was broken - literally - for a large part of its history. From 1795 until 1918, the country did not exist at all having been partitioned by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy Following the collapse of these empires at the end of the First World War, Poland was able to reestablish itself having kept its culture alive through 200 years of foreign governance via resistance movements and educational institutions. While an independent Polish state with access to the sea was established as part of the Treaty of Versailles, various border disputed raged between 1919 and 1921, including one against the Soviets. In August 1920 the Russian army was advancing on Warsaw having already claimed several victories over the Polish, and looked on the verge of crushing their army and perhaps crumbling the country once more. But the city marked as far as the Soviets would get - the Polish stopped the advance, forcing the Russian into a messy retreat which saw their army crippled and the war won. That would not be the last time Poland would have to fight for its survival, however, as it was invaded and occupied by both the Nazis and the Russians during the Second World War. After Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin in September 1939, he marched his troops into Poland before the Soviets attacked back later the same month. The two sides eventually reached an impasse, and decided to partition Poland once more between Germany and Russia. Under the two occupations, Polish citizens suffered enormous human and material losses. It is thought about 5.7 million Polish citizens died as a result of the German occupation and about 150,000 died as a result of the Soviet occupation. Hitler began the process of hunting down Poland's Jewish population and putting them to death in concentration camps, with an estimated 90 per cent of Polish Jews, around three million people, murdered. Meanwhile the Soviets stirred up resentment of native Poles among the Jewish, Ukrainias, Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities and used this to repress them. Most of those killed were Polish priosners of war who were exterminated in a 'reign of terror' perpetrated by the NKVD, or Soviet secret police. The most infamous instance came in 1940, when around 22,000 Polish army officers, police, and intellectuals were murdered in the Katyn Massacre - named after the Russian forest where many mass graves were found. The country was also the staging point for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's full-scale Blitzkrieg invasion of the Soviets which began in June 1941. The attack brought Poland wholly under Nazi control from then until 1944, when Stalin began recapturing the territory as he pushed west to Berlin. For his speech, Trump stood in front of a monument to the Warsaw Uprising which was the largest rebellion against Nazi rule by any resistance group during the war. The Poles fought against the Germans for 63 days, killing 16,000 Nazi soldiers and destroying hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces, in the expectation that the Red Army would imminently arrive in the city, liberating it. But Stalin actually halted his advance several miles away, leaving the resistance to fight completely unaided against Hitler’s forces - only moving in after they were destroyed and the city had been raised to the ground. After the war was over, a deal struck between Stalin and other Allied leaders at the end of the war left Poland under Soviet Union control and Communist rule. This decision would prove deeply unpopular in the decades that followed, as the country suffered widespread repression by their rulers, which rebuilt themselves after the fall of the Soviet empire as Russia, and watched capitalist Europe advance rapidly while their economy languished. Russia’s decades-long failure to acknowledge another massacre, this time in Katyn in which 20,000 Poles were killed by Stalin’s secret police, served only to heighten tensions further. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Poland signalled its desire to join both Nato and the EU, pulling rapidly away from the sphere of Kremlin influence. In 1999 it joined Nato having earlier backed out of the Warsaw Pact, a rival alliance including Russia which collapsed in 1991. Then, in 2004, it became a member of the European Union. Today it is one of America’s closest allies in Europe, and was supposed to play host to a missile defense installation designed to protect against Russian nukes, a move which greatly angered Moscow. While that installation was cancelled in favour of a ship-based missile deterrent, Poland will still host an American radar array which is due to be completed next year. It is perhaps because of this history that Trump used his speech in Warsaw to issue his biggest rebuke to Putin yet – calling for an end to aggression in Ukraine and Syria.
Following his speech, Trump and his wife departed from Warsaw and headed for Germany on Air Force One ahead of the G20 Summit
It was also confirmed that Trump accepted an invitation to visit the small central European nation that is the homeland of his wife Melania following his speech
Demonstrators dressed in costumes resembling those from Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale attended a Trump protest in Warsaw on Thursday
The costumes resemble those worn in a new television series based on Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel in which women - dubbed 'breeders' - are forced to give birth and have no control over their bodies. Poland is currently embattled in a large debate over banning abortion
Poland has month the tightest abortion laws in Europe, and a proposal last year sought to ban all abortions unless a mother's life was at risk. Demonstrators at Thursday's protest wore pins that read 'Together' in Polish
Dozens of protesters showed up at the speech on Thursday, with some carrying signs that read 'Trump Not Welcome' and 'Dump Trump'
Trump said then that Russia 'could have' interfered with the 2016 US presidential election which saw him take victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
He added, however, that he's not totally convinced that Russia was the sole meddler, contrasting claims from four U.S. intelligence agencies which said the effort was directed by Putin and emanated from Moscow.
'I think it was Russia, and it could have been other people in other countries,' Trump said. 'Nobody really knows.'
He added that the U.S. Intelligence Community has made high-profile mistakes in the past, so 'nobody really knows for sure.'
The president sought to redirect any scrutiny toward his predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of allowing Moscow to meddle on his watch.
President Donald Trump questioned whether the West has the 'will to survive' in a landmark speech in Warsaw on Thursday
Trump held a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday after the pair had private talks
At a press conference following his private talks with Andrzej Duda, Trump said North Korea would face 'consequences' for its intercontinental ballistic missile test
He also admitted that Russia interfered with the 2016 election and vowed to work with Poland on addressing threats from the country
Though the Obama administration warned Russia publicly and privately before Election Day to stop interfering, questions have since been raised about whether he acted aggressively enough to stop the threat.
'They say he choked. Well, I don't think he choked,' Trump said. 'I think he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and he said, "Let's not do anything about it".'
Trump said the CIA had informed Obama about the hacking months before the election but added that 'mistakes have been made.'.
He also took a question from DailyMail.com about a domestic tempest that developed this week over a video clip he tweeted on Sunday, depicting himself body-slamming a pro wrestling mogul whose face was superimposed with CNN's logo.
CNN quickly condemned the tweet and assigned a reporter to find out where the viral meme originated.
At a joint press conference between Trump and Duda, the US president called on the global community to ensure there are 'consequences' for Pyongyang's belligerence and warned that he is considering a 'severe' response
Trump later said that he was working with Poland on addressing threats from Russia and reiterated his calls for NATO members to meet their financial obligations
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw comes just days before he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin. He will next travel to Germany for Friday and Saturday's G20 summit
Trump and Duda shook hands for photo ops several times on Thursday, including after their joint press conference
By Thursday the network was under fire for allegedly threatening to reveal the name of a person it said created the video.
But CNN appears to have gotten it wrong, using the wrong version of the doctored footage as the basis for their interview with the unnamed man.
'I think what CNN did is unfortunate for them,' Trump said at the press conference. 'As you know they have some pretty serious problems.
'They have been fake news for a long time. They have been covering me in a very, very dishonest way.'
Trump then turned to Duda and asked, 'Do you have that also, Mr President?', to which Duda shrugged.
'What CNN did – and what others did, NBC is equally as bad despite the fact that I made them a fortune with "The Apprentice," but they forgot that,' Trump said.
'What I will say is that CNN has really taken it too seriously and I think they've hurt themselves very badly, very, very badly. And what we want to see in the United States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want to see fair press.'
'I think it's a very important thing. We don't want fake news. By the way, not everybody is fake news. But we don't want fake news. Bad thing. It's very bad for our country,' Trump concluded.
Trump talks with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, center right, as they arrive for a group photo prior to the Three Seas Initiative transatlantic roundtable in the Great Assembly Hall of the Royal Castle, in Warsaw
Trump talks to Duda as US ambassador to Poland Paul W Jones looks on during the Three Seas Initiative Summit on Thursday
Duda, center, speaks with Croatia President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic as Trump makes a comment during the Three Seas Initiative transatlantic roundtable in the Great Assembly Hall of the Royal Castle
The group who attended the initiative includes leaders of the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas nations and aims to expand and modernize energy and trade with the goal of reducing the region's dependence on Russian energy
While at the Royal Castle, President Trump and Duda (not pictured) attended a meeting together
Following the press conference, Trump attended a meeting of the Three Seas Initiative.
The group includes leaders of the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas nations and aims to expand and modernize energy and trade with the goal of reducing the region's dependence on Russian energy.
While at the meeting, Trump pledged that the United States will never use energy to coerce eastern and central European nations, adding that the United States won't allow other nations to coerce them either.
Trump said he's proud that the region is benefiting from US energy supplies. Poland received a first shipment of liquefied natural gas from the United States last month.
Trump noted the region's special significance to him. His wife, Melania, is a native of Slovenia, which belongs to the group.
He then claimed that everyone is benefiting from the thriving US economy except for him.
He bragged of recent stock market gains, but said: 'Personally, I've picked up nothing.'
President Donald Trump is greeted by Polish President Andrzej Duda as he visits Poland during the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Warsaw on Thursday
Poland's ruling party sees itself as a Euroskeptic regime along the lines of last year's Brexit movement in the United Kingdom
The US president's unapologetic brand of nationalism is seen as its idealized complement, aligning Washington and Warsaw in a push against a Berlin-dominated Europe
Trump and Duda shook hands at the Royal Castle in front of a white marble bust of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland
The leaders then retreated to a room decorated with red walls for their private talks, where they also posed for photos
Asked how he felt about the trip, Trump, who is on a whirlwind 16-hour trip in Poland said 'Great'
'That's all right,' he said. 'Everyone else is getting very rich. That's OK. I'm very happy.'
Trump gave his two adult sons and a senior executive control of his global real estate, property management and marketing empire when he took office in January. But Trump did not divest his businesses.
Instead he placed his financial assets in a trust that he can seize control of at any time.
Busloads of Trump supporters were sent to Warsaw to see Trump speak on Thursday in Krasinski Square, where a monument stands to a 1944 popular uprising against German occupation.
In every corner of Poland, citizens were offered free transportation to Warsaw if they wanted to be a part of the Trump show.
Polish President Duda gave Trump a tour of the royal castle on Thursday ahead of their joint press conference
Meanwhile, First Lady Melania Trump met with Poland's First Lady, Agata Kornhauser-Duda at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw
Trump's daughter, Ivanka, visited the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw on Thursday
'I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization,' Trump told his fans.
The words 'courage,' 'will' and 'civilization' were capitalized for emphasis in the snippets the White House sent to reporters.
The United States is serious about the security of its ally Poland, Duda said on Wednesday after his meeting with Trump.
'We see ourselves as loyal partners who cooperate on a number of issues, among others on security,' Duda told the joint news conference. 'I have a feeling that the United States is serious about Poland's security.'
Trump has made a point of attacking what adviser Steve Bannon has derided as 'the bureaucratic state,' rolling back regulations that he says are choking free enterprise and dampening the American economy.
Trump will praise 'the triumph of the Polish spirit over centuries of hardship' in a landmark speech in Warsaw, the White House said Thursday morning
The two presidents met at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Thursday morning head of Trump's landmark speech
Thursday's joint appearance with Duda at Warsaw's royal castle was originally billed as a press conference
Trump, like Poland's President Andrzej Duda, is aligned against the European Union's bureaucracies
'The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies,' Trump's speech added.
'Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,' he said.
'We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies.'
Trump, like Poland's president, is aligned against the European Union's bureaucracies.
Flag-waving Poles lined Trump's motorcade route on Wednesday night, but critics pointed out that the government had paid to bus in thousands from Poland's far-flung provinces.
Duda's government had reportedly promised his American counterpart a hero's welcome as a condition of visiting Poland.
Like the Trump administration, Duda's government is staking its claim on a desire to limit the numbers of refugees it resettles even as European Union leaders press Warsaw to open its borders
Trump will speak to the leaders of Three Seas Initiative nations and address the Polish people at Warsaw's Krasinski Square later in the da
The White House later described the meeting as a 'press event', which raised concerns that Trump wouldn't be taking questions from reporters
The pair met between flags of each nation before heading into a discussion about the European Union
Poland's ruling party sees itself as a Euroskeptic regime along the lines of last year's Brexit movement in the United Kingdom.
The US president's unapologetic brand of nationalism is seen as its idealized complement, aligning Washington and Warsaw in a push against a Berlin-dominated Europe.
Like the Trump administration, Duda's government is staking its claim on a desire to limit the numbers of refugees it resettles even as European Union leaders press Warsaw to open its borders.
'The Polish government has the same position as Americans – we want strict restrictions on refugees,' legislator Krzysztof Mróz told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Thursday's joint appearance with Duda at Warsaw's royal castle was originally billed as a press conference.
By Tuesday, however, the White House began describing it in advisories to reporters as a 'press event', raising concerns that Trump wouldn't take reporters' questions.
Trump (his motorcade pictured above) will speak to the leaders of Three Seas Initiative nations and address the Polish people at Warsaw's Krasinski Square
Trump's whirlwind visit to Warsaw comes on the front end of a journey to Germany for Friday and Saturday's G20 summit
Trump arrives on a state visit at the Okecie Airport, Warsaw President Donald Trump visit to Poland on Wednesday
Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive on a state visit at the Okecie Airport in Warsaw on Tuesday evening
Also on the trip to Warsaw were Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner
On Thursday morning the White House confirmed that the press conference would indeed include a Q&A from at least four journalists.
Trump's ongoing media war has tended to overshadow talk of his domestic and foreign agendas, a condition he could ill afford as he launched his second diplomacy tour in six weeks.
Duda, too, rolled the dice by allowing American journalists to question his government's clampdown on press freedoms in the last year.
Protesters blockaded the Polish parliament in December after the ruling Law and Justice party restricted the number of journalists allowed in the building and limited which TV networks could record proceedings there.
European Council President Donald Tusk quickly invoked the word 'dictatorship' to warn Duda, as his government blamed protesters for staging an 'illegal attempt to seize power.'
Demonstrators shouted 'Solidarity!' – a throwback to the communist-era movement led by then-dissident trade unionist Lech Wałęsa, who later became president.
Unlike past US presidents, Trump did not meet with him in Poland. Duda's right-wing government has sought to downplay Wałęsa's role in Poland's history.
Wałęsa, however, was in the crowd for Trump's speech. |
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Uber, the smartphone-based hail-a-ride service, often claims it is cheaper than a ride in a taxi. It looks as if some Uber customers do not agree.
The company received an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau earlier this year, the lowest possible rating given by the organization.
The grade is based on, among other criteria, more than 90 Uber customer complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau over the last three years, most of them centering on Uber’s so-called surge pricing.
Uber has failed to respond to many of the complaints in a timely manner, which influenced one of the Better Business Bureau’s grading criteria. A transportation interest group affiliated with the taxi industry alerted media to the rating on Thursday
Customers still feel misinformed about how they are charged for their rides, according to complaints at the bureau’s website, and say they are not able to receive adequate customer service when they try to complain about their fares.
With its surge pricing, Uber’s temporarily increases fare prices anywhere from one and a half to 10 times the normal cost of taking an Uber ride, based on the demand for drivers. When many people in a particular area request Uber at the same time, for example, the price of rides in that area goes up.
“I never knew about surcharges until after the fact and was unaware, confused and uninformed,” one customer wrote on the bureau’s site.
Uber has a long, tricky history of its surge pricing. When Manhattan was hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, for example, many people complained that Uber was using a natural disaster to price gouge its customers.
“BBB recommends that consumers always read a company’s terms and conditions before rendering the company’s product or service,” the organization wrote on its website.
The Better Business Bureau, which was founded in 1912, is not a government agency, nor does it have regulatory or enforcement power. It was started primarily to protect against abuse of advertising by companies, as well as to alert the public about potential fraud.
Uber has repeatedly defended its surge pricing practice, saying that it is the company’s way of keeping enough drivers on the road when demand for the service outweighs the supply.
“Uber’s direct channel for two-way feedback is regularly reviewed and acted on to ensure a high-quality experience,” an Uber spokeswoman said in a statement. “The fact is that consumers in 220 cities around the world have made their opinion known by taking millions of rides with Uber.”
In recent years, Better Business Bureau ratings have been increasingly marginalized with the rise of online local review services like Yelp and Foursquare. Moreover, some branches of the Better Business Bureau were accused of participating in “pay-to-play” schemes, in which businesses would receive better grades in exchange for a paid accreditation status.
Uber’s grades are polarized across other review sites. In San Francisco, Uber has a score of 3.5 out of 5 stars on Yelp, an above-average grade composed mostly of either one-star or five-star reviews. In New York, Uber has a one-star rating on Yelp.
It is worth noting that Lyft, Uber’s largest competitor in the hail-a-ride market, has also been given an “F” grade by the Better Business Bureau, though the company has received only five complaints through the site in the last three years. Lyft’s San Francisco listing has a three-star rating from Yelp, while its New York branch maintains a two-star Yelp rating.
And to be sure, the taxi and limousine industry — Uber’s other competitors in the hail-a-ride space — has not fared well in the court of public opinion. In 2013, San Francisco taxi organizations saw upward of 1,700 service complaints about driver behavior and the state of taxi cabs, according to The Bay Citizen.
Uber has taken steps to notify customers about fare increases before they agree to them. When surge pricing is in effect, for instance, customers must enter a confirmation in the app that they accept the increased fare before taking the ride.
Lyft employs similar pricing models and warnings in its smartphone app. |
Two North Korean submarines have reportedly disappeared from port. Although the subs were last seen at a naval base in the Hwanghae Province in early April, the news is just now filtering out to media outlets. While the capability of North Korea to shoot a long-range missile at the United States has largely been nixed during press conference about EMP attack threats, the possibility of a missile attack from a submarine has rarely been mentioned.
The thought of missing North Korean subs aiming a missile at a coastal city is causing concern for some Americans. While any coastal city could become a target, some analysts think California is a very likely location. If North Korea shot a missile along the coast of the state, some feel than an earthquake could occur and allow the attack to go largely undetected – at least for a time.
North Korea also allegedly bought 1,452 pounds of silver from China. Some researchers believe the silver was purchased to use for batteries on the Sang-O (Shark) mini-subs. Generals in the North Korean Navy allegedly feel the Shark submarines are viable weapons which could be used against both America and South Korea. The Sang-O submarines are typically considered coastal submarines. The subs can reportedly carry at least 15 crew members and a dozen scuba commandos.
While many Americans might believe that a missing North Korean submarine trolling the coast would quickly be detected, that may not necessarily be the case. During a recent discussion about the EMP Commission, Dr. William Forstchen highlighted just how real the possibility is for an EMP attack from a cargo ship or a submarine.
