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At the beginning of the recession, London landmark bookshop Foyles took the brave step of deciding to moving lock, stock and barrel, into the site of the former Central Saint Martins building next door. As the tills start ringing in the newly opened building we take a wander around the stacks.
Foyles bookshop on London's Charing Cross Road was once a Mecca for book lovers. Opened in 1929 by brothers William and Gilbert Foyle it was at one time listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop, with one of the longest lines of shelving (48km). Its rabbit warren of small, eccentric and sometimes infuriating spaces turned it into a tourist destination, while its double payment system was incomprehensible to anyone who walked through the door. But in the past 10 years, as high-street bookshops have been forced to close and e-book sales have risen, Foyles has had to reevaluate its famous store. Now a new flagship shop designed by architect Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands hopes to take the historic bookshop into the 21st century.
Foyles has been a fixture of London's West End for more than a century, as shown from this photo of the shop dating back in 1906. Photo Credit: Foyles Archive
It was important for the brand to stay on the same street. The building at 107 Charing Cross Road, just two doors down from the old shop, was the former home of Central Saint Martins art school, before it moved to its new purpose-built complex in King's Cross. It too was a hodge-podge of ad hoc accretions built up over the past century, with grimy windows, paint splattered studios and drafty corridors. Built in 1939 and designed by EP Wheeler and HFT Cooper, of the London County Council Architects' Department, it became the place where Britain's creative bright young things came to hone their talents, from Terence Conran to Gilbert & George and Alexander McQueen, among others. It was also where in 1975 the Sex Pistols played its first ever show, and where Jarvis Cocker came up with the lyrics for Pulp's Common People.
Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, which has been working on the project some six years, has stripped back the art school's labyrinthine partitions to reveal a structure of open floors separated by a central atrium. A series of stairs was added between the front and rear blocks of the existing building to create a clearly legible and easily navigable floor plan. 'It's a very flexible building. If there is any art in the project, it is in taking away in the ad-hoc additions,' says director Alex Lifschutz. 'The front floors are half a level above the back floors and we've taken advantage of that to create what I think is a very human-scale building. As you cross from side to side you are hardly aware that you are also moving up or down the building -- it's a magic formula which takes people around and up to the main attraction on the upper floor -- the cafe and events space.'
It is telling to see how much more space Foyles has gained each time it has moved, with the latest store the biggest yet. Photo Credit: Simon Heafield.
The result is around 3710 sq m of flexible retail space spread over eight alternating half levels, with 13 new residential apartments above, housed within a new zinc extension and accessed through a separate entrance to the north of the bookshop. The impressive 16m-tall atrium, just off the entrance on Charing Cross Road, fills the space with natural light -- a far cry from the stuffy and oppressive store next door. It is lit from the top by a skylight, while the balustrades are formed of frameless glass to further blur the boundaries between staircase and shop floor. As you move up the shop you encounter slots cut into the atrium walls displaying books as well as lecturns sitting on the landing of each floor, both a clever marketing device to constantly introduce the customer to books they thought they hadn't come across before.
Architect Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands has made clever use of the space thanks to a series of staircases. Photo Credit: Hufton + Crow.
With more than 6400m of shelving, the shop has the capacity to hold 200,000 titles, the same amount as the old shop, but tellingly far less than the 16.5 million books for sale on the Foyles website. Some bookshelves have been used as partitions to create more intimate spaces, partly in homage to the old shop, while other spaces have been left open. Low ceiling heights meant that services such as heating, cooling and lighting needed to be tightly packed. Rather than concealing them behind a suspended ceiling, which would have made the space seem even smaller, they are on view in their foil wrappings and industrial brackets.
Bookshelves have been used as partitions partly to create intimate spaces as a tribute to the old shop. Photo Credit: Hufton + Crow.
While the top two floors are dedicated to a large cafe, purpose-built gallery and events space, a former assembly hall that used to host meetings, fashion shows and dances has become an informal double-height auditorium at the back of the shop. A glass mezzanine and balconies look on to the space so an audience can gather at various levels and look down on an event or at a speaker. The space still has bookshelves and appears much like any other bookshop, but it is the relaxed and adaptable nature of the space that Lifschutz says makes it different. 'The more ad hoc and the more unexpected the space is the better, and the more spaces for events and happenings to take place the better. It shouldn't feel like it's staged, but a seamless part of the building,' he says.
The use of half floors at the new Foyles has given the architect extra space to play with to give the store a more open, contemporary feel. Photo Credit: Hufton + Crow.
One of the main ways Foyles is trying to respond to changing reading patterns is with an ambitious programme of in-store events as well as cult jazz performances. As Lifschutz says, 'Bookshops need to connect with the audience through bookclubs and talks, just like music has countered the internet with performances and gigs.' This is nothing new to Foyles. Christina Foyle, daughter of co-founder William and owner of the bookshop until her death in 1999, initiated monthly luncheons in 1930 so that outsiders could meet the literati such as Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and DH Lawrence. (There is a letter to Christina in the archive from artist Lucian Freud, which reads: 'While your bookshop remains a temple to panic, ignorance and suspicion, I would prefer to not have lunch with you, please do not ask me again'!
3D cutaway model of the new Foyles building gives you a better sense of how it all fits together.
Foyles has appointed Futurecity, a 'placemaking agency', previously responsible for a number of multidisciplinary art projects, including Mark Wallinger's White Horse and Richard Wilson's Slipstream at Heathrow's new Terminal 2, to curate a series of exhibitions over the next few years. It has been advising Foyles on the strategy for the bookstore's new cultural hub for the past two years. Mark Davy, director of Futurecity, calls it the 'gallery of the word', promising 'exciting conversations and collaborations between artists, writers and other creative disciplines'. The first offering will be from Turner Prize nominee and alumnus of Central Saint Martins, Mark Titchner, whose painting studio once existed on the same floor as the gallery.
To mark the opening of the new store, Foyles launched a three-week festival of workshops, performances, signings and readings in which different writers, from Michael Palin to Grayson Perry, opened different sections of the shop -- the Hay Festival of London if you like. The hope is that it has encouraged people to break their usual book-buying routines and help them use the bookshop in a different way than they're used to. Sam Husain, chief executive of Foyles says: 'It's about discoverability, a chance to interact with authors and artists, to listen to great music in one of our many performance spaces and forge partnerships right across the cultural sector.'
One of The Saint Martins Lofts interiors, being styled by former Central St Martins' student Marc Péridis, of 19 Greek Street, will feature hand-picked pieces from an international selection of designers.
For them, a bookshop is no longer a place to merely pop in to and buy books; rather it has taken on the role of a library or cultural centre, to educate people, encourage debate and get people together in one public space. Bookshops now also have the job of editing down the mounds and mounds of material found on the internet into a few essential reads. 'What we're aiming for is that people come here for an experience, rather like dare I say it Harrods, Hamleys or Fortnum's,' said Christopher Foyle at the new store's opening.
Some would say it was an entirely mad decision to up sticks and undertake a major architectural project right on the cusp of the economic downturn in 2008, and just as Foyles was returning to profit. Even more so, considering that Transport for London's development for a new Crossrail station (due to finish in 2018) just 200m to the north was deterring shoppers from entering Charing Cross Road, costing the company an estimated £1.5m loss of sales a year. But inspired by one of the UK's most creative art schools, it saw a window of opportunity to combine books and culture in a new modern space and continue its illustrious history. Essentially, it had to either go big or go home. Now it's hoping to pave the way for other bookshops: whether mad, brave or genius foresight, only time will tell.
One of The Saint Martins Lofts interiors, being styled by former Central St Martins' student Marc Péridis, of 19 Greek Street, will feature hand-picked pieces from an international selection of designers.
The Saint Martins Lofts
High above the bookworms nosing their way through the new Foyles bookshop, there are 13 new apartments, housed within the existing fabric of the building and two new zinc 'pavilions' on the roof. The Saint Martins Lofts, named after the Central St Martins art school and designed by interior architecture practice Darling Associates, feature penthouses, two and three-bedroom properties with views over London's West End, duplexes with double-height spaces and original-style Crittall windows, and some with large terraces. It is a joint venture between Aquila Housing Holdings and Noved Property Group, the property arm of the Foyle family.
One of The Saint Martins Lofts interiors, being styled by former Central St Martins' student Marc Péridis, of 19 Greek Street, will feature hand-picked pieces from an international selection of designers.
Director of Soho-based design hub 19 Greek Street and alumnus of Central Saint Martins, Marc Péridis has styled the interior of one of the apartments. Much of the studio's philosophy is based on injecting new life in design products and promoting sustainability, social design and up-cycling. With this in mind, Péridis has selected pieces with an emphasis on resourcefulness, including those by Nina Tolstrup of Studio Mama, Beirut-based Karen Chekerdjan, 3D pioneer Dirk Vander Kooij and Australian outfit Super-cyclers. There is also work by young and up-and-coming designers, including Chilean studio gt2P and London-based Israeli Yoav Reches.
Says Péridis: 'I remember with such intensity the time spent at Central Saint Martins as a design student. We want to bring that energy and emotion in the apartment at The Saint Martins Lofts, celebrating not only the heritage of this very special building but also London's ability to continuously reinvent itself, breathing new life into objects, buildings and entire urban areas.' |
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Join Date: Oct 2013 Posts: 34
1995 M3 Dakar/Black, 5SPD, DINAN SC & Suspension, 103K Miles, NorCal, $19,950 1995 BMW M3 (e36) 5spd Coupe, Dakar Yellow with Black Leather Interior. Car is a late production MY95 (07/95) and factory options were Sunroof and Cruise Control. The car has had 3 mature owners (>35) and has been in the San Francisco Bay Area it's entire life. Car currently has ~103k miles. Clean CarFax and zero accidents; the original VIN stickers are still visible on both front fenders, hood, both doors, trunk lid, EVEN the front bumper cover!
According to the service records I have, the original owner began to have Dinan (in Mt. View) modify the car in 1997. Initially with a Stage 2 NA kit (Intake, Throttle Body, ECU, Exhaust) and Suspension (Springs, Koni's, Sway bars, Front Strut Bar). A few months later, he went the final yard and had the Dinan SuperCharger Kit installed (Powerdyne based). Car has been garaged most of its life and I was amazed that the car had absolutely ZERO door dings! Headliner is mint as are the door cards. Paint was starting to show some oxidation, but a 2 day correction cleaned this right up!
Car has had the following items addressed within the last 3K miles:
Radiator & Cooling System refresh
New Spark Plugs
New Fuel Filter
Supercharger rebuild by 928 Motorsports
New Motor Mounts
New E46 RTABS with Vorshlag Limiters
New E46 Rear Shock mounts with ECS Tuning reinforcement rings
New Front Sway Bar Endlinks
New Power Steering Reservoir and Hoses
Mobile 1 Engine/Transmission/Diff Oil change
Brand New Yokohama S Drive Tires
4 wheel alignment (spec sheet available)
New Clutch Pedal and UUC Clutch Pedal Bushing
Re-wrapped Steering Wheel
Illuminated Shift Knob with factory wiring kit
Retrofitted OEM BMW CD-Changer
Re-painted the front bumper cover
New front spoiler lip
New Plastic Cowl (around the windshield wipers)
New M3 floor mats
New Driver's Door Seal (the expensive one)
Some other stuff, I am probably forgetting, but I have all the receipts to review.
I don't need to tell you how hard it is getting to find cars like this... Located in SF Bay Area.
Asking $19,950
Pics (New Front Plate Trim has been installed): |
I dug up an old paper that is relevant to the point Rhys Southan of Let Them Eat Meat brought up in a recent post which I quoted on June 9:
But I recognize that my consumer choices are almost totally insignificant in this regard; like veganism, this is a symbolic gesture.
The paper is Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism by Gaverick Matheny (Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2002. p.293-7.). In it, Matheny argues that act-utilitarians cannot know what the actual consequences of an action will be in many cases, and therefore they must base their actions on the probability of expected consequences. Matheny goes on to explain that by not eating meat for a year, you take a chance that you will be the person who causes a reduction of meat past a threshold which is felt to the farmers and causes them to raise less animals:
For example, take the case of The 200 Million Consumers. There are 200 million consumers, each of whom eats 50 farm animals each year. In this market there are only ten possible annual outputs of animals for farmers: one billion animals, two billion, and so on, up to ten billion. The difference between each of these annual outputs, one billion, is the smallest unit of demand perceivable to the farmer and is thus the threshold unit. Since there are 20 million customers per threshold unit, and only one of these customers will actually complete the unit of which his or her purchase is a part, the probability of my completing a unit is one in 20 million. That means by buying meat I have a one-in-20 million chance of affecting the production and slaughter of one billion animals. The expected disutility is then one-20-millionth times one billion, which equals 50 – that is, the disutility associated with raising and slaughtering 50 animals per year.
Matheny explains why this matters using the example of The 100 Bandits in which 100 bandits go into a village and each steals one bean from each of 100 villagers, each of whom has 100 beans. After this is done, the villagers have no beans left. However, the loss of only one bean cannot cause any perceptible difference to a villager. Since no bandit could have caused actual (perceptible) harm by stealing only one bean, none is responsible for the villagers going hungry, right?
No. One of the bandits stole the nth bean that reached the threshold of perceptible harm to a villager, and the probability of any given bandit being the one who steals the nth bean to reach that threshold is the same whether each bandit steals 100 beans from the same villager or 1 bean from 100 different villagers.
In other words, when divided into equal contribution units, any contribution of a unit towards reaching the threshold of a perceptible difference is as morally important as the unit that actually reaches that threshold. |
In one of the more widely publicized moments of an already-ridiculous US presidential circus (I mean race), Republican hopeful Donald Trump had his security detail bounce Univision/Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos from a press conference in Iowa on Aug. 26.
Ramos, widely considered the most trusted voice in US Spanish-language news, stood “without being called on and began asking questions about Trump’s immigration proposals,” according to The Los Angeles Times, “which include ending birthright citizenship and deporting the estimated 11 million people who are in the US illegally, along with their families.”
“You weren’t called,” Trump responded during the televised verbal scuffle. “Sit down.” When Ramos persisted, Trump snarled, “Go back to Univision,” signaling security to move in.
It’s widely known that the GOP frontrunner has an axe to grind with Univision. He’s currently suing the network for a $500 million in damages after it dropped coverage of his Miss Universe pageant; a move prompted by Trump’s public comments on what he called a “mind-boggling” link between rape and illegal immigration.
This latest exchange was caught on video, however, and rapidly went viral. Though a representative for Trump eventually invited Ramos to return, it was not before he was approached by one of the reality TV-star’s supporters.
“Get out of my country,” the man said.
“I’m a US citizen,” Ramos retorted.
“Well, whatever,” he huffed. “Univision, no. It’s not about you.”
“It’s not about you,” Ramos replied. “It’s about the United States.”
In the aftermath, a number of journalists openly criticized Ramos’s tactics. Politico’s Marc Caputo called it bias—“taking the news personally, explicitly advocating an agenda.” The Washington Post’s Michael E. Miller called Ramos a “conflict junkie.” Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough accused the veteran newsman of trying to snag his “15 minutes of fame”—a rather amusing statement, considering the fact that an average of 2 million viewers tune into watch Ramos host Noticiero Univision each night, while Morning Joe regularly comes in dead last, ratings-wise.
This kind of criticism smacks of privilege and respectability politics.
This kind of criticism smacks of privilege and respectability politics. Dan Rather has been lionized for repeatedly, aggressively confronting US politicians. What Ramos did was no different. And in refusing to play nicely with Donald Trump—a man who smugly refuses to play nicely with Hispanic Americans—Ramos is bringing to the forefront a segment of US society, that while often overlooked, refuses to be invisible in 2016.
In a way, Joe Scarborough’s comments are the most telling. Across the country, countless white viewers were undoubtedly asking themselves, “Who is this guy?” They should probably ask the more than 50 million native Spanish speakers residing in the United States—surpassing the entire population of Spain. The rules of media etiquette may have worked for Joe Scarborough and company, but they have systemically marginalized journalists of color, and the communities they serve, for decades.
No more.
If Republican candidates like Trump are going to attempt to shamelessly solicit the white nativist base by demonizing people of color, they need to know they will not be permitted to do so in a vacuum. They will be held accountable for their remarks. In 2016, Ramos is a major part of the equation. Kicking him out of the room is hardly removing him from the picture.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers. |
About
I as a previous restaurant worker would like to develop an app that will allow a waiter or waitress to place order from table and have it go directly to the cook on a monitor.This app will feature drop down menus(mobile apps) that will reflect products that each individual company can use. The server can customize each order and when entered in the cook will have it processed immediatelyon a screen in kitchen . iServmore app will also allow servers to keep up with multiple tables at one time. It will also be linked to a card reader to process payments right at table to move expedite service. This app will also keep track of tips for the server, so they can see how well or poorly they are doing! This will be marketed to chain companies and restaurants in the south east to start and eventually go global! |
The news that Rob Liefeld has partnered with Akiva Goldsman and Graham King to bring his Extreme Comics characters to movies surprised many when it broke this week, but talking to Heat Vision, the comic book creator — who is also responsible for Marvel's Deadpool — revealed that he'd been working on the deal for some time.
Liefeld also revealed that the Extreme revival won't just be happening onscreen, with work on new comic books based on characters and concepts like Brigade and Bloodstrike already underway to coincide with a new reprint program for the original material. After years of Marvel and DC dominating the superhero genre onscreen and in comic book stores, is it finally time for the Extreme age to begin?
This announcement came out of nowhere. How long have you been working on bringing the Extreme properties to the screen?
This is the product of a yearlong process. I went to meet with Akiva Goldsman, who reached out to me because he was interested in the character Avengelyne. He was interested in angels, the afterlife, the conflict between good and evil, and he'd singled out Avengelyne as something that he really wanted to discuss. So I spoke with him, and we got along famously — he shared with me all of the different things he'd been doing — and he's like, "I'm running the Hasbro room for Paramount next, and then I'd like to do your universe," and I'm telling you, that's pretty exciting. He said, "I have a friend named Graham King, and we have financial capital, and I will be your film showrunner. You'll sit with me as we create the [writers] room, and we'll get screenplays for these properties, and we'll get them going." It was pretty astounding.
What happens, with this many titles and characters … there's a deal-making process. That took a year, but no one's enthusiasm faded during this time. Deadpool took seven years to get to the motion picture screen, and I use that as my measurement. That tested me and my patience more than anything I could've imagined, because the screenplay was so good. It was like, "Why can't someone see how well this will play?" It was all over that page. I'd already lived through that seven-year birth process, so taking one year to get all the particulars of this deal worked out, when you have two producers and a financier [was nothing].
The selection of characters mentioned in the announcement was interesting; you had Brigade and Bloodstrike, from Extreme's earliest days at Image Comics, but also material like Kaboom and Nitro-Gen, which came almost a decade later …
Well, Kaboom and Nitro-Gen represent the youth of the package. I mean, they are teenagers. And with Brigade and Bloodstrike, the thing is, they can't be separated. They're bound by a familial tie, they're the Cain and Abel of this particular universe. I mean, if you died on the battlefield and I brought you back without your consent, you might hate me too, being sentenced to a life of constant regeneration. So John Stone and Cabbot Stone are beyond estranged, and that's where the conflict comes from. Altogether, we've got around 100 characters, and we know the central conflicts.
If I'm a ticket buyer, I ask myself, "Why should I give these movies my attention when I already have Marvel and DC movies?" I see all those movies, I'm a fan. I see them on opening night, and depending on the quality, I see them multiple times. With these characters, there's a central conflict between the two brothers that hasn't been seen yet, so we have something new to offer. You've also got monsters, aliens, robots, cyborgs, undead soldiers. We have a lot of stuff.
That brings up something about the Extreme books and characters in general; they're almost more sci-fi than traditional superhero, it's as if they're future-proofed from any backlash against the superhero genre. You could essentially play a lot of these properties as straight sci-fi if you wanted.
There really was a different focus to these characters. Not just story wise, but design-wise, too. They are heavily sci-fi/fantasy. My focus, especially back then, was — I didn't have a lot of spandex characters. My characters came with a lot of gear, a lot of weaponry. I was just watching, just before we talked, these two police officers transport a prisoner into the courtroom and I was taken by all the stuff they're wearing, all their armor. That's my fascination. It's something I started with Cable in New Mutants and X-Force, the gear fascination. Superheroes didn't look like that before. I mean, they've added a lot of pouches to Captain America now [Laughs].
Do you think that Deadpool helped set something in motion where movie audiences are looking for something else from their superhero movies now? Something that isn't the superhero origin story, but perhaps a movie that takes in tropes from other genres?
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And let me tell you what else Deadpool did. I did 30 tour-dates in the last two years. I went to 30 different conventions all across America, I tried to go to places I had never been, and I kept hearing people say, "Finally! It's about time we had a '90s movie! It's about time we got a movie with characters we love!" I'm telling you right now, the '90s have been largely underserved in film. What Marvel is relying on is largely the Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] stuff, the 1960s stuff. Doctor Strange? I loved it, it's brilliant, but it has its roots in the Lee/Ditko material of the 1960s. Age of Ultron, that comes from 1970s Roy Thomas and John Buscema stories. The '90s have not gotten film service, and those fans were out in force, great in number. They were 13 years old when they bought those books, and now they have families and they want to share this material — everyone wants to share what they love with their kids!
I'd go to those conventions and the fans would have X-Force and New Mutants and Deadpool and Brigade and Bloodshot, and they'd ask, "When are we getting Extreme films, Liefeld?" and I'd just have to say, "I wish I could tell you!" [Laughs.] "Hopefully, if everything goes right, sooner than you think!" Brigade went to the top of the charts, Bloodstrike went to the top of the charts. This fanbase is just sitting there. To be honest, I was not prepared for the outpouring of love that followed this announcement. These fans want to see this material onscreen.
What about the source material? Will fans be able to buy new Brigade comics, or Bloodstrike? You brought back some Extreme properties in 2011, but many of these characters haven't been seen on the stands in years.
I have a new Brigade series ready to go that I've been waiting to launch with Bloodstrike, and then we have an Extreme anthology coming out. I'm not going to flood the market. We'll do selective stories, selective arcs, and then at the end of the year, we'll be collecting the material. I love collections. We're going to collect the original stories for the first time, as well. Very little of the '90s stories have been collected. Bloodstrike No. 1 was a book that I laid out, we had young talent at the time — it gave me a chance to control the storytelling — and we're going to recolor and reissue that so that people can have an affordable version of that. Re-Gex No. 1, I did with [Marvel TV head] Jeph Loeb, we're doing a new edition of that. But, yes. There'll also be new adventures. We'll do a couple of story arcs. We've got a lot of the Extreme talent working on new material, some of them are already back at work on it. Marat Mychaels, who was the original artist on Brigade, is working on it again.
And again, the fans love this stuff. On my desk right now, I have a bunch of books from '92 and '93, and I looked at the layouts of this stuff, I looked at the visuals, and I'm telling you, we at Image Comics and Extreme Studios, we pushed the boundaries of storytelling. We had big, bold, colorful characters, and we had interesting conflicts. I just think, especially aesthetically, there's a visual direction we gave great care to. That's fun. That's fun. I do feel like everything old and new again. I loved Twin Peaks, and I keep thinking about that little guy. "That gum you like is back in style." |
Once again, Israel is not part of a US led coalition - and it's all PM Netanyahu's fault, says Labor Party leader.
Once again, Israel is not part of an international coalition to "defend the Middle East", even though Israel is at the heart of the Middle East – and it's all Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's fault, said Labor Party and opposition head Yitzchak Herzog.
US President Barack H. Obama is planning to build an international coalition of Arab and Gulf states to fight back against ISIS, the Islamist terror group that has captured large parts of Iraq and Syria, and has threatened to do the same to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Gulf states, as it continues to build the "Muslim caliphate."
Israel has not been asked to be a part of this coalition – just like it was not asked to be part of the American coalition in 1991, when the US beat Iraq's Saddam Hussein back from Kuwait, which he attempted to occupy. Israel was asked not to intervene in that war – a dictate the country's leaders agreed to, even though Israel's population centers were hit by dozens of Iraqi SCUD missiles.
Then, the country was led by a right-wing Likud leader, Yitzchak Shamir, who refused to negotiate with the Palestinians – and now, said Herzog, it is Netanyahu who has excluded Israel from the anti-ISIS coalition by failing to seriously negotiate with the Palestinians. “Had Netanyahu and his minister behaved differently” and negotiated with PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in a “satisfactory” manner, “Israel would be a part of the coalition,” Herzog told Israel Radio in an interview Thursday.
In fact, said Herzog, the fact that Israel was not included in the coalition should be considered a "diplomatic failure" by Netanyahu.
In his speech Wednesday, Obama said that the US would form a broad coalition to combat ISIS.
"The greatest threat comes from Middle East and North Africa, one of them is Islamic State.” ISIS is “not Islamic...no religion condones the killing of innocents...and they’re certainly not a state,” he added.
He further noted that the airstrikes he recently approved against IS targets in Iraq have protected American interests, killed members of ISIS and have helped the Iraqi government regain territories taken by ISIS.
"So tonight, with a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, [ISIS] through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy," said Obama.
On Thursday, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said that the two countries would continue to cooperate diplomatically and militarily in the wake of US President Barack H. Obama's speech Wednesday night laying out a strategy for fighting ISIS, the Islamist terror group that has conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria.
Despite Herzog's complain, speaking to Israel Radio, Shapiro said that the intelligence services of both countries were already in contact about the issue, and would cooperate in beating back the ISIS threat. Israel is an important American partner in the Middle East, Shapiro said, and would by extension be an important part of the fight against ISIS. |
MUS, Turkey
Ten suspects have been arrested over the killing of a gendarme commander in eastern Turkey, police said on Tuesday.
No details were initially released about the suspects, who were seized in a raid by counter-terrorist police in Mus province.
Major Arslan Kulaksiz, commander of the Malazgirt garrison, was killed in a gun attack in the town on Monday as he travelled by car with his family.
He later died in Malazgirt State Hospital, according to Vedat Buyukersoy, the governor of Mus.
Kulaksiz is the latest security forces officer killed in a recent outbreak of violence in southern and eastern Turkey that was sparked by the killing of 32 activists in Suruc on July 20 in a suicide bomb attack.
Two days later, two police officers were found shot in the head at the home they shared in Ceylanpinar. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - listed by Turkey, the U.S. and EU as a terrorist organization - claimed responsibility.
On July 23, a police officer was killed in a gun attack in Diyarbakir and on Sunday two soldiers were killed in a blast on a highway near the city. The army blamed the Kurdish militant group for the roadside attack.
In a nationwide crackdown on militant groups - primarily Daesh, the PKK and the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) - Turkish security forces have detained more than 1,000 suspects since July 24, according to the prime minister's office. |
Franklin Park woman killed in crash on Lake Shore Drive
A Chevrolet being driven southbound at 5:57 p.m. in the 4700 block of North Lake Shore Drive crossed the median into the northbound lanes, striking three other vehicles, according to Chicago Police. | Photo courtesy of WLS-Ch. 7
A woman killed in a crash that left seven other people injured last week on Lake Shore Drive near the Uptown neighborhood has been identified as a 42-year-old west suburban resident.
A Chevrolet was traveling south at 5:57 p.m. July 24 in the 4700 block of North Lake Shore Drive when it crossed the median into the northbound lanes. It then hit three other vehicles, according to Chicago Police, who said speed was believed to have been a factor in the crash as the driver tried to change lanes.
The Chevrolet’s driver, Griselda Esmerelda Recinos of Franklin Park, was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Seven other people also were injured, six of whom were taken to hospitals for treatment, police and Chicago Fire Media said.
Three were initially in serious-to-critical condition, two at Illinois Masonic Medical Center and on at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. Three others, including two pedestrians, were listed in fair-to-serious condition at Lurie Children’s Hospital and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, authorities said. A seventh person refused medical treatment.
All lanes of Lake Shore Drive were closed for several hours after the crash. |
Dallas police staged demonstration and riot drills Wednesday at Fair Park, the day before a large demonstration is planned against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
About 600 Dallas officers participated in the training with riot helmets and shields. There was smoke to simulate tear gas and scores of police recruits playing the role of unruly demonstrators, all of it in hot weather conditions similar to what the officers could face.
"In our country everyone has a privilege to assemble and give voice, and the Dallas Police Department's role in that is to protect everyone," Deputy Police Chief Jeff Cotner said.
Cotner refused to speak directly about anyone involved in possible demonstrations during Trump's visit, but he acknowledged recent events elsewhere.
Dallas PD Practices Riot Control Ahead of Trump Visit
Dallas police staged demonstration and riot drills Wednesday at Fair Park, the day before a large demonstration is planned against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. (Published Wednesday, June 15, 2016)
"There have been incidents recently across the nation in which these situations have gone violent, so the department is taking steps to prepare our officers," Cotner said.
Grand Prairie and Irving refused to accommodate Trump at venues in those cities.
A Trump rally in September at the American Airlines Center drew around 15,000 supporters and thousands of demonstrators outside.
Video Donald Trump Speaks at Campaign Rally in Dallas
Wednesday the campaign posted an online announcement about a 7 p.m. rally Thursday at Gilley's nightclub on South Lamar. The venue can hold a maximum of 3,800 guests.
Trump's representatives were scrambling to find a rally location for this visit, according Gromer Jeffers, political reporter for The Dallas Morning News.
"We believe he has less than 100 people working for him nationwide. And his advance team and ground operation got here late. They've been trying to put this thing together on the fly," Jeffers said. "He already has the Republican nomination wrapped up but he's doing a rally anyway. And that's a gift for these protesters."
Dallas Police Practice Crowd Control Techniques
Ahead of Donald Trump's rally in Dallas Thursday, the Dallas Police Department practiced crowd control techniques in Fair Park Wednesday, June 15, 2016. (Published Wednesday, June 15, 2016)
Dallas County Republican Party officials said they had not been contacted to help Trump make arrangements, as likely presidential nominees might have done in the past.
"A lot of people don't want to mess with him, but he also doesn't have a relationship with a lot of local Republicans, not just in Texas but also around the country. And that's something that he's going to have to solve," Jeffers said.
Trump also plans a separate private fundraising reception on his Dallas visit.
Cotner said police will be ready to protect Trump and keep peace.
"We do have the capability. We are prepared," Cotner said. |
Greetings beer aficionados, Brandon here with another edition of the Saturday Night Sixer! As always this installment brings you a weekly offering that you can find in your local fine packaged liquor store, or possibly even on tap at your local watering hole. Looking for a new style or not sure what the craft brewing community has to offer this week? Look no further! Onward to beer …
The folks at Stone Brewing Company have been spoiling us for a long time now. With their standard lineup of beers like their Arrogant Bastard Ale, Ruination IPA, and their ever-changing selection of seasonal and special brews like their Old Guardian Barley Wine and the Vertical Epic series (if you haven’t picked up the 12.12.12 finale to the series, you may be too late, so get on it) Stone is always providing us with something new, tasty, and wonderful. Basically, Stone is always looking to put their bold stamp on a wide range of styles, and has succeeded in doing so for quite some time now.
It should be no surprise that Stone is taking their penchant for hoppy beers to the next level with the latest offering, the Enjoy By 02.15.13 IPA. As they have in the past, Stone has made a beer and made it specifically not to last. Now while that might not make a lot of sense initially, it will once you pour one of these and taste the freshness contained within. This is a beer that you WANT and NEED to drink fresh to fully appreciate the characteristics of the blend of hops contained in every bottle; many times certain hops will degrade in taste and aroma during aging, which is why Stone’s goal with this beer was to get it into your glasses as soon as possible. Hence, Stone goes to extra lengths to ensure that the Enjoy By series is bottled and distributed in a timely fashion, just so that we can enjoy the fresh onslaught of hoppy goodness in every drink. What a great bunch of folks!
After previous offerings of the Enjoy By IPA, Stone’s 02.15.13 is like a mosh pit of hops in your mouth. At first pour, I was greeted with an light orange/amber-colored double IPA with a frothy off-white head, with slight lacing as the head diminishes; it almost has the look of a strong pilsner. Now here is where this beer shines, as the first whiff of the aromas was phenomenal; lots of floral, citrus and pine notes are present, with slight caramel malt hints as well. Now some IPAs strive to be a simple cacophony of hops, which can lead to a muddled beer; this is definitely not the case with the Enjoy By 02.15.13 IPA. The taste of this is wonderful, with tangy citrus and pine flavors hitting on the front. The floral hops that are sometimes lost with age in this style are still there, lending a good balance to the tangy flavors. A slight dry resin and subtle malt is present in the back and in the finish, with slight bitterness and grapefruit taste as well. There’s a slightly rough mouthfeel with little sweetness in there, making this a hophead’s best friend. For a DIPA this drinks remarkably easy and is incredibly refreshing on the palate, with very little alcohol bite. But make no mistake, the 9.2-percent ABV is still there, making this one dangerous to session. Believe me, you will want to have another of these once you taste the goodness within!
This time of year usually provides brews that are heavy on the malts and spices, so to have Stone’s Enjoy By 02.15.13 IPA available is a wonderful addition to the the shelves of stores and taps of pubs around the country. It is currently on tap locally at Back Alley Draft House and the O’Niell’s in Nob Hill. Now, as the name implies, this beer is meant to be enjoyed by February 13, 2013 for optimal flavor, so the time to pick up one is now. Stone has done yeoman’s work in getting this onto shelves, so you should be able to hit your local liquor store and find bombers of it waiting for your enjoyment.
Hopheads rejoice, a big fragrant DIPA awaits your indulgence!
Until next time …
Prost!
—Brandon Daniel (Cryptogrind) |
Gordon Brown will make his first major intervention of the general election campaign in the West Midlands, England, on Thursday 11 May.
The former prime minister is expected to deliver a speech in the Labour heartland after ex-John Lewis boss turned Conservative candidate Andy Street beat Siôn Simon to become the metro-mayor for the region on 4 May.
Details of Brown's speech – his first address since speaking on Brexit and Scotland's future in March – have not been released by Labour.
But a party source in the city where he is scheduled speak told IBTimes UK that local campaigners were on the defensive as the Tories are up to 22 points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls as Ukip voters turn to the Conservatives.
"Things are going to be extremely tight, let's put it that way," the source said. As for whether Jeremy Corbyn was coming up on the doorstep in the area, the source added: "He's coming up everywhere, isn't it?"
A number of Labour-held seats in the West Midlands with narrow majorities could turn Conservative on 8 June, including Wolverhampton South West, Birmingham Edgbaston, Walsall North and Coventry South.
Nuneaton, a seat in Warwickshire considered to be a bellwether in general elections, is expected to be retained by the Tories, according to Labour sources. Marcus Jones won the constituency in 2015 with a majority of more than 4,800 votes. |
"We had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops" in Iraq.
During a tough campaign week focused on the Iraq War, former Gov. Jeb Bush shifted blame for problems there to President Barack Obama, saying that Obama’s actions helped hand the country over to Islamic State.
A University of Nevada student attending a town hall-style meeting in Reno asked Bush why he was placing the burden on Obama, at one point telling Bush, "Your brother created ISIS." Bush countered that the Obama administration hadn’t followed through on proper planning.
"We had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, that could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress," Bush said. (Watch video of the exchange above.)
The claim came in the middle of a rough few days for Bush, who was being criticized for his changing answers on whether he would have invaded Iraq. We wondered if it was true that Obama could have signed a deal to leave 10,000 U.S. troops in the country after the war’s end.
The exit
When Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a plan that President George W. Bush forged in 2008 with then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. That Status of Forces Agreement called for the withdrawal of all American troops by the end of 2011.
It was widely assumed a new plan would be negotiated after the 2008 version expired in 2011. There were no stipulations about a specific number of American military personnel to be left behind.
Obama ran on the campaign pledge of bringing a responsible end to the Iraq War, and announced shortly after taking office that combat operations would end in 2010. A high of 168,000 U.S. service members were in the country after the 2007 surge, drawing down to about 43,000 after combat troops left in 2010.
He said in October 2011 almost all troops would be home by Christmas. About 200 Marines would stay to train the Iraqi army and act as security for diplomatic personnel. In short, he kept the 2011 timeline Bush and al-Maliki had chosen.
When it came time to renegotiate a new agreement, there was little consensus on whether a residual force should stay in the country. Military leaders in Baghdad and the Pentagon pushed for as many as 24,000, but the White House rejected that amount. (For the record, U.S. forces in South Korea number more than 28,500 .)
Obama reportedly did consider leaving up to 10,000 troops in strategic locations after the exit, but that plan faced opposition both in the United States and in Iraq. Obama ruled out a force that size during an August 2011 conference call .
Negotiations led to the idea of a smaller, continuous force of 3,500 troops, with up to 1,500 more rotating in and out, and about a half-dozen F-16’s. But this plan ran into several roadblocks, including the insistence by Washington that those troops be immune to Iraqi -- although not American -- prosecution should they commit a crime.
Austin Long, a Columbia University international and public affairs professor, said al-Maliki allegedly supported the residual force and may have signed a new plan, but the Iraqi parliament would not. Facing the prospect of a weak agreement that didn’t protect remaining troops the way the United States wanted, when neither Baghdad nor Washington wanted to leave them there, negotiations broke down. No new agreement was reached, and no residual force was formed. There has been plenty of debate whether it was Washington or Baghdad that was more intractable on a new agreement.
The aftermath
So a plan to leave 10,000 troops didn’t exist when Obama took office and was never fully realized by his administration. But would an agreement to leave American troops have stabilized the nation the way Jeb Bush claimed? We were curious what experts would say about this point. (Bush’s campaign didn’t return our requests for comment.)
"I think most observers would agree that a residual U.S. force would have prevented the Islamic State from achieving as much as it has in Iraq," Long said. "But it is also unlikely that a residual force would have completely stabilized Iraq, as the sources of instability are fundamentally political."
Remember that the country was considered relatively stable in 2011; ISIS elements existed prior to that, but largely formed into the force it is today after American troops left -- and mostly in Syria at first.
Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said a recent Iraqi delegation to the institute agreed the terms of the planned renewal could not have passed parliament.
"They said that the Iraqi government was too weak, and unwilling to go against the wishes of those Iraqis who wanted the Americans to leave," Preble said.
Our ruling
Bush said, "We had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, that could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress."
Obama inherited a timeline to exit Iraq from George W. Bush and followed it, but there was no agreement to leave a large force behind. The Obama White House considered 10,000 troops for a short time but ruled it out, suggesting a much smaller force. Negotiations with Iraq broke down, however, and there was no agreement that met conditions Washington wanted.
Experts told us Bush parsed his words carefully enough to have a point that a residual force would have likely helped Iraq fend off ISIS. But there was no consensus to leave 10,000 troops in place.
We rate the statement Mostly False. |
"Getting out of your own way as an Entrepreneur: You are not your User"
A. Hunter Sunrise is an accomplished business developer and market strategist, whose first priority is creating inspired, sustainable business that both profits and connects community members while remaining accessible to under-served populations for employment and ownership.
Over the past sixteen years, Hunter has launched several distinct businesses in diverse industries, one of which has successfully reached regional and national expansion. Currently, Hunter's focus lies in working as a Principal Partner with INUS Group, LLC an international business consultancy, and leading the helm as CEO of a Digital & Creative Agency and as the COO of a Technology Company.
Hunter is an impassioned and innovative leader, dedicated to helping economic and social communities thrive. A commitment to creating jobs and opportunities for others' success is fueled by as much passion for economic growth as for social enhancement. |
CAPE ELIZABETH — Police are investigating an incident involving marijuana cookies that led to the suspension of nine Cape Elizabeth High School students.
School administrators received information Friday about marijuana-laced cookies on school grounds, said Superintendent Meredith Nadeau.
Additional Photos In this March 2008 file photo, a police cruiser sits in front of Cape Elizabeth High School. Police are investigating a Friday, Dec. 10, 2012 marijuana-cookie incident that led to the suspension of nine Cape Elizabeth High School students. John Ewing / Staff Photographer
The student who provided the cookies apparently knew they contained marijuana, but it was less clear whether everyone who ate them knew, she said.
The names of the students are not being released.
School policy calls for a student who distributes or sells drugs to be suspended for 10 days and possibly be expelled.
Expulsion requires a hearing before the School Board.
The penalty for first-time possession is a two-day suspension and a visit to a substance abuse counselor.
No one has been charged in the incident, which occurred as the high school hosted a TEDxYouth event on Friday. The day-long event for the school’s juniors and seniors featured speakers addressing the school district’s guiding values of “Community, Academics, Passion and Ethics” — an acronym for Cape.
Some of the students ate the cookies, felt ill and went to the school nurse’s office, but Nadeau indicated Monday that other information prompted the administration’s investigation. She would not specify what that information was.
The incident apparently did not require anyone to go to the hospital, said Cape Elizabeth police Capt. Brent Sinclair.
There was no information to suggest that parents or school district employees were involved, Sinclair said.
School Board Chairwoman Mary Townsend said she could not comment on the suspensions.
“The board stays out of these issues. We are not usually informed, in case there’s an expulsion hearing, because we need to be the jury,” she said.
In June 2010, a boy was expelled from Cape Elizabeth High School after he sold a pot brownie to a classmate at school. The student who bought the brownie wound up in a hospital emergency room.
The Northern New England Poison Center periodically gets calls about marijuana poisoning, including 37 from Maine so far this year.
The effects of ingesting marijuana in food can be different from those of smoking it, said Karen Simone, a clinical toxicologist and the center’s director.
The sensations can be different, she said, and someone who ingests the plant could feel sick, especially if they don’t know they have ingested it.
Marijuana could cause agitation, drowsiness, confusion or paranoia, Simone said, and the dosage may be harder to control when the drug is eaten. “Just because something gets you high doesn’t mean you like it,” she said.
Criminal prosecution in Friday’s case could be difficult because police would have to make a case separate from the information that school officials obtained in their investigation, said Jonathan Berry, a lawyer who practices criminal defense and has a specialty in marijuana law.
School officials have broader authority than police to search lockers or compel statements from students, so that information might not be admissible in court, he said.
Berry said he’s unaware of anyone being prosecuted for pot cookies.
Staff Writer Ann S. Kim can be contacted at 791-6383 or at:
[email protected]
Twitter: AnnKimPPH
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The debut album by the London duo of vocalist/lyricist Aluna Francis and producer George Reid was a collection of high-tempo fluorescent pop called Body Music that came out two years ago to much hype but little cut-through. Appearances on other artist’s tracks since (most notably Diplo and Skrillex’s To Ü) may have given them an idea, though, and collaborators from dancehall star Popcaan to pop-house favourite Flume have lent their services to follow-up I Remember.
The result is a work that maintains the group’s penchant for sweet melody and upbeat refrain, but with a richer sound underneath. Mean What I Mean articulates the album’s key theme of female agency over a 90s house rhythm and a noughties Basement Jaxx-style bass, before bringing it all up to date with verses from woozy rappers Leikeli47 and Dreezy. Wanderlust twins alt-R&B with EDM and Francis’s London vocals, while Heartbreak Horizon has a novel style – sounding a bit like a blend of Diplo and Lauren Hill. It’s well-executed mainstream pop with enough variety to prick the ears. |
Monstercat makes entire discography available to Bitcoin buyers
Decentralized digital currency Bitcoin is all the rage this month. Following its spike in value to an all-time high of more than $1,200 last week, everyone ranging from Virgin Galactic to a university in Cyprus wants a piece of the action. It was only a matter of time before Bitcoin made its way into dance music, and it’s no big surprise that it’s forward-thinking label Monstercat carrying the torch in support.
The eclectic dance label announced it would accept Bitcoin in exchange for its music, pricing each release at $4.99 (currently .00484 BTC) and the entire discography at $29.99 (currently .029089 BTC). We’ve seen artists like Gareth Emery and Knife Party take to Twitter to support the open source currency, but this marks the first time a significant label has actually taken the plunge. Fans of the music and/or the move can head here to put their Bitcoins to good use.
Still confused about what a Bitcoin is? Here’s a charming children’s story to bring you up to speed.
Categories: News |
Aviation: In a historic development for the aviation industry in Bhutan, the country’s first helicopter sporting the country’s national flag, touched down at Paro international airport, yesterday.
The helicopter, an Airbus H130, arrives ahead of a November 4 expected delivery date. The helicopter services are on schedule to be launched on November 5.
The helicopter was assembled, painted and tested in Singapore. It began its journey to Bhutan on October 27. It stopped over in Thailand, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, before reaching Bhutan. Upon entering Bhutanese airspace, the helicopter landed at the Gelephu domestic airport to refuel before heading to Paro airport.
The chairman of the helicopter board, Cabinet Secretary Kinzang Wangdi, was on board the helicopter. He joined the flight crew as a passenger from Dhaka, Bangladesh. The flight crew consisted of two test pilots and one engineer working for Airbus Helicopters. One of the Airbus pilots was the CEO of Airbus Helicopters.
The helicopter can accommodate up to seven passengers, excluding the pilot.
The chairman, who had never flown in a helicopter prior, said that he was initially nervous but that the flight had been “pleasant”, quiet and comfortable. He also pointed out that it was quite an experience given the panoramic view as a result of the large wrap-around windscreen and wide windows.
Kinzang Wangdi said it is significant that Bhutan is receiving its first helicopter and will be introducing its services on the 60th Birth Anniversary of His Majesty The Fourth Druk Gyalpo.
The government plans to use the helicopters for search and rescue, air medical evacuations, fire fighting, moving cargo, transport of VIPs and government officials, and possibly even for tourism, among others.
The helicopter will be undergoing proving flights in the next few days as required by the Bhutan Civil Aviation Authority. Flights could occur to other parts of the country.
News of the helicopter’s arrival was welcomed by citizens on social media with many offering their congratulations. Many posted and shared photos of the helicopter.
The helicopter will be based at the old hangar at Paro airport, which is the headquarters of the Royal Bhutan Helicopter Services Ltd (RBHS). The state-owned company has already recruited a pilot recommended by Airbus, and a helicopter engineer from India. Both have already started working for the company.
The second helicopter is expected to arrive sometime mid-next year.
Gyalsten K Dorji |
Rare Frank Zappa Recordings to Appear on New Box Set
Crossfire Publications will release a series of rare pre-Mothers of Invention era Frank Zappa recordings on May 28 in a new box set titled Paul Buff Presents Highlights From The Pal And Original Sound Studio Archives. Paul Buff served as owner of Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, CA from 1957-1964, and also served in the The Pal Studio Band, which included guitarist Dave Aerni and a young Zappa on guitar and drums. Zappa worked at the studio starting in 1961, where he learned basic recording techniques from Buff. Buff later became the sound engineer at Original Sound Records when he sold Pal Recording Studio to Zappa in 1964.
The new 156-track 5-CD collection features 58 early masters by the late Zappa, recorded at Pal and Original Sound Recording Studios. Included are recordings of Zappa as a performer, writer and/or producer. Many of the tracks on the box set with Zappa’s involvement are previously unreleased, including some with original Mothers Of Invention vocalist Ray Collins.
The album’s cover art (shown above) features Zappa’s “A Day At The Beach,” which he created in the early 1960s for his sister Patrice “Candy” Zappa.
The first 200 pre-release orders from Crossfire Publications will be accompanied by two additional CDs, The Tornadoes’ Now And Then and Charge Of The Tornadoes, featuring an additional 11 tracks that Frank Zappa engineered at Pal during 1962-1963.
Visit Crossfire Publications’ website to pre-order the album. |
WASHINGTON — Air traffic controllers are still working schedules known as "rattlers" that make it likely for them to get little or no sleep before overnight shifts, more than three years after a series of incidents involving controllers sleeping on the job, according to a government report released Friday.
A report by the National Research Council expressed concern about the effectiveness of the Federal Aviation Administration's program to prevent its 15,000 controllers from suffering fatigue on the job, a program that has been hit with budget cuts. The 12-member committee of academic and industry experts who wrote the report at the behest of Congress said FAA officials refused to allow them to review results of prior research the agency conducted with NASA examining how work schedules affect controller performance.
See also: The Incredible Story of the Plane Crash Selfie
The FAA-NASA research results "have remained in a 'for official use only' format" since 2009 and have not been released to the public, the report said.
The committee stressed its concern that controllers are still working schedules that cram five eight-hour work shifts into four 24-hour periods. The schedules are popular with controllers; at the end of their last shift, they have 80 hours off before returning to work the next week. But controllers also call the shifts "rattlers" because they "turn around and bite back."
An example of the kind of schedule that alarmed the report's authors begins with two consecutive day shifts ending at 10 p.m. followed by two consecutive morning shifts beginning at 7 a.m. The controller gets off work at 3 p.m. after the second morning shift and returns to work at about 11 p.m. the same day for an overnight shift — the fifth and last shift of the workweek.
When factoring in commute times and the difficulty people have sleeping during the day when the human body's circadian rhythms are "promoting wakefulness," controllers are "unlikely to log a substantial amount of sleep, if any, before the final midnight shift," the report said.
"From a fatigue and safety perspective, this scheduling is questionable and the committee was astonished to find that it is still allowed under current regulations," the report said. The combination of "acute sleep loss" while working overnight hours when circadian rhythms are at their lowest ebb and people most crave sleep "increases the risk for fatigue and for associated errors and accidents," the report said.
A view from the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Image: Reed Saxon/Associated Press
FAA officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association defended the scheduling, citing the 2009 study that hasn't been publicly released. The union said in a statement that NASA's research showed that "with proper rest periods," the rattler "actually produced less periods of fatigue risk to the overall schedule."
In 2011, FAA officials and then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood promised reforms after a nearly a dozen incidents in which air traffic controllers were discovered sleeping on the job or didn't respond to calls from pilots trying to land planes late at night. In one episode, two airliners landed at Washington D.C.'s Reagan National Airport without the aid of a controller because the lone controller on the overnight shift had fallen asleep. In another case, a medical flight with a seriously ill patient had to circle an airport in Reno, Nevada, before landing because the controller had fallen asleep.
Studies show most night shift workers, not just controllers, face difficulties staying awake regardless of how much sleep they have gotten. That's especially true if they aren't active or don't have work that keeps them mentally engaged. Controllers on night shifts often work in darkened rooms with frequent periods of little or no air traffic to occupy their attention, conditions scientists say are conducive to falling asleep.
"We all know what happens with fatigue," said Mathias Basner, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical school and the sleep expert on the committee. "The first thing you expect to see is attention going down, reaction time slows, you have behavioral lapses or micro-sleeps. ... If you have to react quickly in that situation, that is problematic."
After the 2011 incidents with falling asleep, the FAA stopped scheduling controllers to work alone on overnight shifts at 27 airports and air traffic facilities and increased the minimum time between work shifts to nine hours.
Another change was the creation of a "fatigue risk management program" for controllers. However, budget cuts "have eliminated the program's capability to monitor fatigue concerns proactively and to investigate whether initiatives to reduce fatigue risks are providing the intended benefits," the report said.
Basner said the FAA was making no effort to determine whether there is a correlation between work schedules and controllers errors. For example, there were near collisions between airliners near Honolulu and Houston recently.
On April 25, 2014, a controller failed to notice when two airliners were on a collision course in Honolulu. The pilot of one of the aircrafts had to initiate an abrupt dive to avoid an accident.
In Houston, two planes almost collided during takeoff — the aircraft came within a few hundred feet of each other when a controller told one plane to turn right when it was supposed to turn left.
The FAA and the controllers' union have established a program that encourages controllers to report errors by promising they won't be penalized for honest mistakes. The reports are entered into a database that the agency is supposed to use to spot trends or problem areas. But controllers are sometimes too busy to file reports, and the report forms don't seek information on the controller's schedule or other details that might be used to determine whether schedules are contributing to errors, Basner said.
When FAA officials were asked about this, they indicated "they didn't see the necessity to analyze the data that way," he said.
The committee also thought it was "a bit strange" that FAA officials wouldn't show them their 2009 study conducted with NASA, Basner added.
"You would think you would get 100% support, but we didn't get it."
Additional reporting by Mashable |
Back in the 90's application developers often exposed their API through COM Automation. This allowed third-party developers to attach to and manipulate running applications through a rich set of extension points. Unfortunately, that spirit of interoperability has largely fallen by the wayside in the .NET era.
Crack.NET tries to bring back some of that power by opening up WinForm and WPF-based .NET applications. With a rich GUI that puts Visual Studio's property inspector to shame, users can attach to most .NET applications. This relies entirely on the .NET infrastructure, the original application developer doesn't need to provide any explicit hooks.
Once attached, users are free to explore and manipulate the running application. However, the real fun comes in when you start scripting. With IronPython scripts, developers can inject code into running applications to add whatever features they see as missing.
As .NET and the DLR become more popular, we could see a whole new cottage industry for add-ons to applications that were not meant to be extendible. |
Finance Minister Bill Morneau is planning another deficit surprise for the Christmas holidays.
The Globe and Mail has learned that, for the second year in a row, the Liberal government has opted to release its long-term fiscal forecasts in late December, rather than as part of the fall fiscal update.
The forecast Mr. Morneau released on Tuesday contained an update of the projected bottom line for this year – a $19.9-billion deficit – and the following five fiscal years. However, Finance Canada officials also produce a longer-term forecast that covers the next 40 years, which is meant to provide a general guide as to the long-term sustainability of federal spending.
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In response to recommendations from the Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Conservative government began publishing long-term fiscal forecasts as part of the fall fiscal update in 2013. This was repeated in 2014. No long-term forecast was published in the fall of 2015, when the last federal election was held.
Internal documents obtained and previously reported on by The Globe revealed that Finance Canada officials had included long-term projections in draft versions of Mr. Morneau's 2016 fall fiscal update. Yet when the final version was made public on Nov. 1, the long-term projections had been removed.
The Liberal government opted to publish them quietly online without a news release just days before Christmas, at a time when they would be unlikely to garner much attention. That 2016 report showed annual deficits are on track to continue until the 2050s.
Daniel Lauzon, a spokesman for Mr. Morneau, confirmed to The Globe that the government is planning to release this year's long-term forecast on Dec. 22. Mr. Lauzon did not say why. Mr. Lauzon said in February that the two 2016 forecasts were released separately so as not to "create confusion."
Last December's report showing deficits until the 2050s was frequently cited by Conservative MPs in their criticism of the government's financial performance.
Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said the government is trying to hide the fact that it has no plan for erasing the deficit.
"Instead of admitting that in the update, they will quietly release it when people are gathered around Christmas dinner thinking happier thoughts," he said. "The current plan of the government is to run deficits forever. But eventually, Justin Trudeau will run out of other people's money."