In 2012, a Russian boomer went unnoticed for nearly a month in US waters on the Gulf of Mexico. The nuclear-powered submarine sighting was not the only such occurrence in recent history. In 2009, another Russian submarine patrolled very close to the United States. The incident happened about the same time as Russian bombers were spotted in restricted airspace near Alaska and California.
Dr. Forstchen, a North Carolina college professor, also told The Inquisitr just how woefully unprepared America is for an EMP attack. The professor wrote the bestselling novel One Second After. The book details the chaos which occurred in a small town after an EMP attack. His research was cited on the floor of Congress during discussions about EMP threats and the vulnerability of the power grid.
As the renowned professor so aptly noted, life as we know it would end without a functioning power grid. The nation’s electrical systems could be repaired, but most of the necessary components are made in China. The time frame to repair a downed power grid is a hotly disputed topic, but a quick flip of the switch after a visit to the storage room would not be a possibility. Many experts feel that it would take months, if not years, to get the overly-taxed power grid back online.
The bestselling author also pointed out the many ways a downed power grid would increase the EMP attack death toll sooner rather than later. The most obvious and immediate impact would involve the thousands of Americans who would perish when planes near the EMP zone would fall from the sky.
Without power, hospitals with still-functioning generators would not be able to keep patients alive after they run out of stored fuel. Grocery stores would reportedly have only empty shelves after about three days, leaving those without a garden or ability to hunt or fish with very empty stomachs. Civil unrest would also cause an unthinkable amount of deaths, according to Dr. Forstchen.
The EMP Commission was established under a Republican-controlled Congress in 2001. The commission was re-established under a Democratic majority in 2006. The EMP preparedness commission was disbanded in 2008. EMPact America is an outspoken advocate for re-convening the Congressional commission to further preparedness efforts.
How concerned are you about the missing North Korea missing submarines and the possibility of a downed power grid?
[Image Via: Shutterstock.com] |
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt admitted Sunday the “climate is changing.” In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Pruitt also admitted “human activity contributes to that change in some measure.”
The comments came just days after President Donald Trump revoked Obama-era regulations designed to combat global warning and Department of Energy staffers were told to avoid words like “climate change,” “emissions reduction” and “Paris agreement.”
Read: Climate Change, Emissions Reduction, Paris Agreement Among Terms To Be Avoided At DOE
Trump frequently has called climate change a hoax perpetrated by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive.
Pruitt said EPA efforts to control CO2 emissions amount to overreach, and the agency has been slapped down by the Supreme Court several times. He also noted U.S. sulfur and ammonia emissions are down 65 percent since 1980, and for CO2, the U.S. is at pre-1994 levels.
But, Pruitt admitted, “there's a warming trend — the climate is changing.”
Read: Florida Congressman Working On Legislation To Abolish EPA
Pruitt, however, called the Paris climate agreement a “bad deal for this country,” allowing China and India to put off their commitments at the expense of the U.S. economy.
Pruitt said he doesn’t expect water quality to slip despite the 31 percent cut in the EPA budget proposed by the administration because, he said, states will pick up the slack.
“This attitude in Washington, D.C., that people in Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas and Colorado and the rest of the country don't care about the water they drink or the air they breathe and are not going to take care of the air and the water locally and states, I just don't believe that,” Pruitt said.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which comes under the Commerce Department’s jurisdiction, would not be directed to stop its collection of data on climate change.
“NOAA has many missions and my attitude is the science should dictate the results. As long as they stick to science and to facts, I’m comfortable with whatever is the outcome,” Ross said. |
In this Feb. 8, 2017 file photo, Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, shares a laugh with members of the Senate Government Affairs Committee during a meeting to discuss a resolution to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day at the Nevada Legislative session at the Legislative Building in Carson City. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
In this Feb. 7, 2017 file photo, Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Nev., addresses attendees at the first meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the second day of the Nevada Legislative session at the Legislative Building in Carson City. Benjamin Hager Las Vegas Review-Journal @benjaminhphoto
Nevada’s godfather of marijuana, state Sen. Tick Segerblom, intends to leave the Nevada Legislature to run for a vacant Clark County Commission seat.
The veteran lawmaker said Monday he will run for the District E seat in 2018 to replace term-limited Chris Giunchigliani, a fellow Democrat who has held the seat since 2006. District E represents part of the Strip and extends to much of the eastern Las Vegas Valley.
Jumping from the state Legislature to local elected office is not uncommon in Nevada, and Segerblom said the opportunity to run for the commission is impossible to pass up.
“Opportunity knocks,” he said. “There aren’t many vacancies that show up anymore.”
Segerblom, 68, is a native Nevadan and graduate of Boulder City High School. He received a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in California and a law degree from the University of Denver.
He was first elected to the Assembly in 2006, where he served three terms before jumping to the state Senate in 2012. His term expires in 2020.
Segerblom was the driving force behind many of the laws that regulate marijuana in Nevada, including a 2013 piece of legislation that finally set up a sale structure for medical marijuana some 13 years after it was legalized. He is also credited by marijuana advocates for helping to get recreational marijuana legalized last year.
Now he wants a chance to implement the laws at the local level that he helped pass as a member of the Legislature.
And that goes well beyond those marijuana regulations that became synonymous with his name, he said.
“We need to start looking at how we can improve our quality of life,” Segerblom said.
That includes bolstering public transportation, improving the county’s parks and working with the school district on “creative solutions” for ways to help students and teachers in an effort to better education in Southern Nevada.
No one else has announced an intention to run for the seat.
The county’s official filing period begins in March.
Age: 68
Party: Democrat
Profession: Lawyer
Elected experience: Nevada Assembly (2007-2012), Nevada Senate (2013-present)
Contact Colton Lochhead at [email protected] 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter. |
Content Images and illustrations Overall rate
Just wanted to write a quick review to thank the people behind these issues and let them know that their effort is very much appreciated. Another great issue with awesome content discussing one of my favorite times, the Crusades. I also wanted to point out the incredible artwork in this issue, really top notch. Takes the whole thing to another level.
There was one article that really hit home this issue, I received the issue in November, so Remembrance Day was very much present at the time when I read it. The article "The Enemy Within" was a great read about how far to often we overlook the mental health of the era and focus far to much on the physical aspect. With mental health playing a huge role in current events it was nice to make a connection to the past and how it wasn't all courageous knights and gallant heroes. I thought the author did a great job of providing sources to prove his point that there was in fact a place for mental health care in this time period. Kudos to Mr. Burfield for shedding light on a subject that is far to often over looked.
All in all, another great issue. Can't wait for the next one. Keep up the good work. |
A driver caught on video using his car to assault a pair of cyclists in Glendale has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. County prosecutors have also charged the driver, identified as Dennis Reed of Toluca Lake, with filing a false police report regarding the incident, according to the Glendale Police Department.
Take a second to think all the way back to January, when we first posted about an encounter between some cyclists and an aggressive driver on Chevy Chase Road, close to the 2 Freeway. Recall how, after passing dangerously close to the cyclists, Reed pulled his shiny black Audi in front of the cyclists and slammed on his brakes.
Now, recall what the Reed did the next day. Do you remember how Reed, went on TV and defended his actions to NBC 4? Do you recollect how he claimed how one of the cyclists hit his car as he rode by? Do remember how Reed described, on camera, how "my attention was just all on this guy who is assaulting me. I was just trying to get away from him."
The video originally surfaced on CiclaValley, and immediately sparked a wave of controversy in commenting spaces across the Internet. The cyclists in the video filed a police report against the driver, and the driver did the same against the cyclists.
"Since the case was reported, we've been investigating it very thoroughly," said Tahnee Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for the Glendale Police Department, said to LAist. "It has attracted a lot of attention."
In his police report, as well as his interview with NBC4, Reed alleged one of the cyclists had previously punched his car. Given county prosecutors are charging him with filing a false police report, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Don Ward, the de-facto organizer-in-chief of L.A.'s cycling advocacy network, finds the news ultimately reassuring. He laid out his thoughts exclusively to LAist:
Traffic violence and assault are two of the most serious barriers to safe cycling on our city streets. While these crimes are perpetrated by a small percentage of drivers the impact can not be overstated. I applaud the Glendale police and district attorney for moving to protect the most vulnerable users of the road who have every right to be taking the lane safely and lawfully as these two cyclists were.
Reed's arraignment will happen on May 11th, setting in motion the processes for his criminal trial. All of this stems from his choice to use his car as a weapon. While neither of the cyclists in the video were injured, Reed's car could very easily have knocked over one of the riders and forced him into a parked car, or caused the rider with the camera to crash into the back of Reed's own car.
And all of this was over absolutely nothing. According to Ward, who has seen the full length video recording, the riders did nothing whatsoever to provoke Reed. The riders even stopped at a stop sign a few minutes before their unfortunate encounter with Reed.
Ward offers this:
I hope this case will serve as an example to all drivers that the stakes are high and it is really not worth risking other people's lives for the sake of saving a few seconds on the way, ultimately, to that next red light. We are all humans traveling from one place to another. Just because you are in a car does not mean your trip is worth any more or less than those trips taken by foot or by bike. |
Image: Rialto Police Department Calm Down: Ideally, the very act of using a body cam will keep everyone on his or her best behavior. But if tempers nevertheless flare, the video collected from the camera can help others judge whether a police officer’s use of force was appropriate. This image comes from a vast amount of footage captured by officers in Rialto, Calif., where the first large-scale controlled trial of police body cameras was performed.
Police body cameras are popping up everywhere, often to good effect because both police and suspects normally behave better in their presence. No wonder these small devices, enthusiastically endorsed by police, politicians, and civil-rights advocates, have generated a burgeoning industry. Yet people know very little about how and why they work, so the intended and unintended consequences of using them remain nebulous.
That’s not for lack of effort. There have been nearly 40 studies on the use of body cameras, including a dozen randomized controlled trials on the magnitude of their effect on policing. Despite all this work, it’s still not entirely apparent why these cameras are helpful, under what conditions, or for whom.
Here I’d like to offer my interpretation of all that research and to delve into what sets police body cameras apart from other video-recording equipment, such as closed-circuit television, dashcams, and everyday smartphone cameras.
Ultimately, body cameras are just video cameras, albeit specialized ones for capturing evidence in a reliable way. Although body cams are relatively straightforward technology, their effectiveness has proven highly variable, for reasons that remain puzzling. Why, for example, does their use reduce by more than half the number of times officers apply force during their encounters with the public in some places, while in other places it nearly doubles the reported use of force?
To address these questions, it’s helpful first to consider other surveillance devices used in policing. These have a longer track record and could offer some insight into the new phenomenon of body cameras.
Over the past 25 or so years, surveillance cameras have increasingly become an integral part of law enforcement as technological advancements made video cameras better, more reliable, and substantially cheaper. Most, if not all, police agencies in developed nations use closed-circuit television (CCTV) with the aim of deterring criminal activity, investigating crimes that have taken place, and prosecuting those responsible for them.
London, for instance, is under such heavy police surveillance that it’s hard to find streets not covered by CCTV. And many of the blind spots that remain are targeted by private video cameras. So when you’re in London, as well as many other cities, nearly every move you make in public is videotaped, tagged, and filed away somewhere.
But do these cameras really prevent crime and disorder? Common sense says, of course they do. If potential offenders are rational actors, aware that their misdeeds will be caught on video, they will surely be deterred from wrongdoing. This is the rationale for concluding that bad guys will not victimize us when there is CCTV, an ever-more-common part of life for which we all pay the price of infringed privacy.
Video: SPDwatcher Not-So-Candid Camera: A typical body-cam video demonstrates the usefulness of this technology for documenting people’s behavior during the interaction, even if the camera is not quite pointed where you’d want it.
Despite such intuition, and despite the huge investments made, overwhelming evidence indicates that CCTV equipment has, in fact, little deterrent effect. At least 44 studies illustrate that CCTV reduces the overall level of crime by only about 16 percent, with half of that reduction concentrated in parking lots. There is no effect at all on assaults, robberies, and similar against-person violent crimes. The evidence also tends to show that what little criminal behavior CCTV prevents is just displaced to other areas.
In short, CCTV cameras are pretty much a failure. Perhaps that’s because offenders know where the blind spots are. Or maybe it’s because CCTV does not work well in the dark or when the perpetrator wears a hoodie. Another possibility is simply that police lack the resources to assign somebody to sit through endless hours of recorded video hoping to find clues in not-so-serious crimes. Or it could also be that CCTV has become such an integral part of everyday life that its presence escapes people’s conscious attention. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that although CCTV may make you feel more secure, it does not really make you any safer, although it makes it modestly less likely you’ll get your car broken into or stolen.
Another common type of video surveillance, the one that has accompanied the proliferation of smartphones, might actually be more important. Video cameras are ubiquitous, and the video recording of engagements between police and public is incredibly influential, especially when misconduct is caught, be it the infamous beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 or the killing of Eric Garner in New York City in 2014. These recordings certainly demonstrate the effect of cameras on public reactions to the police, having sparked the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and the Black Lives Matter movement of 2015.
Given the notoriety of such videos, a camera at the scene of a police-public encounter ought, logically, to send out an accountability cue, eliminating feelings of anonymity on either side. There is no strong evidence, however, to support the conclusion that mobile-phone cameras deter officers from misconduct. The Garner incident is particularly telling in this regard: As clearly shown in the recording released to the media, officers were well aware of the cameras filming them (some of them looked directly at the cameraman), yet they still used a prohibited choke hold. Why?
There are probably two reasons. First, the officers might have been aware of a camera, but it still didn’t really register. Here, as in many other highly charged encounters, people just don’t think much about all the cameras around them before making the decision to throw a punch or otherwise misbehave. Second, even if they are aware of being recorded, the parties involved might not perceive a strong possibility that the footage captured can and will be used to hold them accountable for any type of misconduct. Because it is not official evidence, the video from a civilian’s smartphone camera doesn’t seem to inspire concern that it will surface later.
I should point out that one particular type of camera is effective in preventing unwanted behavior: road or speed cameras. A systematic review of 35 rigorous tests of road cameras has shown that they reduce serious and fatal accidents by as much as 44 percent. The evidence is unequivocal. They do exactly what they are intended to do. Even a speed-camera sign, with no actual camera anywhere, prompts drivers to slow down. Unlike CCTVs or smartphones, speed cameras work because punishment for illegal actions is virtually guaranteed.
1/5 This patrolman, like all line officers in West Valley City, Utah, wears a body camera while on duty, a practice the town began in March 2015. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images 2/5 The equipment adopted in West Valley City—Taser International’s Axon system—allows the camera to be affixed to the side of special Oakley eyeglasses. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images 3/5 Or the camera can be mounted to the officer’s collar. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images 4/5 The camera is attached by cable to a main unit where the officer triggers recording by pushing a button. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images 5/5 The equipment is stored in a special docking station used to upload video to a cloud-based service while recharging the unit’s batteries. Photo: George Frey/Getty Images
Where do body cameras sit on this spectrum of effectiveness? There have been 12 randomized controlled trials, with another 30 ongoing research projects seeking the answer. My students in the police executive program at the University of Cambridge, in England, and I have conducted most of the randomized controlled trials that have been published so far, including one that is now commonly referred to as the “Rialto experiment.”
This study, which really gave rise to today’s heated debate about police body cameras, took place in Rialto, Calif., a town of about 100,000 located some 100 kilometers east of Los Angeles. I worked on this experiment with Tony Farrar, then Rialto’s police chief, while he was completing a master’s thesis, for which I served as his academic advisor.
My Cambridge colleague Alex Sutherland helped Tony and me give this evaluation of body cameras a high degree of statistical rigor. Indeed, we devised this test just as if we were investigating the effectiveness of some new drug therapy. The study involved all of the town’s 54 frontline police officers, who for an entire year, starting in February 2012, would be assigned either to treatment (camera-wearing) or control (not camera-wearing) conditions when they went out on patrol.
During treatment shifts, officers were asked to take video of all their interactions with the public, to announce that the encounter was being recorded, and subsequently to store the footage on a secure cloud-based server. In control shifts, the officers were told not to use body cameras at all. Outcomes were then measured in terms of officially recorded use-of-force incidents and complaints lodged against Rialto police officers. At the end of a year, we were able to compare nearly 500 patrol shifts during which all police-public encounters were assigned to treatment conditions with a roughly equal number of shifts assigned to control conditions.
Results of the Rialto Experiment (incidents) Take the Plunge: The author and a student working with him—who was then chief of police in Rialto, Calif.—undertook a large-scale controlled trial of police body cameras starting in February of 2012. The number of times Rialto officers resorted to using force and the number of complaints received both diminished markedly after just half the patrols began using body cameras.
The results were stunning. There were roughly 50 percent fewer incidents of force being used while the officers were wearing body cameras compared with control conditions (8 incidents as compared with 17). And after reviewing the footage, we discovered that all eight times the camera-using officers resorted to force, they did so in response to violent behavior on the part of the people they were engaged with. The evidence suggests that in 4 of the 17 instances in which officers not wearing cameras resorted to force, it was the officer who initiated physical contact. This seems a key finding, because it really points to cameras making police officers less likely to use force without ample justification.
What’s more, there was a 90 percent reduction in citizens’ complaints against police officers compared with the 12 months prior to the experiment. That’s particularly remarkable, because it was a 90 percent reduction in the total number of complaints filed, not just those filed against officers wearing cameras.
Perhaps because all officers wore cameras some of the time, their behavior even when not wearing cameras changed. The statistics suggest as much, because the officers not wearing cameras resorted to force only half as often as they did in the year before the experiment. The moderating effect of the cameras seems to have been contagious.
The results of the Rialto experiment would lead you to think that police body cameras are an unequivocal success. In Rialto they were, but studies my colleagues and I have since conducted elsewhere require that I add a rather large note of caution. You see, if you consider the 10 other places where we have now completed tests of such cameras, you would conclude that their overall effect on police use of force is a wash: In some instances they help, in some they don’t appear to change police behavior, and in other situations they actually backfire, seemingly increasing the use of force.
Use of Force in Multisite Trial (incidents) Uneven Results: After the Rialto experiment, the author and his colleagues expanded their trials of body cameras to 10 sites spread over three continents. The results proved perplexing, with the use of force sometimes diminishing when cameras were worn, sometimes staying the same, and sometimes even increasing. (The locations of the various test sites cannot be disclosed because of agreements with the police forces involved.)
That wearing a camera would ever cause an officer to use force more than he or she would otherwise do is puzzling, to say the least. But some hints of what is happening come from looking at how well officers complied with the experimental protocol.
In places where they closely followed the instructions (use the camera during each encounter if you’re in a treatment group; don’t use it if you’re in a control group), the results were positive—a 37 percent reduction in use of force on average. But if you allow the treatment group discretion to choose when to turn it on, the result is 71 percent greater use of force. Thus the problem seems to arise mainly when officers are allowed to turn cameras on at times of their own choosing.