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The Parliamentary Budget Officer also publishes long-term forecasts. Its most recent fiscal sustainability report, released on Oct. 5, concluded that federal finances are sustainable over the long term and that the federal debt will be eliminated entirely by 2060 when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The PBO's data reached that conclusion even though annual deficits are expected to continue until 2042, five years earlier than the PBO had estimated in its 2016 report.
After decades of hearing from Liberal and Conservative finance ministers about the importance of the annual bottom line, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has said that a more important measurement of fiscal health is the debt-to-GDP ratio.
By that measure, Ottawa's financial health can be improving even in an era of permanent deficits.
Economists agree that the debt-to-GDP ratio is a more important measurement of a government's financial health than whether or not it is in balance in any particular year. However, many economists have urged Mr. Morneau to set a clear target for erasing the deficit as a vehicle for instilling internal discipline over public spending.
Tuesday's fiscal update showed the federal debt-to-GDP ratio is on track to decline from 31.2 per cent last year to 28.5 per cent by 2022-23, bringing it down to levels not seen since the 1970s and well below the peak of 66.8 per cent reached in 1995-96, which coincided with the modern political focus on deficits.
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer Mostafa Askari said he would prefer to see Finance Canada return to publishing the long-term forecasts along with the fall fiscal update.
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Mr. Askari said ensuring the debt-to-GDP is sustainable over the long term is far more important than whether finances are in deficit or surplus in any given year.
"We think that what matters is whether over time, given the current fiscal structure, you can actually reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio and eventually balance the budget," he said. "But the balancing of the budget – whether it's a $200-million deficit or a $200-million surplus – it doesn't really matter on a year-to-year basis from our perspective." |
While driving through the Ukrainian countryside in 1932, Rhea Clyman, a Jewish-Canadian journalist, stopped in a village to ask where she could buy some milk and eggs.
The villagers couldn’t understand her, but someone went off and came back with a crippled 14-year-old boy, who slowly made his way to her.
“We are starving, we have no bread,” he said, and went on to describe the dire conditions of the previous spring. “The children were eating grass… they were down on all fours like animals… There was nothing else for them.”
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To illustrate the point, a peasant woman began to peel off her children’s clothes.
“She undressed them one by one, prodded their sagging bellies, pointed to their spindly legs, ran her hand up and down their tortured, misshapen, twisted little bodies to make me understand that this was real famine,” recalled Clyman in a piece published by the Toronto Telegram, one of the largest Canadian newspapers at the time.
Largely forgotten, a Ukrainian professor in Canada is writing a book about Clyman, the first ever biography of the intrepid reporter.
“She went to the Soviet Union feeling very optimistic, [expecting that there would be] no unemployment, that men and women were equal,” said Jaroslaw Balan, of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta. “But she very quickly came to the realization that this was an incredible totalitarian state — how poor people were and how difficult their lives were.”
Clyman was born in 1904 in Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire, and immigrated to Canada when she was 2 years old. At the age of 6, she was hit by a streetcar and had her leg amputated. She spent the next few years in and out of hospitals.
Yet this didn’t stop her, at age 24, from traveling alone to the Soviet Union and trying to make a living as a freelance foreign correspondent.
‘She learned the language. She developed a perspective that was very different’
In 1928 Clyman got off the train in Moscow with no acquaintances and only a few words of Russian. She spent hours in the train station until someone showed her the way to a hotel, where she slept in the bathtub of an American journalist. She was to remain in the Soviet Union for the next four years.
“A lot of newspapers sent journalists [to the USSR] for short [stints],” Balan said. “But she learned the language. She developed a perspective that was very different.”
At one point, Clyman traveled to Russia’s far north to the town of Kem, near a Soviet prison camp, a place off-limits to foreigners. She met the wives of the prisoners, saw the former inmates who were not permitted to leave the town even after they were freed, and reported on how the Soviets used political prisoners as forced laborers to chop wood. This was an important story for Canada, which was then losing its lumber market in the United Kingdom to the cheaper Soviet competitor.
“It supported the claims that cheap labor was used in the Soviet Union, and [that’s why] Canada couldn’t compete,” Balan said.
But it was Clyman’s coverage of the Holodomor, the man-made famine estimated to have led to the deaths of some 4 million Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, that really interests Balan. He first came across Clyman’s work while searching through Canadian newspapers for what was written about the famine in Ukraine.
In 1932, Clyman drove in a car southward from Moscow through Kharkiv — then the capital of Ukraine — to the Black Sea and on to Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia.
In Ukraine, she passed empty villages and wondered where had all the people gone?
A group of villagers on a collective farm gathered around her to see if she could bring a petition to the Kremlin to tell the Soviet leaders that the people were starving. All their grain had been taken away. Their animals were long ago slaughtered. When she tried to buy eggs, a village woman looked at her incredulously and asked if she expected to get them for money.
“Of course,” Rhea answered. “I don’t expect to get them for nothing.”
“You don’t understand,” the peasant told her. “We don’t sell eggs or milk for money. We want bread. Have you any?”
Balan said that Clyman developed insights into the causes of the famine — that it was not just due to drought, but a result of forced collectivization. For instance, the Soviet attempt to mechanize agriculture led to problems when the production of machinery didn’t go as quickly as planned. Horses and cattle were already killed, but there weren’t enough tractors to harvest the crops. This was the result of poor decisions from the top, Balan said. When Ukrainians were starving, the Soviets sealed the borders between Ukraine and Russia so that people couldn’t escape, he added.
“Her story is important for Jews and Ukrainians,” Balan said. “Among Ukrainians, there are a lot of stereotypes that the Jews were Bolsheviks and that they were responsible for the famine. And here’s a Jewish woman who’s written about the famine. In truth, Jews were also persecuted. She’s Jewish too, but look, she wrote the truth.”
In 1932, Clyman became the first foreign journalist in 11 years to get kicked out of the Soviet Union, allegedly “for spreading lies.”
But from there she went to Germany, to report on the rise of the Nazis.
Balan still needs to do a lot more research to find the articles that Clyman authored from Germany. He said that he has only been able to read two of them so far.
Clyman reported from Germany until 1938, when fled the country on a small airplane together with a few Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, as the plane came in for landing in Amsterdam, it crashed. Nearly half of the passengers were killed and Clyman broke her back — though she somehow avoided paralysis.
She returned to North America, where she moved to New York and recorded her memoirs. She never married nor had children, and died in 1981.
Upon her death, Clyman’s memoir remained unpublished and Balan is hoping to find it. He is also trying to find out where she was buried. He located some of her relatives but they did not know where she was laid to rest, he said.
“If we could find her memoirs that would be an exciting thing to see, that would be a goldmine,” he said.
Balan recently gave a talk on Clyman at Limmud FSU in New York, the largest gathering of Russian-speaking Jews in North America. The talk was sponsored by the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter, a Canadian nonprofit that aims to promote cooperation between Ukrainians and Jews. Launched by Canadian businessman James Temerty, the initiative aims to do away with negative feelings between the two peoples.
“Jews have been living in Ukraine probably for 1,000 years, and certainly in large numbers since the 16th century,” Balan said. “If you take out the periods of the pogroms and the Holocaust, the rest of the time, Jews in many cases flourished in Ukraine.”
The two peoples have more in common than they might realize — the food, for one — and they should learn more about each other’s culture, said Natalia Feduschak, the director of communications for the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter.
Feduschak said that Clyman helps to bridge the gap between the two communities because she was a Jewish woman who wrote “about the Ukrainian famine with great compassion and great understanding.”
“Because of World War II and the horrific events of that period, the communities find it difficult to communicate with one another,” she said. “But there are a lot of similarities.” |
Eve Valkyrie might be free from the constraints of gravity, but there’s plenty of weight on its shoulders. CCP’s team aren’t fulfilling just the one dream, of VR dogfighting – they’re also charged with redrawing the Eve universe in unforgiving close-up for the first time.
That’s a lot of pressure for a low-pressure shooter to handle. But on the phone, the wonder its developers feel for the game they’ve made together is audible. They’re buoyed by a vacuum that’s become “infinitesimally more and more beautiful” as they’ve rebuilt it in Epic’s new engine.
The Valkyrie team are still sustained by the enthusiastic push Eve players gave them back at the studio’s Icelandic Fanfest in 2012. The show demo was built by a five person team working in their spare time – but reception was such that Valkyrie suddenly became a fully-fledged CCP project.
A team was assembled in Newcastle after work wrapped on Dust 514, and the decision made to port the Unity prototype to another engine. Somehow, that new version of Eve Valkyrie in Unreal Engine 4 was playable by the time we saw it in the middle of last year.
“It was a pretty quick transition process,” said technical director Richard Smith. “A lot of that was to do with the experience we had on the team, because we knew how to make the right technical choices first time around. Epic have put a lot of work into the tools – and for all of that code we wrote back at the beginning of this year, there’s very little we’ve had to go and revisit because we were very familiar with a lot of Unreal’s systems.”
The prototype team had already worked out the fundamental principles of their dogfighter, and the role VR would play in it. The rebuild, then, has been about “making good better” – finding out what was new in EU4 that could improve on what they already had.
Cockpits are a strong case in point. In the demo version, CCP created a framework for their depth and scale that felt right in VR. But they “never really pushed visually”.
“We’ve really started to think about these cockpits and get deeper into them – what they are and what they do, how they’re represented,” said 3D artist Andrew Robinson.
“In UE4 we knew we could throw around a bigger poly count, and the lighting was more accurate with physically-based rendering. And the knowledge we had of Unreal shaders meant that we could fill the cockpits a bit better, make them more of the characters that we wanted them to be.”
CCP have thought a lot about the character and personality of the world they’re building in Valkyrie. They’re working with a pre-existing universe: 10 years of story, 10 years of evolving races, and 10 years of established aesthetic.
“We have all this narrative and the racial definitions are so strong that we can take those and build new things from that,” said Robinson. “It’s the perfect backbone for building a world of great fidelity for VR.”
For the existing Eve community, the fantasy of Valkyrie is seeing the world they know recreated at a granular level. It offers, literally and figuratively, a new perspective on the ships and battles players have watched from on high for so long.
“We’re putting you right inside them with the bolts and wires and really giving you a sense of scale – a sense of ‘I’m the smallest piece of this huge battle’,” enthused Robinson. “In Eve it’s a small speck, but we’re taking you right down to that level. The base ships are even bigger now. We’re down inside that world, like tiny ants in a huge wrestling match, just scurrying around.”
Doing justice to that fantasy has been an awful lot of work. The low-poly ships of Eve Online were never designed to be inspected in first-person. In order to “push the detail”, the Valkyrie team needed to return to eight-year-old, original concept art and rebuild the vessels from scratch.
It’s clear it’s been a privilege for the Newcastle team, to finally construct those first ships in all the detail they were first imagined. But it’s also been a technical challenge.
For starters, low-res objects that would pass unnoticed on a screen will cause wobble and jitter in VR. What’s more, the incredible size of the planets, stations and other landmarks in Valkyrie’s vacuum can lead to some serious cases of Dougal syndrome – the inability to tell a small-but-near object from a large-but-distant one.
You might think the problem would be easy to solve in three-dimensional VR – but it turns out poor stereo perception renders small and large objects “indistinguishable” once they move beyond 10 metres from the viewer.
“Even in VR, it’s very difficult to tell something that’s 100 meters away from something that’s a kilometer away, except by the level of detail and having that human-level scale on those objects,” explained Smith. “We’ve had to put a lot of detail into the assets out there in the world because otherwise you couldn’t really get a sense of how far away you were from them.”
Solving the problem has required a change in mindset from the art team, and a willingness to exploit the tools that come “out of the box” with Unreal Engine 4.
“UE4 helps you extend those systems and also make it work in multiplayer,” said Smith, “so you can have ships that have millimetre details in them, yet could be tens of hundreds of kilometers apart, moving at hundreds of kilometers an hour.”
The engine’s capacity for quick iteration has proven essential for working in VR, too. UE4’s blueprint system allows designers to link up systems they’d ordinarily have to bother programmers about, and CCP have used it “quite extensively” to test features in-engine – before passing the results to the team’s experts.
“It’s just the immediacy of being able to hook things up and put things together very quickly,” said Smith. “Particularly when traditionally we would have relied on an iteration cycle that went back and forth between content creator and programmer.
“The content guys are now able to work directly in there, bash things together to get them how they want. Once they’ve essentially figured out what a feature needs to be and how it needs to work, they can hand it over to the programmers to create their optimal code systems and make that stuff work.”
“There’s no firm rulebook for VR yet,” pointed out Robinson. “We’re writing quite a lot of it right here in the studio. As we’ve been working, rapid prototyping has been absolutely key to getting the right pieces together and finding what works in VR. Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? Can we make it right or is it straight up not gonna work?”
Maintaining that stable test environment has been tricky. A VR game running at less than a solid 75 hertz quickly becomes uncomfortable – not just for testers, but for the developers playing it every day. That’s left CCP fighting to keep the game in an optimised state throughout development – an unheard of standard for pre-beta games.
“We’re used to pushing beautiful content into the game in development, and then getting to the optimisation stage and making it run a solid 30 or 50 hertz on whatever console or PC we’re targeting,” said Smith. “We’ve had to put a lot of emphasis on performance, on optimisation, even in our early prototyping phase.”
There’s still a lot we don’t know about Valkyrie as a game – Smith and Robinson talk about “building exciting paths” through an environment with no clear axis or direction, and reference a day/night cycle that must surely be unlike anything we’ve seen in a planet-bound game world. We don’t know how it’s going to work as a full-length experience.
But the team are already proud of what they’ve built. As Smith puts it, any VR developer can be proud if they can run a “beautiful looking world” at 75 hertz on the Rift’s dev kit 2. There’s a sense that CCP are colonising previously inhospitable systems – pioneering VR techniques for a AAA industry that’ll be working with Unreal 4 for years to come.
“We’re the first VR game in UE4, possibly first on the planet, to do cross platform play between both Oculus and Morpheus, and getting as few changes between the two as possible,” said Smith. “I’d like to think that a lot of the improvements that Epic are pushing out in their VR implementation, they are from the feedback that we’ve been giving.”
Eve Valkyrie will be an Oculus Rift launch title. Unreal Engine 4 development is available to anyone for $19 monthly subscription fee.
In this sponsored series, we’re looking at how game developers are taking advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to create a new generation of PC games. With thanks to Epic Games and CCP. |
Donald Trump. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Donald Trump took a shot at President Barack Obama on Saturday for not attending Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral services.
"I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque?" Trump tweeted.
The Republican presidential frontrunner added: "Very sad that he did not go!"
Obama visited the Supreme Court on Friday, when Scalia was lying in repose. But the White House suggested that the president's security detail would have been disruptive to the funeral the next day.
Trump has for years stoked rumors about Obama's past, especially the authenticity of his birth certificate. He was criticized last summer for not correcting a supporter at one of his events who accused Obama of being a Muslim foreigner. But he shrugged it off.
Earlier this month, Trump suggested that Obama made his first presidential trip to a mosque because "he feels comfortable there." |
Reconstruction of Israeli attacks in Rafah between 1 and 4 August 2014
Strong evidence of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity revealed requiring urgent investigation
Israeli forces killed at least 135 Palestinian civilians, including 75 children, following the capture of an Israeli soldier
Hundreds of videos, photos and satellite images analysed by experts, cross-referenced with eyewitness testimony
Advanced techniques used to analyse evidence, including studying shadows and smoke plumes in multiple videos to determine time and location of an attack
New evidence showing that Israeli forces carried out war crimes in retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier has been released today in a joint report by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture. The evidence, which includes detailed analysis of vast quantities of multimedia materials, suggests that the systematic and apparently deliberate nature of the air and ground attack on Rafah which killed at least 135 civilians, may also amount to crimes against humanity.
The online report, ‘Black Friday’: Carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict, features cutting edge investigative techniques and analysis pioneered by Forensic Architecture, a research team based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
“There is strong evidence that Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives. They carried out a series of disproportionate or otherwise indiscriminate attacks, which they have completely failed to investigate independently,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.
“This report presents an urgent call for justice that must not be ignored. The combined analysis of hundreds of photos and videos, as well as satellite imagery and testimony from eyewitnesses, provides compelling evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces which must be investigated.”
There is strong evidence that Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives. Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Director Share this Twitter
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The massive amount of evidence collected was presented to military and other experts, and then pieced together in chronological order to create a detailed account of events from 1 August, when the Israeli military implemented the controversial and secretive “Hannibal” procedure following the capture of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin.
Under the “Hannibal Directive”, Israeli forces can respond to the capture of a soldier with intense firepower despite the risks to his life or to civilians in the vicinity. As the report illustrates, the implementation of the directive led to the ordering of unlawful attacks on civilians.
“After Lieutenant Hadar Goldin was captured, Israeli forces appear to have thrown out the rule book, employing a ‘gloves off’ policy with devastating consequences for civilians. The goal was to foil his capture at any cost. The obligation to take precautions to avoid the loss of civilian lives was completely neglected. Entire districts of Rafah, including heavily populated residential areas, were bombarded without distinction between civilians and military targets,” said Philip Luther.
The ferocity of the attacks, which continued after Lieutenant Goldin was declared dead on 2 August, suggests they may in part have been motivated by a desire to punish the population of Rafah as revenge for his capture.
Intense bombardment
Shortly before Lieutenant Goldin’s capture on 1 August 2014, a ceasefire had been announced, and many civilians returned to their homes believing it was safe. Massive and prolonged bombardment began without warning while masses of people were on the streets, and many of them, especially those in vehicles, became targets. That day later became known in Rafah as “Black Friday”.
Eyewitness accounts described horrifying scenes of chaos and panic as an inferno of fire from F-16 jets, drones, helicopters and artillery rained down on the streets, striking civilians on foot or in cars, as well as ambulances and other vehicles evacuating the wounded.
One witness described the attacks that day as an attempt to pulverize Rafah’s civilians, likening the onslaught to “a machine making mincemeat out of people without mercy”.
Cutting edge forensic analysis
For this investigation, eyewitness accounts describing the carnage in Rafah were cross-referenced with hundreds of photos and videos taken from various sources and multiple locations, as well as new high resolution satellite imagery obtained by Amnesty International.
A team of researchers at Forensic Architecture used an array of sophisticated techniques to analyse this evidence. They examined time indicators within an image – such as the angle of shadows or shape and size plumes of smoke, which act as “physical clocks” – to pinpoint attacks in time and space (a process known as geo-synching).
The analysis reveals that on 1 August, Israeli attacks on Rafah targeted several locations where Lieutenant Goldin was believed to be located, regardless of the danger posed to civilians, suggesting that the attacks may even have been intended to kill him.
In one of the deadliest incidents researchers, with the help of military experts, were able to confirm that two one-ton bombs – the largest type of bomb in Israel’s air force arsenal –were dropped on a single-storey building in al-Tannur in eastern Rafah. Scores of civilians were in the immediate vicinity at the time making this a grossly disproportionate attack.
The ferocity of the attack on Rafah shows the extreme measures Israeli forces were prepared to take to prevent the capture alive of one soldier – scores of Palestinian civilian lives were sacrificed for this single aim Philip Luther Share this Twitter
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“The ferocity of the attack on Rafah shows the extreme measures Israeli forces were prepared to take to prevent the capture alive of one soldier – scores of Palestinian civilian lives were sacrificed for this single aim,” said Philip Luther.
The analysis of available photos, videos and other multimedia evidence from eyewitnesses was crucial for investigating possible violations since the Israeli authorities have denied Amnesty International staff access to the Gaza Strip since the 2014 conflict began.
“Forensic Architecture combines new architectural and media technologies to reconstruct complex incidents based on the traces that violence leaves on buildings during a conflict. Architectural models help us draw links between multiple bits of evidence such as images, videos uploaded on social media and testimonies to virtually reconstruct the unfolding of events,” said Eyal Weizman, the Director of Forensic Architecture.
Attacks on hospitals and medical workers
Satellite images and photographs analysed for the report show craters and damage indicating that hospitals and ambulances were attacked repeatedly during the assault on Rafah, in violation of international law.
A doctor described how frantic patients fled Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital after attacks on the area intensified. Some were wheeled out on beds, many had intravenous drips still attached. A young boy in a plaster cast dragged himself along the ground to get away.
An ambulance carrying a wounded old man, woman and three children was struck by a drone-fired missile, setting it alight and burning everyone inside including medical workers to death. Jaber Darabih, a paramedic who arrived at the scene, described the charred remains of bodies with “no legs, no hands… severely burned”. Tragically, he later discovered that his own son, a volunteer paramedic was among those killed in the ambulance.
“By attacking ambulances and striking near hospitals, Israel's army displayed a flagrant disregard for the laws of war. Deliberately attacking health facilities and medical professionals amounts to war crimes,” said Philip Luther.
Ending the cycle of impunity
This investigation into Rafah provides some of the most compelling evidence yet of serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, during the conflict. In previous reports, Amnesty International has highlighted violations by both sides, including systematic attacks by Israel on inhabited civilian homes and its wanton destruction of multistorey civilian buildings; and Palestinian armed groups’ indiscriminate attacks and direct attacks on civilians in Israel, as well as summary killings of Palestinians in Gaza.
However, a year after the conflict, the Israeli authorities have failed to conduct credible, independent and impartial investigations into violations of international humanitarian law. Israel’s limited military inquiries into some of its forces’ actions in Rafah on 1 August have not held anyone accountable.
“Thus far, the Israeli authorities have proved at best incapable of carrying out independent investigations into crimes under international law in Rafah and elsewhere, and at worst unwilling to do so. This report’s findings add compelling evidence to an already large body of credible documentation of serious violations during the Gaza conflict, which demand independent, impartial and effective investigations,” said Philip Luther.
”Victims and their families have a right to justice and reparation. And those suspected of ordering or committing war crimes must be prosecuted.” |
Is the Pentax Full Frame Just Around the Corner?
What's in store for 2015
By PF Staff in Photokina 2014 on Sep 23, 2014
The two big prototype lenses that were on display at Photokina as well as various interviews and discussions with Ricoh Imaging representatives have reignited a considerable amount of Internet buzz about the possibility of a Pentax full frame DSLR. In fact, some discussions in our Pentax News & Rumors and Pentax Full Frame forums cite rumors claiming we might see a FF as early as CP+ 2015— in just 5 months.
To be clear, it seems that the majority of these claims are based on overzealous or erroneous interpretations of things that various official sources have stated. History repeats itself and this is no exception; if you look back to our CP+ 2013 interview, you'll notice that Pentax/Ricoh representatives had "confirmed" the development of a full frame just as they did in our Photokina 2014 interview. These statements say just as little about the actual state of affairs as a recent Facebook post by Ricoh Imaging France claiming that a Pentax full frame is development at this moment.
The same goes for the "wide aperture telephoto lens" prototype pictured above. The physical size of the lens as well as the zoom range suggested by the K-mount lens roadmap (70-200mm) do hint at the fact that it's a full-frame lens. But this is mere speculation. The lens is just a prototype, after all, and its appearance is subject to change. Pentax could just be using a 645 lens barrel they had lying around as a mock-up. The large size could also be attributed to an aperture faster than F2.8 (unlikely) or built-in stabilization, but again, that's pure speculation. We won't know until the lenses are actually announced, which could be at CP+ 2015 or later.
Back in 2012, we were all thinking that the full frame would be out by Photokina 2014, but it isn't! This rumor cycle is bound to continue until the full frame is either actually released, or officially abandoned. In other words, trying to draw conclusions based on word of mouth and misinterpretations isn't going to get us anywhere.
With that said, there are three reasons why we think that a Pentax full frame camera is just around the corner. None of these reasons are related to the rumors that have been circulating over the course of the past week. Read on to learn more!
1. The full frame market is growing
You don't have to wait until question 19 of our Photokina interview to see that this is evident. Full-frame sensors deliver the best available still image quality without forcing camera bodies to grow beyond form factors friendly for (or tolerable by) consumers. In the past, production costs for full frame sensors have made them nothing short of a luxury, but that production overhead is getting smaller and smaller, and a larger variety of sensor resolutions is becoming available. Thus, the average price of full-frame cameras has been dropping steadily and more and more "enthusiast" models are hitting the market. The increased availability and lower price of such cameras will inevitably meet the demand set forth by users who want nothing short of the best picture quality that money can buy, within reason. Some of those users could even be people with nothing more than a smartphone who are considering buying their first "real" camera.
We can look at this from another angle: when full frame DSLRs first hit the market, they were exclusively targeted at professional users and thus priced accordingly. Today, you can pick up a new FF DSLR for just a few hundred dollars more than a high-end APS-C DSLR. Thus, it wouldn't be crazy to predict that sooner rather than later, FF cameras will find a place within upper entry-level camera lineups, whether it be in a DSLR form factor or otherwise. As improving technology makes larger formats more manageable, smaller formats might then be shifted to focus only on compactness or cosmetic appeal.
In any case, we diverge. Many arguments can be made both for and against full frame cameras, and that's beside the point. The point is that the FF market is growing, and this is a market that Pentax could capitalize on if the company were to enter it with the right kind of product. Other camera manufacturers (Nikon and especially Sony) are also taking advantage of the current state of the FF market.
2. Pentax (now Ricoh Imaging) is finally recovering from Hoya's mess
When Ricoh bought Pentax Imaging back in 2011, the state of Pentax as a company was rather miserable. As consumers, we might not be able to fully appreciate the positive changes that the Ricoh acquisition (and later merger) have brought, but it's fairly evident if you look closely. Not only has the company's product lineup matured, but based on publicly-available data as well as conversations with company representatives, we now also know that Ricoh Imaging has turned things around and has been making money two years in a row. This is rather impressive given the declining state of the camera market as a whole, and the positive attitude was echoed by many of the people we talked to at Photokina. By the end Hoya's ownership of Pentax, camera development had slowed and profits were tumbling. This led to few new announcements from Q4 2010 until Q3 2012. Things have sinced changed for the better!
In any case, the healthier state of the company means that more resources can be allocated toward R&D, production, and openings in the market. Thus, it is now more likely than ever that the launch of a Pentax full frame camera is seriously being considered by Ricoh.
3. There's plenty of interest
Again, you don't have to be a camera market expect to observe that many current Pentax users would buy a Pentax full frame in a heartbeat. Did you know that the words "full frame" have made it into the comments section of every major Pentax product announcement (645Z, K-3 Prestige, K-S1, Q-S1) that we've posted so far this year? Check out the news section and our Facebook page if you don't believe us!
When the Pentax K-3 was launched, the response to it was tremendous, and the cameras sold like hotcakes. Similarly, the demand for the 645Z by enthusiasts is currently exceeding the initial supply. What if Pentax launched something considerably better than the K-3 but also considerably cheaper than the 645Z? It would sell out too. If Pentax's full frame offering could enjoy the same advantages as current K-mount lineup, it would probably attract even more new customers, as well as customers who have used Pentax in the past.
The Bottom Line
If a Pentax (or Ricoh) full frame digital camera were to be launched, it won't be because somebody at Ricoh Imaging said we'll see one, and it certainly won't be revealed ahead of time. Such a camera will be launched if and when it makes sense for the company, and once sufficient demand is gauged.
The recent rumors have brought about a considerable amount of excitement, and we think that is great. But the real excitement should stem from the fact that the future looks very bright for Ricoh Imaging.