Although there are exceptions, especially where officers are allowed too much discretion, it nevertheless seems clear to me that police body cameras properly used can be very helpful because officers and suspects alike become more certain that they’ll be punished for bad behavior when a camera is rolling.
For this reason, body cameras are sometimes seen as a panacea: They record everything and therefore tell the unmediated story of what took place. They increase transparency, heighten accountability, and keep the actions of all parties in check. Because no rational person wants to get into trouble (or into more trouble than he or she is already in), police-public interactions become less heated.
Very often that’s the case, but it doesn’t always play out that way. It’s common for officers to interact with people who are mentally ill, drunk, high, raging with anger, or otherwise emotionally disturbed—people who are not likely to be aware of a camera even if told about it. Similarly, officers in emotionally heightened situations—such as during a high-speed pursuit or while subduing a resisting offender—might easily fail to turn the camera on or just ignore it even if it’s running.
Here’s where better technology could help. Body cameras could be automatically activated immediately when certain cues are triggered, such as when the officer enters a crime hot spot, leaves a police vehicle, takes out handcuffs or a weapon, turns on the siren, or makes a call for assistance on the radio. This way, the officer doesn’t have to think about activating the body camera in a tense situation.
One manufacturer, Taser International of Scottsdale, Ariz., is already offering body cameras that activate automatically when an officer turns on a vehicle’s flashing lights or draws a “smart” weapon. And others are investigating the use of cameras that stream live video back to headquarters. Right now, power and bandwidth limitations prevent that general practice, but one day in the not-too-distant future it will likely be the norm.
While the variability in the effectiveness of these cameras is disappointing, perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, what could work for a sheriff’s department in Iowa may not necessarily apply to a national police force in the Middle East. The results are going to hinge on the way official records are stored, the prevalence of police misconduct, and how legitimate the force is in the eyes of the people they serve.
So even though I’m a great supporter of body cameras, I’d advise police departments to move slowly and thoughtfully in their adoption. Test them in ways that allow these cameras to fail as much as to succeed. Try out different procedures and pick the ones that work best. After all, who’s to say that the policies practiced in the United States or the United Kingdom are appropriate elsewhere? Police administrators need to consider, in particular, whether rank-and-file officers will embrace the cameras or lash back at “big brother” and the threat to their autonomy.
There are certainly a lot of issues to address: Should superior officers be allowed to view all of the patrol officers’ footage, or ought those rights be limited to specific cases? Should officers be able to review their own recordings before filing their written reports? And who should be in charge of curating all this video, police departments or some independent agency subject to public-records laws? The different people involved will no doubt answer those questions very differently based on their hunches and past experiences, so to find what really works best will require much experimentation.
I would also add that there are still plenty of technological hurdles. The most pressing is the need to integrate the evidence captured by body cameras with other information-technology systems used in law enforcement. These are already troublingly fragmented. Typically, police forces have one system for taking emergency calls, another for handling investigations, and another yet for recording their reactions to crimes. Offender databases do not talk to victim databases. And there is often no link whatsoever with databases held by prosecutors, so court outcomes are never then fed back to the police. The list goes on.
These kinds of problems will grow only more acute as police departments look to incorporate additional layers of information with their body-cam video, including location data and the results from facial-recognition technologies. To fully explore the possibilities and rewards, many more tests are needed.
There’s another reason to test these cameras and their associated technologies carefully before handing them out. Imagine a police force is looking to use body cameras as a way to boost public trust. If police administrators simply announced, “We’re using cameras now, and we find that police misconduct is extremely rare,” most people would take such statements with a grain of salt. If, however, the police force had first partnered with independent researchers to test the effectiveness of the cameras, positive results would more likely be believed. That, in my view, is the best prescription for any police agency that wants to move forward with body cameras and the technology that is swiftly evolving around them.
About the Author
Barak Ariel is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. He is also the chief analyst for this institute’s Jerry Lee Center, where he uses various experimental methods to investigate the causes of, and responses to, crime. |
The U.S. Air Force plans to add 1,264 new airmen in the cyber realm over the next few years as part of a broader service-wide strategy to improve cyber defense efforts, service leaders said Tuesday.
The cyber community is one of the few that is growing as the rest of the service prepares for significant cuts to its end strength in connection to the budget cuts associated with sequestration.
Lt. Gen. Robert Otto, deputy chief of staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), said the cyber domain continues to present mounting challenges in dealing with the hordes of data collected by government. The National Security Agency has received quite a bit of scrutiny for the manner it has probed international and domestic data.
“This is a big data problem on steroids. If you look at the amount of data that is transmitted every day, it is going to take a tremendous amount of investment,” Otto said at the 2013 Air Force Association Air & Space Conference and Technology Exposition, National Harbor, Md.
Lt. Gen. Michael Basla, the chief information officer, mentioned that the pressures of the current fiscal environment are adding some stress and uncertainty to the services’ cyber programs.
“It is a delicate balance between efficiency and effectiveness. We will strive to bring greater capability to our warfighters with cost in mind,” Basla said. “The demand for full-spectrum cyber capability across the department has increased significantly.”
Otto also said Air Force cyber strategy should focus on improving integration with ISR.
“This is an exciting time for cyber military planning. We will see a lot of progress over the next few years,” Otto said.
Service leaders also talked about improving cyber capabilities by addressing vulnerabilities and “technical gaps.”
“Identifying technical gaps includes the ability to identify key cyber terrain and pair it to vulnerability,” said Maj. Gen. Brett Williams, director of operations, US Cyber Command.
Gen. William Shelton, Commander, Air Force Space Command also told reporters the service was spending time examining cyber vulnerabilities.
“We’re doing reviews of vulnerabilities of every network. We’re trying to build in information assurance from the outset,” Shelton said.
Shelton talked about an Air Force approach which is both looking to identify and “plug” holes in current networks while simultaneously building new systems for the future.
“We want to ensure that Air Force IT capabilities are designed to support Air Force missions and effectively integrate with the joint community,” Basla said.
He also mentioned a cyber-weapons course at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., designed to train Air Force personnel for cyber operations and made reference to a broader service-wide cyber strategy. Training the next-generation of capable cyber professionals will be necessary to address the growing threat.
“As a nation, we need to encourage our kids and grandkids to get into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). These are the skill sets doing the high end stuff,” he said. |
News rooms across the country are waiting anxiously to hear whether or not their takeover by Sinclair Broadcast Group will be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Sinclair has until October 5th to respond to the latest FCC request for information about its pending $3.9 billion merger with Tribune Media Company, owner of 42 broadcast stations.
Sinclair is controversial for its size — it’s often been compared to the radio conglomerate Clear Channel — its unabashedly right-wing politics (which it pushes in the “must run” segments it forces all its stations to air) — and its close connections to the Trump White House.
Politico reported in December 2016 that the Trump presidential campaign “struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage,” according to his son-in-law Jared Kushner. “In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary,” Kushner reportedly told a gathering of business executives in Manhattan that month.
As the Washington Post reported, “Sinclair gave a disproportionate amount of neutral or favorable coverage to Trump during the campaign while often casting Clinton in an unfavorable light.”
The stakes are high. Although some critics argue that the Fox News Channel operates much like a “Trump TV” station, in reality the cable channel draws far fewer viewers than Sinclair, which already operates close to 500 local television channels, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates.
As for the pending merger request, Craig Aaron, Executive Director of the anti-media consolidation group Free Press, commented, “Sure looks like a quid pro quo: friendly coverage and full employment for ex-Trump mouthpieces in exchange for a green light to get as big as Sinclair wants.”
Newsmax to Trump: “A free and diverse press…will be crippled by this proposed merger”
The media company Sinclair, based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, owns and operates more TV stations in the United States than any other company: 483 local television channels as of its 2016 annual report. Those channels include 36 ABC, 30 CBS, 22 NBC, and 54 FOX affiliates, reaching approximately 38 percent of all U.S. television households. (The FCC’s national ownership cap — currently under review by the Trump administration — restricts television broadcasters from reaching more than 39 percent of the country’s population.)
In Denver, Colorado, two TV news stations (KDVR and KWGN) currently owned by Tribune Media would be transferred to Sinclair under the proposed purchase. In Des Moines, Iowa, the purchase would mean that Sinclair would own both KDSM (a FOX affiliate) and WHO (an NBC affiliate). In Oklahoma City, Sinclair would gain two stations — KFOR (an NBC affiliate) and its sister station KAUT — adding to the two it already owns there, leaving it with half the commercial TV stations in that city.
Sinclair’s moves to create an even bigger network and dominate key cities and states have critics from across the political spectrum crying foul.
Former FCC Chairman Michael Copps, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, called Sinclair “probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” according to a recent expose by The Guardian. John Oliver called it “maybe the most influential media company you never heard of” in a stinging 18-minute Sinclair segment on his weekly satirical HBO show “Last Week Tonight.
According to the New York Times even Trump allies, like Newsmax are sounding the alarm.
“This week, Newsmax, whose founder, Christopher Ruddy, is a close associate of President Trump, filed a petition urging the Federal Communications Commission to deny the Sinclair-Tribune combination. One America News Network, a cable network that has championed the Trump administration’s agenda, and The Blaze, a news and entertainment network started by Glenn Beck, have also pressed for a careful assessment of the merger.
“‘A free and diverse press, a bedrock principle of American democracy, will be crippled by this proposed merger,’ Newsmax said in its filing. ‘The level of media concentration proposed by this transaction will homogenize the content available to U.S. consumers, eliminate unique viewpoints and reduce press diversity, especially in the delivery of local news.’”
Dish Network and Ride Television have also expressed their opposition.
Sinclair’s Bias Interferes with the News
Sinclair’s rise has been accompanied by frequent evidence of its favoritism of right-wing candidates and willingness to slant the news.
The company and its executives have consistently funded right-wing political candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In April 2004, Sinclair refused to let its stations broadcast a special “Nightline” episode, produced by the ABC television network, that was devoted to reading the names of soldiers who had died in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It also directed its stations to air an anti-Kerry program ahead of the 2004 presidential election.
Sinclair stations are forced to make room for “must run” segments produced by the company, such as brashly right-wing video op-eds from Sinclair executive Mark Hyman and the station’s chief political analyst (and senior advisor to Trump’s campaign) Boris Epshteyn, who memorably claimed that President Obama won North Carolina because of voter fraud.
Sinclair stations are also fed scripts to introduce must-runs, leaving local news stations across the country echoing language such as, “Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn?” as evidence was mounting that Flynn was in serious legal jeopardy for failure to report foreign ties and for withholding information from the Pentagon and the FBI.
Sinclair’s Threat to Freedom of the Press
Sinclair initially declined to respond to concerns raised by liberal and conservative media outlets. But in mid-July, Politico obtained an internal memo sent to Sinclair station news directors in which Vice President of News Scott Livingston claimed that “biased” news organizations reporting negative reactions to Sinclair’s latest proposed merger have “an agenda to destroy our reputation.”
Livingston’s comments echoed the company’s 2016 annual report, in which Chairman of the Board David Smith told shareholders “Our First Amendment rights are under attack…”
Because of its ties to the Trump White House and the overwhelming influence an even larger Sinclair would have on the majority of local news stations across the country, Free Press head Craig Aaron put a finer point on the threats that such a consolidation poses to freedom of the press:
“Trump-favoring mega-chain gets rules changed — and expects others to be erased — so it can put its cookie-cutter newscasts in nearly 70 percent of local markets across the country.…. I feel terrible for the local journalists who will be forced to set aside their news judgment to air Trump administration talking points and reactionary commentaries from headquarters.”
There is a Stop the Sinclair-Tribune merger petition at Free Press. Image credit: Free Press. |
City-wide housing march, July 16th 2014
This Sunday an unusual Affordable Housing Rally will be held at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The stated goal of the rally is to attract Vancouver’s middle class residents, “young professionals,” and “well educated people” who #DontHave1Million. In the words of the organizers, the rally seeks to amplify the voices of an “increasingly incensed population of Vancouverites who by comparison live pretty privileged lives.” In a city with deepening poverty and a long history of working class housing movements, the event has been interpreted as a bold shift capable of highlighting the housing aspirations of Vancouver’s relatively affluent.
The story goes that Vancouver is becoming home to the poor and the rich, with no place for the so-called middle-class. For years this has been the official policy of the Vision-led municipal government, whose own “bold” housing strategy excludes those who make under $21,000, as was first outlined with the terms of reference for the Mayor’s Task Force on Affordability. Instead of supporting those at the bottom, official city policy offers tax breaks to developers to build expensive market units for the middle and upper classes. The effect of prioritizing aspiring home-buyers is that Vancouver’s low-income housing stock is being eroded everywhere from the West End and City Centre to the Eastside, creating another spike in homelessness.
These politics of the status quo are reflected in the programing for Sunday’s rally. Working class organizations have been all but excluded. The Social Housing Alliance, which has been organizing around housing and homelessness in BC since 2012, asked to be included in the event but were declined by the organizers. Likewise, the Power of Women, which has organized the Women’s Housing March since 2007, is not listed as participants or speakers. Nor have the DTES SRO Collaborative or Carnegie Community Action Project, or any other representatives from low-income, racialized, or Indigenous movements who are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis.
Instead, the speakers list consists of Wes Regan, executive director of the Hastings Crossing (DTES) Business Association (BIA). By advancing the interests of the gentrifying businesses, Regan and the BIA have been key players in the aggressive gentrification of the DTES. Another speaker will be Tony Roy, executive director of the neoliberal BC Non Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA). For the last few years the BCNPHA has been pushing BC’s housing non-profits to embrace the expiry of operating agreements as an emerging opportunity for private public redevelopment schemes. Also invited to speak is the author of the blog post The Decline of Vancouver, which recapitulates the usual scapegoating of foreigners for the housing crisis while obscuring the role of the local elite installed at every level of government.
In short, evictions, displacement, substandard housing, and homelessness will not be acknowledged this weekend – even while the demand for middle-class homeownership directly contributes to these problems.
The myth of trickle down affordability
So why organize a housing rally exclusively for the middle class? The case goes something like this: helping the middle class will help everyone. To do this we need solutions targeting the housing problems facing the middle class, especially affordable forms of homeownership.
The idea of trickle down affordability, also known to economists as ‘filtering theory,’ is not new. The theory of filtering, developed by right-wing think tanks in the United States in the 60s and 70s, refers to the assumption that when housing units for the middle class are added to the market, tenants with lower incomes move up the housing commodity chain, leaving their previous affordable units available for others.
Many real estate corporations in Vancouver take filtering theory to its logical conclusion, arguing that the more condo units we add to the market, the more people we help by pulling tenants up the housing ladder, improving the average level of housing quality and affordability for everyone.
Studies of the Canadian housing market indicate that the effects of filtering theory are not only exaggerated, but nonexistent in terms of overall affordability. Andrejs Skaburskis’ 2006 research article concludes that, “the filtering process is both too slow and, at best, can have too small an effect to be part of a government strategy for reducing the housing burdens of low-income people. Filtering is not helping lower-income households.”
Through the daily process of gentrification, luxury and mid-level home ownership works against the existing stock of affordable housing. The people who are the worst affected by the housing crisis have repeatedly declared that the larger problem can’t be solved without addressing the problems facing low-income people.
What does it mean to propose homeownership as a solution to the housing crisis? It means that for-profit real estate corporations – and their parties at city hall – will continue to dominate our housing economy, when instead we need non-commodified social housing. It means that SROs will be turned into condos, that rents will rise across the board, and that working people will be displaced from their homes and neighbourhoods.
It is also important to reflect on what it means to rally in favor of property ownership in a city like Vancouver, located on unceded Coast Salish territories. The model of property ownership and the commodification of land is at the origins of the housing crisis, which for Indigenous people dates back to the beginning of colonialism. Vancouver is experiencing not just a housing crisis – it’s a land crisis. Without acknowledging this fact, we are just repeating history.
Housing hierarchy perpetuates the crisis
One of the organizers of the event, Eveline Xia, repeatedly makes the point that she has a Master of Science and still can’t afford to live in the city. The fact that “respected professionals” and people with a “good education” can’t afford to live in the city is repeatedly stressed. And of course this fact is a true sign that the city is absurdly unaffordable. However, this way of approaching the problem only reinforces the idea that middle class people deserve to access home ownership and other settler-colonial entitlements. It assumes that certain people have truly earned the right to stay in the city, emphasizing the division between seemingly deserving and undeserving residents.
Last year at the City Wide Housing March, Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS) president, Tracey Morrison, gave a moving speech about how she had to almost die in order to get housing. Only when she was lying at the intensive care unit was she offered housing by Atira housing society. People in Tracey’s situation will not be represented or heard this Sunday. Instead of Tracey, you will hear about how hard it is for Eric and Ilsa to build a house with enough space for their live-in nanny and their combined income of $360k per year. It is a shame, because it is only through the leadership of Tracey, not Eric and Ilsa that Vancouver’s housing crisis can be genuinely confronted.
We challenge the organizers to stand by their word to take “a lesson from those less fortunate than us who have endured their own housing crisis for much longer. It’s time to follow their lead. It’s time to stand up for ourselves and for our communities. It’s time to stand with them too.” As a starting point, invite low-income speakers to the rally, reach out to low-income residents, centre the housing problems faced by the majority, not the minority. Take leadership from the Indigenous residents whose land we stand on, land that has never been ceded, and who despite only making up 2% of the population in the city make up over 32% of the homeless population. |
One language separated by an ocean. English spoken in the UK and the US is not only separated by geography, but also 400 years of history. Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 was one of the first codifications of English in the UK and helped standardise the language across the country. However, English in the US continued in its original form and developed in its own way until Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. Therefore some of the words used in the US today may have come from dialects in the UK, but have fallen out of favour.