We welcome your thoughts, comments, predictions, and rants below as well as in our Full Frame forum. |
The last flight out taxied from the sparkling new Harare airport, built to handle the non-existent tourists, lifted over the city and dipped its wings in farewell. With that, at 9am yesterday, British Airways said goodbye to Zimbabwe, amid mutterings from supporters of Robert Mugabe that the pull-out had less to do with the collapse of its economy than a British government plot to unseat the Zimbabwean ruler.
In seat 13H, Cephas Msipa, a lifelong member of Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF, said he thought it probably was all a conspiracy but he was going to miss British Airways anyway, particularly when he reflects on the alternative. "In these difficult times, Air Zimbabwe has developed what you might call a reputation for being unreliable," he said.
What he means is that Zimbabwe's national carrier is in much the same state as the country, with flights running days late for lack of fuel or maintenance, or diverted at Mr Mugabe's whim to a shopping trip in Kuala Lumpar or to attend the Pope's funeral.
Annie, a white Zimbabwean who preferred not to give her surname for fear of retribution by "Comrade Bob" as Mr Mugabe is nicknamed, is going to miss BA for another reason. "You know there's toilet paper on this plane. I haven't been able get toilet paper in the shops for weeks," she said. "I don't know why it matters that this is the last flight but it does. It's as if we're finally being cut off from the rest of the world. I think for us [whites] it felt like the escape route if we ever needed it. It's stupid really because we can get to South Africa easily enough but it just made us feel better having the BA link."
Though symbolic, it's not the first time BA has been forced out of Zimbabwe in the 75 years since the first flying boats opened up the aerial link with southern Africa. Services were discontinued in 1965 as Ian Smith declared independence for Rhodesia with the deluded pledge that not in a thousand years would a black man rule. BA was back 15 years later as Mr Smith was defeated by the reality of economics as much as war; Rhodesia ceased to exist and the only black man to ever rule Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, took power.
Yesterday, the last plane left behind another government sinking deeper into the delusion that everything is under its control. As the economy contracts amid hyperinflation and collapsing production, Mr Mugabe has created a vast new bureaucracy to oversee price controls on non-existent goods in the shops.
His finance minister maintains an official exchange rate so out of proportion with the hidden market that the central bank governor has to send his staff out to buy dollars on the street.
The regime has declared "the mother of all agricultural seasons" even though there is no bread in the shops because the wheat harvest has fallen short by two-thirds and production of tobacco, once Zimbabwe's biggest money earner, has dropped to one-fifth of what it once was. Cigarettes are in such short supply that a marijuana joint is cheaper.
The government has even announced plans to sell electricity to Namibia next year although it doesn't generate the power to keep lights on at home.
The reality is that a man living in a Harare township lucky enough to have a job earns, on average, Z$5m dollars a month, or £2.50 at the hidden-market rate. His transport to work in Harare costs more than that but he has to overspend if he wants to keep his job.
Other European airlines abandoned Zimbabwe as it sank deeper into the mire but BA stayed because historic ties with Britain, the old colonial power, assured a steady supply of passengers.
But the airline says it has been defeated by escalating costs, particularly the price of having to ship fuel in by road from South Africa, and the unreal maths of the Zimbabwean economy.
An Air Zimbabwe economy class ticket to London and back officially costs £7,500 at the government exchange rate but just £225 on the alternative rate, half the price of a BA ticket (which could only be bought in pounds sterling or US dollars), after the Zimbabwe dollar plummeted from $5,100 to the pound at the beginning of the year to close to $2m today.
Mr Msipa is suspicious of the economic claims, as is the Zimbabwean government. He doesn't understand how BA isn't making money. "It's interesting that it's pulling out at the same time Gordon Brown came in and made a more concerted effort to cut ties with Zimbabwe. To us it would seem it's part of the ratcheting up of sanctions.
Mr Msipa admits there is a crisis though, and that his dad might be part of the problem.
His father, who shares the same name, is a liberation war hero and now the Zanu-PF governor of Midlands province where he has overseen the confiscation of white-owned farms and the collapse of agriculture. Mr Msipa concedes this may have been a mistake.
"Being an old nationalist he would be in the mainstream of this soil-based development, that everything is about the land. Whereas our generation says we should get into computers and call centres. I don't see myself being a horse-drawn plough," he said.
The younger Mr Msipa is a property developer who travels regularly to London. At home he also sells houses. He suspects many of those buying are Zimbabweans living abroad, and those selling are in desperate need of cash. That has kept the worst of it at bay for him and his five children.
"We have a relative advantage. I can get things done ... I have contacts," he said. "But how I'm going to get to London now is a problem. No one wants to go through Johannesburg. They steal your luggage there. I suppose it will just have to be Air Zimbabwe." |
ISTANBUL — Following its establishment in Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which has spread out over Raqqa, northern Aleppo and some of the border areas, has begun to attract young jihadists from around the world. The fighters have expropriated houses, land and cars to have the desired life in the "Islamic state." They have also married Syrian girls for various reasons.
Some parents are ready to give up everything they have to be close to the ISIS emirs, achieve material gains and have prestige and power. They offer their daughters to foreign fighters without asking the bride-to-be, according to prominent Raqqa activist Omar al-Huwaidi. Some girls — such as Fatima Abdulla al-Abou, 22, a university student from the al-Ojeil tribe in Salhabiya in Raqqa's countryside — categorically reject the practice. When her father tried to force her to marry a Tunisian immigrant on Feb. 2, she chose to die than to live with him. She committed suicide by poison, ending her life as a student who had worked halfway toward her degree.
Fatima escaped, in a way, the dark future that awaited her, but two other girls who married Tunisian jihadists did not. Huwaidi told Al-Monitor via a Skype interview that the two women were hospitalized in January after suffering barbaric physical abuse and maiming by their new husbands. Another activist in Raqqa, who wished to remain anonymous, told Al-Monitor, "We were shocked indeed when we heard about this inhuman behavior. We did not believe it at first, but we later found out that it really happened. We call for stopping this kind of marriage in any possible way."
Some ISIS emirs marry to further integrate into Syrian society and get closer to the clans in the areas they occupy, to acquire popular support. They ask to marry a girl and her parents often have no choice but to approve, without knowing the men's history and reputation, according to media reports. The ISIS fighters keep their identities and histories secret, and even their names are sometimes unclear or hidden under the pretext of security.
Activist Hammoud al-Moussa, from the city of Raqqa, told Al-Monitor that in some cases the groom asks for the permission of a father to marry his daughter without revealing his real name. Then the marriage takes place to avoid hostilities with the emirs. In most cases, the marriages are concluded using a pseudonym, and, according to Moussa, in 90% of the cases these marriages are secret affairs. Moussa added that the marriages involve nothing more than a verbal agreement.
There are no offices that document these cases, and there are no guarantees of the rights of women who marry foreign fighters. Should their husbands get killed, the women are left to their own devices.
Civil activists in Raqqa told Al-Monitor that the ISIS leadership also awarded houses to married emirs. It evacuated several displaced families from the scouts’ camp and replaced them with the new couples. Sometimes, the married emirs do not consider marriage the start of a family, but rather an opportunity for sexual relations.
Abu Jihad al-Halabi, a pseudonym for an activist in the city of Aleppo, told Al-Monitor via Skype, "Most of the marriages that we learned about did not last for more than two months. The husband either abandons the wife under the pretext of moving to a new battlefront, or divorces her and marries another woman."
“When the Free Syrian Army arrested one of the ISIS emirs during the last battles in the countryside of Aleppo, they found a large number of marriage contracts in his car,” he added.
In al-Dana in Idlib, Mohamed Hussein, an activist who conducted research on this subject, told Al-Monitor that a large proportion of these marriages end in divorce after two months, at which time the foreign fighters marry another woman. Sexual relations under the appropriately sanctioned institution of marriage is their main concern. “We found with one of the 'immigrants' who got caught, a notebook in which he had written military and first aid lessons, in addition to his reflections and prayers. He prayed to God to marry a good Syrian girl,” Hussein said.
“All the 'immigrants' who come to the medical center in the countryside of Latakia insist that the female doctors marry them. These doctors say they are engaged, and the fighters insist on being introduced to other Syrian girls,” he added.
Hussein recounted a wealthy Libyan who was kidnapped by jihadists seeking assistance in marriage. “He told us that he came to Syria with the intention to help out Syrian families by donating money. But upon his arrival, ISIS captured him and kept him hostage until he paid a sum of 5,000 euros [$6,928] to help a Libyan jihadist fighter get married. When he asked the jihadist about his wife residing in Libya, the latter answered, 'This is her punishment because she refused to come with me to wage jihad in Syria.'”
Until this date, Raqqa remains under ISIS control and out of the Syrian regime’s hands. ISIS is currently the strongest faction in town and has taken upon itself to kill opposition forces and activists and fight the regime. Every day that passes witnesses another ISIS execution, the cutting off of hands or crucifixion of Raqqa residents. |
GENERIC, cambodia, flag, cambodian AP Graphics Bank
(CBS News) The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Cambodian government are investigating the cause of a mysterious illness that has killed more than 60 children from different areas around the country.
A joint press release by Cambodia's Ministry of Health and the WHO on Tuesday said that 61 out of 62 children admitted to hospitals have died of the unknown ailment. By Wednesday, Dr. Beat Richner of Kantha Bopha Children's Hospitals -- who alerted the government to the disease -- told Al Jazeera that 64 out of 66 cases had died. All the victims are aged 7 and under, and died with 24 hours of getting to the hospital, typically of complications from pneumonia.
Cambodia mystery illness kills 61 kids
The disease starts as a high fever, followed by respiratory problems and/or swelling in the brain and then the destruction of the child's respiratory system, according to the press release. While the majority of the cases have been found in the southern region of the country, the disease has been recorded in victims from 14 different provinces, an official told the Cambodian national newspaper Phnom Penh Post. No obvious clusters have been found.
"This can be a mixture of a number of known diseases -- virological, bacterial or toxicological -- which have been reported as one syndrome or something new," Dr. Nima Asgari, a team leader of the WHO country office in Cambodia, told CNN.
"While the labs are excluding the various pathogens, we are providing support to [the Ministry of Health] to make sure that an in-depth analysis of cases is done to identify possible causes or exposures which will give us a better picture. The investigation is ongoing," Asgari added.
The WHO said to AFP that there are no reports of staff or neighboring patients getting the disease, meaning that it doesn't appear to be contagious. All the patients were eventually admitted to hospitals in the capital Phnom Penh or in locations in Siem Reap.
Both the recent outbreak of dengue fever and Chikungunya (CHIKV) - a mosquito-borne alphavirus - have been ruled out as being related to the deadly disease, according to the New York Times.
According to the Phnom Penh Post, at the time of Richner's letter to the Ministry of Health, June 20, 47 kids had died. Thirteen days later, an additional 13 deaths had been recorded at Kantha Bopha hospitals.
Richner added that all the children had encephalitis - swelling in the brain - and were hospitalized and treated at private clinics before being sent to Kantha Bopha Children's Hospitals. He voiced his concern that these kids may have received incorrect medication.
"I worry that a wrong treatment and drug intoxication at some private clinics has destroyed the lungs leading to a pneumonia we cannot treat," he said to the Cambodian newspaper.
Neighboring countries have been officially notified through a post on the International Health Regulations event information system. The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh has yet to issue any special warnings or health alerts. |
Nomura comments on the possibility of The World Ends with You sequel, Final Fantasy VII Remake still far away
In an interview with Famitsu at E3 this week, Tetsuya Nomura discussed the possibility of a The World Ends with You sequel and also gave a minor update on Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Regarding a sequel to The World Ends with You
Nomura noted the game has a big following outside of Japan and acknowledges that many people – especially from overseas have requested a sequel to be created. He points out that it won’t be an easy task to do, though the chances of doing one hasn’t been completely ruled out. First, he wants make sure he will have the staff/team required to produce a game equal to the original title.
Update on Final Fantasy VII Remake
Additionally, the director gave an update regarding Final Fantasy VII Remake. He mentions that the game is still a while away, but says not to worry as development is going at a steady pace. Square Enix will share more information about the game at a later time and when they do, Nomura will make an appearance to publicly reveal it.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is currently in development for PlayStation 4. |
Were you hoping to gather 'round the flatscreen and Chromecast with your local Android Users Group for the live stream of Google's next Nexus event? Too bad: at the moment, YouTube live stream videos just won't work with Chromecast, as demonstrated by our tipster Nathan. We tried it using the Lollapalooza 2013 live stream, and sure enough, it just won't display.
This lack of functionality is documented in Google's support page as well, though the reason isn't clear. Videos set to "private" and videos disabled for mobile viewers are likewise inaccessible (remember that Chromecast is running a modified version of Android) no matter what device you "cast" to your TV, or from what account. Interestingly, sending a live stream to Chromecast from a desktop or laptop with the full Chrome browser will let you listen to the audio and see a few choppy frames, but it isn't close to satisfactory. Google may address this with a future update, or they may not - I can't imagine that these relatively narrow use case scenarios are much of a priority.
On a personal note, I can report that using an Android device as a mobile WiFi hotspot also won't work - you can't "cast" from your phone to the Chromecast when it's being used as the Internet connection. You can work around this by having another Android device or laptop handy, but that makes it even harder to enjoy the Chromecast while traveling.
Source: Google YouTube Support - thanks to Nathan for the tip! |
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Houston, TX — A completely innocent man was shot, tasered, brutally beaten, and had stun grenades thrown at him by vicious and incompetent SWAT officers. Then, those same officers tried to cover up their mistake by charging the victim, Chad Chadwick, with six criminal offenses including felony assault on a police officer.
This incident happened in 2011, but it has taken Chadwick three years and his entire life savings, to finally beat the charges that he was falsely accused of. Last month, a jury found Chad Chadwick not guilty of interfering with police. With tears in their eyes members of the jury offered the exonerated defendant comforting hugs, according to My Fox Houston.
“They tried to make me a convict. It broke me financially, bankrupted me. I used my life savings, not to mention, I lost my kids,” said Chadwick.
Chadwick had been drinking and went to sleep in his bathtub on the night of September 27, 2011, when police were given a tip from a friend of Chadwick’s who said they were concerned with his emotional well-being. So naturally the police responded by mobilizing a heavily militarized SWAT team.
“They came in did what they did, figured out that they messed up and now they are doing everything they can to cover it up. They treated a normal American citizen like an animal. It’s not right,” Chadwick said in an interview with FOX 26.
The SWAT team lied to the judge to get the warrant by telling the judge that Chadwick had hostages. “
They told a judge I had hostages. They lied to a judge and told him I had hostages in my apartment and they needed to enter,” said Chadwick.
When SWAT broke down his door without identifying themselves, they launched a stun grenade into his bathroom, according to Chadwick.
“While I had my hands up naked in the shower they shot me with a 40 millimeter non-lethal round,” said Chadwick.
Another stun grenade was fired.
“I turned away, the explosion went off, I opened my eyes the lights are out and here comes a shield with four or five guys behind it. They pinned me against the wall and proceeded to beat the crap out of me,” said Chadwick.
That’s when SWAT officers shot Chadwick at point blank range with a taser in the back of his head.
“They claimed I drew down with a shampoo bottle and a body wash bottle,” said Chadwick.
Tased, shot and with multiple SWAT officers smashing him into a corner with a shield, a brutal beating ensued.
“They grabbed me by my one hand that was out of the shower and grabbed me by my testicles slammed me on my face on the floor and proceeded to beat me more,” said Chadwick.
Chadwick was then hauled off to Ft. Bend County Jail with a fractured nose, bruised ribs and what’s proven to be permanent hearing loss. He was kept in an isolation cell for two full days. Remember, Chadwick has never broken a law; he had committed no crime.
“Instead of apologizing to this man and asking let us see what we can do to help you to make you whole again, they concocted criminal charges against this man, one after another, after another,” said activist Quanell X, who believes the prosecution of Chadwick was designed to fend off civil liability.
The SWAT team that took Chadwick into custody and testified against him was comprised of officers from Missouri City, Sugar Land, Stafford and the Ft. Bend County Sheriff’s Department. To this date, none of them have faced any disciplinary action.
According to FOX 26, Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Healy declined to comment on camera, but did say he stands by his decision to prosecute Chadwick, despite the multiple no-bills and not guilty verdict. Asked how much the case cost taxpayers, Healy said “I wasn’t keeping a tally.”
Chadwick is now pursuing a civil suit against the police agencies involved and they will most assuredly know how much money that will cost the taxpayers. |
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A full 25 percent of voters in this month's election identified themselves as liberals, according to exit polls, a marked increase from 22 percent in 2008. (Conservative is still a more popular identifier, with 35 percent of voters claiming that label.) Still, the "L" word is more popular than it has been since 1976. Conservatives managed to turn "liberal" into an insult in the 1980s, and when Republican icon Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, only 17 percent of voters confessed to being liberal. Today that number has ballooned to 25 percent. Why are a growing percentage of Americans calling themselves liberal? Here, three theories:
1. Obama made being liberal cool again
President Obama has "talked about government in a way that many Democrats haven't in recent years," forcefully making the case for a more active role for public agencies in American life, says Aaron Blake at The Washington Post. Obama "may not call himself a liberal," but that's how people see his policies. "Thus, Obama supporters are less reticent to embrace that label." And "the Democratic Party is riding high" — it just snared a majority of the popular vote in two consecutive presidential votes for the first time since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "They've done it with a president who is regarded as a liberal," and that reinforced "the idea that it's okay to be liberal."
2. Conservatives have been unfairly tarred
It's not that Americans are suddenly gung-ho about liberal politics, says Gary Bauer at Human Events. Voters are still filled with "strong skepticism about whether Obama will be able to accomplish Americans' goals." The Obama campaign simply managed to drive people away from Mitt Romney with a relentless barrage of negative ads smearing him — and, by extension, conservative politics — as "uncaring and disconnected." Republicans can regain this lost ground next time around if they just learn from this loss. "Republican values — strong families, faith, personal responsibility and freedom, among others — are not unique to specific subsets of the electorate. They are universal values, and it is Republicans' job to remind Americans of that fact."
3. America really is changing
"Some of the fastest-growing demographics in the country happen to be the ones that are trending toward the 'liberal' label," says Blake at The Washington Post. That includes "non-religious people (rising from 18 percent liberal in 2004 to 24 percent today), college graduates (from 48 percent to 53 percent) and Hispanics (from 10 percent to 13 percent). Young people, of course, have always been pretty liberal; the label's increasing appeal to these groups means it is gaining steam." Reinforcing this trend is the nation's increasing "tilt to the left when it comes to social policy," as seen in voters' increasing openness to legalizing recreational marijuana use and gay marriage. But the main thing, says Wisconsin state Rep. Leon D. Young at the Milwaukee Courier, is that "the American electorate is indeed changing. It's younger, more multicultural in appearance (Black, Latino and Asian), and definitely less white." Is it any wonder a growing percentage of voters identify as progressives? |
Music’s Next Big Thing: Bottled Water
It’s in the news every other week. Spotify is ruining musicians. iTunes killed the album. Labels are angry at Pandora. It seems like the music industry is doomed. Take a closer look though, and you’ll see the core issue: Things are changing, and we’re doing a terrible job of handling it.
The Changing Landscape
In the last 20 years, the music industry has changed more significantly than in its entire history. What happened? The internet arrived. First it was Napster. Suddenly everyone could get music for free. A few years later iTunes came along offering a paid option, and breaking up albums into single-track downloads. Now there’s Spotify, Pandora, and with them, endless debates. Stories of streaming services paying mere cents for thousands of streams, or calling it the “last desperate fart of a dead corpse” (this is my favorite) seem to come out weekly.
Not only that, MIDI samples are being substituted for studio musicians. Auto Tune can make make anyone sound halfway decent. Studio editing can make a botched performance radio ready. Any kid with garageband and a mic can get his music heard by thousands, instantly. The market is saturated with music, and hardly anyone is making money.
That’s only on the recording side of the music industry. On the live music scene, symphonies are closing, club owners are paying pitiful rates, and suddenly everyone is a DJ. How can anyone afford live music in this economy??!?!
The Music Industry Isn’t Helping.
Does suing 12 year old kids and 83 year old deceased women for hundreds of thousands of dollars solve anything? Is complaining about how things aren’t like they used to be going to change how people consume music?
One of my college professors provided great insight on this debate. “How do you get someone to pay for something when they could easily get it for free?” he asked us. The class unanimously agreed that it was impossible. We argued that if given the option, people will always take something for free rather than paying for it.
“What about bottled water?” he asked. Well, crap.
Why Bottled Water Matters
Remember the days before bottled water? You could get water anywhere. Out of the tap, from a drinking fountain, from the SKY even! The best part is that it was all free. Doesn’t that seem strange now? Fastforward a few years. Now the bottled water industry makes over 100 billion dollars a year. Let me say that again: these companies are making 10 billion (with a B) dollars every year by selling something that you can get for free.
Before you make the argument that “Fiji is the nectar of the gods” or “Arrowhead tastes like it’s bottled from the LA River,” I’m well aware of the differences between bottle water. You don’t want to get me started on this.
Look, music isn’t going anywhere. If there’s one thing that has been made clear in the last 20 years, it’s this: people love music. People want to listen to music. Napster, iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, and SoundCloud all prove this.
Music is essential to life, just like water. Yet people stream music on Spotify for free as they drink a $3 bottle of Evian. (In Evian’s defense, their pH levels are higher than tap water. I’m telling you, you don’t get me started.) The past 20 years have been a transition period for our industry, trying to figure out the “bottled water of music.” We haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m hopeful that the music industry’s best days are ahead.
One Industry Is Doing It Right
When internet piracy showed up, the film industry was hit with the same problem as music, but they’ve handled it much better. Rather than complaining about streaming services like Netflix, they’ve decided to up their game. In recent years, movie theaters have added new upgrades like 3D, IMAX and Dolby Atmos Sound to make the movie going experience something you don’t want to miss.
Sure, I could have torrented Gravity and watched it on my laptop, but instead I saw it in IMAX 3D. I was completely immersed in the story. When I left the theater, I felt like I could finally breathe again. It was an incredible experience that I wouldn’t have had watching the torrented version at home. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see it a second time in theaters.
The film industry has found their bottle.
Trying New Things
In order to find music’s bottled water, we have to be constantly trying new things. Here’s two groups that are experimenting with unconventional methods of making money with music, for better or worse.
Cheating The System
LA Funk band Vulfpeck is trying something interesting. Rather than complain about Spotify’s low streaming rates, they’re using Spotify to fund their upcoming tour. They recently released Sleepify, an album of complete silence. They’re asking fans to stream this album on repeat from Spotify when they go to sleep. Because the band earns only half a cent per song streamed, each fan will generate $4 per night. The band then plans on launching a tour of the cities with the most fans, at no charge.
Will this plan work? We’ll have to wait and see. It’s important to note that Vulfpeck’s other albums are actually great music, and not silence. Is this the solution to the music industry’s problem? Not exactly, but I love that Vulfpeck is taking lemons and making lemonade.
Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nothing To Torrent
Hip hop group Wu Tang Clan plans to release exactly one copy of their forthcoming album. Yes really. The lone album will be toured around in various museums and festivals, where eager fans can take a listen on headphones, for a price. After the tour concludes the album will be auctioned off, presumably for millions of dollars, at which point the owner is free to do what they want with it (READ: it will be leaked online).
The idea behind this is to restore music as an art form, and I applaud Wu Tang for trying something no one has ever done before. Obviously this method won’t work for most artists, since they don’t have a Wu Tang-like following, but the larger statement they’re making is bold.
What Do We Do Now?
Spoiler alert: I don’t have the answer. I have no idea what the music industry is going to look like in the next 20 years. But I’m confident that smart, hard working musicians are going to keep fighting, keep trying new things, and keep their entreprenurial spirits alive. Let’s figure this out together. That’s the only way we’re going to find our bottle.
(Final note: Smart Water is the best tasting water and I will fight any man that says otherwise. Plus, it has electrolytes. It’s what plants crave.)
Photo credit: Lora Rajah
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United scared Giggs will quit
Manchester United could have an issue with Ryan Giggs when they next look for a new manager. The Mirror understand that the club are very concerned that Giggs will leave the Red Devils if he's not named manager when Louis van Gaal departs. It's still unclear how much longer Van Gaal's reign will last, but Giggs wants assurances of his future at the club and that his path to being manager still exists. If United hire Jose Mourinho to replace Van Gaal, Giggs' future would very much be in doubt and he may look for a job elsewhere.
Paper Round's view - United obviously want to keep Giggs at the club, but that can't be the priority right now. If he leaves Old Trafford, so be it. They're potentially going to miss the top four this season and face an uphill battle to get into it next year, even if they continue to spend insane amounts of money. They need to right the club and get them back to winning matches. If they believe that Giggs can do that, hire him, but him potentially leaving shouldn't factor into the decision.
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Chelsea want at least £80m for Hazard
Chelsea's Eden HazardReuters
Paper Round's view - Chelsea are in a position of strength here. Hazard is under contract for several more years so they don't have to sell and they pay him plenty of money so a richer club coming in isn't a concern. He may be having a bad season, but there's no reason for them to sell him on the cheap. If Real Madrid want to pay up then so be it. Of course, this could all change depending on who their new manager is, but it's tough to imagine anyone not wanting Hazard in the team.
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Townsend gets big deal from Newcastle
Andros TownsendPA Sport
Papr Round's view - It's astonishing to see Townsend doubling his wages considering his lack of playing time and form this season, but Newcastle need to do something to entice players to come. The Magpies are a historically big club, and have the support and backing to get players like Townsend, but it is difficult to convince someone to join a difficult relegation fight. Big wages are one way to do it and if Townsend can help keep them in the top flight, he will be well worth it.
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Chelsea eyeing van Persie
Robin van PersiePA Sport
Paper Round's view - As long as Van Persie joins Chelsea on a short-term deal, it's not a terrible idea to bring him back. He's far from his prime and hardly going to be an impact player, but he's still serviceable and would provide an alternative to Costa. Chelsea really need to sign someone better, but it doesn't appear as if they are going to until the summer so finding relatively cheap, decent options for short spells is their best move and Van Persie fits the bill. Then again, so does Pato, and he's even better, so if they get that deal done then that's that.
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Newcastle told Remy will cost £12m
Loic RemyAFP
Paper Round's view - Newcastle aren't in a position to get bogged down over small amounts of money for good players. If they are going to be ambitious in the transfer market and try to sign a quality player like Remy from a club like Chelsea, they have to recognise that they don't have a lot of leverage. There is huge urgency on the Magpies' part as they fight to stay in the top flight and every other club knows it. £12m is a fair price for someone who could keep them from the drop.
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Leicester chasing Musa
CSKA Moscow striker Ahmed MusaPA Sport
Paper Round's view - Leicester are on the right track in looking for a striker. They do need to ease the burden on Vardy, whether it's with someone who can play alongside him or someone who can deputise for him in some matches. Musa would be capable of both, making him ideal. CSKA have him under contract until 2018 so they do not have to sell and are right to hold firm on their valuation. Leicester should probably pay it and they very well might.
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Turkey is backing away from claims that a child suicide bomber sent by Islamic State carried out for Saturday's blast at a Kurdish wedding, killing 54 people.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Monday said speculation that a child was responsible was based on rumors from witnesses.
"We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organization's name, is, unfortunately, not right," he told reporters.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier described the bomber as being between 12 and 14 years old and sent by Islamic State. Nearly all the victims were Kurds younger than 18.