As an UK ex-pat living in the US, and someone who loves cooking, there have been challenges while shopping, eating in restaurants or just discussing food. It is sometime like learning a new language. As well as new words and phrases, even the cuts of meat are different, and not just the names. See for “What’s your beef?” for diagrams. |
Mutagenic effects of ribavirin on IAV genome
We first determined whether ribavirin can induce mutagenesis in the IAV genome. To determine the effect of ribavirin on IAV genomic mutational frequencies, recombinant virus Wuhan95 (H3N2) was passaged four times in the presence (35 μM) or absence of ribavirin and the HA1 gene was analysed by clonal sequencing. After four serial passages in vitro, ribavirin increased genomic mutation frequency from 3.69 (25 out of 67,704) to 15.74 (89 out of 56,544) per 104 nucleotide sequenced (Fisher’s exact test, P<0.0001; Supplementary Table 1), predominantly with the characteristic G-to-A and complementary C-to-T mutations (Fisher’s exact test, P=0.001; Fig. 1a). This observation suggested that the purine analogue ribavirin can cause mutagenesis in the IAV genome. We then evaluated whether addition of guanosine may compete with ribavirin and rescue viral replication. First, the 50% cytotoxic concentration (CC 50 ) of guanosine and ribavirin in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells was determined by MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay to be 122.00±0.11 μM (mean CC 50 ±s.e.; Supplementary Fig. 1a) and 352.00±0.04 μM, respectively (Supplementary Fig. 1b). In the presence of 40 μM ribavirin, we observed that the addition of 20 μM guanosine reversed the inhibition of Wuhan95 by ribavirin (Fig. 1b). This confirms previous observations that guanosine can reverse the antiviral activity of ribavirin at non-cytotoxic concentrations for influenza virus15,16,17,18. Thus, although ribavirin can inhibit RdRP directly16, our data shows that ribavirin can also cause mutagenesis in the IAV genome as a purine analogue.
Figure 1: The mutagenic effect of ribavirin on IAV genome. (a) Frequencies of nucleotide substitutions in the HA1 gene (nts 140–883, numbering from ATG) of Wuhan95 viruses that were serial passaged four times in the absence (no drug control) or presence (N6) of 35 μM ribavirin in MDCK cells. Six clones for N6 and two clones for no drug control were analysed. Nucleotide changes from letters in the first column to those in the first row were shown, with the most frequent changes highlighted in the black boxes. Increased G-to-A and C-to-T mutations were noted in N6 after four passages in the presence of ribavirin (Fisher’s exact test, P=0.0010). Fisher’s exact test was based on a 2 × 2 contingency table constructed to compare the relative number of G-to-A mutations to A-to-G mutations between wild-type and V43I viruses. (b) Ribavirin competition assay with nucleoside guanosine was performed with the Wuhan95 virus at MOI=0.1 in MDCK cells under three different conditions: no drug treatment, 40 μM of ribavirin and 40 μM ribavirin plus 20 μM guanosine. Culture supernatants were harvested at 48 h post infection to determine viral titres (log 10 TCID 50 per ml). Student’s t-test was performed to compare the difference in viral titres between different treatment groups. The mean viral titers±s.d. from triplicates derived from one out of two independent experiments are shown. Full size image
Isolating H3N2 variants with reduced ribavirin sensitivity
Since ribavirin was observed to increase IAV RdRP mutational frequency, we hypothesized that the selection of an IAV ribavirin-resistant variant may yield an RdRP fidelity variant as reported previously for other RNA viruses9,19,20. We serially passaged a human seasonal H3N2 influenza strain Wuhan95 (H3N2) in six replicates in MDCK cells at a constant multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.01 TCID 50 per cell from passages 1 to 11 in the presence of 35 μM ribavirin. This concentration of ribavirin was previously determined to be at approximately EC 75 by determining viral titre from culture supernatant (Supplementary Fig. 2a) and by determining M gene copy numbers using quantitative real-time PCR (Supplementary Fig. 2b). After 11 serial passages in the presence of 35 μM ribavirin, we raised the concentration of ribavirin to 40μM and continued passaging the virus for six more passages, aiming to isolate variants that can replicate at a higher concentration of ribavirin and to further increase the proportion of ribavirin-resistant variant in the total virus population. Two of the six replicates, N1 and N6, went extinct at passage 5 as no virus progeny can be detected using TCID 50 assay (detection limit=1.789 log 10 TCID 50 per ml; Supplementary Fig. 2c). Two more replicates, N3 and N5, subsequently went extinct at passage 12. Replicates N2 and N4 were passaged in the presence of ribavirin until passage 17 (Supplementary Fig. 2c), at which point plaque reduction assays were performed to isolate virus clones with increased resistance to ribavirin. A total of 182 plaques that showed reduced sensitivity at 40 μM ribavirin in plaque reduction assay were picked and were expanded once in the absence of ribavirin before further testing for their sensitivity to ribavirin by plaque reduction assay. Six expanded clones derived from replicate N4 and two clones from replicate N2 that showed a consistently reduced sensitivity to ribavirin were selected for Sanger sequencing to map potential mutations in PB2, PB1, PA and NP genes that may confer to ribavirin resistance.
PB1-V43I confers ribavirin resistance to H3N2 and H5N1 IAV
Eleven mutations were identified in genes from the six expanded clones from N4 and two expanded clones from N2 with reduced sensitivity to ribavirin, five mutations in PB1, two in PB2, one in PA and three in NP (Supplementary Table 2). We introduced 10 mutations found in the clones derived from the N4 replicate (Supplementary Table 2) into the PB2 (PB2-D309N, PB2-R702K), PB1 (PB1-V43I, PB1-V191I, PB1-A661T, PB1-S741F), PA (PA-L54F) and NP (NP-D101N, NP-S287N, NP-M371I) proteins as RNPrib-resist (Fig. 2a). The PB1-S678N mutation found in the N2 replicate was tested separately (Fig. 2b). We used a reductionist approach based on a mini-genome assay to assess the role of each mutation on ribavirin sensitivity. First, we identified that the mutations conferring the ribavirin resistance phenotype resided in PB1, as co-transfecting the PB1 plasmid harbouring the four mutations (V43I, V191I, A661T, S741F) identified from the clones derived from the N4 replicate with the PB2, PA or NP plasmids derived from the wild-type virus exhibited reduced sensitivity to ribavirin (Fig. 2a). In reverse, replacing each of the PB2, PB1, PA or NP plasmids derived from RNPrib-resist with that from the wild-type RNP confirm that only retaining the PB1 derived from RNPrib-resist show reduced sensitivity to ribavirin in the mini-genome assay (Supplementary Fig. 3a). We then individually evaluated the effect of all the mutations identified in the PB1 of the N2 (S678N) and N4 (V43I, V191I, A661T, S741F) replicates by the mini-genome assay (Fig. 2b). S741F mutation was found to confer minimal resistance to ribavirin (Fig. 2b) and significantly reduced polymerase activity of Wuhan95 polymerase complex by 2.4-fold (Table 1). Through testing each of the PB1 mutations with the mini-genome assay, we identified the PB1-V43I mutation that exhibited most significant resistance to ribavirin (Fig. 2b), with an EC 50 (effector concentration for half-maximum response) value of 95.59 μM (95% confidence interval (CI), 70.92–128.8 μM) while the EC 50 of the wild-type polymerase was 41.67 μM (95% CI, 36.24–47.91 μM; Table 1). The PB1-V43I mutation was observed to reduce the polymerase activity of the Wuhan95 virus by 50% by the polymerase-based mini-genome assay (Table 1).
Figure 2: Applying polymerase-based mini-genome assay to identify mutation(s) conferring reduced sensitivity to ribavirin. (a) Effect of the gene segment conferring to ribavirin resistance was evaluated by substituting wild-type Wuhan95 polymerase (RNPwild type), with PB1, PB2, PA or NP genes from the ribavirin-resistant variant (N4) harbouring all 10 mutations (RNPrib-resist). The experiment was performed two times with similar trends. (b) Mapping of the PB1 mutation conferring to ribavirin resistance was performed by substituting each of the five PB1 mutations identified from the ribavirin-resistant clones N4 and N2. The ratio of firefly luciferase and renilla luciferase derived for each reaction was normalized to that of the ratio derived at 0 μM ribavirin (retained polymerase activity %). Three independent experiments were performed with one representative result shown. The error bars represent the s.d. of triplicates (N=3). (c) Ribavirin dose–response curve in MDCK cells using recombinant Wuhan95 viruses each carrying a single-point mutation (V43I, V191I, A661T and S678N) in PB1. Cells were infected at MOI=0.1 and the supernatants were harvested at 48 h post infection for titration. The error bars represent the s.d. determined for triplicates (N=3) for one representative experiment. The experiment was performed two times. One representative result of two independent experiments is shown. (d) Mini-genome assays for polymerase activity were performed in the presence of increasing concentrations of ribavirin to compare the sensitivities of the wild type with the PB1-V43I counterparts using H3N2 or H5N1 polymerase complexes. The error bars represent samples prepared in triplicates (N=3). The experiment was performed three times. (e) Ribavirin dose–response curve in MDCK cells using the recombinant H3N2 and H5N1 viruses with or without the PB1-V43I mutation. P values are based on Student’s t-test. N.S. denotes not statistically significant. The error bar represents the s.d. determined from samples prepared in triplicates (N=3). The ribavirin dose–response curve with Wuhan95 (H3N2) wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant viruses were repeated five times. Full size image
Table 1: The effect of the identified PB1 mutations on ribavirin sensitivity and polymerase activity using mini-genome assays. Full size table
To confirm the results derived from the mini-genome assay, we generated recombinant H3N2 viruses harbouring each of the four mutations in PB1 (S678N from replicate N2 and V43I, V191I and A661T from replicate N4). The S741F mutation was excluded because it conferred minimal resistance to ribavirin and reduced polymerase activity by mini-genome assay (Table 1). Under increasing concentration of ribavirin, the recombinant Wuhan95 virus carrying the PB1-V43I mutation showed the most pronounced ribavirin resistance with a 10.8-fold higher virus titre at 60 μM ribavirin compared with that of the wild-type-recombinant Wuhan95 virus (Fig. 2c,e). The EC 50 value of Wuhan95-recombinant PB1-V43I virus at an MOI of 0.1 was 73.49 μM (95% CI, 60.67–89.03 μM), which is higher than that of the recombinant wild-type virus, with an EC 50 value of 39.49 μM (95% CI, 35.65–43.74 μM).
PB1-V43 lies within the putative viral RNA-binding domain in the amino terminus of PB1 and is highly conserved among IAV21. To evaluate whether the PB1-V43I mutation would confer resistance to ribavirin in a different IAV polymerase complex, we introduced the V43I mutation into the H5N1 highly pathogenic VN04 virus. We observed that the V43I mutation similarly confers resistance to ribavirin in a mini-genome assay, with an EC 50 value of 29.00 μM (95% CI, 23.46–35.86 μM), which is higher than that of the wild-type virus, with an EC 50 value of 15.74 μM (95% CI, 11.82–20.96 μM; Fig. 2d). Compared with its wild-type counterpart, recombinant H5N1 virus with the PB1-V43I mutation showed reduced sensitivity to increasing concentrations of ribavirin in MDCK cells (Fig. 2e). Importantly, the PB1-V43I mutation did not significantly reduce the polymerase activity of the H5N1 polymerase complex (wild-type polymerase activity is 12.64±0.5366 (mean firefly/renilla luciferase ratio±s.d.), whereas for V43I mutant is 12.98±0.3647; Supplementary Fig. 4a).
PB1 of IAV encodes three polypeptides, PB1, PB1-F2 and the recently identified N40 protein22. The PB1-V43I mutation in PB1 protein would lead to an amino-acid change (V3I) in the N40 protein but not in the PB1-F2 protein, as CAG in PB1 and CAA in PB1-F2 both encode glutamine. To ensure that the phenotype we observed was purely derived from the PB1-V43I mutation but not due to the V3I mutation in the N40 protein, we eliminated the expression of N40 protein by introducing a PB1-M40L mutation to remove the start codon of PB1-N40 of the VN04 polymerase complex. This approach allows direct assessing of the effect of the PB1-V43I mutation in the PB1 protein without being confounded by the V3I mutation in the N40 protein. VN04 polymerase complex was selected over the Wuhan95 polymerase complex to study the effect of PB1-N40, as the V43I mutation did not cause significant reduction in VN04 polymerase activity (Supplementary Fig. 4a) but would reduce the Wuhan95 polymerase activity by ~50%. The introduction of the M40L mutation in the absence or presence of the PB1-V43I mutation was observed to reduce the polymerase activity to 80.21 or 64.19%, respectively (Supplementary Table 3). Comparing with the VN04 polymerase complex containing the PB1-M40L mutation, the combination of the M40L and V43I PB1 mutations retains resistance to ribavirin (Supplementary Fig. 4b). In summary, we identified a single V43I mutation in PB1 protein that confers resistance to ribavirin in both the human-origin Wuhan95 and the avian-origin VN04 polymerase complexes. The PB1-V43I mutation introduced in recombinant Wuhan95 or VN04 viruses similarly confers to reduced sensitivity to ribavirin.
Fitness of the PB1-V43I-recombinant virus in vitro
To compare the viral fitness of the PB1-V43I variant with its wild-type counterpart in vitro, we determined the single-cycle replication kinetics of the H3N2- and the H5N1-recombinant wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses in MDCK cells. For the H3N2-recombinant viruses, the PB1-V43I virus replicated to half a log lower titre than that of the wild-type virus at 6 h post infection; however, both viruses reached comparable titres after 8 h post infection (Fig. 3a). For the H5N1-recombinant viruses, both the wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses replicated to comparable titres (Fig. 3a). Overall, the results of replication kinetics correlated with the polymerase activity of the H3N2 and H5N1 polymerase complexes as described previously.
Figure 3: Replication kinetics of wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses under competition or suboptimal temperatures. (a) One-step growth kinetics of wild-type and PB1-V43I H3N2 and H5N1 viruses using MOI 1–2 TCID 50 per cell in MDCK cells. Viral supernatants were collected every 2 h post infection and viral titres (mean±s.d. log 10 TCID 50 per ml) from triplicates were shown. The replication kinetics has been repeated three times for the H3N2 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses and once for the H5N1 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses. (b) Competitive replication of wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant viruses in vitro. Wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses were premixed at different ratios before infection of MDCK cells. To determine the actual ratio in both the premixed (inoculum) and the viral supernatant after incubation for 2 days (progeny virus), clonal sequencing was performed to determine the ratio between Wuhan95 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses. (c) As an alternative, in a separate experiment, instead of clonal sequencing, plaque assay was performed for the inoculums and passage-one viral supernatant after incubation for 2 days. Then, 32 clones were picked for each of the three inoculums and three corresponding passage-one viral cultures for viral RNA isolation and RT–PCR of the PB1 gene region that can distinguish wild-type virus from its V43I-mutant counterpart. The actual ratio in the inoculums and the viral supernatant was shown in the same manner. (d) The mean plaque sizes formed by the Wuhan95 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses incubated at different temperatures. Wild-type or PB1-V43I-mutant viruses were used to infect MDCK monolayers in triplicates and were incubated under 0.5% agar overlay for 48 h at 33, 37 or 39 °C. The experiments were repeated independently twice and one representative result was shown. (e) Picture taken for the one representative plaque assay experiment performed for wild-type and V43I-mutant viruses at the three temperatures. (f) Growth curve of wild-type and V43I-mutant Wuhan95 viruses performed at 37 °C, (g) 33 °C and (h) 39 °C. For f–h, viral titres (mean±s.d. log 10 TCID 50 per ml) from quadruplicated wells were shown. Three independent experiments were performed, with one representative experiment being displayed. P values were based on two-way analysis of variance test with Bonferroni post tests. N.S., not statistically significant. Full size image
The stability of the PB1-V43I mutation in the H3N2 virus after five passages in MDCK cells was confirmed by Sanger sequencing. We observed that the V43I mutation was stably maintained; however, a subpopulation of A370V PB1 mutation was noted at passage 5 by Sanger sequencing and was further confirmed by clonal sequencing (46.2%). No additional mutation was noted in the other seven segments of the PB1-V43I virus after five passages in MDCK cells by Sanger sequencing. The effect of the A370V mutation was assessed using the mini-genome assay. As observed previously, the V43I mutation alone reduced polymerase activity by 1.46 fold when compared with that of the wild-type virus; however, the combination of V43I and the A370V mutations increased the polymerase activity by 1.66 fold when compared with that of the wild-type virus (Supplementary Table 4). Therefore, the A370V mutation may play a compensatory role to rescue the decreased polymerase activity caused by the V43I mutation in the Wuhan95 polymerase complex.
We further conducted a direct competition assay between the PB1-V43I variant and its wild-type counterpart in vitro (Fig. 3b). MDCK cells were infected at MOI 0.1 by a mixture of the H3N2 wild-type and the PB1-V43I variant at three different ratios. The three ratios between the wild-type and V43I-mutant viruses were intended to be at 25:75%, 50:50% and 75:25%; however, the exact ratios were confirmed by clonal sequencing of the inoculum to be at 2.4:97.6%, 40:60% and 56.3:43.8%. The ratios between the wild-type and the PB1-V43I variant in the viral progenies at 48 h post infection, as determined by TOPO cloning of the reverse transcription PCR (RT–PCR) product of viral RNA extracted from the virus supernatant, were comparable to that of the inoculums (Fig. 3b), suggesting that the wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses possess comparable viral fitness in vitro under minimal selection pressure. To further verify the competitive fitness between the Wuhan wild-type and the PB1-V43I-mutant viruses, MDCK cells were infected at MOI=0.1 with mixtures of the two viruses 41.9:58.1%, 64.5:35.5% and 83.9:16.1% (verified by RT–PCR and sequencing of the PB1 gene flanking the V43I region from plaques formed by the inoculums). Culture supernatants were harvested at 48 h post infection. The post-infection ratio between the Wuhan wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant viruses were determined by RT–PCR and sequencing of the PB1 gene flanking the V43I region with 32 picked plaques per reaction. Similar to the previous observation, the ratio of wild-type and V43I mutant remains comparable before and after one passage in MDCK cells (Fig. 3c), suggesting that the PB1-V43I mutation did not compromise viral fitness under direct competition assay with the wild-type virus.
To assess whether the wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses exhibited similar viral fitness at suboptimal conditions, we determined the plaque sizes of the wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses at 33, 37 and 39 °C (Fig. 3d). The two viruses formed comparable sizes of plaques at 33 or 37 °C, but the wild-type virus formed significantly larger plaques than that of the PB1-V43I virus at 39 °C (Fig. 3e). In addition, we determined the viral replication kinetics with an MOI of 0.01 of the Wuhan wild-type and V43I-mutant viruses at 33, 37 and 39 °C in MDCK cells. Comparable virus replication efficiency was observed for the Wuhan wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant viruses at 37 °C (Fig. 3f), while minor differences in replication efficiency was noted at 33 °C (Fig. 3g). The difference in replication efficiency between the wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses was most noticeable at 39 °C, as the V43I-mutant virus replicated to lower viral titres while compared with its wild-type counterpart at all six time points examined (Fig. 3h). The result suggests that the wild-type virus may possess a replicative advantage over the PB1-V43I virus under the suboptimal condition of higher temperature.
PB1-V43I confers reduced favipiravir sensitivity
To further investigate the molecular mechanism for the increased resistance to ribavirin displayed by the PB1-V43I mutation, we applied the polymerase-based mini-genome assay to assess whether the mutation would similarly confer reduced sensitivity to another purine analogue, favipiravir, for which no IAV-resistant variants has been reported. PB1-V43I mutation in the polymerase complex of either Wuhan95 (H3N2) or VN04 (H5N1) exhibited decreased sensitivity to favipiravir compared with that of the wild-type polymerase complexes, although the difference is not as significant as observed for ribavirin (Fig. 4a). Applying the mini-genome assay, the calculated EC 50 as determined of the PB1-V43I H3N2 and PB1-V43I H5N1 viruses was shown to be 49.11 μM (95% CI, 41.05–58.76 μM) and 59.66 μM (95% CI, 41.00–86.81 μM), respectively, while those of the H3N2 and H5N1 wild-type polymerases were determined to be only 27.88 μM (95% CI, 22.28–34.88 μM) and 40.08 μM (95% CI, 33.84–47.47 μM), respectively.
Figure 4: Effect of PB1-V43I mutation on favipiravir sensitivities. (a) Sensitivity of the PB1-V43I mutation in Wuhan95 and VN04 polymerase complexes to favipiravir (0–120 μM) was determined using the mini-genome assay. (b) Favipiravir dose–response curve in MDCK cells using the recombinant H3N2 wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses (MOI=0.1). (c) Favipiravir dose–response curve in MDCK cells using the recombinant H5N1 wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses (MOI=0.001). The supernatant was harvested at 48 h post infection for titration. The viral titres (mean±s.d. log 10 TCID 50 per ml) from triplicates are shown. Student’s t-test was performed to calculate the P values. Full size image
We then examined whether the PB1-V43I mutation affects the sensitivity of recombinant H3N2 or H5N1 viruses to favipiravir in MDCK cells. The wild-type H3N2 virus has an EC 50 value of 10.98 μM (95% CI, 6.93–17.41 μM) compared with a 2.24-fold increase in EC 50 to 24.61 μM (95% CI, 17.65–34.32 μM) in the PB1-V43I mutant when infected at a MOI of 0.1 (Fig. 4b). Although there is a reduction in favipiravir sensitivity observed for the VN04 PB1-V43I polymerase complex by the mini-genome assay, the recombinant H5N1 VN04 virus carrying the PB1-V43I mutation (EC 50 =17.85; 95% CI, 11.69–27.27 μM) did not show significant resistance to favipiravir while compared with its wild-type counterpart (EC 50 =18.97; 95% CI, 12.26–29.38 μM) at MOI of 0.001 (Fig. 4c). Overall, we identified that the V43I mutation confers reduced sensitivity to both ribavirin (Fig. 2d) and favipiravir at the polymerase level (Fig. 4a).
PB1-V43I confers increased guanosine selectivity
As ribavirin is a purine analogue, it is possible that the PB1-V43I mutant, which exhibited altered selectivity to ribavirin, would possess altered binding affinity for GTP or ATP. We evaluated the effect of guanosine treatment on the polymerase activity of both wild-type PB1 and PB-V43I proteins in IAV mini-genome assay. The VN04 polymerase complex was used for the assay as the V43I mutation does not significantly decrease its activity. We observed that an increasing concentration of guanosine leads to reduced polymerase activity (as reflected by the expressed firefly luciferase activity) for both the wild-type as well as PB1-V43I polymerase complexes (Fig. 5a). The reduction in polymerase activity is likely through the biased intracellular nucleoside triphosphate (NTP) concentrations, as the addition of 25–500 μM guanosine to the Jurkat cells has been reported to increase intracellular GTP but deplete ATP concentrations23. Interestingly, we observed that the PB1-V43I protein exhibited more significant reduction in polymerase activity under increasing concentration of guanosine (Fig. 5a), suggesting that the PB1-V43I showed increased selectivity for nucleosides over the wild-type PB1 protein under the biased intracellular NTP concentrations. The observed greater reduction in the polymerase activity (as reflected by expressed firefly luciferase activity) by the PB1-V43I protein under high guanosine concentrations (leading to biased intracellular NTP concentration) can be due to direct inhibition of RdRP as a result of increased nucleoside selectivity, or due to mutagenesis effect under the biased intracellular NTP concentration, leading to increased deleterious mutations in the luciferase mRNA and the synthesis of non-functional luciferase proteins. To clarify the potential mechanism, we quantified the firefly luciferase mRNA copy numbers from cells co-transfected with the PB1 plasmid carrying the V43I mutation under high guanosine concentrations. The reduced polymerase activity (as reflected by reduced firefly luciferase activity) was correlated with lower firefly luciferase mRNA levels from cells co-transfected with the PB1 plasmid carrying the V43I mutation (Fig. 5b). This observation further supports that the reduced polymerase activity is through decreased RNA synthesis. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the reduced luciferase mRNA copy numbers can also be explained by reduced promoter binding, cap binding or cap cleavage by the viral polymerase.
Figure 5: Effects of PB1-V43I mutation on guanosine selectivity and mutational frequencies. (a) Effect of increasing concentrations of guanosine on VN04 wild-type or PB1-V43I polymerase complex using mini-genome assay. P values are based on Student’s t-test. The error bars denote s.d. calculated for samples performed in triplicates. The experiment was repeated twice independently. (b) Firefly luciferase mRNA expression (copy numbers) under increasing concentration of guanosine. P values are based on Student’s t-test. (c) Guanosine and ribavirin competition assay to determine the effect of guanosine in reversing the inhibitory effects of ribavirin on wild-type versus PB1-V43I polymerases. P values are based on Student’s t-test. The mean±s.d. relative polymerase activities under different concentrations of ribavirin and guanosine were determined from triplicate samples. The experiment was repeated twice independently. (d) Mutation frequencies of recombinant Wuhan95 or VN04 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses in the HA gene were determined by clonal sequencing. Data were expressed as the percentage of clones with 0 or ≥1 mutations in the HA gene. One of the three independently repeated experiments is shown. Fisher’s exact test was performed to determine the P values. Full size image
We then evaluated the effect of guanosine for both the wild-type PB1 and PB1-V43I proteins in the presence of ribavirin. We showed that guanosine (20 μM) can restore Wuhan95 replication in the presence of ribavirin (40 μM; Fig. 1b). As we observed previously, the wild-type PB1 activity inhibited by ribavirin (120 μM) can be partially rescued at low concentrations of guanosine (≤40 μM); however, the PB1 activity was significantly reduced under higher guanosine concentrations, likely through the biased NTP concentrations (Fig. 5c). In contrast, increased guanosine (≤40 μM) did not reverse the inhibitory effects of ribavirin on PB1-V43I as efficiently as that on the wild-type PB1 protein, suggesting that the PB1-V43I protein may possess a reduced affinity to GTP at low concentrations of guanosine. Under higher guanosine concentrations, at which a biased intracellular NTP concentration is likely present, the PB1-V43I protein exhibited further reduced polymerase activity than that of the wild-type PB1 protein. Overall, the results suggest that the V43I mutation increased the nucleoside selectivity of the PB1 protein.
PB1-V43I reduces H3N2 and H5N1 mutational frequencies
Resistant variants selected by ribavirin of the Piconaviridae and Togaviridae families have been reported to possess altered polymerase fidelity9,11,20. To confirm that the PB1-V43I mutation conferring ribavirin resistance would also affect IAV polymerase fidelity, clonal sequencing was performed to calculate the mutational frequency between the wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses. The HA gene of the recombinant Wuhan95 (H3N2) or VN04 (H5N1) wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses that were passaged twice in MDCK cells was analysed. The mutation frequency of the H3N2 wild-type virus was calculated to be higher compared with that of the PB1-V43I virus by a factor ranging from 0.98 to 3.12 in three independent experiments (Fig. 5d; Supplementary Table 5). A similar trend was observed when we calculated the mutational frequency in the NA gene of the H3N2 wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses; the wild-type H3N2 virus (7.06 mutations per 104 nucleotides) showed 1.49-fold higher mutational frequency than that of the PB1-V43I virus (4.75 mutations per 104 nucleotides) (Supplementary Table 6). Since ribavirin may act as a mutagen for IAV RdRP, a reduced mutation frequency would be expected for the PB1-V43I virus after passaging in the presence of ribavirin. Therefore, we determined the mutational frequencies of the wild-type and the PB1-V43I viruses after one passage in the presence of 66.6 μM ribavirin in MDCK cells. After 48 h, viral supernatant was collected to determine the mutational frequencies in the HA gene by clonal sequencing (Supplementary Table 7). We observed that in the presence of ribavirin, the wild-type virus (5.53 mutations per 104 nucleotides) exhibited a 1.36-fold higher mutational frequency than that of the PB1-V43I virus (4.08 mutations per 104 nucleotides). In addition to applying clonal sequencing, we also directly sequenced the HA gene of plaques formed by the Wuhan wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses in MDCK cells by Sanger sequencing. The wild-type virus (1.67 mutations per 104 nucleotides) has 4.76-fold higher mutational frequencies when compared with that of the PB1-V43I mutant (0.35 mutations per 104 nucleotides) (Supplementary Table 8). Applying clonal sequencing, the mutational frequency in the HA gene of the recombinant H5N1 virus carrying the PB1-V43I mutation was lower compared with that of its wild-type counterpart by a factor of 1.39–1.55 (Fig. 5d; Supplementary Table 9).
PB1-V43I H5N1 IAV exhibited reduced pathogenicity in mice
We evaluated the effect of mutation frequency on viral fitness in vivo using the recombinant H5N1 viruses with or without the PB1-V43I mutation at a challenge dose of 100 p.f.u. (Fig. 6a,b) or 10 p.f.u. (Fig. 6c–e), respectively. At either challenge dose, both the wild-type and the high-fidelity H5N1 viruses replicated to comparable titres in the mouse lungs on days 3, 6 and 8 (10 p.f.u. only) post inoculation (Fig. 6a,d). The PB1-V43I variant was tenfold less lethal than wild-type virus with the MLD 50 (mouse lethal dose) at 31.6 or 3.4 p.f.u., respectively. At an inoculation dose of 100 p.f.u., all mice in the wild-type group had died by day 11 post inoculation compared with five out of nine mice in the PB1-V43I virus group; three out of nine mice with PB1-V43I survived at the end point of the experiment (20 days post inoculation). The difference in lethality between wild-type and PB1-V43I is more pronounced when a lower inoculation dose of 10 p.f.u. was used (Fig. 6c). All mice (10 out of 10) in the wild-type group died within 14 days post inoculation, while only 4 of 10 mice died in the PB1-V43I virus group at 20 days post inoculation. To further examine the mechanism of the observed difference in lethality between the wild-type and PB1-V43I mutant, the viral titres in the brain were determined to assess the neurotropism of the wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses (Fig. 6e). At day 3 post inoculation with 10 p.f.u. per mouse, there was no detectable virus in the brain. At days 6 and 8, the viral titre in the brain was observed to be higher for the wild-type group compared with the PB1-V43I-mutant group (t-test, P=0.0267).
Figure 6: In vivo characterization of wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant H5N1 viruses. (a) Viral titres of lung homogenate of mice inoculated with 100 p.f.u. of wild-type and PB1-V43I H5N1 viruses at 3 and 6 days post inoculation. (b) Survival curves of mice (N=9 per group) inoculated with 100 p.f.u. of H5N1 wild-type or PB1-V43I viruses. Log-rank (Mantel–Cox) test confirmed the statistically significant differences in mouse survival after infection with the H5N1 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses. (c) Survival curves of mice (N=10 per group) inoculated with 10 p.f.u. of H5N1 wild-type or PB1-V43I viruses. Viral titres (log 10 TCID 50 per ml) in mouse lungs (d) and brain (e) homogenate after being inoculated with 10 p.f.u. of H5N1 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses at 3, 6 and 8 days post inoculation were determined. (f) Mutation frequencies in the HA1 gene (nucleotides 57–978) of H5N1 wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses from mouse lungs collected at days 3 and 8 post inoculation. Results were expressed as the percentage of clones with 0 or ≥1 mutations in the HA1 gene. Fisher’s exact test was performed to determine the P value. Full size image
The mutational frequencies and genetic diversity of wild-type and PB1-V43I viruses in the mouse lungs were assessed by clonal sequencing at day 3 and day 8 post inoculation. At day 3, the mutational frequencies in the HA gene of the wild-type H5N1 virus (8.2 mutations per 104 nucleotides) was higher than that of the PB1-V43I-mutant virus (4.4 mutations per 104 nucleotides) by a factor of 1.86 (Fisher’s exact test, P=0.0143; Fig. 6f; Table 2). However, such a difference was not observed later at day 8 post inoculation (6.6 mutations versus 6.4 mutations per 104 nucleotides; Table 2). To assess the stability of PB1-V43I in viruses in vivo, sequences of the PB1 segment of viruses collected at day 8 post inoculation were examined by Sanger sequencing and no reversion to wild type was observed, with no additional mutation found in PB1. The comparable mutational frequency between the wild-type and PB1-V43I-mutant viruses in the mouse lungs at day 8 post inoculation could be a result of strong selection pressure posed by host immune response. Overall, our results showed that a single V43I mutation in PB1 protein confers reduced genetic diversity of the H5N1 VN04 virus at an early time point (day 3) but not at later time point (day 8) post inoculation in vivo. This reduced genetic diversity in the mouse lungs at early time point post inoculation was associated with a reduced pathogenicity in mice. |
The official website for the Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry anime film announced on Wednesday that the film will open in at least 16 countries besides Japan in May. As of April 26, the countries will be the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, nine countries in Central America and South America, Thailand, and France.
The film will open in Japan on May 6.
The cast includes:
Tetsuya Kakihara as Natsu Dragneel Aya Hirano as Lucy Heartfilia
Rie Kugimiya as Happy
Yūichi Nakamura as Gray Fullbuster
Sayaka Ohara as Erza Scarlet
Satomi Satou as Wendy
Yui Horie as Charles
Makoto Furukawa as King Animus, the king of Stella kingdom.
Aoi Yūki as Sonya, an aide to King Animus
Jiro Saito as Zash Caine, the minister of state of Stella Kingdom
Tatsuma Minamikawa (episode director for Aldnoah.Zero, Attack on Titan, Haganai NEXT) is directing the film at A-1 Pictures. Shoji Yonemura is returning from the previous two television anime series to write the script, Yuuko Yamada (chief animation director for Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East, Persona 3 the Movie #3 Falling Down) is the character designer and chief animation director, and Yasuharu Takanashi is returning from the previous anime series and Fairy Tail Zero to compose the music. GAGA is distributing the film.
The two-member unit Polka Dots (pictured right) is performing the film's theme song "What You Are." The duo is composed of i☆Ris member Himika Akaneya and Mimi Meme MIMI member Yuki Takao. Polka Dots previously performed an insert song for the Trinity Seven: Eternal Library & Alchemic Girl anime film.
Those who purchase advance tickets for the film in Japan will receive clear files with Mashima's special illustration of Natsu. Theaters showing the film will give viewers a free booklet while supplies last. The booklet contains the rough storyboards for the film that original manga creator Hiro Mashima drew. Mashima drew 193 pages of storyboard for the film, and is also serving as executive producer. Mashima also drew rough sketches for the characters and the key visuals for the film.
Starting in the movie's second week in Japan on May 13, each filmgoer will receive one of three randomly distributed character bromide photos of Natsu, Lucy, or Sonya, complete with a reproduced signature of the respective character's voice cast member.
Sources: Oricon, Anime Now! |
Michael Moore. Kevin Winter/Getty Michael Moore has never been one to hold back his opinions, so when the Oscar-winning filmmaker airs his thoughts about Donald Trump, it tends to make news.
In a recent conversation with Business Insider to talk about his new movie "Where to Invade Next," he made a bold prediction when discussing the polarizing presidential hopeful.
"Donald Trump is absolutely going to be the Republican candidate for president of the United States," Moore told BI. "It's going from being a joke to being a serious reality."
Moore elaborated by saying that "people are feeling more and more that we've moved back into a darker time."
But the progressive documentary director thinks it's impossible that Trump will become president, because, as he puts it, "81 percent of the country is either women, people of color, or youth between the ages of 18 to 31," groups that he says Trump has alienated.
Donald Trump. Ralph Freso/Getty Images Moore believes the selection of the next president will come down to the voter turnout by the Democrats.
"My side of of the political fence is the slacker side of the fence," Moore said. "When people ask me, 'Who should we vote in the primaries?' I say, 'You should vote for who you think should be president.' Don't vote for who has a better chance, because whoever has a 'D' by their name on the ballot is going to win, assuming we get the vote out."
And right now, he sees Bernie Sanders having the edge over Hillary Clinton.
"My biggest concern about Hillary right now is her lack of inspiration," Moore said. "She doesn't get big crowds. There's not a lot of excitement about her. Too many young people see her as the same-old, same-old politics. So she is going to have to have a bit of what Obama had and a bit of what Bernie has if she's going to be the candidate. I honestly believe that Bernie Sanders could be elected president of the United States. I think people will pour out in droves to elect him and there's just not enough angry white guys anymore over the age of 35 to put Trump in office." |
It’s that time of the month again, I got my latest Loot Crate and am about to phone in a blog piece about all the cool crap that was inside! Yes! I’m getting into that sweet spot of being a Loot Crate subscriber where I am sort of forgetting that I’m subscribed and the package showing up feels more and more like a random present.
February’s theme was “PLAY” so we all probably figured on getting some game related stuff or something. It’s a pretty broad little theme here and honestly, the contents of the crate really take some liberties with how they tie in to the theme. I guess they can’t really call the theme “Cool Stuff” because then we’d all be calling them on it. Anyhow, as always, let’s take a look at what we got: Rock-Paper-Scissor Dice
You know what the hard part about rock-paper-scissors is? Deciding which of the three options to throw! If you’re the “always pick rock” type then the RPS-Dice just might be for you. A black and a white die with 2 of each of the three possible options. Rock. Paper. Scissors. Ok, I will admit that I was oddly excited when I popped open the little dice bag since as a roleplayer I’m always looking to have zany new dice to show off for some street cred. I was like “Oh cool! Rock-paper-scissor dice!”. It took me only a few moments to realize how useless these things were though. Maybe if there was more of a game than a game you can easily play without the assistance of a set of dice? I dunno man.