No one has claimed responsibility, but the style of the attack and the type of bomb used were similar to previous blasts blamed on Islamic State.
The bomber attacked a Kurdish wedding and celebration in Gaziantep, a city just 60 kilometers north of Syria and a prominent refugee community for people looking to escape the five-year civil war in Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu vowed Monday his country would "completely cleanse" Islamic State militants from its border region with Syria.
On Tuesday, Turkish soldiers launched a barrage of shells into Islamic State-held territory along Syria's northern border in retaliation for an IS mortar attack. Turkish media report that 40 shells were fired.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports rebel fighters were massing inside Turkey to carry out an offensive on the Islamic State-held Syrian town of Jarablus. Cavusoglu did not confirm the rebel plans, but said Ankara supports any group fighting Islamic State.
The Gaziantep attack came amid continuing turmoil in Turkey in the month after Erdogan's government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which the Turkish leader has blamed on U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
WATCH: Turkey Cites Terrorism in Fatal Blast at Wedding
In an earlier written statement, Erdogan said there is "no difference" between Islamic State, the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, and Gulen's followers.
"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us - you will not succeed!" he said.
The White House condemned the Gaziantep attack, saying the "perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding." The statement Sunday added that Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara Wednesday to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to work together with Turkey against the "scourge of terrorism."
Blast sparks outrage
Witnesses said the blast, the deadliest terror attack in Turkey this year, occurred in a packed street of people dancing and celebrating the marriage.
Speaking Sunday while surveying the wreckage, local resident Ibrahim Ozdemir said people are in shock.
”Our friends and neighbors were there. We are so sad and in pain. The attack is an atrocity." He said, "We want to end these massacres. We are in pain, especially the women and children.”
The Turkish city is about 90 kilometers from the Syrian city of Manbij. A U.S. backed coalition of Syrian fighters and Kurds earlier this month drove Islamic State fighters from that city after a two-month siege, pushing them into the countryside northward toward the Turkish border.
Shortly after Saturday's bombing, the pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack, while noting it came just hours after a Kurdish militant organization battling the Ankara government for autonomy announced new plans to try to end the decades-long conflict.
The so-called Group of Communities in Kurdistan, the KCK, which includes the outlawed PKK, said it is ready to resume peace talks with Ankara, but said the government should take the first step. A KCK statement also said those overtures are supported by "friendly" countries and non-government organizations both inside and outside Turkey.
The statement also said the Gaziantep attack "targets those determined and consistent in peace ... and those struggling for democracy, equality and freedom."
The PKK launched an armed rebellion in 1984, seeking an autonomous homeland in a vast area of the southeast bordered by Syria, Iraq and Iran. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Last year, the armed wing of the PKK scrapped a three-year cease-fire with Ankara, after Turkish warplanes struck the group's military training bases in northern Iraq while PKK fighters battled Islamic State militants. Ankara also bombed several other PKK bases. |
Updated, 9.49pm: MPs passed the third reading of the Digital Economy Bill without putting it to the vote. The draft legislation will now move to the House of Lords.
Original story
The government's plan to force UK ISPs to block porn sites that fail to provide age checks has been backed by MPs debating the report stage of the Digital Economy Bill.
Labour, as expected, mounted little opposition against the government's proposal. Junior culture shadow minister Kevin Brennan told MPs on Monday evening that the government's recent stealth amendment to the bill—which took British telcos by surprise—had come at "quite a late stage" and contained "significant changes."
The new clause, which proposes that ISPs should block porn sites that fail to comply with age verification checks, was added to the bill last week. Brennan asked digital minister Matt Hancock to allay fears that the measures could end up being extended to "Internet censorship" for adult porn users.
But Hancock claimed that news reports had "misread the bill," adding that it was "neither our intention nor our understanding of the working of these amendments."
Brennan said:
We just want to put on record our concern that we didn’t have the opportunity at committee stage to pore over these kinds of proposals... not withstanding our support for blocking, we think there’s a lot more scrutiny that will be required when there’s more time available in the other place.
He described the planned age verification system as a "blunt object" and added that Labour wanted to see an amendment added to the bill that requires schools to teach kids about the risks and dangers of online porn, alongside the legal age requirement to access such material. However, the party's proposed amendment was shot down by MPs who voted 278 to 181 against Labour's clause being added to the bill.
Earlier in the debate, Hancock was challenged by Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael, who asked the minister to offer assurances—in light of recent high profile hacks—about data safeguards in the bill, particularly around age verification.
"All of the data measures in this act and all of the consequences of the age verification process will be within the Data Protection Act, which has a very strong consensus of support behind it," Hancock said. He declined to say whether the data will be anonymised, however. "It will be held in such a way that it is required to be secure and the data is not made available," the minister said.
Net neut neutered?
On the spiky topic of net neutrality—a measure that then prime minister David Cameron in late 2015 promised would be swerved with regulation, if necessary, in order to allow British ISPs to continue, on a voluntary basis, to apply network-level filters (euphemistically described as parental controls) to block access to perfectly legal porn sites—Hancock told MPs:
In committee we discussed the concerns that the EU net neutrality regulation would render these controls—which have worked well—illegal. I am clear that our interpretation of the EU net neutrality regulation is that filters are allowed where they can be turned off as then they are a matter of user choice. But I know there remains uncertainty on this matter and concerns that filters could be challenged. and I’m happy to confirm to the house that for the avoidance of doubt we will bring forward an amendment in the other place to the effect that providers may offer these filters to put this issue beyond doubt.
He was then challenged by John Whittingdale—the Tory who first tabled the Digital Economy Bill in July this year, before being dropped from his culture secretary post when Theresa May became PM—who asked what was being done about porn being routinely served up on websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Hancock said:
The age verification requirements apply to the commercial provision of pornography. Now commercial provision is not only paid for it’s also that which is provided for a commercial return. There is a difference between websites that provide commercial pornography and platforms on which others can upload images. And getting this right around that second group is much harder than around the first group.
He said the government wanted to put forward the bill to try to address age checks on porn sites. He then admitted: "I appreciate for those who want to access porn online then, if they’re really intent on doing it, there is a big challenge in stopping that," before adding: "platform-based pornography is a much more difficult technical nut to crack."
Which, perhaps put another way, suggests that the challenge is far more difficult because the likes of Twitter and Facebook aren't homegrown companies—making regulation very tricky.
Later in the debate, Whittingdale urged caution on forcing ISPs to block "legal content." He said: "like it or not, the sites we are discussing are visited by millions and millions of people every day." The back bencher added that he supports age verification, even though it was yet to be made clear how the system would work. He argued that the government was "asking a lot" to expect porn users to dish up their credit card details.
"I personally was not persuaded about the necessity of introducing ISP blocking. It does represent a considerable infringement of civil liberties of individuals who are wanting to access material… at a time when we are concerned about censorship online… I do think this is a dangerous road to go down," Whittingdale said.
Nonetheless, the government's planned amendments to bring in ISP porn-blocking where sites fail to comply with age checks looks set to be waved through by MPs.
At time of publication, parliamentarians had finally begun talking about Part 5 of the draft Digital Economy Bill. Brennan said the proposed law should be amended "in the aftermath of the Care.data scandal." Labour is concerned that patient confidentiality could be undermined based on the current information sharing clause detailed in the bill.
Identifiable information about patients should be exempt from access by public bodies and the bill should clarify this, Brennan said. |
feardragon Profile Blog Joined October 2010 United States 864 Posts Last Edited: 2015-03-27 19:04:53 #1
Breaking Out Season 4
http://www.twitch.tv/feardragon64
Or catch the vods on the same day at:
http://www.youtube.com/feardragon64 Watch the show live over at:Or catch the vods on the same day at:
This past November,
There's a common misconception that players in North America don't work hard, aren't motivated, and don't have much talent. Breaking Out looks to prove otherwise by highlighting some up & coming players that might not be on your radar yet. North America as a scene may be behind others like Europe and Korea, but we have the players with the talent to be better. We just need to give them the resources and the motivation to do so. The show seeks to show some of those players worth caring about and give them a bit more exposure. And of course, the invitational that has hit over two-thousand dollars doesn't hurt to motivate the players a little...
Breaking Out is about fostering growth in the local scene. I'm not going to lie to you. These guys are not WCS Grand Finalists or GSL Code S winners. But what they are is a group of hard working individuals who have the potential to be a "foreign hope" or top NA player given the right environment. If you haven't watched some of these guys play, this is your opportunity to see just how awesome some of their games can be. You might surprise yourself at how much fun you'll have cheering for these guys if you give them a chance.
This past November, Breaking Out finished its third season of highlighting different up & coming player in the North American scene. It's time for yet another season to see who is going to win learn more about some of the up & comers in the scene and find out who is the next most likely player to Breakout of the North American scene.There's a common misconception that players in North America don't work hard, aren't motivated, and don't have much talent. Breaking Out looks to prove otherwise by highlighting some up & coming players that might not be on your radar yet. North America as a scene may be behind others like Europe and Korea, but we have the players with the talent to be better. We just need to give them the resources and the motivation to do so. The show seeks to show some of those players worth caring about and give them a bit more exposure. And of course, the invitational that has hit over two-thousand dollars doesn't hurt to motivate the players a little...is about fostering growth in the local scene. I'm not going to lie to you. These guys are not WCS Grand Finalists or GSL Code S winners. But what they are is a group of hard working individuals who have the potential to be a "foreign hope" or top NA player given the right environment. If you haven't watched some of these guys play, this is your opportunity to see just how awesome some of their games can be. You might surprise yourself at how much fun you'll have cheering for these guys if you give them a chance. Format
We're really excited to announce Season 4 of Breaking Out. Picking up where Season 3 left off, Season 4 will see a return of the old format that focused on quality, edited content that gives you everything you need to know about a player in a reasonable amount of time.
Breaking Out Season 4 will run twice a week for one month. The broadcast time is planned to be Friday's and Saturdays at 7:00pm PST/10:00pm EST. Each day will highlight a single player, with two players covered each week. The show will run through the month of March, with qualifiers for the show taking up the majority of February. The exact date for the Invitational itself will be announced at a later date after consulting with the players for availability.
Each episode focuses on a single player with interviews, gameplay and analysis that should give you a very good idea of who the player is. The format will be as follows:
1) Brief 3-4 minute interviews to give you a feel for the player
2) Cover the player's XvZ matchup
3) Cover the player's XvT matchup
4) Cover the player's XvP matchup
5) Cover an AWESOME game from the player
6) A short 5ish minute fun segment where we embarrass the hell out of the player
Interviews are fantastic but sometimes it can be hard to pay full attention to one person talk about themselves for an hour straight. Instead, small 3-5 minute clips will be interspersed throughout the show so you can get a better feel for the player in a shorter amount of time!
+ Show Spoiler + no matter what qualification method you use. So, let's go over how to register.
Submit an e-mail to [email protected] with the following information by February 13th
2) A picture of yourself meeting most, if not all of the requirements listed.
3) A link to your battle.net profile on the account you want considered for the ladder qualifiers. This account should be *your* account and should not be shared with others. Obvious rules such as win trading, hacking, boosting, etc. being grounds for a DQ from any or all parts of Breaking Out apply. (Note this account will be publicized as your account.) 1) Proof of North American Residency. Some examples of this are Drivers Licenses, Student ID's to NA universities, Passports, etc.
4) A 3-8 minute video of yourself answering the following questions(be ready for parts of this video to be used on the show!):
a) What is your name, age & Starcraft 2 race?
b) What do you do for a living?
c) Tell us the most interesting fact about yourself that you can think of.
d) Describe your playstyle for us.
e) Why do you deserve the chance to be the next breakout player?
f) What does Starcraft mean to you?
Once you submit your application and it has been processed, we will respond to confirm or deny it. We are reserving the right to reject applications. However, the main reason we're doing so is to prevent players that already have a good bit of notoriety. Some good examples would be if for some reason Evil Geniuses' Huk or Acer's Scarlett applied, their applications would be rejected because I don't think anyone could argue they haven't already "broken out." If you have any question of whether you would be accepted or rejected, feel free to shoot an e-mail and ask. All applications will be considered by a small committee due to the arbitrary nature of issue.
Also note that during the season, there will be an expectation for you to behave appropriately on the show, as well as off it to a degree. While we have no interest in disqualifying players that have already qualified, we reserve the right to show the door to any players who demonstrate behavior that is seen as unfit for their position. This is basically saying, we reserve the right to boot you from the show and tournament if you're being a complete jerk, subject to our own opinion. We don't want to, but know that we can and don't be stupid. Things that would put you in an awkward position for this would include maphacking, racial slurs, etc. Are you a player interested in being on Breaking Out? Well before we get into how you can qualify, first you need to register! Registration is an required part of being considered for the show. So, let's go over how to register.Once you submit your application and it has been processed, we will respond to confirm or deny it. We are reserving the right to reject applications. However, the main reason we're doing so is to prevent players that already have a good bit of notoriety. Some good examples would be if for some reason Evil Geniuses' Huk or Acer's Scarlett applied, their applications would be rejected because I don't think anyone could argue they haven't already "broken out." If you have any question of whether you would be accepted or rejected, feel free to shoot an e-mail and ask. All applications will be considered by a small committee due to the arbitrary nature of issue.Also note that during the season, there will be an expectation for you to behave appropriately on the show, as well as off it to a degree. While we have no interest in disqualifying players that have already qualified, we reserve the right to show the door to any players who demonstrate behavior that is seen as unfit for their position. This is basically saying, we reserve the right to boot you from the show and tournament if you're being a complete jerk, subject to our own opinion. We don't want to, but know that we can and don't be stupid. Things that would put you in an awkward position for this would include maphacking, racial slurs, etc.
Similar to previous seasons, there will be a total of eight players on the show. In the interest of making qualifications as open as possible to everyone walking the different paths of life, we've opened up three different methods of qualification.
We're really excited to announce Season 4 of Breaking Out. Picking up where Season 3 left off, Season 4 will see a return of the old format that focused on quality, edited content that gives you everything you need to know about a player in a reasonable amount of time.Breaking Out Season 4 will run. The broadcast time is planned to be. Each day will highlight a single player, with two players covered each week. The show will run through the month of, with qualifiers for the show taking up the majority of February. The exact date for the Invitational itself will be announced at a later date after consulting with the players for availability.Each episode focuses on a single player with interviews, gameplay and analysis that should give you a very good idea of who the player is. The format will be as follows:Interviews are fantastic but sometimes it can be hard to pay full attention to one person talk about themselves for an hour straight. Instead, small 3-5 minute clips will be interspersed throughout the show so you can get a better feel for the player in a shorter amount of time!Similar to previous seasons, there will be a total of eight players on the show. In the interest of making qualifications as open as possible to everyone walking the different paths of life, we've opened up three different methods of qualification. Qualification Methods
The two registered players that hold the highest ranking on the North American ladder will be given a spot on the show. This does not mean you have to hold spot 1, 2 in GM. You just have to be the highest ranked of all those who are trying to qualify. The end time for the ladder qualification will be 11:59pm EST on Sunday March 1st.
registered players that hold the highest ranking on the North American ladder will be given a spot on the show. This does not mean you have to hold spot 1, 2 in GM. You just have to be the highest ranked of all those who are trying to qualify. Four will qualify through two separate tournament qualifiers will be held for those unable to qualify through the first method. The first and second place finishers of both qualifiers will earn a spot on the show, meaning the top 2 will qualify. The first qualifier will be held on Friday February 13th at 8:00pm EST. They will be hosted by the SC2 Up & Coming Podcast hosts, NanMan and MasterDalk. The second qualifier's date will be on Sunday March 1st at 3:00pm EST. For updates on the qualifiers, be sure to register.
Bracket for the first qualifier:
http://challonge.com/BOS4Q1
Bracket for the second qualifier:
http://challonge.com/BOS4Q2
will qualify through two separate tournament qualifiers will be held for those unable to qualify through the first method. The first and second place finishers of both qualifiers will earn a spot on the show, meaning the top 2 will qualify. They will be hosted by the SC2 Up & Coming Podcast hosts, NanMan and MasterDalk. For updates on the qualifiers, be sure to register. Bracket for the first qualifier: Bracket for the second qualifier: If you've been unable to qualify through the ladder or through the tournament qualifiers, one last qualification method is possible. The final two player spots will be awarded via invite. These players will be picked by a small committee and be decided by various factors including the answers given in their application video, performance in various tournaments, etc.
Currently Qualified Players
1) EJK(T) through Qualifier #1
2) PiLiPiLi(P) through Qualifier #1
3) HuShang(P) through Qualifier #2
4) Trace(P) through Qualifier #2
5) Bioice(Z) through Ladder Spot #1
6) Moosegills(Z) through Ladder Spot #2
7) ElhayM(T) through Invite #1
8) SLeet(Z) through Invite #2
Be sure to remember in order to qualify, you MUST register. Don't forget to before the deadline(BY February 13th, NOT AFTER). We will be much more strict about this than previous seasons.
The show eventually leads up into an eight man tournament that has a $1000 base prize pool that has payout even to last place. However, we do take donations for that prize pool to increase. The last three season through donations we were able to raise the prize pool at least an additional $1000 through donations. If you'd like to contribute to the prizepool for the next Breakout Invitational, feel free to use the link below to do so!
Be sure to remember. Don't forget to before the deadline(BY February 13th, NOT AFTER). We will be much more strict about this than previous seasons.The show eventually leads up into an eight man tournament that has a $1000 base prize pool that has payout even to last place. However, we do take donations for that prize pool to increase. The last three season through donations we were able to raise the prize pool at least an additional $1000 through donations. If you'd like to contribute to the prizepool for the next Breakout Invitational, feel free to use the link below to do so! $1,219.05 Updated 3/27/2015 12:00pm PST
Donators to this season's prize pool
Boblekonvolutt - Archnog - doenietjigg - peacenluv - mYi.Halcyon
Big thank you's go out to everyone that has made this possible. From those who helped with the art assets for this season and the last (Noobity, Sybert, MinnyMausGG) to those who have provided feedback, adminstration help(NanMan, MasterDalk, KurenTV), as well as casters(Boisterous, Day[9], ZombieGrub, iNcontroL, Temp0, etc.). To the all the viewers of the previous seasons, I extend my thanks for helping to make this all possible. I also want to send a big thank you to all the players working hard in North America! Keep on fighting the good fight!
Big thank you's go out to everyone that has made this possible. From those who helped with the art assets for this season and the last (Noobity, Sybert, MinnyMausGG) to those who have provided feedback, adminstration help(NanMan, MasterDalk, KurenTV), as well as casters(Boisterous, Day[9], ZombieGrub, iNcontroL, Temp0, etc.). To the all the viewers of the previous seasons, I extend my thanks for helping to make this all possible. I also want to send a big thank you to all the players working hard in North America! Keep on fighting the good fight! Q/A
I was in a previous season of Breaking Out. Can I apply again?
Breaking Out has a 1 season layout period. If you were a part of Breaking Out Season 1 or 2, feel free to apply! If you were in Season 3, you'll have to wait until Season 5!
Is this an actual tournament? All I saw was info on player interviews and such.
Good question! This is both a show and a tournament. The idea is that I spend a month doing a show talking about the players and letting people(including myself to be honest) get to know them, and THEN we have an 8 man tournament called The Breakout Invitational. The invitational has a base prize pool of $1000 and takes donations to be increased. The past two seasons it's over doubled the base prize pool to roughly $2150.
Can a player from Latin America participate?
Yes! Season 3 even featured the Brazillian player Kelazhur! If someone in Latin America is interested, they should feel free to apply as long as they feel comfortable communicating in English in extensive interviews. Unfortunately, the format relies very heavily on speaking good English at the moment.
Your question here! Ask in the thread!
Some incredible answer that
Breaking Out has a 1 season layout period. If you were a part of Breaking Out Season 1 or 2, feel free to apply! If you were in Season 3, you'll have to wait until Season 5!Good question! This is both a show and a tournament. The idea is that I spend a month doing a show talking about the players and letting people(including myself to be honest) get to know them, and THEN we have an 8 man tournament called The Breakout Invitational. The invitational has a base prize pool of $1000 and takes donations to be increased. The past two seasons it's over doubled the base prize pool to roughly $2150.Yes! Season 3 even featured the Brazillian player Kelazhur! If someone in Latin America is interested, they should feel free to apply as long as they feel comfortable communicating in English in extensive interviews. Unfortunately, the format relies very heavily on speaking good English at the moment.Some incredible answer that blows your mind Garbage Starcraft 2 Commentator |
For its size, the coffee berry borer makes your caffeine consumption look almost laughably manageable, downing an amount that relative to its body mass would be like a person taking 500 shots of espresso in one day—and its habit is becoming a real threat to coffee supplies.
A new study in Nature Communications looks at the great mystery of the coffee berry borer: Just how does it manage to take in all that caffeine? The relative amount of caffeine that its ingesting should be poisonous. Its continual ability to exist, even flourish, has been a cause of envy and consternation for both researchers and coffee farmers alike.
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So what’s going on? The study suggests that the secret may be deep in the beetle’s gut, with a unique set of microbes that work together to efficiently break down caffeine. They charted them out, and their elaborate interaction with each other:
Of course, once the coffee berry borer has taken hold of a coffee field, it’s tenacious: Farm yield levels typically drop by 80% once they move in. So, now that they’ve figured out how it holds on, the next step says the researchers is to figure out a way to use the secret of its caffeine-processing bacteria against it.
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Top image: Coffee berry borer / Hawaii Department of Agriculture via Berkeley Lab, Chart: Nature Communications. |
Michigan rock star Kid Rock on Thursday tried to amp up speculation he could run for U.S. Senate – or at least release new music – as he blasted media reporting and skepticism on his Wednesday tease. (Photo: www.kidrockforsenate.com)
Michigan rock star Kid Rock on Thursday tried to amp up speculation he could run for U.S. Senate – or at least release new music – as he blasted media reporting and skepticism on his Wednesday tease.
The Clarkston resident and Romeo native again did not make clear whether he plans to run for the GOP nomination for Senate in Michigan. But he said in a blog post that “like politicians write books during their campaigns, I’m planning on putting out music during mine.”
It all starts at midnight, Rock said in a post that ended with hash tags #fakenews #kidrockforsenate #kidrock #podunk #greatestshowonearth. The latter appear to be possible song titles.
The Republican rebel, real name Bob Ritchie, also responded to comments from incumbent U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Lansing area Democrat and pianist. Asked about his possible run Tuesday, Stabenow said they both love music and conceded he’s better at guitar but said she’ll continue doing what she does best, which is “fighting for Michigan.”
Rock agreed they share a love of music – but probably not the same kind, he wrote.
“I concede she is better at playing politics than I am so I'll keep doing what I do best, which is being a voice for tax paying, hardworking AMERICANS and letting politicians like her know that We the People are sick and tired of their bull----!” he said.
Other Republican hopefuls who have announced they are running include President Donald Trump Michigan campaign co-chair Lena Epstein and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young Jr.
Rock appeared to take exception to media reports skeptical that he will run for Senate. The Detroit News and others reported Rock has not filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, but he said he has 15 days to do some “from my announcement.”
Sales of Senate-logoed gear on his website also redirect to a Warner Bros. Records site, but Rock mocked reports he was signed to the label.
“I have recently worked out a unique deal with BMG, Broken Bow, CAA and Live Nation to release music ON MY TERMS.”
The post ends with an image of a vehicle gas meter on empty with the words “F--- TANK” emblazoned beneath it.
Rock would be far from the first celebrity to run for political office. Oakland University political science professor Dave Dulio noted Republican President Donald Trump (“The Apprentice”), Democratic Sen. Al Franken (“Saturday Night Live”) and former President Ronald Reagan (movies and television appearances).
“I don’t think you can easily dismiss the possibility that it is a publicity stunt,” Dulio said earlier Thursday, before Rock’s blog post. “However, President Trump was thought to be more of a publicity stunt prior to him pulling the trigger on the 2016 presidential race. So I think it’s possible that with the election of Trump we see more of this.”
If Rock is really preparing to run for Senate, it’s news to the Michigan Republican Party.
The Michigan GOP has “not had any contact with him at all,” spokeswoman Sarah Anderson said Thursday, “so I can’t speak to the validity of it.”
Although the state party does not endorse in Republican primaries, potential candidates typically talk to GOP leaders and activists around the state before launching campaigns.
Rock caused an uproar Wednesday when he tweeted a mock image of a political lawn sign and said his website is “absolute YES” for real.
Speculation over a Kid Rock run went viral in February when Michigan GOP state central committee member Wes Nakagiri of Hartland told a newspaper he thinks the rock star would make a good Senate candidate.
Nakagiri did not have any insider information at that time – he just liked the idea. He said Thursday he has not had any contact with Rock or anyone close to him regarding political aspirations.
“I’m not sure how serious he is,” Nakagari told The News, noting Rock’s product sales redirect to the record label’s website. He also pointed out Rock’s new site was registered just days after Nakagiri floated his name in February.
“So he’s been thinking about something for a while, or he took the name to prepare for any eventuality, whether it was marketing for his record, which I’ve heard people say, or a real run for Senate,” he said.
[email protected]
Staff Writer Michael Gerstein contributed
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2viu2D6 |
Abstract There is a growing appreciation that individuals differ systematically in their use of particular emotion regulation strategies. Our aim was to examine the structural correlates of the habitual use of expressive suppression of emotions. Based on our previous research on the voluntary suppression of actions we expected this response-focused emotion regulation strategy to be associated with increased grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). On high-resolution MRI scans of 42 college-aged healthy adults we computed optimized voxel-based-morphometry (VBM) to explore the correlation between grey matter volume and inter-individual differences in the tendency to suppress the expression of emotions assessed by means of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003). We found a positive correlation between the habitual use of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy and grey matter volume in the dmPFC. No other brain area showed a significant positive or negative correlation with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire scores. The association between the suppression of expression of emotions and volume in the dmPFC supports the behavioural stability and biological foundation of the concept of this particular emotion regulation strategy within an age-homogenous sample of adults.
Citation: Kühn S, Gallinat J, Brass M (2011) “Keep Calm and Carry On”: Structural Correlates of Expressive Suppression of Emotions. PLoS ONE 6(1): e16569. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016569 Editor: André Aleman, University of Groningen, Netherlands Received: October 1, 2010; Accepted: December 21, 2010; Published: January 26, 2011 Copyright: © 2011 Kühn et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: SK is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: JG has received research funding from AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly & Co, Janssen-Cilag, Bristol-Myers Squibb and speaker fees from AstraZeneca, Janssen-Cilag, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Introduction Humans have the acknowledged ability of self-control. Self-control has been defined as the capacity to alter one's responses, e.g. by overriding impulses in order to bring behaviour in line with goals and standards [1], [2]. In particular the suppression of emotions serves a useful purpose in daily life. Certain situations seem to afford self-control of emotion expression, such as the need to laugh during a funeral or the experience of sexual arousal at the wrong time or place. One common form of emotion regulation is expressive suppression, which entails inhibiting the outward signs of emotion. There is a growing appreciation that individuals differ systematically in their use of particular emotion regulation strategies [3]. At the broadest level one can distinguish between antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation strategies [4]. Antecedent-focused strategies refer to regulations before the response tendencies have become fully activated, whereas response-focused strategies come into play once an emotion is already underway. Gross and John [5] have designed a self-report questionnaire that assesses inter-individual differences in habitual emotion regulation, namely the antecedent-focused cognitive reappraisal and the response-focused expressive suppression. Reappraisal enfolds a cognitive-linguistic strategy that alters the trajectory of emotional responses by reformulating the meaning of a situation [6], whereas expressive suppression involves the inhibition of ongoing emotion expressive behaviour as in the so-called “poker face”. Expressive suppression has been shown to be negatively correlated with well-being [5]. Relative to the natural expression of emotions, suppression leads to increased sympathetic activation despite the concomitant decrease in somatic activity [7], [8]. Since emotion regulation strategies have been shown to be considerable stable over time [5] we set out to explore its biological underpinnings in the brain by means of voxel-based morphometry (VBM). Since expressive suppression has been conceptualized as being strongly response-focused intervening considerably late when the peripheral physiological response of the emotion has already been triggered, we hypothesized that its neural correlates could bear resemblance to the vetoing of actions. Based on previous functional neuroimaging studies of our lab that associated the voluntary inhibition of actions [9], [10] to brain activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), as well as on studies on resistance to different kinds of urges [11], [12] and based on previous neuroplasticity studies that have demonstrated the impact of learning and practice on brain structure [13]–[15] we predicted that habitual use of expressive emotion suppression might be associated with an increase in volume of cortical grey matter in dmPFC.
Methods Participants 42 healthy volunteers participated on the basis of written informed consent and with local ethical committee approval at University Hospital Ghent and according to the Declaration of Helsinki. No subject had a history of neurological, major medical, or psychiatric disorder. The participants (27 women and 15 men) had a mean age of 23.2 (ranging from 18 to 32) and were all right-handed as assessed by a handedness questionnaire [16]. Questionnaire We administered the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) designed by Gross & John [5] comprising the two subscales expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. The ERQ consists of 10 items and participants give their answers on a 7-point Likert scale with the endpoints “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree”. The expressive suppression items clearly address the tendency of participants not to show their emotions: “I keep my emotions to myself”, “When I am feeling positive emotions, I am careful not to express them.”, “I control my emotions by not expressing them.” and, “When I am feeling negative emotions, I make sure not to express them.” Scanning Procedure Images were collected with a 3T Magnetom Trio MRI scanner system (Siemens Medical Systems, Erlangen, Germany) using an 8-channel radiofrequency head coil. First, high-resolution anatomical images were acquired using a T1-weighted 3D MPRAGE sequence (TR = 1550 ms, TE = 2.39 ms, TI = 900 ms, acquisition matrix = 256×256×176, sagittal FOV = 220 mm, flip angle = 9°, voxel size = 0.9×0.9×0.9 mm3). Data Analysis Anatomical data were processed by means of the VBM5 toolbox (http://dbm.neuro.uni-jena.de/vbm) by C. Gaser and the SPM5 software package (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm). The VBM5 toolbox makes use of the segmentation algorithm of SPM5 and its implementation of a Hidden Markov Random Field approach that has been demonstrated to be superior to previous SPM versions [17]. We employed the optimized VBM protocol proposed by Good et al. [18]. We first resampled the anatomical images to a voxelsize of 1×1×1 mm3. Then the images were segmented into the different tissue types and the grey matter segmentations were normalized to a grey matter template. Then modulation was applied in order to preserve the volume of a particular tissue within a voxel. Modulation was achieved by multiplying voxel values in the segmented images by the Jacobian determinants derived from the spatial normalization step. In effect, the analysis of modulated data tests for regional differences in the absolute amount (volume) of grey matter. Finally, images were smoothed with a FWHM kernel of 12 mm. Then statistical analysis was carried out by means of whole brain correlation of grey matter volume with the individuals' scores on the expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal scale of the ERQ. Sex, age and whole brain volume were entered as covariates of no interest. The resulting maps were thresholded with p<0.001 and cluster-size corrected by means of Monte Carlo simulation. Accordingly significant effects were reported when the volume of the cluster was greater than the Monte Carlo simulation determined minimum cluster size on whole brain grey matter volume (>149 voxels), above which the probability of type I error was below 0.05 (AlphaSim, [19]).
Results On the ERQ participants had a mean score of 3.04 (SD = 1.0) on the suppression factor and a mean score of 4.9 (SD = 0.99) on the reappraisal factor. Internal consistency was acceptable with Cronbachs Alpha of .71 for the suppression factor and .78 for the reappraisal factor. This is similar to the average Cronbachs Alpha that have been reported ([5]; suppression factor: .73 reappraisal factor: 0.79). In the structural images we found a positive correlation between the inter-individual differences in expressive suppression of emotions and inter-individual differences in the grey matter volume in dmPFC (MNI coordinate: 13, 52, 32, cluster of 1364 voxels, BA 9 extending into BA 32, Figure 1A). No cluster of grey matter volume survived for the negative correlation with expressive suppression or for the correlations with the cognitive reappraisal score of the ERQ. PPT PowerPoint slide
PowerPoint slide PNG larger image
larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Brain regions showing a positive correlation (yellow) between expressive suppression of emotions and grey matter volume. The dmPFC (MNI coordinate 13 52 32) showed a significant correlation (p<0.001, corrected for multiple comparisons by means of Monte Carlo simulation) (A). Clusters of significant fMRI activation in previous studies during voluntary suppression of action (left: −2 41 37, right: −7 42 21) (B). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016569.g001
Discussion In line with our a priori predictions the present finding links the self-reported tendencies to use expressive suppression strategies of emotion regulation to grey matter volume in the dmPFC. More specifically, participants who habitually suppress their emotions show a significant increase in grey matter in the frontomedial wall. The fact that this self-report measure is related to structural characteristics in the brain can be seen as support of the notion that emotion regulation strategies constitute relatively stable inter-individual differences. The location of the grey matter correlation with expressive emotion suppression is in line with our predictions based on previous functional neuroimaging research relating the dmPFC to self-control of actions and more complex urges [9]–[12]. In a study exploring vetoing of actions we asked participants to press a button at a time of their own choice but to inhibit the execution of the response on some trials that they were free to choose. When comparing voluntary inhibition with voluntary action trials, brain activation was found medially in the dmPFC (MNI coordinates: −2 41 37). In a follow-up study we used an entirely different paradigm in which the button press was rewarded in order to ensure reliable action preparation, and therefore more effortful action suppression ([10], Figure 1B, MNI coordinates: −7 42 21). Of note the peak coordinate of the structural correlations is found in the right hemisphere whereas the functional peak coordinates are located in the left hemisphere. One might speculate that this is in line with the traditional assumption that the right hemisphere is specialized in emotion processing [20]. Furthermore, an activation of the dmPFC has been reported during the inhibition of more complex urges such as cigarette craving [11] or loss chasing in gambling [12]. In the former study smokers were exposed to cues depicting tobacco paraphernalia and were instructed to resist the wish or to freely crave for a cigarette. The resistance to craving was associated with activity in the dmPFC. This finding suggests that dmPFC activation is not restricted to vetoing of ongoing simple actions but extends to the inhibition of more complex urges such as the urge to smoke. A study by Campbell-Meiklejohn and colleagues [12] has related functional activation of the dmPFC to loss chasing behavior which is central to pathological gambling and enfolds the continuation of gambling in order to recover previous losses. The vetoing of loss chasing was found to be related to activation in the dmPFC. Moreover the dmPFC has been shown to be engaged when an anticipated response has to be delayed until an actual Go-signal is presented [21]. This so-called proactive inhibition could be interpreted as a default state of refraining from responding, that is not necessarily a conscious process. This suggests that the association between dmPFC grey matter volume and expressive emotion suppression could reflect unconscious control processes. Taken together these functional neuroimaging findings point to the important role that dmPFC plays in self-control. Nevertheless the dmPFC is not the only brain structure that has been related to the inhibition of action. It has been suggested that the voluntary suppression of actions can be distinguished from externally instructed stopping of actions [9], [10]. One reason for that distinction is that internal and externally driven inhibition seems to rely on different neural substrates. In contrast to studies focussing on internal self-control a multitude of studies on externally triggered inhibition used stop tasks and Go/NoGo tasks in which prepotent actions had to be inhibited in response to a stimulus. These external inhibition processes have been associated with activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex, most prominently the right inferior frontal gyrus [22]–[24]. In line with this distinction functional neuroimaging studies on emotion regulation have predominantly reported the involvement of lateral but also of medial prefrontal cortex when participants were instructed to use strategies to reduce negative emotional experiences [25]–[28]. The involvement of lateral prefrontal cortex might be explained by the fact that participants were prompted to suppress emotions externally. Based on the neural dissociation of brain regions associated with internal and external inhibition of action, the association we found between the habitual use of expressive suppression strategies and an increase of grey matter in dmPFC could suggest that emotion suppression is under internal control. Further research is needed to dissociate structural correlates of internal and external inhibition in one study. One might interpret the manifestation of expressive suppression in the dmPFC as a consequence of the internalization of societal norms, manners and mores that govern the acceptable and unacceptable times for emotional expression [29], [30]. We suspect a relationship between the functional involvement of dmPFC in the voluntary suppression of actions and the increases in grey matter volume in dmPFC related to the habitual use of expressive suppression strategies. In accordance with this assumption previous studies have demonstrated the impact of learning and practice on brain structure as e.g. in taxi drivers [13], musicians [14] and in participants who were trained in juggling [15]. Several neuroplasticity studies have shown overlap between functional plasticity and structural plasticity suggesting practice induced grey matter changes [31], [32]. However, the present finding cannot rule out that the increased dmPFC volume in subjects with expressive suppression strategies is an a priori condition rather than a consequence of behaviour. In order to transfer our present finding of an association between expression control and grey matter volume in the dmPFC to self-control in general further research is needed to examine suppression exerted on different targets. Future studies might consider relating inter-individual differences in the suppression of the feeling and thoughts rather than the outward expressions that accompany emotions to differences in grey matter volume. Moreover future studies might elucidate the relationship between functional correlates of emotion regulation and inter-individual differences in dmPFC volume.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: SK JG. Performed the experiments: SK. Analyzed the data: SK. Wrote the paper: SK JG MB. |
Toxic smog brings nightmare 'white Christmas' to Beijing
Beijing residents woke up to a white Christmas Friday morning but with the sky obscured by thick toxic smog rather than snow after more than 100 million people across China had been warned to stay indoors.
The capital and surrounding parts of northern China are regularly blanketed in deadly pollution associated with heavy industry and an increase in coal consumption during the winter months.
Counts of PM2.5 -- harmful microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the lungs -- in Beijing peaked at 620 micrograms per cubic metre as of early Friday, according to data from the US embassy.
Counts of PM2.5, harmful microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the lungs, in Beijing peaked at 620 micrograms per cubic metre as of early December 25, 2015, according to data from the US embassy ©Wang Zhao (AFP)
The World Health Organization's recommended maximum exposure is 25 micrograms over a 24-hour period.
"If this only happened a few days a year, I'd put up with it, but it's paralysing for it to be like this every day!" said one angry social media user on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform. "Is this the new normal?"
The city posted contradictory alerts for Christmas day, with the Beijing Meteorological Service issuing an orange alert - requiring factories to limit expelled pollutants and schools to cease outdoor activities -- while the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau issued only a yellow alert, the second lowest in a four-tiered, colour-coded warning system.
The smog is expected to last until Saturday afternoon.
Photos on social media showed empty freeways shrouded in a white-out of haze as authorities shut down highways in the region and grounded flights out of the capital.
More than 500 international and domestic arrivals and departures at Beijing's main airport were cancelled due to "heavy fog and low visibility", its website said.
"In this kind of weather, can Santa even find Beijing?" a user wrote on Sina Weibo.
In the neighbouring city of Tianjin, no fewer than 19 freeways were closed early Friday morning, according to the Tianjin Freeway Management Office's official microblog, with CCTV television reporting visibility of less than five metres (15 feet).
"Santa can't even get to Tianjin! I was wondering why my stocking had no gifts in it! Smog you better get out of here!" said another Weibo commentor.
Beijing issued its first-ever red alert on December 7, declaring emergency pollution measures following scathing public criticism of the city's weak response to choking smog that settled on the capital earlier in the month.
Its second and latest red alert, which lasted four days, concluded Tuesday night. |
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Two thirds of youngsters who are certain to vote in the General Election plan to back Labour, according to a new poll.
The ICM survey found 68 per cent of aged 18 to 24 year olds who are registered and say they are “certain” to vote plan to support Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
Sixteen per cent said they would vote for the Conservatives, while 8 per cent said they would go for the Lib Dems.
Half of those surveyed said Mr Corbyn has the right qualities to be Prime Minister versus 28 per cent for Theresa May.
Manifesto pledges by Labour which could appeal to the 18-24 age group include the promise to scrap university tuition fees and lower the voting age to 16.
The NHS, Brexit, education and tuition fees were among their highest concerns, according to the survey.
The poll was co-commissioned by civil rights group Hope Not Hate and the National Union of Teachers.
Four out of ten (39 per cent) of those surveyed said that living in a marginal constituency would make them more likely to vote.
General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 43 show all General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 1/43 Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA 2/43 Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters 3/43 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA 4/43 Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA 5/43 Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC 6/43 Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA 7/43 Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA 8/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images 9/43 Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA 10/43 A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA 11/43 Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA 12/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA 13/43 A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA 14/43 Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images 15/43 Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA 16/43 Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA 17/43 Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images 18/43 Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images 19/43 Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party‚'s manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA 20/43 Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA 21/43 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA 22/43 Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News 23/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA 24/43 Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters 25/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA 26/43 Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images 27/43 British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA 28/43 Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA 29/43 The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images 30/43 Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA 31/43 The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images 32/43 Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images 33/43 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images 34/43 Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images 35/43 Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA 36/43 Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn 37/43 Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA 38/43 Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images 39/43 Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA 40/43 Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA 41/43 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA 42/43 Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale 43/43 Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images 1/43 Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA 2/43 Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters 3/43 First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA 4/43 Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA 5/43 Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC 6/43 Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA 7/43 Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA 8/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images 9/43 Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA 10/43 A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA 11/43 Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA 12/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA 13/43 A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA 14/43 Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images 15/43 Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA 16/43 Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA 17/43 Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images 18/43 Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images 19/43 Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party‚'s manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA 20/43 Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA 21/43 Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA 22/43 Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News 23/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA 24/43 Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters 25/43 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA 26/43 Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images 27/43 British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA 28/43 Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA 29/43 The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images 30/43 Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA 31/43 The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images 32/43 Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images 33/43 UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images 34/43 Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images 35/43 Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA 36/43 Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn 37/43 Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA 38/43 Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images 39/43 Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA 40/43 Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA 41/43 Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA 42/43 Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale 43/43 Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The poll suggests that 63 per cent of young people are “absolutely certain” they will vote in the election on Thursday.
ICM surveyed 1,002 18 to 24 year olds in the UK online. |
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We’re in the middle of May, and as promised, we’ll release our first major batch of invites Soon™.We’ve planned two upcoming contests for you to win one or more invites for the 64GB Sandstone Black version of the One. As always, we welcome all of our fans to participate in our events and share the excitement with as many as possible - whether you’ve just joined us or if you’ve been with us for a while.We also want to show our gratitude to those early believers that have supported us from the beginning. So we’re giving invites to some of our earliest members to buy the 64GB version of the One. Without their encouragement and invaluable feedback, we honestly couldn’t have made it this far. We certainly wouldn’t have made this big of an impact.Our system will automatically allocate invites based on these three parameters:With this invite, you’ll finally have the chance to buy the phone you’ve been waiting for: the One. We want to protect the rights of our users and avoid accidentally creating a second-hand invite market, as such you’ll have 24 hours to make good use of your invite. If you decide not to use it, we will pass it on for you to the next person in the queue.The most active users hang out with us on our forums a lot, so we’re not worried that you will miss out on your invite. Nevertheless, do stay tuned and keep an extra eye on your inbox! |
by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
P hoto Credit: UDN
QUESTIONS OF victimization, victim-blaming, and sexual violence on college campuses have been raised in a sexual assault case at Fu Jen Catholic University. Though the case has been ongoing for many months and provoked much discussion, what has been particularly provocative of anger is the actions of the school administration, which appears to have gone out of its way to cover up the case for fear that this would tarnish the school’s reputation.
A number of the involved parties in this case are members of Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Psychology. A student surnamed Wu who was a student in the department was raped by a student surnamed Wang, after an incident involving alcohol during a party in June 2015. Sexual assault was confirmed by DNA testing after the incident was reported to the Ministry of Education. Wang was reported as being expelled after Wu filed a complaint with the school’s gender equality committee, but it is also reported that Wang later returned to the school. Wang has not made many public appearances since the beginning of the incident.
However, one year after the incident, in May 2016, Wu’s boyfriend, another Fu Jen student surnamed Chu, would release an essay on social media accusing Hsia Lin-Ching, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Dean of the College of Social Sciences, of attempting to cover up the incident by urging Wu not to report the incident to the police and not to file a complaint with the gender equality committee. Hsia’s justification was supposedly that this would reflect badly on the department as the incident involved alcohol and sex and, according to Chu, Hsia wished to depict the incident as a case of drunken consensual sex. Reportedly, Hsia stated “This incident might be the straw that breaks this department’s back”, and “I want to know what you have experienced as a woman; do not play the victim.” Chu also accused Hsia of directing teachers to harass students who expressed support for Wu on social media.
Hsia Lin-Ching during a press conference in June. Photo credit: TVBS
The post became a viral one, provoking much outrage. These events occurred during a tumultuous time for Fu Jen Catholic University, occurring at the same time as a hunger strike centered around the issue of gendered dormitory policy at the university. Both incidents raise broader questions of how gender issues are treated at the college.
Complicating matters where gender politics is concerned is that Hsia, a senior professor and a member of the environmental group Raging Citizens Act Now (人民火大聯盟), is known for her reputation as a feminist. Likewise, Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Psychology presents itself as one of the most gender progressive psychology departments in Taiwan. Particularly enraging would be that if Chu’s accusations are true, Hsia told Wu not to play the victim and seemed interested in preserving the reputation of the Department of Psychology more so than actual addressing a case of sexual assault, never mind claiming to be a feminist.
Further complicating not only gender politics but also questions of political identification would be that during a press conference, Hsia highlighted the fact that the involved students were mostly Taiwanese students but that Chu was a Chinese student studying in Taiwan. Hsia seemed to accuse Chu of stirring up trouble and then slipping back to China after making accusations against her, Chu apparently having returned to China at some point after posting his accusations on social media, probably for the summer. Some found this accusation hypocritical on Hsia’s part, given that Hsia has been accused of pro-unification Left sentiments in the past. This would not be surprising given Hsia’s background, her father being a famous KMT military official, her brother being the well-known pro-unification Left scholar Hsia Zhu-Jiu, and her husband Zheng Cun-Qi serving as Taipei Minister of Labor under Ma Ying-Jeou’s mayorship after a history of labor activism. Yet Hsia would raise the specter of China to attack Chu, as a Chinese student, when this was convenient for her.
Banner for the Facebook event created after Wu’s apology on September 21st. Banner reads “I am sorry, I am standing in the position of a victim”
Subsequently, there would be much discussion on the matter, provoking many articles written on the subject by commentators. Two online competitions mocking Hsia were also created as Facebook events. These, along with the online statements of involved parties, have been helpfully collected and organized by author and blogger Chen Jie-Hao, also known as Felis Simha, who intervened in the matter at several points.
Fu Jen’s Department of Psychology has refused to comment on events, citing privacy concerns and that the case was ongoing. But seeing as much discussion spilled over online, including online statements by the victim, her boyfriend, school administrators, and then commentators weighing on the matter from outside, this has raised questions about privacy, blame, and accountability with regard to sensitive cases of sexual assault and social media. There was much contestation regarding who exactly could claim being a victim here and how to take charges that did not necessarily have supporting evidence.
This has been raised by Hsia several times in her defense, with Hsia claiming Chu’s recollection of events included false accusations and was different from her recollections, and that Chu was acting irresponsibly in letting events explode out of control by posting on social media. Hsia generally claimed not to understand the rules of the Internet, and that Chu’s actions were stirring up an online campaign of persecution against her founded on lack of evidence. Defenders of Hsia on such grounds included students of Hsia and Hsia’s daughter Zheng Xiaota. Yet in consideration of the uneven relationship of authority between students and professors on the campus, it is also possible that if there was a cover up, these events would have never seen the light of day except by posting on social media.
Facebook post by Anonymous threatening to release the private information of all Fu Jen Catholic University professors unless the university apologizes to Wu
Nevertheless, what would be sparking of anger in recent days is that Wu would later post on Facebook, apologizing to Hsia and others for complicating matters. It remains unknown as to under what circumstances this apology was made, for example, whether Wu was forced to make this apologize. Angering of many has been the the victim of a sexual assault was apparently forced to apologize. This provoked commentary from individuals as Miao Poya and Wang Dan and an action held on Fu Jen Catholic University’s campus. Livestream video of the event showed back-and-forth between an older woman and a student surnamed Tsai, Tsai having criticized Chu’s initial statement as lacking evidence and seeking to carry out grudges and later having been accused by Chu of being an accomplice of Wang.
Hsia would also later be temporarily placed on leave by Fu Jen Catholic University’s administration. Internet hacktivist collective Anonymous would also later threaten to release the private information of all Fu Jen Catholic University professors unless the university apologized to Wu.
The situation is a complicated one which has yet to be resolved. Questions of sexual assault on college campuses, of course, are often discussed worldwide, and sorting out questions of responsibility and blame is always complicated. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen as to whether justice will be arrived at in this case. Certainly, Fu Jen’s institutional handling of events to date do not leave one with much faith in the administration. |
One of them is worsening public health, specifically a tuberculosis epidemic because of dislocation and stress, interrupted medical treatment and the outdated approach that health officials take to curing the potentially deadly disease.
“We will definitely have an outbreak in prevalence of all forms of TB after all this ends,” predicts Natalia Chursina, deputy head of the Donetsk Regional Tuberculosis Hospital.
“We see all the factors that contribute to an increase in the TB epidemic,” added Andrej Slavuckij, a medical officer for TB with the World Health Organization.
A doctor takes blood from a child TB patient at Donetsk Regional Tuberculosis Hospital for testing, on June 26. (Photo: Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Among those factors that will lead to an upsurge: the dislocation of more than 100,000 people in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts because of the fighting, inadequate access to some diagnostic centers and interrupted treatment – which can be worse than no treatment at all.
Ever since Russian-backed insurgents seized control of Donetsk in April, the main tuberculosis treatment center in the provincial capital of 1 million people has had TB patients coming and going: Some have arrived there from other war-torn cities in the oblast, such as Kramatorsk. Others have left to safer places such as Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and other cities. Some have abandoned treatment altogether, or had it interrupted.
And still more wonder how long their life-saving medicines will keep coming in a war zone.
Oksana Serduik, another physician in the Donetsk clinic, says that the hospital has enough reserves of medication to last several months, but could face a shortage by the end of the year. Its supply comes from the non-profit International HIV-AIDS Alliance, but with the fighting, it has been too dangerous for suppliers to travel between Kharkiv and Donetsk.
Any interruption of treatment promotes resistance to antibiotics in patients and could trigger multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR TB, from which only half of patents recover, compared to a recovery rate of 98 percent with treatment for normal bacteria strains.
Why TB surge is expected
By the age of 30, most Ukrainians are infected with mycobacterium tuberculosis, which becomes TB if the immune system falters. Stress, like the kind Ukrainians have been under amid revolution and war, can contribute to the weakening of immune systems.
Even before the conflicts, Ukraine had Europe’s worst rate of TB after Russia, with almost 48,000 people suffering from this disease now and 6,390 who died from it last year, according to official statistics. When the deaths of those who suffered from HIV and TB are taken into account, the death toll goes up by 2,500 people. TB, in fact, is the main cause of death of people with HIV in Ukraine. Still, the World Health Organization estimates that one in four TB patients are not officially registered.
A nurse shows a bomb shelter at Donetsk Regional Tuberculosis Hospital, on June 26. (Photo: Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
TB has a reputation as a “disease of the poor,” but actually it has spread to others in society, especially those in constant contact with people, such as shop assistants, taxi drivers, medical workers and police officers.
Without treatment, a TB carrier infects up to 15 people per year. The easiest way to catch TB is to spend at least several hours in poorly ventilated room with a TB transmitter. So prison cells have become an ideal environment for spreading the disease, with prevalence among prisoners three times higher than in the rest of the population in Ukraine. Out of nearly 150,000 prisoners in 2012, more than 3,000 were suffering from TB.
Early detection and treatment are essential. Both have been disrupted by Ukraine’s unrest. Moreover, Ukraine’s laws don’t force people to get treated if they refuse. A person who advances to the multi-drug resistant stage of TB must undergo long, painful and more expensive treatment – nearly $50 a day. Some 10,000 such cases are registered.
Prisons with TB
Serhiy Petruk, 30, quietly sits with IV on a couch in Zhdanivska prison hospital No. 3 in Donetsk Oblast watching other patients swallow their pills for treatment. The medication that he receives helps his liver, which was damaged by treatment of his MDR TB. Petruk, who worked as a miner before being sentenced to prison for stealing a cell phone, was infected with the dangerous strain in prison and then sent to this hospital six months ago.
A patient signs for his daily dose of pills for treatment of tuberculosis at Zhdanivska prison hospital in Donetsk Oblast, on June 24. (Photo: Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Zhdanivska prison is the only one in the oblast designated for treatment of convicts with TB. It is equipped with the newest equipment for diagnostics and treatment, courtesy of Doctors Without Borders, an international health organization.
Petruk has two years left in his prison sentence, during which time he hopes to be cured of TB when he returns to his wife in Donetsk Oblast’s Krasnoarmiysk, the scene of fierce fighting between Ukraine forces and Kremlin-backed forces.
Out of 540 convicts who are receiving treatment at this colony, more than half have MDR TB and 102 people suffer from TB and HIV. About 10 people have such a chronic form that they are just receiving palliative care until they die.
Despite the availability of treatment, many convicts with TB refuse to take the pills. “They say that we are conducting experiments on them,” said Ihor Hrytsun, deputy head of the prison on medical issues. “I hear these accusations for about 20 years of my work here.” Others interrupt treatment after their release.
Former convicts chat at the Donetsk-based Variant rehabilitation center, on June 26. (Photo: Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Yaroslav Strelnikov, head of the Variant non-government organization that helps former prisoners make the transition to social life, said that only 3 percent of these people continue treatment. But with the assistance of Variant, more than half of former convicts continue treatment, Strelnikov said.
Andriy, a former convict who refused to give his last name out of fear of stigmatization, said he discontinued treatment after his release from Zhdanivska TB prison several years ago because he felt fine. But then TB led one of his lungs to collapse. “I saw mist in my eyes, felt a high temperature and checked into a hospital,” he said. “So it turned out I was transmitting TB during all this time not being aware of that.”
Lack of access to fresh air and poor nutrition harm a patient’s recovery “They fed me mostly with cabbage, beetroot and carrots,” said Zhdanivska prison inmate Abessalom Gvasalia, 38, who was released in March.
For those who don’t get proper treatment, survival chances fade, said Hrytsun, the prison doctor, adding that often convicts come to them in such grave condition that it’s impossible to save them. Those with TB and HIV are “doomed,” he added.
With the current war in the Donbas, prison administrators often refuse to transport TB convicts to specialized prison hospitals because of fears of attacks on the convoys. On its way to Zhdanivska prison hospital in Khartsyzsk from Donetsk, the Kyiv Post was stopped at checkpoints of armed separatists and thoroughly searched several times.