Rating: ♥ ♥
Pacman Mini-Poster
Me: “What’s this little tube?” Sarah: “It’s a poster” Me: “But maybe it’s a game!” Sarah: “It’s a poster”. Sure enough, poster. A cool little poster mind you, but maybe I was still hoping for some sort of a game to go along with the rock-paper-scissor dice. The design here is pretty cool, a “blown apart” blue print of a PacMan cartridge. I need to fight some serious battles to put anything up on the walls in the apartment, but I think this little guy is destined for my cubicle at the office.
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ Ready Player One – By Ernest Cline
If you are a 9to5 (dot cc) veteran than you know that I have already read and loved this book. To the point where I originally planned on re-visiting many of the pop-culture references that Cline employs in his story. I will admit, I stopped after embarking on an epic quest through the Tomb of Horrors but still, the book was awesome. I only had the digital copy so this will likely be destined to be a re-gift but hey, I really like the inclusion of books in Loot Crate and if this is the kinda book they’ll be sending me then I am down with that. The only reason this isn’t a full 5 stars is because I’ve already read the book. You should too. Also, I love the cover illustration of the Stacks.
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ SuperFight Loot Crate Exclusive Deck
This was a super sweet pull for me. I have actually been considering picking up a copy of Superfight for a while now and the only thing that’s really been holding me back is whether or not I want to spend an evening arguing with my friends over geeky crap (I already do that on 9ES). If you don’t know how Superfight works, you and your opponent draw cards then you match up a white and a black to make your champion. Blue and purple cards can be added into the mix in variations. You then have an argument over who would win and the rest of the players vote. The champion stays on and the next player tries to come up with a combination to beat them. So in this randomly generated encounter, a Derby Girl who can only be killed by a stake through the heart faces off against Godzilla who throws water balloons filled with acid. The fight takes place deep in the amazon rainforest and neither fighter can see or hear. Go! Kickass, right? Right. Double kickass that it’s a Loot Crate exclusive deck so if I decide to buy then I have cards that you won’t! Muahaha.
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ Promo Code for the Firefly Game
Ok, this is a thing I have for a game I don’t play. Yay! I assume it’s cool if you play Firefly?
Rating: ♥
HexBug
This doesn’t really hold any interest for me, but I think it will make an excellent gift. Sadly, since I intend to gift it I may never know exactly how much joy this could have brought into my life.
Rating: ♥ ♥
The box turns into a board game!
Hurray! My wish was granted! There’s a game that you can play with the RPS-dice! Oh. Wait. You just go around the board and pick stuff up and first player to get the stuff wins? Bah. This is basically just a roll the dice and move forward game. Would’ve been cooler if there was a little more of a game in this game.
Rating: ♥
Blank Mini Munny
Ok, I love vinyl figs. I’ve got a pretty big collection of these dudes and the “colour your own” have always appealed to me even though I am not artistically inclined at all. Thankfully, the washable markers make it possible for me to be the worst at art and then just run water over the figurine and set it back to normal! Hurray! This is dope and the little Munny guy will probably get some action whenever someone comes over or when I’m bored. My only slight beef is that the washable markers are a little too washable, coming off on your fingers as you colour. Meh, you can’t win ’em all.
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
And for a bonus, here is Sarah’s first creation, she created the Munny Joker-Henchman:
Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek. |
Bill to increase penalties for attacks on transsexuals advances
Sun Coverage Sun politics coverage
CARSON CITY – A bill to enhance the penalties for those who attack transsexuals has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote.
The committee, with Democrats in the majority of the 4-3 vote, approved Senate Bill 180 and sent it to the floor of the Senate for a vote, which likely will happen next week.
The bill allows criminal sentences to be increased “regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth.” It would add to the current law that the penalty can be increased if the assault was directed at the person because of his or her race, religion, national origin, physical or mental disability or sexual orientation.
Sen. Michael Roberson, R-Las Vegas, said the language in the bill was vague and it “will open up a can of worms.” Senate Minority Leader Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, also spoke against the bill.
The bill says the increased penalty applies in cases of “gender identity or expression means a gender-related identity, appearance, expression or behavior of a person, regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth.”
Before the passage of the bill, the committee removed a section that would have allowed the murder of a transsexual to be used as an aggravating circumstance to justify the death penalty. |
Mitt Romney
In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and—let’s not mince words—thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.
Senate Republicans are looking for some grounds—any grounds—to defeat this treaty, which was signed in April by President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, and which will soon come to the Senate floor for a vote.
Romney, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, clearly feels the need to pump up some foreign-policy swagger in advance of the 2012 presidential primaries. But one would think he could have found a ghostwriter who had even the vaguest acquaintance with the subject matter.
Let’s take his rant—critique is too serious a word—line by line.
“New-START impedes missile defense, our protection from nuclear-proliferation rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. Its preamble links strategic defense with strategic arsenal.”
Aside from the bad grammar and the suggestion that Romney’s ghostwriter was taking dictation over a poor phone line (he should have written “links strategic defense with strategic offense,” not “strategic arsenal,” which makes no sense), the first sentence is false, and the second is irrelevant.
There is nothing in the treaty that places any limits on the U.S. missile-defense program. (And several generals, many with a vested interest in the program, have so testified before the Senate foreign relations and armed services committees.)
Yes, the treaty’s preamble notes that there is a relationship between strategic defense and strategic offense. This is Arms Control 101. If both sides drastically reduce their offensive nuclear weapons, while one side greatly builds up its defensive weapons, then that side could (theoretically) launch a disarming first strike and, moments later, shoot down what’s left of the other side’s missiles as they’re launched in retaliation. The essence of nuclear deterrence—and strategic stability—is to maintain the ability to retaliate in kind to a first strike. Very small offensive forces, combined with very large defensive forces, erode deterrence and create a “destabilizing” situation.
However, we are far from this state of affairs. New START leaves each side with 1,550 nuclear warheads; the Pentagon’s missile-defense program envisions a few dozen anti-missile interceptors.
More to the point, as is the case with all treaties, preambles are not legally binding. In response to the Russians’ unilateral statement, President Obama’s negotiators added one of their own, noting that U.S. missile defenses “are not intended to affect the strategic balance with Russia,” but rather to defend against “limited missile launches” by “regional threats” and, to that end, the United States will continue “improving and deploying” its missile-defense systems.
“[New START] explicitly forbids the United States from converting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos into missile defense sites.”
That’s right. But Romney doesn’t note that the managers of the missile-defense program say, privately and publicly, that they have no plan—and see no advantage—in doing this sort of conversion.
“And Russia has expressly reserved the right to walk away from the treaty if it believes that the United States has significantly increased its missile defense capability.”
This is true, but, as is the case with all treaties, Russia and the United States expressly reserve the right to withdraw for any reason if they believe it endangers their “supreme interests.” President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Treaty under such a clause. Any president, Russian or American, can pull out of this treaty, too, with three months’ notice. (See Article XIV, Section 3.)
However, the Russians would have to consider the following: If they did withdraw from the treaty, that would probably aggravate tensions to the point where the United States would probably accelerate missile-defense deployments and perhaps resume an offensive arms buildup, too—a resumption that we can afford a lot more than they can.
“The treaty empowers a Bilateral Consultative Commission with broad latitude to amend the treaty with specific reference to missile defense.”
This is silly. Previous arms treaties—negotiated by Democrats and Republicans—have created similar commissions. This one, like the others, has no “broad latitude to amend the treaty.” In fact, Article XV of New START states explicitly that the commission can make no changes that affect “substantive rights and obligations.” Its purpose, as noted in several other sections (Articles V and XIII of the treaty, Part VI of its protocol), is to “resolve any ambiguities that may arise” over the 10 years that it remains in effect. These articles contain no “specific reference to missile defense,” by the way.
“The treaty also gives far more to the Russians than to the United States. As drafted, it lets Russia escape the limit on its number of strategic nuclear warheads.”
Again, there might have been some static on the phone line. The treaty does let Russia get by without cutting any of its strategic “delivery vehicles” (missiles and bombers). Each side is limited to 700, but Russia right now has only 600; the United States has 850, so it will have to cut back a little. However, both sides will have to reduce their warheads—the actual nuclear weapons—to 1,550. And, for what it’s worth, Russia, which now has 2,787 warheads, will have to cut back more than the United States, which now has 2,252.
“For example, rail-based ICBMs and launchers are not mentioned.”
First, neither Russia nor the United States has any rail-based ICBMs or launchers. Second, the treaty does deal with mobile ICBMs, in two ways. Article IV, Section 1 states that ICBMs can be deployed “only at ICBM bases.” If, in some perverse wordplay, the Russians claim that a railroad line is a “base,” Article III, Section 5b notes that an ICBM is counted under the treaty’s limits the moment it leaves the production facility (which other sections of the treaty place under constant monitoring); it doesn’t matter where the missile goes afterward, it’s still counted as an ICBM. So while mobile missiles might not be “mentioned” by the treaty, they are, in effect, restricted.
“Similarly, multiple nuclear warheads that are mounted on bombers are effectively not counted. Unlike past treaty restrictions, ICBMs are not prohibited from bombers. This means that Russia is free to mount a nearly unlimited number of ICBMs on bombers—including MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) or multiple warheads—without tripping the treaty’s limits.”
This is where I began to wonder if Romney had fallen prey to someone, perhaps a spy from Sarah Palin’s camp, who wanted to make him look like an idiot.
ICBMs are not “mounted on,” or loaded inside, bombers. The only nuclear weapons carried by bombers are bombs; that’s why they’re called bombers. (Many years ago, some B-52s and B-1s were equipped with air-launched cruise missiles, which flew through the atmosphere, as opposed to intercontinental ballistic missiles, which arc outside the atmosphere. These ALCMs are almost completely phased out, in any case.) Certainly bombers are incapable of carrying MIRVs (which, by the way, are “multiple warheads” loaded onto the tips of missiles).
I think Romney’s ghostwriter might have mixed up one of his talking points. New START counts each bomber as if it is carrying just one nuclear bomb, even though it almost certainly carries several. This counting rule was established for practical reasons. A bomber might carry three bombs one day, a dozen the next, with no need to alter its design. There’s no way to verify how many it’s carrying. So they agreed just to count one bomber as one bomb.
The thing is, this counting rule is to the United States’ advantage, not Russia’s. We have 113 heavy bombers; they have 77. So, if this is what Romney’s ghostwriter meant to take note of, it’s not a problem with the treaty, not from the U.S. point of view.
“Under New START, the United States must drastically reduce our number of launchers but Russia will not—it already has fewer launchers than the treaty limits. Put another way: We give, Russia gets.”
As noted above, this is irrelevant. Both sides do have to reduce the number of warheads, which is to say weapons, and Russia has to cut more than the United States does.
“The treaty ignores tactical nuclear weapons, where Russia outnumbers us by as much as 10 to 1.… Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States. But surely they can reach our allies, nations that depend on us for a nuclear umbrella. And who can know how those tactical nuclear warheads might be reconfigured?”
True, the treaty does not limit tactical nuclear weapons. But this isn’t a gotcha point; both sides explicitly recognize this fact. Obama hopes to tackle the issue in a follow-on treaty, though doing so will be very hard, since Russia regards its tactical nukes as a counterweight to U.S. conventional military superiority.
Still, three points need to be made here. First, a Senate rejection of the treaty won’t limit tactical nuclear weapons, either. If the choice is to ratify the treaty or reject it, the point is irrelevant. Second, the “nuclear umbrella”—the U.S. commitment to threaten enemies with nuclear retaliation if they attack our allies—is unaffected by the presence of Russian tactical nukes; the rough parity in strategic (or long-range) nuclear weapons is far more decisive. Third, I know of no source claiming that Russia has 10,000 tactical nukes. The number is classified (and probably not precisely known by anyone, perhaps including the Russians), but the real number is believed to be about 2,000, compared with the United States’$2 500 (and no serious strategist or military officer believes we need anywhere close to that many for any purpose).
“By all indications, the Obama administration has been badly out-negotiated.”
On the contrary, by all indications, Romney has been badly advised. Next time he speaks out on nuclear weapons, he should read up a little bit. At the very least, he should learn the difference between an ICBM and a bomber.
And if this is the best the Republicans can do to beat down the New START treaty, well, that’s just sad.
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Shannon Dickson couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. On a Saturday morning, the retired engineer was at home in Sedona, Ariz., trying to talk to his wife on the phone. Dickson knew what he wanted to say, but suddenly he forgot how to speak.
“I could really hear the kind of dragged-out slurry words,” he said, recalling the day in May 2014. “I thought, ‘This is not right.’”
Dickson had suffered a stroke — and he was shocked. Just nine months earlier, he had undergone a novel procedure designed to prevent strokes in high-risk patients such as himself.
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But as Dickson’s surgeon would later tell him, the device used to seal off the left atrial appendage in his heart — where most blood clots form before traveling to the brain and causing stroke — had leaked. In fact, it had never been cleared by federal regulators for any heart procedure.
Yet a STAT investigation has found that the device, called the Lariat, was widely recommended for that purpose by physicians — some with close ties to the manufacturer — and used in thousands of cardiac surgeries nationwide. Nearly all of the surgeries were performed on patients with atrial fibrillation, a common condition in which patients have an irregular heartbeat, putting them at high risk of stroke.
At least six patients who had heart procedures similar to Dickson’s have died and 39 have suffered “serious adverse events,” including bleeding, lacerations, and unexpected drops in blood pressure, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Because many doctors fail to report problems to manufacturers, the number of adverse events, officials acknowledge, is likely greatly underreported.
This summer, the FDA issued a public notice cautioning doctors against using the Lariat — manufactured by a California-based firm called SentreHEART — for tying off the left atrial appendage. The notice, however, has not stopped some clinicians and hospitals from continuing to tout the device as an effective tool in cardiovascular procedures. The warning also did not discourage the use of the device for its approved purpose: helping to stitch soft tissue in general.
“I can see how it got slipped by. It’s a prime example of the defects in the … clearance process.” Dr. David Challoner, emeritus vice president for health affairs at the University of Florida
The story of how the Lariat won FDA clearance and how quickly cardiologists began to use it to treat atrial fibrillation, despite the lack of evidence that the procedure was safe and effective, is a study in the weaknesses of the regulatory process for medical devices, according to legal experts, doctors, and even the FDA itself.
The case also illustrates the difficulty the FDA faces in protecting patients. Because the agency doesn’t strictly oversee medical devices after they go to market, doctors may use them in whatever ways they think will best benefit their patients. But in the early years after a new device is cleared, doctors may disagree on what best practice means.
A tiny lasso
The idea behind the use of the Lariat in cases of cardiovascular procedures was straightforward. The Lariat resembles a tiny lasso. To treat patients, surgeons have used it to rope off the left atrial appendage in the heart. By sealing the appendage, the idea went, blood clots would be trapped and unable to migrate to the brain.
In the case of Dickson, who suffered a rare heart condition, the procedure seemed to go well. But when his cardiologist, Dr. Andrea Natale, ordered a scan of Dickson’s heart, following the stroke, he discovered a problem: The pouch that was supposed to have been sealed by the Lariat had leaked.
“The stroke was from the reopening,” said Natale, adding that the procedure had otherwise gone smoothly.
Federal regulators didn’t know about Dickson’s case, but said they are worried about the rate of serious complications in people who have had the Lariat heart procedure. The FDA warning on the Lariat, which followed the release of several scientific journal studies and reviews critical of the device, is a carefully worded call for restraint: “Be aware that the safety and effectiveness of the Lariat Suture Delivery Device to close the [left atrial appendage] and prevent stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation has not been established. … consider treatment options for which safety and effectiveness have been established.”
SentreHEART has defended its product. In interviews, Chief Executive Russell Seiber noted the Lariat was first approved by the FDA in 2006 to help stitch soft tissue. The company, he said, made no therapeutic claims for its use to treat atrial fibrillation, stroke, or anything else.
“There was no call to action from the FDA,” Seiber said. “What it was is an awareness that the Lariat has not been studied yet for stroke.”
Seiber, who co-founded SentreHEART in 2005 after stints in sales and marketing jobs at Procter & Gamble, Boston Scientific, and other firms that make medical devices, was adamant that the company has been transparent about the Lariat. And he said the number of adverse events must be considered in the context of the six-year period examined — during which, by some estimates, the Lariat has been used in 4,000 to 4,500 procedures like Dickson’s.
“By anybody’s standard, that would not be considered risky,” Seiber said.
The issue, federal regulators and outside experts say, comes down to how the Lariat got onto the market in the first place. At the time it was cleared by the FDA, the device appeared to resemble existing suture-closure products that had previously been cleared. And in its application to the agency, SentreHEART wrote only that the Lariat “facilitates suture placement and knot tying” for soft-tissue closures.
There was no reference to the word “heart,” “stroke,” or atrial fibrillation, often called AFib.
As a result, the FDA cleared the Lariat as part of a fast-track process known as the 510 (k) program, which permitted SentreHEART to avoid years of expensive clinical trials. And that, some experts say, was a problem.
The company’s 510 (k) application, from the FDA files, “is almost stunning in its brevity,” said Dr. David Challoner, emeritus vice president for health affairs at the University of Florida, who oversaw a report about the FDA fast-track process for the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 2011.
The report was fiercely critical of the 510 (k) program — named for the statute that gave the FDA authority to speed approval of low- and medium-risk medical devices — and recommended that it be overhauled by the agency.
Challoner, who reviewed the FDA’s records on the Lariat at STAT’s request, said he doesn’t blame FDA regulators for not paying closer attention to the SentreHEART application.
The FDA has to deal with thousands of 510 (k) applications a year, and where something appears to be simple and to be based upon existing device, Challoner said, “I can see how it got slipped by. It’s a prime example of the defects in the 510 (k) clearance process.”
Seiber insisted that, in its application, SentreHEART never intended to seek approval of the Lariat for the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation.
Nevertheless, the company’s trademark application for the Lariat, filed in 2009 at the US Patent and Trademark Office, states the Lariat is “for treating diseases of the heart, specifically for ligating the left atrial appendage of the heart.”
Seiber said the company had applied for patents for broad and narrow uses of the Lariat.
‘A safe and effective way to close the appendage’
Some cardiologists have also questioned how the Lariat was promoted for complex heart procedures after it was cleared only as a general suture closure device. Seiber said that SentreHEART had not promoted the Lariat for the heart procedure.
“We cannot market for [stroke prevention] and we don’t,” Seiber said. “The company has never promoted the use of the product for anything beyond closure. You’ll never see anything, there has never been anything on our website with regards to stroke prevention.”
Indeed, SentreHEART’s website does not mention stroke prevention. But a review of the websites of some of the company’s officers and consultants shows them promoting the Lariat for the treatment of atrial fibrillation, especially in patients who cannot or do not want to take blood thinners.