Archaic treatment patterns
Experts also say Soviet-style treatment, with an emphasis on expensive and inefficient hospitalization, is exacerbating Ukraine’s TB problem.
Ukraine spends billions of hryvnias every year to finance some 20,000 hospital beds for TB patients, medical personnel, equipment and medication. Yet government money is still not enough to treat thousands of people with MDR TB, which is financed by the international Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Patient of Zhdanivska Prison Hospital No. 3 waits for his turn near cabinet of the doctor on June 24. (Photo: Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Perhaps aside from prisons, TB dispensaries “are the best place to catch tuberculosis, because TB is there, the windows are closed and people are coughing,” said Nicolas Cantau, Global Fund’s regional manager on Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Only an estimated 10 to 15 percent of TB patients truly need hospitalization, the WHO’s Slavuckij believes.
“But the system clings to hospital beds,” he said. Because state budgets are tied to numbers of beds, hospital administrators have no incentive to adopt other, more effective forms of treatment.
More effective than hospitalization, TB patients require easy access to quick diagnostics and clinics close to their places of residence or work, where they could receive medication without interrupting their normal lives, Slavuckij said.
He said that government money needs to be allocated on a per-patient and per-service basis, not on a per-bed basis, as it is now.
On June 22, Ukraine applied for a Global Fund grant and hopes to receive $184 million for 2015-2017, some 30 percent of which will go directly for the treatment of TB. While the Global Fund is considering the request, its experts say that, without changes in Ukraine’s diagnostic and treatment approach, the additional money won’t help much.
“If we don’t shut the TB hospitals we will not be able to overcome TB,” Cantau of Global Fund stressed.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]. |
With the Ukrainian economy in a tailspin, ordinary Ukrainians now face the unnerving reality of having to pay “new European prices” while getting their “old Ukrainian salaries,” a German newspaper wrote.
© Sputnik / Alexei Filippov Ukraine Crisis Will Not End Soon – McFaul
“It is absolutely clear that the crisis in Ukraine is just beginning,” Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper warned on Thursday.
According to IMF figures, the Ukrainian GDP plunged 7 percent in January 2014. The downfall continued through 2015 with the economic indices sagging by a hefty 17.6 percent between January and April. The forecast for the future is equally uninspiring, the paper added.
While the cost of homegrown produce has not changed much from last year, imported food is going through the roof forcing many to stop buying oranges, bananas and other foreign-grown treats.
“What we now have are European prices and old, Ukrainian, salaries,” a struggling local vegetable vendor told the newspaper.
Bananas are not the only thing millions of Ukrainians are no longer able to afford. With the hryvniya in a permanent nosedive ever since the so-called “Maidan revolution”, all imports, including first-necessity goods, clothing and household electronics are now a luxury few people can afford to buy.
There is a 100 percent spike in gas prices as well as public transport fare, Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote.
Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk blames the country’s economic woes on the loss of territories in Donbass and the need to support the million-plus refugees fleeing war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Millions feel the pinch now that the traditional subsidies for natural gas, pre-school education and things like that are gone, and many people are no longer able to pay back their bank loans – an alarming situation, which the newspaper fears may only get worse as the country plunges ever deeper into chaos… |
Josh Miller/CNET
Score one for Samsung Electronics.
After several legal defeats resulting in a product ban, Samsung finally got a court to side with it. The company said that the High Court of England and Wales ruled that its Galaxy Tab did not infringe upon Apple's tablet designs, and found 50 different recognizable traits.
The victory is a measure of relief after a few rough weeks in which a U.S. judge ordered a ban on the Galaxy Nexus , resulting in Google pulling it from the Google Play store before putting it back up Saturday. Samsung has filed an appeal and the ban has temporarily lifted.
The moves are part of a broader legal skirmish between the two largest smartphone makers in the world, and part of Apple's legal campaign against Android and any company supporting the operating system. Apple and Samsung have lawsuits filed in different courts around the world, and are looking for a ban or decision so devastating that both companies will be forced to sit down and work out a resolution. So far, both sides have only seen minor victories.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling, but reiterated its claims about the similarities between its products and Samsung's lineup.
"This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we've said many times before, we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas," said an Apple representative.
Today's ruling affects three versions of the Samsung tablet: the Galaxy Tab 10.1 , Galaxy Tab 8.9 , and Galaxy Tab 7.7 . Differences the court cited were the thickness of the devices, front and rear surface designs, and lack of physical buttons.
Samsung said it had requested this voluntary trial to get ahead of Apple's claims that Samsung's tablets copy the iPad and its design. Samsung said it welcomed today's ruling.
Updated at 7:38 a.m. PT: to include a response from Apple. |
(Image: Sonny Meddle/Rex)
We can breathe easy after all. Smoking bans are linked with falls in childhood asthma attacks and premature births, according to the biggest analysis yet of the impact of public smoking bans on child health. The finding should dispel fears that such laws could have the opposite effect because they may lead people to smoke more at home.
Several countries and some US states have tightened laws on smoking in public places over the last few years. Meanwhile, some countries, such as the Netherlands and Germany, still allow smoking in pubs and restaurants or do not strictly enforce their laws. Only about half of US states have comprehensive bans, and there are few restrictions in poorer nations.
Opponents often claim that bans could result in people smoking more at home, which would be worse for their children’s health. Asthma is one of the main concerns as second-hand smoke harms children’s airways in several ways – by making them hypersensitive to allergens in the air, for example.
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Researchers led by Jasper Been at Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands reviewed 11 studies that examined how hospital admissions for childhood asthma and preterm births changed after smoking bans came in – pregnant women who smoke are more likely to have premature babies. The studies involved more than 2.5 million births, and nearly 250,000 hospital admissions for asthma. Three studies related to the UK ban introduced between 2006 and 2007, with the rest looking at other parts of Europe or the US.
Both asthma admissions and preterm birth rates fell by about 10 per cent within a year after smoking restrictions were implemented. This was independent of any gradual changes in rates that might have been occurring anyway.
Socially unacceptable
While the studies included in this meta-analysis did not investigate the mechanisms, the authors suggest that the fall in asthma admissions is a reflection of the bans making smoking less socially acceptable. “It’s changing societal norms rather than the actual exposure of children in public places,” says Been. It is likely that more people are banning smoking in their home, he says.
The effect on preterm births could also have been caused by pregnant women being more likely to quit or cut down following a public ban, says Been.
Been says the studies could not prove that smoking bans caused these health benefits because they were not randomised trials. However, a causal link is the most likely conclusion, he says, because the analysis included several smoking bans introduced in different countries in different years, and most saw health improvements.
Alun Blum at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa says such findings are useful for countries and states where there is ongoing debate about how strict smoking bans should be, especially as hospital care for premature babies is so expensive. “This might be one of the most important things to know in order to reinforce legislation,” he says. “It’s epidemiological eye candy.”
Other studies have shown that rates of heart attack and stroke also tend to fall after smoking bans are introduced.
Journal reference: The Lancet, DOI: 1-.1016/S0140-6736(14)60082-9 |
Buy Photo Subway spokesman Jared Fogle (left) and his attorney Ron Elberger leave the Subway pitchman’s Zionsville home Tuesday. (Photo: Charlie Nye / The Star)Buy Photo
The Zionsville home of Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was searched Tuesday by federal and state authorities two months after an Indianapolis man who ran Fogle's nonprofit was arrested on child pornography charges.
Fogle has not been arrested or charged with any crime.
Here is a look at the people, organizations and situations involved:
Attorney blast reports of informant, IU porn
A pair of stories widely circulated following a police search of suspended Subway spokesman Jared Fogle's home in Zionsville are false, Fogle's attorney says.
Ron Elberger slammed the reports alleging an unnamed Florida woman -- who claims to have taped telephone conversations with Fogle -- is behind the FBI probe, and that Fogle made money in college renting out pornographic movies.
The woman told television station WWSB in Sarasota that during numerous conversations with Fogle the longtime Subway pitchman made comments she found troubling, which prompted her to contact the FBI. She also said she recorded some subsequent conversations with Fogle for investigators. Among her claims reported by the TV station: Fogle allegedly said middle school girls are hot.
"The story is a fabrication that clearly lacks credibility," Elberger said.
After the search of Fogle's home -- where investigators spent nearly 11 hours and were seen removing electronic equipment and documents -- many news outlets also reported on a 2007 VH1 Best Week Ever claim that Fogle was the owner of an expensive collection of pornographic movies as a college student, and made money renting the movies to fellow students at Indiana University.
"It is false, and absurd," Elberger said of that story.
IndyStar had not published stories based on either of those claims.
Fogle, who was suspended from his role as Subway spokesman following last week's search of his home, has not been charged with any crime.
The Subway-Fogle relationship
Marketing experts on Wednesday said the restaurant chain faces a complicated situation. Should the company sever ties with its longtime spokesman? Or was Subway smart to just suspend its relationship with Fogle while the investigation runs its course and reassess the relationship after all the facts are known?
"Brands are shaped by perceptions," said Tim Calkins, marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "The longer that people mention Jared in the same breath as child pornography, that's a huge problem for Subway."
Russell Taylor
The 43-year-old Indianapolis man was hired in 2008 to run The Jared Foundation, Fogle's nonprofit. He was fired in April after he was arrested and later charged with seven counts of production of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
Taylor tried to commit suicide May 6 while being held in the Marion County Jail. He survived and was placed on life support. His health later improved and he was put in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.
The charges
A tip from a woman who reached out to Indiana State Police prompted the investigation into Taylor, court records said. The woman said Taylor offered to send her images and videos of young girls by text message.
Officers searching Taylor's home in the 1300 block of Salem Creek Boulevard on April 29 found several digital media cards and thumb drives that included "multiple video files of nude or partially nude minor children," court documents said. More than 400 videos of child pornography were found.
Many of the images appeared to have been made in bedrooms and bathrooms at Taylor's former and current homes, police said.
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The court documents also said Taylor had an interest in bestiality. He has not been charged with any crimes related to bestiality.
Taylor and his attorneys have not commented on the charges.
His case was moved from Marion County to the federal level.
The ties to Fogle
Two thumb drives found in Taylor's home office appeared to have a link to Fogle or his foundation, according to court records.
One drive, police said, contained "commercially made child pornography from Eastern Europe similar to that seized on other investigations" and "revealed a document file with Taylor's employer listed in the file name."
In the documents, the investigating detective described another drive in which "videos of child pornography and child erotica were recovered as were documents related to his employment as director of a foundation."
The search of Fogle's home
Authorities began searching Fogle's home in the 4500 block of Woods Edge Drive before sunrise Tuesday morning. By 7:30 a.m. officers were seen removing electronics, documents and other items and loading them into an evidence truck.
Officers throughout the day moved back and forth between the evidence truck and the home. The home's blinds were drawn.
Officials with the FBI, the Indiana State Police and the U.S. attorney's office would not discuss the nature of the search.
Fogle left the home with his attorney, Ron Elberger.
Statement from Elberger
"Jared has been cooperating, and continues to cooperate, with law enforcement in their investigation of unspecified charges and looks forward to its conclusion. He has not been detained, arrested or charged with any crime or offense."
Statements from Subway
About 1 p.m. Tuesday Subway issued this statement:
"We are shocked about the news and believe it is related to a prior investigation of a former Jared Foundation employee. We are very concerned and will be monitoring the situation closely. We don't have any more details at this point."
About 5:30 p.m. Tuesday Subway issued this statement:
"Subway and Jared Fogle have mutually agreed to suspend their relationship due to the current investigation. Jared continues to cooperate with authorities and he expects no actions to be forthcoming. Both Jared and Subway agree that this was the appropriate step to take."
Subway
Subway is the world's largest submarine sandwich chain with more than 37,000 locations, according to its website. The chain got its start when Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from family friend Peter Buck to open his first sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Conn., in 1965.
Forbes estimates annual sales of the privately-held chain at $19.8 billion.
Jared Fogle
Fogle's rise as a sandwich spokesman turned the Hoosier into a celebrity. He was a 425-pound freshman at Indiana University when he embarked on an unusual diet of turkey and veggie subs in 1998. After losing 235 pounds he began to appear in television commercials for Subway.
He has since starred in more than 300 Subway commercials, appeared in numerous television shows and movies, wrote an autobiographical book and pulls in $5,000 to $10,000 for personal appearances. His net worth now may exceed $15 million, estimates celebritynetworth.com.
The Jared Foundation
Fogle founded his charitable venture in 2004 with the stated goal of eliminating childhood obesity. It's unclear how the organization was funded or if Fogle or Subway contributed money to it.
According to news reports, the foundation sent him to speak to thousands of students at hundreds of schools across the country each year, each time holding up his iconic size-60 pants to illustrate his weight loss.
It was unclear Tuesday if Taylor, the foundation's only paid employee, attended any of those events.
The foundation proved successful at raising cash. According to the nonprofit's 990-EZ tax exempt form in 2013, it raised $127,276 that year from contributions, gifts and grants. The foundation spent $148,244. On just what is unclear. The largest expenditure — $96,805 — was listed as "other expenses."
Taylor earned $40,008 annually.
The tax form listed four board members who were not paid. They are Fogle, Josh Garrett, Junyang Lou and Fogle's father, Dr. Norman Fogle.
Star reporters Michael Anthony Adams, Madeline Buckley, Jill Disis, Tim Evans, Justin L. Mack, John Russell, Chris Sikich, Vic Ryckaert and Stephanie Wang and USA Today contributed to this article.
CLOSE Subway spokesman Jared Fogle celebrates 15 years of maintaining his weight by doing webisodes with celebrities about their health and fitness efforts.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1IHupe2 |
Wilson Cruz: What are your thoughts on passing privilege and how to combat that?
Laverne Cox: You better break it down! I’m actually—I have to say—I’m exhausted because I’ve been working my tushy off. I’m invigorated by it, I really am invigorated by this conversation. Thank you, Wilson, and thank you all, to everyone. Passing privilege—I think it’s really a complicated issue. I think that it is important that trans people who do have that privilege have space to identify as trans when they want to on their own terms.
I think that it’s important to be critical of that. It’s funny—someone—I try not to read negative comments about me, but someone on social media said that—the question was: “Is Laverne Cox bad for the trans community because” and the argument was because I was “drop dead gorgeous on the cover of Time Magazine, and I don’t represent all trans people,” and I said, “I’m drop dead gorgeous?” [laughs] The funny thing—the intense thing is I don’t feel drop dead gorgeous.
Wilson: Well you are.
Laverne: I still—a few weeks ago—and this doesn’t happen every day anymore—but a few weeks ago, somebody called me a man on the street; I was called a he-she. I still get—I don’t think I’ve ever had a passing privilege, personally. When somebody is calling you a man on the street, I don’t feel like I’m passing. I think the whole thing… The question, Janet [Mock] speaks beautifully about this because passing as myself.
Wilson: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Laverne: You know I think it’s like, I’m a woman. I’m passing as myself, I’m a woman, I’m a black woman, I’m a trans woman. For me throughout my life and transition, I’ve embraced… early on, I did not embrace being trans. I was hoping to transition and to pass and to have that privilege, and I didn’t, it didn’t happen. I would still walk down the street, and so many of my sisters and brothers and siblings, trans siblings in general, have experienced that. When they’re walking down the street and people call them out of their names.
For me, I had to begin to empower myself and say that there’s nothing wrong with me being trans. There’s nothing wrong with me being recognized as trans because being trans is beautiful. I think different people look different ways. I think it’s really important to, I don’t want to demonize anyone who might pass or blend in, as a cis person, maybe read as cis. The passing term is so problematic. I’m not going to demonize them because everybody has their own journey and their own struggle. |
Gandolfini's last supper: Troubled actor 'downed cocktails, shots and beers and ate fried prawns and foie gras' just HOURS before fatal heart attack
Actor, 51, had heart attack in his hotel after family day out in Rome
Found in the bathroom by his teenage son who raised the alarm
Gandolfini 'had been excited about visiting his parents' homeland'
He is survived by his wife Deborah, daughter Liliana and son Michael
Sopranos star James Gandolfini drank cocktails, beer and shots as he dined with his son on a family holiday in Italy just hours before suffering a fatal heart attack, it has been claimed.
The actor, who was 51, had struggled with alcohol addiction and had been seen attending several Alcoholics Anonymous meetings back in New York, according to reports.
A source at the Hotel Boscolo in Rome has claimed the actor ordered pina coladas, shots of rum and beer during the al fresco meal on Wednesday evening, as it emerged doctors battled for 40 minutes to save him after he suffered a heart attack in his room just hours later.
'Final pictures': A holidaymaker took this photograph of James Gandolfini enjoying dinner in Rome on Tuesday night - around 24 hours before he passed away suddenly following a suspected heart attack
Tests: The mortuary of Umberto hospital where Gandolfini was pronounced dead on Wednesday night. His body will undergo an autopsy on Thursday, as is required by Italian law
Mario Sesti, director of the film festival which the star was due to attend this weekend, claimed that Gandolfini was excited by his Italian vacation because of his family's link to the country.
'He was so happy to be in Italy, to reconnect with his Italian roots, and he was very excited to come here and receive this award,' he told USA Today .
Gandolfini was born and brought up in New Jersey, but both his parents were Italian. The Taormini Film Festival will host a tribute to the actor in place of a round-table discussion which Gandolfini had agreed to take part in. The actor and his family had spent a 'beautiful day out together' in Rome before his tragic passing, according to Gandolfini's assistant, Tom Richardson. In a sign that he was generous until the end, a holidaymaker claimed on Facebook that Gandolfini, who was staying at the same hotel, witnessed a boy stealing a few Euros from her and 'ran after me in to the elevator to make sure that I was ok.' 'Good man,' she added.
Married to the mob: In character with his Sopranos co-stars Edie Falco, Robert Iler and Jamie-Lynn Sigler
According to Mike Sullivan, a close friend of Gandolfini's, Richardson told him: ' When they got back to the hotel, Jimmy went to use the restroom. And something happened in there.
'His sister said he was alive when they took him out in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.'
When paramedics arrived to take Gandolfini to hospital, they found him lying on the bathroom floor, according to hotel owner Antonio D'amore.
The actor was taken to hospital at 10.20pm, and was pronounced dead at 11pm when efforts to revive him were unsuccessful, according to Dr Modini.
Gandolfini's first wife Marcy Wudarski, Michael's mother, is said to have immediately booked a flight to Italy to comfort her son after learning of the actor's death.
The couple were married for three years until they divorced in 2002.
Divorce papers from 2002 show Wudarski accused him of battling serious issues with drugs and alcohol which saw him 'punch himself in the face with frustration'.
Hotel: Gandolfini had a heart attack in his bathroom at the Hotel Boscolo, pictured, in Rome Emergency services: An ambulance parked in the square outside the hotel today
The scene: People walk in the entrance of the morgue of Policlinico Umberto I hospital where the body of actor Gandolfini was brought after he was reported dead late Wednesday At the hospital: Members of the media gather outside the emergency department of Policlinico Umberto I According to GQ , those who worked with the actor on the HBO drama from 1999 to 2007 saw him frequently 'berate himself in disgust, curse and smack the back of his own head'. Wudarski also alleged that he dated a string of women, including a stripper.
In response, Gandolfini claimed that his wife constantly threatened to kill herself and blamed her emotional instability and volatile temper for the marriage breakdown. He filed for divorce on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment. At the time his wife said his departure had come as a shock.
Gandolfini's second wife, former model Deborah Lin, was with the star in Italy along with their daughter Liliana. The pair married in Hawaii in 2008, and Liliana was born last October. After his daughter's birth, Gandolfini said he was 'thrilled' to become a father for the second time.
Grief: Family spokesman Michael Kobold giving a statement on Gandolfini's death Tributes: Fans leaves flower and gifts outside of Gandolfini's New York City apartment on Thursday The actor rose to fame playing a hitman in the 1993 film True Romance, and roles in films such as Terminal Velocity and Get Shorty followed.
However, it was not until his breakout role in 1999 in the hit television show The Sopranos that he became a household name. He played the powerful mob boss Tony Soprano, whose stressful gangster and family life left him needing to visit a psychiatrist, played by Lorraine Bracco. His compelling portrayal of the ruthless mob boss who suffered from panic attacks saw him win three Emmy Awards for the role.
The character apparently died in the series finale, although the audience was never shown the moment of his death, with the screen just fading to black instead.
Speaking to Vanity Fair about the ending, Gandolfini said: ‘What the f***? I mean, after all I went through, all this death, and then it’s over like that?' Gandolfini's managers Mark Armstrong and Nancy Sanders paid tribute to the star, saying in a statement: 'Our hearts are shattered and we will miss him deeply. He and his family were part of our family for many years and we are all grieving.'
Breakout role: Gandolfini is best known for his role as Tony Soprano in hit HBO series The Sopranos
Compelling: Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) and Lorraine Bracco, as Dr. Jennifer Melfi, in a scene from the fourth season of The Sopranos
Tribute: Sopranos creator David Chase, pictured with Gandolfini, compared the actor with Mozart
First big role: Gandolfini in 1993's True Romance, in which he also played a mobster Cable channel HBO, which hosted The Sopranos until the show ended in 2007, called the actor a 'special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone, no matter their title or position, with equal respect.' 'We're all in shock and feeling immeasurable sadness at the loss of a beloved member of our family,' HBO added.
'He touched so many of us over the years with his humor, his warmth and his humility. Our hearts go out to his wife and children during this terrible time. He will be deeply missed by all of us.' The Sopranos creator David Chase called his leading actor 'a genius'. He said: 'Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time. A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. 'I remember telling him many times, "You don't get it. You're like Mozart." There would be silence at the other end of the phone. '
Devoted dad: James was said be 'thrilled' at the arrival of his daughter last year; he is pictured carrying her to lunch with his wife in May
Family tragedy: The actor was married twice, to Deborah Lin, left, mother of his nine month old daughter, and right, Marcy Wudarski the mother of son Michael who has flown to Rome to be with him
James Gandolfini marries Deborah Lin. The couple tied the knot on the islands of Hawaii over the Labor Day weekend in 2008
Mr Chase added: 'He wasn't easy sometimes. But he was my partner, he was my brother in ways I can't explain and never will be able to explain.'
Chris Albrecht, who commissioned the crime drama for HBO and approved Gandolfini for the role, told Deadline : 'Absolutely stunned. I got the word from Lorraine Bracco and just got off with Brad Grey who had just heard from David Chase.
'We had all become a family. This is a tremendous loss.'
And Steve Schrirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri in the show, said upon hearing the news: 'I had to get up and leave. It was like being told a brother had died. Jimmy Gandolfini was as great a friend as he was an actor and a human being.
'The phone hasn’t stopped. I spoke to a lot of the guys from The Sopranos. We were crying. People joke about us being a family. But we are a family.'
Complex character: James Gandolfini alongside actors Tony Sirico Federico Castellucio, and Steven Van Zandt in The Sopranos
The mob boss: Gandolfini was the head of a mob family in show Sopranos Celebrated: James and his on-screen wife Edie Falco both won at the 2000 Golden Globes for their roles as Tony and Carmela Soprano
His co-star Joseph Gannascoli, who plays Vito Spatafore in the show, told MailOnline that Gandolfini was a 'tremendous person'.
An emotional Gannascoli said: 'He came to my wedding with his son and spoke beautiful words in front of everyone to me and my wife.'
He said that the greatest tragedy was that Gandolfini's son and daughter would grow up without their father. The actor said that Gandolfini was a generous guy with no airs about him who made everyone feel comfortable.
He told of a time that Gandolfini had been scheduled to make an appearance at his Brooklyn restaurant and despite being ill and it pouring with rain, he took pictures with everyone in a line of people who had queued around the block.
Gandolfini's sudden and unexpected death has prompted a huge outpouring of grief from those who worked with the actor, with many celebrities taking to Twitter to pay tribute.
Actor and friend Gilles Marini revealed on his Facebook page that Gandolfini had travelled to Italy with his son Michael for a 'boy trip'.
Tribute: Gandolfini's picture is displayed in the window of a restaurant in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York following his sudden death on Wednesday
Versatile: James Gandolfini starred opposite Twilight's Kristen Stewart in the heartwarming 2010 movie Welcome To The Rileys
'I am heartbroken. My bud James Gandolfini just died. Last Saturday he told me at our kids graduation [that] he was so happy to go with his son to Italy. A boy trip!' Marini wrote.
He added: 'It was an honor to have met this man, such a great Dad! I spent so much time with James son teaching him soccer. I feel for that kid it must be so hard right now for little [Michael].'
'RIP James Gandolfini. A great friend,' wrote Jeff Daniels, his co-star in Broadway's God of Carnage.
'I am so deeply saddened by the untimely passing of sweet James Gandolfini!', tweeted Christina Applegate, his co-star in the 2004 comedy Surviving Christmas. 'My heart is broken for his family!! I’m in shock.'
Steve Carell, who was about to work with the larger-than-life star in HBO Films' Bone Wars, added: 'James Gandolfini. Unbelievably sad news. A fine man.'
In his younger days: As a basketball star at Ridge High School, Park Ridge in New Jersey Following the success of the HBO television series - which finished in 2007 - he continued to make big screen appearances in critically acclaimed films including In The Loop and The Taking of Pelham 123.
Senior year: James Gandolfini, in 1979 at Park Ridge High School, New Jersey
He appeared alongside Twilight actress Kristen Stewart in the heartwarming drama Welcome to the Rileys and voiced the 'Wild Thing' Carol in Where the Wild Things Are.
He recently played Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oscar nominated film Zero Dark Thirty.
In his personal life, Gandolfini made his first public appearance with Deborah at the premiere of the second half of the sixth and final series of The Sopranos in March 2007.
At their wedding a year later, they exchanged vows in front of family and friends at Honolulu's Central Union Church.
Deborah wore a white gown made of Italian lace, while the church was decorated with white lilies and rhododendrons.
Born in Westwood, New Jersey, Gandolfini graduated from Park Ridge High School, where he cut his teeth acting in school plays, and went on to study communications at Rutgers University.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has described himself as a 'huge fan' of Gandolfini.
'It's an awful shock. James Gandolfini was a fine actor, a Rutgers alum and a true Jersey guy,' he said.
In his school days: Gandolfini poses with a female friend in a picture from his High School year book in 1979; he was voted 'class flirt'
Gandolfini started his professional acting career treading the boards in New York, and made his Broadway debut in the 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin.
Although his first film role came before in the 1987 comedy horror movie Shock! Shock! Shock! and also had a minor role in the Melanie Griffith thriller A Stranger Among Us.
Gandolfini had a number of projects completed before his death including Violet & Daisy starring Saoirse Ronan, and another project by director Nicole Holofcener starring Catherine Keener.
In an interview in December last year, Gandolfini sounded upbeat about a slew of smaller roles following the breathtaking blackout ending in 2007 of The Sopranos.
'I'm much more comfortable doing smaller things,' Gandolfini said.
'I like them. I like the way they're shot; they're shot quickly. It's all about the scripts - that's what it is - and I'm getting some interesting little scripts.'