On the website of The Texas Heart Institute, Dr. William E. “Billy” Cohn, a founder and current director of SentreHEART, responded to an inquiry from a prospective patient about the treatment of atrial fibrillation by recommending one of two devices, including the Lariat.
“First let me be clear. I have a vested interest in SentreHEART and the Lariat, as I invented the technology and started the company,” wrote Cohn, who is a professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. “Although there has not yet been a prospective randomized study looking at stroke and embolic prevention after the Lariat procedure, we are very certain that it is a safe and effective way to close the appendage.”
Cohn, who is also director of minimally invasive surgical technology for the Texas Heart Institute, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
On its website, the University of California San Francisco Medical Center touts the Lariat for atrial fibrillation as well, citing the work of Dr. Randall Lee, a UCSF professor and a SentreHEART consultant, who has an equity stake in the company.
The site notes that Lee has “trained cardiologists from more than two dozen centers, coaching them as they perform the procedure for the first time.”
In an interview, Lee said SentreHEART approached him to discuss the device, after Dr. Cohn invented it. Lee said he immediately saw the potential to take a surgical procedure that had been done for decades in open-heart surgery — putting a suture around the left atrial appendage — and using a medical device to carry out the procedure in a much less intrusive way.
“We have a lot of patients with AFib who are at high risk for stroke,” Lee said. “Certainly the therapy of choice is anticoagulation therapy, blood thinners, but some people have bleeding problems and other problems, and can no longer take the anticoagulation therapy. Then, they are left unprotected.”
Lee said he has long advocated a clinical trial for stroke prevention using the Lariat, and that he expected one to be underway soon. The FDA has already approved a separate trial, the AMAZE trial, which is to test the Lariat for treatment of atrial fibrillation — but not to determine whether doing so will prevent stroke. Meanwhile, he considers it safe.
“I believe the Lariat is safe if there is proper selection of patients, operators have the necessary skill … and prior experience in working in the left atrium,” he said.
The FDA is clear that it does not have sufficient evidence to establish that the Lariat is safe to use to treat atrial fibrillation. That, officials said, is why the agency issued its safety communication in July.
“We wanted to make sure people were aware of the very tragic events associated with the device,” said Dr. William Maisel, a cardiologist and deputy director of FDA’s medical device office. “We wanted to make sure people were aware that the FDA had not evaluated the use of the Lariat for this specific purpose.”
Seiber said he believed doctors would continue to use the device in the procedure as they saw fit. In interviews, several doctors agreed with him and said they continue to believe the device is safe and effective. Others said they would now move away from the Lariat for treatment of atrial fibrillation.
Dr. William O’Neill, an interventional cardiologist who pioneered the procedure at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, under the direction of Lee, said he expected the number of Lariat procedures conducted at the hospital to decline.
O’Neill, medical director of the hospital’s center for structural heart disease, said doctors there will likely rely more on the Watchman, a Boston Scientific-manufactured device that underwent years of clinical trials and that was recently approved by the FDA to close the left atrial appendage of the heart.
The FDA’s role
Some doctors are divided on whether the FDA should have subjected the Lariat to more scrutiny or permitted it to be cleared through the 510 (k) program. For its part, the FDA said it must rely on information supplied by the applicant. In the case of the Lariat, the agency said, that information was limited.
The device had been on the market for several years before drawing agency scrutiny, in 2013, when the FDA received reports of deaths associated with the procedure, according to Maisel, the agency official. When no deaths were reported in 2014, regulators decided to continue to monitor the product but not yet act. With additional deaths in 2015, and journal studies beginning to raise safety questions, the FDA revisited the issue, speaking to SentreHEART, surgeons, and researchers.
Dr. Jay Giri, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of a critical study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in May, said he began looking into the Lariat in 2014 because he was trying to decide if his hospital should use it for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. The first thing he and his team did was to seek out all published evidence about its effectiveness in the use of patients with atrial fibrillation. They couldn’t find any.
“There were anecdotes and small studies, but no rigorous clinical trials,” Giri said.
Giri went back to review the SentreHEART’s application with the FDA and was surprised to find no mention of the atrial fibrillation procedure at all.
“Obviously the Lariat has been available … and it was only used for one purpose,” he said. “It’s an ingenious device, but ingenuity does not guarantee safety and efficacy.” |
A century of Pulitzer winners call on journalists to shake up the status quo
Journalists uncover the facts. They’re instructed to seek the truth and report it.
But they’re also supposed to get in the way.
That’s the challenge U.S. Rep. John Lewis set before a crowd of more than 800 people Thursday night who gathered at The Palladium Theatre in St. Petersburg, Florida, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes.
“You must not give up,” an impassioned Lewis told the crowd. “You must hold on. Tell the truth. Report the truth. Disturb the order of things. Find a way to get in the way and make a little noise with your pens, your pencils, your cameras.”
Thursday’s event focused on journalists who did just that while covering the tumult of the civil rights movement, along with the stories, photos, music and poetry that shaped the fight for equality and social justice during some of the most turbulent decades in American history.
In a program that paid tribute to these award-winning works, special attention was given to a dozen editorial writers whose careers spanned the classic period of the civil rights movement, from 1946 to 1972.
“These Southern editorialists — 11 White men and one White woman — would risk life, limb, and livelihood to write what they believed,” said Kanika Jelks Tomalin, the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. “That the South must change, that legal barriers to equality must be torn down, that violence and hatred must give way to peace, tolerance, and justice.”
But the history of the prizes isn’t about “progressive White people rescuing Black people from racial violence,” said Roy Peter Clark, a vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which hosted the event.
“They are, instead, about White editorialists willing to be carried along upon a sea of change that was hard for them to imagine, a sea cresting with the courage and endurance and hard patriotism of African-Americans,” Clark said.
One of those patriots was Lewis, who built his life by “getting in the way” of injustice. A product of the civil rights era, he was born in 1940 in Troy, Alabama. As a young student, he met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “The boy from Troy,” King called him.
His activism started with sit-ins and campus protests. By 1963, he was dubbed one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement. He helped plan the March on Washington and was a keynote speaker there. He later helped spearhead the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.
He would be arrested, attacked or injured more than 40 times throughout his life. He would not back down. He refused to stay silent.
That same commitment to truth and willingness to take a stand was on display Thursday as the Poynter Institute honored the history of social justice journalism.
“I come here tonight to thank members of this great institution for finding a way to get in the way,” Lewis said. “Finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble…
“We need the press to be a headlight and not a taillight.”
The program was one of four that will take place this year in celebration of 100 years of Pulitzer Prizes. Other events will take place at Harvard University, the Presidential Libraries in Texas, and the Annenberg School in Southern California.
The editorialists recognized at Thursday’s event came from storied institutions with rich journalistic histories and small-town papers, one of which had a circulation of only 1,700. They spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan, segregation and the brutal violence which marked their time.
They carried with them varying outlooks on the world shaped by distinct life experiences. But any differences in these journalists were overshadowed by three shared virtues.
“They had the moral courage to stand for what is right against a towering wave of opposition,” Clark said. “They had the physical courage that helped them resist threats of violence to their person, their loved ones, their property, and their businesses.
“And they had a devotion to craft, an understanding that, in the end, not only was the pen or typewriter or camera mightier than the sword, it was also mightier than the flaming cross.”
Their work was not without repercussions. Hazel Brannon Smith, who won the Pulitzer in 1964, accrued a debt of $80,000. As her family’s financial situation grew critical, she did not relent on her attacks against racists, corrupt local politicians and racketeers.
“But we have given it all we have, nearly 10 years of our lives, loss of financial security and a big mortgage,” Smith said when awarded the Pulitzer in 1964. “We would do the same thing over, if necessary…
“My interest has been to print the truth and protect and defend the freedom of all Mississippians. It will continue.’”
Others faced threats of great physical harm, not only to them but their families. Ira B. Harkey won the Pulitzer in 1963. He also had someone fire a bullet through his door. He had to sell his paper and move out of state.
But one journalist, perhaps more than any other honored Thursday night, embodied Lewis’ edict of getting in the way.
L. Alex Wilson was one of many journalists who had come to Arkansas to cover the integration of Little Rock Central High School, where nine African American students — known as the Little Rock Nine — had been blocked by the Arkansas National Guard on the order of Gov. Orval Faubus.
Unlike his White counterparts in the press, Wilson was berated, pushed and slapped. Then the taunts turned to blows. First came one kick, to the base of his spine. Then another to his stomach. One strike knocked his hat to the ground. He carefully, almost casually, bent to pick it up.
He slowly ran his hand along the crease as the mob threw punches and kicks. Another hard kick to the center of his chest was followed by one last, powerful blow to the head. Some witnesses later said it was a brick this time.
He kept walking. He did not run. As the mob beat him, the nine students slipped into the school uninhibited.
L. Alex Wilson got in the way.
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In 1989, two chemical engineers – Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons – announced they had carried out the first nuclear fusion experiments at room temperature (cold fusion) which, they hoped, would steal a march on physicists researching fusion at high temperatures. Sadly, problems with the experiments were identified and the scientific community debunked their claims. However, chemists now have another opportunity to become the driving force behind an environmentally-friendly nuclear reactor.
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR – pronounced lifters) was first developed in the 1950s by Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US. This is a type of thorium molten salt reactor and is essentially a chemical plant. The development of LFTRs was soon mothballed because they did not produce very much of the plutonium required to feed the nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR. A LFTR has never been used commercially. Instead, the pressurised water reactor (PWR) was widely adopted. This type of reactor produces plutonium and was also a more natural evolution of the nuclear weapons research undertaken as part of the US-led Manhattan Project during the second world war and for the power plant in the first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, commissioned in 1954.
There are 441 nuclear reactors worldwide, meeting about 5% of the global demand for energy and 13% of the world’s electricity supply. The majority of these have PWRs. Some countries are now starting to re-explore LFTR technology to see if commercialisation is possible, due to the many advantages it is expected to offer over PWRs.
Nuclear fission explained
Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction where an unstable ‘parent’ nucleus splits into smaller ‘daughter’ nuclei along with free neutrons, which can induce further fission events as part of a self-sustaining chain reaction. The combined mass of the products is less than the combined mass of the original nucleus plus initiating neutron. The difference in mass – the mass defect – manifests itself as energy, according to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2. In contrast to chemical reactions, neutrons need to be moderated or slowed down to increase the probability of inducing fission.
Compared to the status quo
The thorium fuel used by LFTRs is easier to come by than the uranium-235 used in PWRs. Thorium is present in the Earth’s crust at about four times the amount of uranium and is more easily extracted. Additionally, U-235 has a natural abundance of only 0.7%, and requires expensive enrichment to 2.5% before it can be used in a PWR.
The LFTRs also do not waste any of their nuclear fuel, unlike PWRs. The solid uranium oxide used in PWRs is a poor thermal conductor and so the fuel rods become stressed by internal temperature differences and damaged by radiation. Fission products are also trapped within the fuel rods, acting as ‘poisons’ and compromising a sustained chain reaction by absorbing neutrons. This means that fuel rods need to be replaced when less than 5% of the available energy has been used, and the plant must be shut down every 18 months to allow one third of the rods to be removed and the remainder shuffled. This ‘spent’ fuel is intensely radioactive and is waste that needs to be managed. In contrast, all of the U-233 dissolved in the molten salt of the LFTR undergoes fission. This is because the U-233 atoms are circulating freely in solution so that every nucleus is equally available to absorb a neutron. Also, unlike solid fuel, liquid fluoride salts are impervious to radiation damage and not subject to structural stress. Poisons bubble out of solution in LFTRs or can be chemically removed.
LFTRs work at atmospheric pressure, in contrast to the 150 to 160 times atmospheric pressures needed by PWRs. In PWRs, water is the coolant and there are two cooling stages or loops. In the primary loop, water is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy generated by the fission process. This loop is kept under high pressure to allow the water to warm to up to 330°C. Heat from the primary coolant loop is then conducted through heat exchangers to the secondary loop where steam is generated to spin an electric generator.
High pressure in a PWR increases efficiency but expensive piping and pressure vessels are required and, because steam occupies 1000 times the volume of liquid water, massive containment buildings are also needed.
The salt in the core of the LFTR acts as its own coolant but is passed through a heat exchanger to maintain the temperature of the salt at 800°C and to transfer heat to an inert gas like carbon dioxide or helium. The thermal expansion of this gas drives a turbine to generate electricity
In safe hands
While the LFTR initially lost out to the PWR because it does not generate as much plutonium waste product, today that is viewed as an advantage. Six more neutron absorptions are required to reach Pu-239 when starting from Th-232, compared to the U-238 which makes up 97.5% of the uranium in a PWR. This prevents fretting about whether Pu-239 is being diverted into a nuclear weapons programme. It also reduces the headache of waste management, as after 300 years the waste from thorium-fuelled reactors is about 10,000 times less toxic than that from uranium-fuelled reactors. The relatively small amount of radioactive waste produced in LFTRs requires a few hundred years of isolated storage versus the few hundred thousand years for the waste generated by PWRs.
The 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan was caused by a tsunami disabling the PWR’s cooling system. LFTRs cannot suffer meltdowns because their fuel is already molten. PWRs contain control rods that are designed to absorb neutrons. They are inserted into, and removed from, the core of the nuclear reactor as required to control the rate of fission. They are usually made of boron or cadmium and are suspended from the ceiling by electromagnets. If power failure occurs the control rods fall under gravity into their slots in the reactor core below. However, like applying brakes in a car, the reactor has thermal inertia and cannot stop producing thermal energy instantaneously. The core remains hot and fission continues among the daughter nuclei, which means that meltdown is unavoidable if the coolant stops circulating.
In stark contrast, the LFTR needs power to prevent shutdown of the reactor. It has a ‘freeze plug’ at the bottom of the core – a plug of salt, cooled by a fan, to keep it below the freezing point of the salt. If the power turns off, the fan stops. This causes the plug to melt and the liquid fuel to flow, under gravity, into a catch basin below.
Inside a LFTR
The LFTR is based on chemical engineering technology and uses uranium-233, a different isotope of uranium from that used in PWRs. It consists of a uranium-233 ‘core’ nested inside a thorium-232 ‘blanket’. These both contain molten fluoride salts of lithium and beryllium and a graphite ‘jacket’ that separates the core from the blanket.
The U-233 dissolved in the core undergoes fission, producing ‘daughter’ nuclei and (on average) just over two neutrons. One neutron induces further fission of U-233 in the core while the second neutron is moderated by a graphite jacket before it is absorbed by Th-232 dissolved in the blanket. This produces Th-233, which then undergoes two b decays to ‘breed’ a replacement U-233 nucleus.
In the molten fluoride salt of the thorium blanket, the newly created U-233 forms soluble uranium tetrafluoride (UF4). Bubbling fluorine gas through the blanket solution further fluorinates the UF4, which comes out of solution as uranium hexafluoride (UF6). The UF6 is then captured and fed into the core through a reduction column in which hydrogen gas reduces it back to soluble UF4. Thorium tetrafluoride does not react with the fluorine gas in the fluorination process and stays in the blanket unchanged.
Fluorine and nuclear power might seem odd bedfellows. After all, fluorine is the most chemically reactive element and reactions with fluorine release a lot of energy. But this is also why fluorine compounds are very stable. The same amount of energy released has to be supplied to break fluorine compounds and explains why fluoride salts and Teflon, another fluorine compound, are not corrosive.
Looking to the future
One of the most ardent advocates of LFTRs is Kirk Sorensen, from the Energy from Thorium Foundation in Cleveland, US. His interest in thorium started in 2000 while he was working for NASA and considering ways to provide energy for a lunar community. There are no fossil fuels on the moon and with no atmosphere there is no access to wind power. Solar energy is also not an option because the lunar day lasts a month and it is not possible to store sufficient energy for the fortnight of night time. Nuclear energy was the only option but there is no water for coolant on the moon. LFTRs are the obvious choice and once he decided they were a good fit for a lunar community he turned his attention to whether LFTRs could also be developed for use here on Earth. There are, however, still technical challenges to be overcome, and a 2010 report by UK National Nuclear Laboratory concluded that there was still 10 to 15 years of concerted research and development effort and investment before the thorium fuel could be used in current reactors and much longer for any future reactor systems such as LFTRs to be used commercially.
India is keen to use thorium as a nuclear fuel, and plans to produce 30% of its electricity from thorium by 2050. This may, however, be based on solid rather than liquid fuel, which offers fewer advantages. China is also investing heavily in thorium fuel-based research programmes and the French are showing an interest.
Mike Follows is a teacher at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, UK
Further information |
MUMBAI: Consumer rights experts recently came together to explain how advertisements—from health drinks to innerwear to fairness lotions and creams—fool you and how you can sue them under the Consumer Protection Act Elaborating on the damaging effects of misleading advertisements M S Kamath of the Consumer Guidance Society of India said, “Right from undergarment advertisements where the model is shown as a person with superhuman powers to nutrient supplements for children which claim to make them taller, one can take on manufacturers for making such unreal claims.”He pointed out that fairness creams, which formed the biggest share of such controversial advertisements, have social implications as they propagated the idea of promoting fair skin to achieve success. “Fairness cream advertisements make several claims on how one can fetch high-paying jobs and luck in even matrimony. They mislead consumers by telling them that without using their products one cannot get a good job or a suitable life partner. Consumers need to take them on,” Kamath prodded.He claimed that in surveys conducted by the organization at least 60% of women respondents had used such creams and 16% even admitted that it had reacted badly on their skin.Kamath suggested that there should be a regulatory agency to control and restrict such misleading advertisements.Referring to another beauty product shampoos, Kamath said that the product does nothing but clean one’s hair and scalp. He said that claims that shampoos contain various nuts or oils are nothing but hype to mislead consumers suffering from various hair-related issues. “Certain shampoos even claim to give you the dual benefit of a champi and a hair wash, while another claims to combat all hair troubles with one product. A buyer needs to be more cautious of such tall and unreal claims,” he said. |
Cronos Group isn’t the kind of company to promise the moon and deliver a pizza.
That’s why the Toronto-based firm announced its intentions for a massive expansion after breaking ground on a 315,000-square-foot facility earlier this year.
It’s all part of CEO Mike Gorenstein’s plan to be realistic with the company’s production targets.
“This is what we bank on. Being able to overdeliver,” he said. “We communicate like we are a large-cap company, because that’s what the institutional investors want to get behind.”
In fact, the new year will be marked by increasing separation between licensed producers able to execute their business plans and others caught with unrealistic targets.
“When a few of the companies show more execution,” he said, “what it does is, it makes people ask, ‘If these guys are doing it, why aren’t the others?'”
Cronos is based in Stayner, Ontario and traded on the TSX Venture Exchange as MJN.
Gorenstein spoke with Marijuana Business Daily about product differentiation, the first day of legalization in Canada next summer and the status of Cronos’ new arrangement to grow medical marijuana in Israel.
How do you make your 40,000 kilograms (88,185 pounds) of marijuana more appealing than the other 1 million kilograms on the market?
I view our 40,000 kilograms as a premium product.
Capacity is something you need, but what will ultimately separate the companies is the quality of the products that you bring to market.
We spend a large amount of time and resources developing our intellectual property.
Examples of IP include fine-tuning the ratios of cannabinoids and terpenes that form the API in a formulation to produce different effects using the entourage effect — having a cannabinoid-based derivative product that doesn’t make you hungry because it has a specific ratio of cannabinoid varins or breeding to develop unique genetics.
Ultimately, intellectual property is what separates large agricultural companies from small farms – it’s not just a matter of who has the most farmland – what you can produce is more important than how much you can produce.
With 80 licensed producers and another 460 in the works, will attracting capital get harder?
As there are more licenses issued, people will care more about the business and people attached to the license.
I don’t think there will be a capital crunch for everyone. There’s a certain tier that will always be able to get capital.
But you have to execute, you need a unique strategy, you need a position in the market. You have to capitalize on your license to get more capital.
Is 2018 the year “the big five” banks (Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Royal Bank of Canada) get more involved in cannabis via lending?
In the macro market we’re in, everyone’s starved for credit. But if you have a heavy cashflow business and you’re executing, banks are not going to ignore it.
When the big five do get involved, you’ll see more separation the companies that are executing and the companies that are just promoting.
Sophisticated lenders don’t read random blog posts. They do hard diligence. They make sure their investment is derisked.
And, when you introduce traditional debt financing, you lower cost of capital and allow the companies to fuel their growth without dilution.
It will make life easier for those that can access the debt and tougher for the companies that can’t.
What’s holding back institutional investors?
They’re waiting to see who is going to execute their business plans and do real valuations.
We don’t know what the date is, but at some point they’ll feel comfortable enough and that the companies are mature enough to start investing.
What will institutional investing mean for the industry as a whole?
There will be more information.
As things mature, people are going to start focusing on who is executing and who is not. It causes rationalization. It’s a move towards equilibrium.
You can think of it as a reckoning — I can’t tell you if it’s 2018 or 2019, but I don’t think it’s much longer than that.
You’ve got to execute. These valuations won’t stay lockstep forever. There will be a rationalization at some point.
Right now, the question is which way will that go, and for who? Some companies will do extremely well from it, and some won’t.
Think we’ll see more inter-industry investments in 2018 along the lines of the Constellation-Canopy deal?
I think you’ll see more high-profile partnerships in 2018.
The cross-industry interest is amazing. Both alcohol and pharma companies see the potential disruption to their core businesses.
Whether they are making a defensive move, an offensive move or no move at all, just about all of them are deciding what to do and how best to do it.
Where do you see opportunity for anyone on the outside looking in?
If I were entering the industry right now, I wouldn’t be entering as a grower.
I would put my resources into developing a product. By the time you get that product developed, it will probably be easier to get the raw inputs.
How is rec going to unfold?
Everything’s going to sell out instantly. It happens everywhere. Demand is always underestimated.
That first day when the CCBO (Cannabis Control Board of Ontario) opens – people will line up to be able to say they were there the day that the first G-7 country legalized cannabis.
It’s like if you have had five generations of iPhones, the iPhone X is being released, but – for no good reason – this was the first time the iPhone was actually legal.
Can you give us an update on your Israel operations?
We’re starting to get regulatory clarity on distribution and pharmacies.
We expect to start putting up the structure for the greenhouse by the end of January. We have the electrical done and land cleared.
Matt Lamers can be reached at [email protected]
To sign up for our weekly Canada marijuana business newsletter, click here. |
Appeal court rejects argument that London mayor had no right to evict demonstrators because he did not own the land
The Parliament Square peace protesters today lost their legal challenge against eviction, and "Democracy Village", the ramshackle camp they have occupied since May Day, in the shadow of the Palace of Westminster, could now be cleared within days.
A spokesperson for Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, appealed to the campers to respect the rulings and leave the site peacefully – an outcome some fear is unlikely, given the mixture of temperaments and causes represented in the camp.
The site was due to be cleared a fortnight ago, but the eviction notices were suspended pending the appeal.
The appeal court judges upheld the high court judgement granted to the mayor last month outlawing the camp, and rejected the argument that he had no right to evict the demonstrators because he did not own the land, which belongs to the Queen, and had failed to prove any legal title to it.
The campers' lawyers also argued an eviction order would be contrary to the rights to free speech and free assembly.
However, in a decision announced today, the judges, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger, Lady Justice Arden and Lord Justice Sir Stanley Burnton, upheld the original ruling that Parliament Square Gardens was an open space, which the public had a right to use.
A spokesperson for the mayor said: "In the case of the 'Democracy Village' protesters, the mayor is pleased that the court of appeal has supported the high court's decision that there are no grounds to appeal in this case and to return possession of Parliament Square Gardens to the GLA. The mayor has won on all points made in his claim, and all defences failed, vindicating his position.
"The Mayor respects the right to demonstrate – however, the scale and impact of the protest, which has gone on since 1 May, has caused considerable damage to the square – which sits alongside a world heritage site – and has prevented its peaceful use by other Londoners, including those who may have wished to conduct an authorised protest."
The ruling does not affect the original camper, Brian Haw, who has lived in the square since 2001: his own website is at pains to point out that he has "no connection or affiliation whatsoever" with the "Democracy Village" campers.
Many of the original campers, demonstrating against the war in Afghanistan and a rainbow of other causes, including BP and climate change, have moved off since the June court verdict, but their places have been taken by a number of new arrivals, including some homeless people delighted to find congenial company and regular communal meals in the heart of the capital.
Although the mayor has argued that the camp is an eyesore and off-putting to tourists, a steady stream of tourists arrives every day to photograph one another against the colourful banners and the now rather wind-battered vegetable garden. |
GORDON Brown's proposal to nationalise parts of North Sea oil and gas has been branded "so crazy it is hardly worth commenting on” by one oil industry expert.
Speaking at a lecture in Glasgow yesterday, the former Prime Minister called for the state to take over oil fields that are under threat of being abandoned.
Brown said that public-private partnerships were necessary to keep open fields that are under threat of being mothballed amid current low oil prices. He called for the creation of a North Sea “reserve” that would act as a last resort for oil companies struggling in marginal fields.
But the former Labour leader’s proposals were branded as “claptrap” and “folly” by oil experts and workers yesterday.
“I’m bemused at the audacity of Gordon Brown to come out with these suggestions,” says Alex Russell, professor of petroleum accounting at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.
“It is all too far high risk. He actually advocates a reserve fund to bail companies out if they cannot continue working marginal fields. But if they cannot continue working marginal fields the likelihood is it is not worth doing economically. For the Government to step in there and bail them out is just to throw good money after bad.”
A Labour member and oil worker in Aberdeen described Brown’s proposals as “folly”.
Speaking ahead of yesterday’s lecture, Brown said the North Sea had reached a “tipping point” as companies lay off staff and cut contractors rates amid a global fall in oil prices. Government, he said, should be prepared buy up oil in advance, lend to operators or enter public-private partnerships to take over and run production facilities.
“Ultimately the proposal is to make the most of our oil reserves, rather than to ignore them or to downplay their contribution in the future, particularly given the volatility of the world oil market and the strong prospect prices could rise again,” said the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, who is stepping down from Westminster after 33 years in Parliament in May.
Public investment in the oil industry is quite common internationally, says Alex Kemp, professor of petroleum economics at Aberdeen University. A previously nationalised oil company, British National Oil Corporation, was privatised in the early 1980s. Norway has two state oil companies.
“[Brown’s] idea is not particularly new. But how the details will actually work is not very clear,” Kemp told the National.
Scottish nationalists accused Brown of failing to protect the North Sea during almost a decade as Labour Chancellor.
“As a Chancellor who treated Scotland’s oil as a cash cow, imposed the supplementary tax on the North Sea industry in the first place, then doubled it — and left office having failed to set up an oil fund to deliver any long-term benefit from our own natural resources — Gordon Brown is responsible for undermining investment in this vital industry,” said Stewart Hosie, SNP Deputy Leader.
“The Scottish Government has already published a comprehensive action plan to help the North Sea industry and protect tens of thousands of jobs, and it would be good if Mr Brown could help make up for the damage he did when in office by backing it. This includes an investment allowance to provide support for fields that incur higher costs to develop, a reversal of the increase in the supplementary charge implemented by the UK Government in 2011, and the introduction of an exploration tax credit to help increase levels of exploration and sustain future production.
“Whatever good ideas Mr Brown has now, by definition he didn’t implement them in the 13 years when he was Chancellor and Prime Minister.”
Alex Russell said that in office Labour had been only “interested in obtaining as much revenue from the North Sea as possible, as quickly as possible, without thinking ahead to the current situation”.
Rather than establish potentially extremely costly private-public partnerships, the UK Government should reduce the rate of tax paid by oil and gas companies in the North Sea to 20 per cent, in line with all other companies, says Russell. “That would have a bigger incentive for the oil companies to stay here and they wouldn’t be a risk to the Government.”
Rather than nationalising the liabilities of oil and gas companies the best way to protect the North Sea is to devolve full control of energy policy to Holyrood, says Russell.
“This is an attempt to win votes for the Labour Party in the General Election. It is disguised as saving the North Sea oil industry. The best way to save the North Sea oil industry is to devolve responsibility to the country in which the economic activity takes place, and that happens to be Scotland.
“Why on earth did Gordon Brown not suggest that the full powers over the North Sea industry be devolved to the Scottish Parliament? Had that happened we would not be in the crisis we are in today. The Scottish Government would be taking action to ensure the North Sea industry survived in the way that the United Kingdom Government appears not to be doing.”
Significant job losses are expected in the north-east as oil companies tighten their belts. Last week oil doyen Ian Wood predicted that “15,000 jobs will go in the next few months”.Chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce the introduction of field allowances to spur investment and the lowering of the tax take on the industry to just below 50 per cent from 60 per cent in his Budget on March 18.
Kevin Forbes, managing director of recruitment company Oil and Gas People, and a former offshore contractor, says while the North Sea is currently “on freeze” Scotland’s offshore industry is far from finished: “I think there is short-term pain for long-term gain,” says Forbes, who points to savings that companies are making that could lead to a “mini-boom” when oil prices rise. “There is still a lot of work left in the North Sea. There is still a lot of oil to be discovered in the North Sea,” he said. |
Luis Enrique Rodriguez, 18, of Anaheim, was arrested in connection with rioting in Huntington Beach on July 28, 2013 after he 'liked' the Police Department's Facebook page, apparetly "proud of his actions," authorities said.
After more than four months of investigation, 20 people have been arrested in connection with this summer's rioting after a major pro surf contest in Huntington Beach, police said.
The rioting started after a fight broke out July 28 across from the beach where thousands of spectators had gathered for the popular nine-day U.S. Open of Surfing.
The crowd toppled portable toilets, threw items from rooftops and smashed car windows along the popular downtown strip lined with restaurants, bars and surf and skate shops.
Police fired pepper balls and rubber projectiles to break up the melee. Some 250 officers responded to the disturbance.
Bike Shop Repairs Window After Vandalism
A bike shop window shattered in Sunday's violence has been replaced as police continue the search for vandals who stormed through the streets Sunday evening after a surf competition. Jacob Rascon reports for the NBC4 News at Noon on Tuesday July 30, 2013. (Published Tuesday, July 30, 2013)
One person was treated for injuries at a hospital after apparently being hit by a flying bottle and one of the rubber projectiles, police said.
Since then, detectives have collected what they said were "vast amounts of evidence" with the help of tips from the community to identify those responsible.
"To date, we have been able to arrest everyone involved that we have be able to identity," the Huntington Beach Police Department said on its Facebook page.
Huntington Beach Holds Meeting to Discuss Future Safety of U.S. Open Following Riots
The Huntington Beach City Council held a special meeting to discuss Sunday’s riots following the U.S. Open of Surfing. A judge told suspect Chase Scott Christman in court Tuesday that he cannot go back to Huntington Beach where he is accused of vandalism and inciting a riot. Vikki Vargas reports from Huntington Beach for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on July 30, 2013. (Published Tuesday, July 30, 2013)
Authorities have made felony and misdemeanor arrests for possession of stolen property, vandalism, inciting a riot, participating in a riot, assault on a peace officer, vandalism, assault with a deadly weapon and arson.
Others were being investigated for drunken conduct and failure to disperse.
More Southern California Stories:
Local Firefighter Arrested in Connection With Huntington Beach Riot |
On reporting homophobia, as a gay man
Rick Morton Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 17, 2016
I once walked out of a pub with a friend who joked: “I’m an eastern suburbs Jew, I think I know a bit about anxiety.” I couldn’t help myself: I’m an Outback Queensland raised gay, welcome.
It was a joke, and not, as many things often are.
This morning I wrote a news report based on two interviews I did with two Islamic imams I spoke with on Friday, June 17, 2016. One imam said the punishment for being homosexual is death. The other, more cautious, said he’d “have to check”.
Perhaps I was naive but I did not expect these comments to be defended by people, some of them straight, who admonished me for ignoring the Christian right, our politicians, other church leaders in my 800-word article.
Ignore them? They have been my atmosphere for almost every one of the 29-years I have been alive. To be born gay in this country, even today, is to grow up in an environment in which your growth is not assured. The character of those around you, as a child, is overbearing. This is the case for better or worse.
For precisely seven years in my late teens and early 20s I spent most of every day in fear. I received messages filled with hate in my hometown. I had friends try and convert me. They were not malicious. They just didn’t understand. How could they? At my 18th birthday drinks in my first proper job as a cadet at a Gold Coast newspaper I wore a pink sweater. And then agonised over whether I would be found out. Disowned. Banished. My father does not “agree with my lifestyle”. Thankfully, my mother is a hero.
I am no longer afraid in the same way, though the anxiety has never left. You grow crooked in this world. That’s the way of it. I had my first panic attack at the age of 21, after I had come out, while attending a party with high school friends in my hometown. There have been many since. I don’t talk about it because, really, that’s for me and not for you.
I am almost 30 and I am still boxing at shadows that sometimes materialise. The hate-filled faggot yelled on the street by drunk men, the commentary dripping with either disdain or hurtful ignorance. The word faggot is a gun shot. I hear it everywhere. I remember it. You never forget the sound of a gun shot.
There are fault lines in your soul, to be gay in this world.
It taught me other things, things that I often think I could not have learned growing up where I did. Compassion for others on the outer. To be careful with my words. To have consideration for where people have come from, for what they have seen and heard, how their families treated them. I know the things that set like concrete if they happen early enough. People are accountable for their actions but their pasts, too, should be held accountable for creating the people that take the decisions they do.
Yesterday I calmly listened as an imam told me unequivocally that the Islamic law punishment for homosexuality is death. I was gentle and curious in my questioning. I asked how the process worked, after he explained there is no way religion allows an individual to just go around “bashing and killing people”. It wasn’t until the interview ended that I realised how deeply desensitised I had become to such forms of hate. I’ve never spoken directly with someone who so resolutely believes acts of homosexuality should be met with death. Sure, plenty of angry people have told me I should kill myself but that’s old hat now.
Now, I am a reporter. We all hear things we would rather not. I take no issue with it. But then came the people who were angered by my story. Angered by my paper’s stance on other issues.
This is not the first time I have been held to account for working at The Australian. Gay men have recently taken to calling me a traitor for working where I do. One said the LGBTI employees, all of us, are morally culpable. They said look at what the paper is doing to “our community”, as if I had never been a part of it. I would find no dramatic tension working in a newsroom where everybody thought the same things.
I am proud of my reporting. Proud of the time I broke the story about the Catholic Church’s intervention in corporate support for marriage equality, proud of the stories I have written about equality in all its forms throughout my career. And when I spoke to the imam it did not occur to me for one second that I should keep it quiet. To what end?
To ignore Islam’s role in homophobia is paternalistic and a form of privilege. Who cares about the thousands of gay and lesbian and queer Muslim kids? Do we only care about the Christian ones? I’m not Muslim, so that is the extent to which I should speak of it. Others have and will continue to have that conversation.
I resent explaining myself through the prism of my own sexuality, which is as much a part of me as my elbow is. It might sound like a sob story but it is my story. I resent being told by people how to qualify and rank hate. Being told that my contribution to equality can only be measured after I overcome the perception of the handicap of my employer.
Not by my design, my life has been ruled by my identity. And it continues to be shanghaied into the work I do as an adult. This is worth the price of admission, to write about things that matter.
At a certain stage, you become used to the noise. |
AFP, January 2, 2011
KABUL — More than 10,000 people, about a fifth of them civilians, lost their lives in violence in Afghanistan last year, an AFP count based on official figures and an independent website tally showed Sunday.
An Afghan child injured in the 4 May, 2009 US air strikes in Farah province. (Photo: Abdul Malek/AP) An Afghan child injured in the 4 May, 2009 US air strikes in Farah province. (Photo: Abdul Malek/AP)
Afghanistan's interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary revealed new figures for the number of civilians, police and militants killed in 2010 -- a total of 8,560 people.
In addition, the Afghan defence ministry said that 810 Afghan soldiers died in 2010, while independent website icasualties.org puts the total death toll for international troops last year at 711.
That brings the overall number of dead from the war last year to 10,081, according to an AFP calculation.
Afghanistan has been in the grip of a Taliban insurgency since the hardline Islamists were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
The Taliban were accused of sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders linked to the attack.
Last year was the deadliest yet in Afghanistan's nine-year war for international troops, according to the icasualties tally.
Bashary said his ministry had recorded 2,043 civilian deaths caused by Taliban attacks and military operations targeting the militants.
This is lower than the 2,412 Afghan civilian deaths in the first 10 months of 2010 identified in a United Nations report last month. It said the toll was up 20 percent on the same period in 2009.
The UN has yet to release its figures for the whole year.
The interior ministry spokesman added that 1,292 policemen were killed battling the Taliban and other insurgents last year.
Meanwhile, he said 5,225 militants were also killed in 2010 operations by the war-torn country's security forces and their international backers, a NATO-led force of about 140,000 troops.
Limited, conditions-based international troop withdrawals are due to start in July 2011 ahead of a planned handover of responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014. |
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