LOVING TRIBUTES: CELEBRITIES EXPRESS THEIR GRIEF ON TWITTER Broadway: James with actor Jeff Daniels ' RIP James Gandolfini. A great friend,' wrote Jeff Daniels, his co-star in Broadway's God of Carnage. 'I am so deeply saddened by the untimely passing of sweet James Gandolfini!' tweeted Christina Applegate, his co-star in the 2004 comedy Surviving Christmas. 'My heart is broken for his family!! I’m in shock.' Steve Carell, who was about to work with the larger-than-life star in HBO Films' Bone Wars, tweeted: 'James Gandolfini. Unbelievably sad news. A fine man.' Olivia Wilde, who starred with the actor in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, said: 'James Gandolfini was a kind, funny, wonderful guy. I'm so lucky to have worked with him. Sending love to his family. Such a sad, sad day.' Patrick Wilson wrote: 'R.I.P. James Gandolfini. So awful. What a fantastic actor…so much to say but I can’t even process. My condolences to his family.' Bush rocker Gavin Rossdale said: 'james gandolfini– so sad what an incredible actor. more loss. be good to each other. it’s all so short.' Actor Jonah Hill: 'I'm truly heartbroken to hear that James Gandolfini has passed away. He is one of my all time favorite actors. Tragic loss.'
Touching tribute: Actress Rose McGowan posted this picture of herself and James on Twitter Rose McGowan posted a picture of herself with the actor, saying: 'I am heartbroken about James Gandolfini. He was a gentle giant and great man. I love this picture, I loved him.'
Carson Daly: 'SO SAD! PRAYING FOR HIS FAMILY- wow- Shocked by this news today….' Josh Henderson: 'Just read about James Gandolfini.. Never met him but what a damn good actor. Gone way to soon. Rip brother.. #prayers' Dominic Monaghan: 'Oh man James gandolfini died. Fantastic in the soprano, and true romance. A great talent.' Alyssa Milano: 'Rest in peace, Mr. Gandolfini.'
Rainn Wilson: 'Arrivederci, James Gandolfini. You were one of the great greats. We’ll miss your dangerous, big heart. #RIPGandolfini' Josh Groban: 'Thank you James Gandolfini for some of the most brilliant tv moments of all time. So sad!!!' Giuliana Rancic: 'Just heard James Gandolfini has died of a heart attack at the age of 51. So incredibly sad.' Leah Remini: 'R.I.P James Gandolfini. My prayers to his family and friends. He will certainly be missed by us who loved watching him' |
JavaScript can access the current URL in parts. For this URL:
http://css-tricks.com/example/index.html?s=flexbox
window.location.protocol = "http:"
= "http:" window.location.host = "css-tricks.com"
= "css-tricks.com" window.location.pathname = "example/index.html"
= "example/index.html" window.location.search = "?s=flexbox"
So to get the full URL path in JavaScript:
var newURL = window.location.protocol + "//" + window.location.host + "/" + window.location.pathname + window.location.search
A bit of a more modern way of working with URLs is the URL() global method.
If you need to break up up the pathname, for example, a URL like http://css-tricks.com/blah/blah/blah/index.html, you can split the string on "/" characters
var pathArray = window.location.pathname.split('/');
Then access the different parts by the parts of the array, like
var secondLevelLocation = pathArray[0];
To put that pathname back together, you can stitch together the array and put the "/"'s back in:
var newPathname = ""; for (i = 0; i < pathArray.length; i++) { newPathname += "/"; newPathname += pathArray[i]; } |
Business investment in the UK: Guidance for overseas businesses Guidance on why overseas companies should set up and locate their businesses in the UK. Includes information on UK business investment and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) opportunities.
Department for International Trade Sweden Department for International Trade (DIT) helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high-quality investment to the UK’s dynamic economy.
Overseas Business Risk - Sweden Information on key security and political risks which UK businesses may face when operating in Sweden.
Set up a business What you need to do to start a business: choose a legal structure, see if you need licences and insurance, learn about reliefs and benefits
UK Science & Innovation Network in Sweden Science and innovation are at the heart of government strategy for promoting prosperity and growth. Research and knowledge is increasingly developed and transferred through international collaboration which provides opportunities to work with the best in the world, exchange students and researchers, and gain access to large scale international facilities; leading to mutual benefits for the UK and Sweden. |
Is prescription diet cat food really necessary, or is it simply overpriced and a great way for your vet to earn extra income? Most vets are honest, and will only prescribe a specific food for certain medical problems or conditions if the dietary needs are legitimate. Feline epilepsy, diabetes, and other diseases can cause your cat to have special nutritional needs, but it is normally possible to find a quality food that meets these needs without paying more than you have to. Prescription diet cat food may be recommended, but it is rarely necessary if you are willing to do the research and find foods that meet your pet requirements for less.
Organic cat food is made from all natural ingredients, with no chemicals, preservatives or additives, or added sugars and fats. If your cat is overweight then a high quality canned food may be given in the recommended amounts, and the exercise that your pet gets should be increased to burn off additional calories. A prescription diet cat food will usually cost more, but in many cases the same nutrition and dietary requirements can be found in a top quality canned food that does not require any prescription.
A feline diabetes diet will restrict the sugars and certain other nutrients that your cat consumes, to help your cat use insulin effectively and control blood sugar levels better.
Prescription diet cat food may be necessary in some cases, and your vet can help you determine whether this choice is the only one available. Ask your vet why the specific food is needed, and then do your research to see what your other options may be. Dental diet cat food will promote good dental health, but there are some other food types and brands that may also offer this benefit for less. Urinary tract infections and other urinary problems may require a food with an altered pH level or certain urinary supplements, but even these may be available without a prescription. |
The Lena Baker headstone in Mt. Vernon Baptist Church cemetery, in Cuthbert, GA
Lena Baker (June 8, 1900 – March 5, 1945)[1] was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia who was convicted of capital murder of her white employer, Ernest Knight. She was executed by the state of Georgia in 1945.[2] Baker was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electrocution. [3][2]
The slaying and execution came during a decades-long period of state suppression of civil rights of black citizens in Georgia by the white-dominated society. It had disenfranchised blacks since the turn of the century, and imposed legal racial segregation and second-class status. At the time of the trial, a local newspaper reported that Baker was held as a "slave woman" by Knight, and that she shot him in self-defense during a struggle.[4]
In 2005, sixty years after her execution, the state of Georgia granted Baker a full and unconditional pardon. A biography was published about Baker in 2001, and it was adapted for the feature film The Lena Baker Story (2008), chronicling the events of her life, trial, and execution.
Early life [ edit ]
Lena Baker was born June 8, 1900, to a family of sharecroppers and raised near Cuthbert, Georgia. Her family, which included three siblings, moved to the county seat when she was a child. As a youth, she and her siblings all worked as farm laborers; she chopped cotton for a farmer named J.A. Cox.[5]
By the 1940s, Baker was the mother of three children and worked as a maid to support her family.
Killing [ edit ]
In 1944, Baker started working for Ernest Knight, an older white man who had broken his leg. He owned a gristmill and, after they started a sexual relationship, he would keep her there imprisoned for days at a time in "near slavery."[4] Knight's son and townspeople disliked their relationship, and tried to end it through threatening Baker.[2] One night an argument between the two ensued, during which Knight threatened Baker with an iron bar. As she tried to escape, they struggled over his pistol and she shot and killed him. She immediately reported the incident and said she had acted in self-defense.
Trial and execution [ edit ]
Lena Baker was charged with capital murder and stood trial on August 14, 1944. The trial was presided over by Judge William "Two Gun" Worrill, who kept a pair of pistols in view on his judicial bench.[5] At her trial, Baker testified that Knight forced her to go with him on that Saturday evening of April 29. The town disliked their sexual relationship and the county sheriff had warned her to stay away from Knight, or risk being sent to jail. But she was afraid of Knight's physical abuse; he had forced relations on her. His son had also beat her on another occasion, warning her to stay away from his father.[4] Baker said she got away from Knight that night and slept in the woods. As she returned to Cuthbert the next morning, Knight cornered her, taking her to the gristmill and locking her in. When Knight returned, Baker told him she was leaving. According to Baker, they "tussled over the pistol," after he threatened her with an iron bar.[3] She immediately reported it to J.A. Cox, the county coroner who had previously employed her.
The all-white, all-male jury rejected Baker's plea of self-defense and convicted her of capital murder by the end of the first day of the trial.[5] This charge carried an automatic death sentence. In addition to the legal racial segregation imposed by the white-dominated Georgia legislature, it had disenfranchised most blacks since the turn of the century, which disqualified them from jury service. After Baker's court-appointed counsel, W.L. Ferguson, filed an appeal, he dropped Baker as a client.[5]
Governor Ellis Arnall granted Baker a 60-day reprieve so that the Board of Pardons and Parole could review the case, but in January 1945 it denied Baker clemency.[6] She was transferred to Georgia State Prison at Reidsville on February 23, 1945.[6]
What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself. Where I was I could not overcome it. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me. I am ready to go. I am one in the number. I am ready to meet my God. I have a very strong conscience. Baker's last words[5]
Baker was executed on March 5, 1945.[2] She was buried in an unmarked grave behind Mount Vernon Baptist Church, where she had sung in the choir.
Posthumous pardon [ edit ]
In 1998, members of the congregation arranged for a simple headstone for her grave.[6] That year two articles were published about her case.[7]
In 2003, descendants of Baker's family began to mark the anniversary of her death and Mother's Day at her graveside. That year Baker's grandnephew, Roosevelt Curry, requested an official pardon from the state, aided by the Georgia-based prison advocacy group, Prison and Jail Project.
In 2005, the Parole Board granted Baker a full and unconditional pardon.[2][6][5] Commentators have suggested that in 1945, the Board of Pardons and Parole could have lowered her charge to voluntary manslaughter, which would have carried an average 15-year sentence and saved her life.[2][8]
Representation in other media [ edit ]
In 2001 Lela Bond Phillips, a professor at Andrew College, published a biography, The Lena Baker Story (ISBN 978-1930897076) This was adapted as a feature film of the same name, released in 2008.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
The wife of Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain was arrested and charged with domestic battery earlier this year, and she'll have her date in court next month. Rebecca McBrain will face a judge on May 3 after being accused of trying to stab her husband*, and throw logs at him.
* 4/18 Update: The Boca News Now website, our original source, has altered its story to report that it is now unclear whether the man who was allegedly attacked is Nicko McBrain. The rest of this article has been updated to reflect this new information.
The couple live near Boca Raton, Fla., and the incident allegedly occurred at their home on Feb. 24, according to the Boca News Now . She was not successful in her stabbing attempt, but the logs caused minor injuries and she was arrested and booked at the Palm Beach County Jail.
Bravewords reports that the logs were sitting in a fire pit behind the home. The 50-year-old was released on $3,000 bond, and has entered a not guilty plea.
In the early 2000's, the McBrains worked together to produce Rebecca's 'Voyager' album. Nicko produced the project and drummed on all tracks in addition to writing five of the eight songs. The couple is thought to have met in 1984 at the Button South in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Earlier this month, Iron Maiden announced seven Maiden England Tour dates in the United States. |
As if the hysteria of the royal wedding and Kate Middleton’s fashion choices in the royal tour of Canada were not enough, it seems like the Kate mania continues. The Duchess of Cambridge scores another two crowd pleasers, first transforming her memorable wedding dress into London’s main tourist attraction for the summer, and then making yet another fashion statement by reviving one of Princess’ Diana’s favorite sapphire and diamond earrings.
Record crowds, more than half a million people are expected to visit the exhibition entitled The Royal Wedding: A story of great British design, which has already opened to the public and will run until October 3rd. Buckingham Palace’s Ballroom will feature items from the glorious wedding in April, but the main attraction will be the stunning £250,000 Alexander McQueen dress that made history back in April.
The ivory and white satin dress together with the veil and Cartier “Halo” tiara are displayed on a royal mannequin with no head in the dark ballroom, with the only light on it. The dramatic atmoshere have caused a bit of a stir, Queen Elizabeth exclaimed in a private viewing of the exhibition that the ensemble is “dreadful” and “horrid” and “it’s made to look very creepy”, at which the Duchess said it has a “3D effect”.
The dress’s craftmanship realized by The Royal School Of Needlework at Hampton Court can be closely admired, and it is said to be so beautiful that it was not surrounded by glass so that visitors could perfectly see the details.
Other elements of the exhibit feature Kate Middleton’s Alexander McQueen handmade shoes which now can be admired in full detail, the Queen’s Cartier “Halo” Tiara loaned to the Duchess for the wedding day, the Robinson Pelham diamond earrings – a gift from Kate’s parents, a silk replica of the bouquet and the eight-tiered wedding cake designed by Fiona Cairns which will be displayed in the State dining room. In addition, 19 state rooms, a display of Faberge jewelry, the State Landau carriage and the Rolls-Royce Phantom which transported the royal couple on the wedding day and highlights from the royal wedding are also part of the tour.
Royal family enthusiasts will have to pay a £17.50 ticket, which is about $29 for the audio tour lasting two and a half hours. Unusual setting though, taking into account the theme of the display but I bet it’s worth it, just to see Kate Middleton’s wedding dress.
And if you needed another proof of the Duchess fitting so well into her royal role, recently she reinvented the family’s jewelry by wearing Diana’s favorite sapphire and diamond earrings given to her by Prince William. She already had Lady Di’s engagement ring, but now her fashionista sense modelled the studs into drop earrings, transforming them from vintage into modern. She was seen wearing them several times, last month at Wimbledon and recently in the North American Tour.
Amazing how Kate Middleton manages to reinvent herself and how everything she touches turns into gold. After all, everything she wears is now a matter of interest worldwide. What’s Kate’s next move? |
Here's a recap of notable crime reports handled by officers at Tenderloin Station in recent weeks. All reports come directly from SFPD, unless otherwise noted.
Daylight Mugging On Mission Street
Two men said to be between 25 and 35 approached a 23-year-old man from behind near the intersection of Mission and 8th streets at 3:00pm on May 16, struck him, and stole his wallet. The two suspects fled on foot in an unknown direction and have not been identified.
Assailant Strikes Man, Steals Backpack
At 12:50pm on May 14, a 52-year-old man standing near the intersection of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue was approached by a man of unknown age who punched him, causing him to fall. The suspect assaulted the victim while he was on the ground and stole the man’s backpack, which included clothing.
Man Punched, Stabbed On Turk St.
A 55-year-old man walking on Turk Street between Jones and Market around 5:50pm on May 13 was approached by a man said to be in his twenties who punched the victim and then stabbed him with a knife. The suspect has not been identified and the victim was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Early-morning Verbal Altercation Escalates To Assault
Around 2:35am on May 13, a man said to be in his twenties got into a verbal argument with a 38-year-old man near the intersection of O’Farrell and Mason Streets. The younger man punched the victim, who was transported to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. The suspect fled east on O’Farrell on foot.
SFPD Town Hall On Officer-involved Shooting
On Wednesday, May 10, SFPD Chief William Scott held a town hall to share details about a May 3 officer-involved shooting in the Subway sandwich shop at 960 Market Street.
Commander of Investigations Greg McEachern said the two officers involved were responding to an unrelated vandalism call nearby when witnesses reported a physical altercation occurring at the Subway.
The officers responded to the sandwich shop and found three subjects in a fight behind the counter, with one man, stabbing a Subway employee. The employee and the other person behind the counter attempted to flee, but Flusche followed them, knife in hand.
Officer Kenneth Cha shot Flusche in the right lower back, and the suspect died from the wound. The Subway employee was treated for injuries and has since been released from the hospital. Police have video footage from body-worn cameras on both officers that responded to the scene, as well as Subway surveillance footage and some external camera footage.
The incident is under ongoing investigation by the San Francisco Police Department’s Homicide Detail, the SFPD Internal Affairs Division, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Independent Investigations Bureau, the Department of Police Accountability and the Medical Examiner’s Office.
Would-be Purse Snatcher Takes Mobile Phone
An unknown suspect attempted to steal a 62-year-old woman’s purse around 7:30pm on May 11 near the intersection of Mason and Ellis streets. The victim fell to the ground and dropped her phone, which the suspect picked up and fled on foot.
Dog Recovered, Three Arrested After Four-on-one Attack
Around 11:15pm on May 9, four suspects — three men aged 20, 21, and 33 and a 22-year-old female — approached a 21-year old woman near the intersection of Eddy and Taylor streets, attacked her and stole her dog, cell phone, wallet and money.
The suspects all fled in a vehicle traveling east on Eddy Street, but the woman and the 20 and 21-year-old men were identified and taken into custody by police later. The victim’s dog was recovered. The 33-year-old male suspect remains at large.
Anyone with information about any of the incidents listed above is asked to call the SFPD tip line at (415) 575-4444 or Text-a-Tip to TIP411 and begin the text message with 'SFPD.' Any tipsters can remain anonymous.
Tenderloin Station Captain Teresa Ewins holds monthly community meetings on 6pm on the last Tuesday of each month at 301 Eddy St. This month's meeting is scheduled for May 30th. |
Launcher List Indicator is a simple AppIndicator that makes it easy to switch between multiple lists of Unity Launcher icons (apps pinned to the launcher).
The indicator allows saving applications that are pinned to the Unity launcher as a list that can later be restored from the its menu.
Update 1: Launcher List Indicator now includes options to hide the indicator label (so only an icon is displayed), toggle Unity launcher visibility, and to change the indicator icon.
Also, the app now ships with a monochrome icon, and I've set it as default for the package from the WebUpd8 PPA. You can still use the old icon if you want, by selecting Extras > Change icon from the indicator menu, and then selecting the colored Launcher List Indicator icon (indicator-icon-orig.png) from /usr/share/pixmaps/.
This is useful if you often use the same computer for multiple purposes. For instance, you can have a profile with applications that you only use for work, another profile with for web-related stuff, and another one for gaming, and easily switch between them using Launcher List Indicator.(so only an icon is displayed),, and toAlso, the app now ships with a monochrome icon, and I've set it as default for the package from the WebUpd8 PPA. You can still use the old icon if you want, by selectingfrom the indicator menu, and then selecting the colored Launcher List Indicator icon (indicator-icon-orig.png) from
Update 2: the AppIndicator features a new option which allows clearing the Unity Launcher (removes favorites, so you can easily create a new profile). This can be accessed from the indicator menu > Extras > Clear Launcher.
Update 3: Launcher List Indicator can now automatically change the profile based on the current workspace:
To access this feature, select "Toggle workspace switcher" from the "Extras" menu.
After configuring this for the first time, the "Toggle workspace switcher" menu item can be used to enable / disable this feature. To reconfigure the profiles used for each workspace, use the Extras > Reconfigure Workspace List (this only shows up after it was configured once).
middle-click on indicator calls dialog for saving current launcher as a profile
hovering over indicator icon and scrolling up switched lists backwards, scrolling down - switches forward
Install Launcher List Indicator
To install Launcher List Indicator, you can use its official PPA. To add the PPA and install the indicator in Ubuntu, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:launcher-list-indicator/ppa sudo apt update sudo apt install launcher-list-indicator
Once installed, launch it from Dash.
To have Launcher List Indicator start automatically on login, you'll need to add it to startup. To do this, launch "Startup Applications" from Dash, click "Add", enter anything you want under "Name", and use "launcher-list-indicator" in the "Command" field.
Here's an updated screenshot which includes these new features:If you don't want to add the PPA, you can download the deb from HERE Report any bugs you may find @ GitHub |
A city man who was armed with a gun and walking around a West Side apartment complex Monday was subdued with a Taser by police after he refused to put the weapon down, according to a police report.Michael Hendricks, 45, is charged with unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon and refusing to obey a police officer, jail records state. He remained at the Metropolitan Detention Center on Tuesday on a $2,000 bond.Hendricks told a leasing agent Monday morning at the Ventana Canyon Apartments at 10300 Golf Course NW that he was unhappy the leasing office did not offer water and he had to drink coffee, according to the police report. Hendricks, who is a tenant at the complex, left and returned carrying a handgun.The leasing agent fled the office and called management and co-workers to alert them, the police report states. Someone also called police.The employees tried to leave and avoid Hendricks, but met up with him in a breezeway, where he allegedly pointed his gun up in the air and began to lower it, as the employees ran away.An officer who arrived on scene tried to talk to Hendricks, who said he was "doing what he had to do to protect his family," the police report states. He also asked to speak to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and the Secret Service. Hendricks said he wanted to speak with the Department of Justice and saw nothing alarming about his actions, according to the police report.Hendricks told the officer that he had been diagnosed with depression, but that his other mental health issues were none of the officer's business, the report reads.Police repeatedly ordered Hendricks to drop the weapon, put his hands in the air and to not approach officers. Hendricks did not comply. Instead, he put the gun in his pocket and walked toward police.Hendricks continued to disobey police commands and was shocked with a Taser by police. He resisted arrest and after a brief struggle, four police officers were able to handcuff him, the police report states.Police found a .357 revolver, which was loaded with five bullets, that Hendricks had been carrying, according to the police report. |
6 years ago
Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama says that federal law enforcement agencies have "bigger fish to fry" than prosecuting marijuana users in Colorado and Washington, which voted in November to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
Obama made explicit in an interview to air Friday on ABC News that prosecution of marijuana users in the two states would be placed low on his Justice Department's list of law enforcement priorities, but that certain issues must still be ironed out as more states could pass similar legislation.
"This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law," Obama said. "I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?"
In a statement Monday, U.S. Attorney John Walsh said that the Department of Justice is "reviewing" the initiatives passed in both states and that the department's "responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged."
"Regardless of any changes in state law, including the change that will go into effect on December 10 in Colorado, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal under federal law," Walsh said.
The Justice Department is familiar with negotiating contradictory state and federal laws on marijuana. Aside from the two states which have legalized recreational use of marijuana, 18 states and the District of Columbia have allowed legal use of the drug for medical reasons.
Marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug by the Drug Enforcement Agency, meaning it's dangerous and has no medical use. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, ecstasy, and psychedelic mushrooms. Medical marijuana advocates say it should be listed under Schedule II, comparing it to other prescription painkillers that have a high potential for abuse.
In California alone, more than 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries are in business, employing thousands and providing state and local governments as much as $105 million in taxes each year.
But federal prosecutors are getting tougher. Last year, law enforcement agents seized 3.9 million plants in the Golden State and were poised to collect more this year.
Marijuana advocates say the attack collides with California's law and goes against a campaign promise by Obama to not circumvent the state's relaxed rules.
A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted after November's election indicated 64% of Americans felt the federal government should not take steps to enforce federal anti-marijuana laws in states where it has been made legal for recreational use.
A Quinnipiac University poll conducted between November 28 and December 3 showed 51% of registered voters nationwide thought marijuana should be made legal in the United States, compared to 44% who thought it should remain illegal.
CNNMoney's Jose Paliery contributed to this report. |
You’ve probably heard the expression “necessary evil.” Usually it applies to something unpleasant that we do not like but are forced to accept in order to achieve a particular objective. Taxes, for example.
Recently however, I heard this idiom applied to recruitment consultants. Not by a client or candidate, but by a recruiter! Even worse, he was a team leader.
Let’s examine this statement for a moment.
Are we “necessary”? The fact is that when it comes to recruiting, clients have a lot of options:
They could head-hunt candidates for themselves. Of course, why would the client take time away from what they’re good at to spend time on something in which they have no training, experience or aptitude? They could advertise on job boards. Assuming they know where to advertise, and are able to write good ad copy, they then have to sift through an inbox full of resumes — most of which are unsuitable. Oh, and they’ll have to pay full rate card for the advert. They could search for resumes on job boards and call candidates directly. Assuming they’re willing make the investment of time and money, what would they say? Are they able to qualify candidates effectively? Do they know how to sell an opportunity? Do they know how to turn a “not interested” into 2-3 candidate referrals? They could advertise the job on their own website. But will they generate sufficient traffic to get a decent response? Even if their company is well known and well regarded, they’re only attracting active job seekers. What about the great candidates who are not looking a job? Advertise in local, regional, national or trade press. After shelling out thousands of dollars/pounds all they get is one day (or one week) of exposure with no guarantee of success. And they still have to do all the work themselves! Word of mouth. They could conceivably find the perfect candidate by networking with their industry contacts, including clients, suppliers and employees. But then again, they might not.
It seems that clients do have several alternatives when it comes to recruiting staff. Therefore it would inaccurate to say that we’re necessary to the process.
On the other hand, there are obvious benefits to outsourcing all this work to a competent recruiter:
We save our clients a lot of time, hassle and money.
We work very hard to find candidates who fit our clients’ job role and company culture.
We promote their employer brand and actively sell their jobs in the marketplace.
We can produce better quality shortlists, faster than they can do it themselves.
We manage the whole process and often have a higher acceptance rate than offers made directly by the employer.
We usually take all the risk and the client only pays if we produce results!
It seems to me that we provide tremendous value to our clients and candidates, and the fee we charge is worth every penny!
Now let’s look at the second part of this expression, the part about being “evil.” Are recruiters evil?
Well let’s see…We help our candidates to improve their careers. We help our clients to grow their business and hire great people. I’m having trouble seeing where the “evil” part comes in!
So coming back to our cynical team leader who thinks “recruiters are a necessary evil”…
How does this bizarre idea (also known as a limiting belief) affect his performance?
Does he perform to his full potential?
Is he an obvious choice for future promotion?
Is he a great role model for his team members?
How do his beliefs affect his client/candidate relationships?
What about his job satisfaction?
How about his overall sense of fulfillment, achievement, happiness?
Even without knowing this individual, I bet you can answer the above questions accurately.
We need to be very careful when we come into contact with other people’s beliefs which ones we let in, and especially which ones we choose to accept.
Next time you have a negative thought, or hear something negative from a colleague, client, candidate, or manager ask yourself the following questions:
“Is that really true?”
“Where does that idea come from?”
“How credible is the source of that idea?”
“What evidence is that assumption based on?”
“If I adopt that idea, will it help me or hinder me?”
“Is that a thought that a big biller would think?
“If not, what would a big biller think instead?
I’ve had the privilege of working with, training, coaching and interviewing hundreds of recruiters including some of the biggest billing recruiters in the country. I can tell you for a fact that 99.9% of them have incredibly positive belief systems. Big billers wouldn’t entertain this “necessary evil” notion for two seconds.
You can choose your beliefs. Make sure they’re the right ones. Which ones are the right ones? They’re the beliefs that help you to maximize your performance and feel good about yourself!. |
Michael Hickey/Getty Images
Doug McDermott strengthened his already ridiculous resume for National Player of the Year on Sunday night with a season-high 39 points in Creighton's 101-80 win over Villanova in Omaha.
In his team's 21st win of the season, McDermott passed Larry Bird on the all-time Division I scoring chart and put a stronger grip on the player of the year title.
In 25 games this season, the 6'8" senior has had just one bad game. That's right, only one bad game: a seven-point showing in a loss to George Washington back on December 1.
Other than that, there has been very little criticism about the play of the son of Bluejays head coach Greg McDermott.
Nati Harnik/Associated Press
The younger McDermott's resume starts with his outstanding point production, as he has scored at least 20 points in 21 games and netted 30 or more on nine different occasions.
No one in the nation, not Tyler Ennis, Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Marcus Smart, Joel Embiid or any other player labeled as dominant has been that consistent in the scoring department.
Combined, that group of five players has scored 20 points in a game in 33 outings and produced just two 30-plus-point performances all season.
While that is a small sample size, it gives you an idea of just how impressive McDermott's single-game performances have been compared to the other National Player of the Year hopefuls.
His season totals are quite astounding as well, as he leads the nation in scoring with 25.9 points per game. To go along with his scoring numbers, McDermott averages seven rebounds per game and shoots over 50 percent from the field.
McDermott's intangibles are what separate him from the pack. He can play both inside and outside, pass the rock and be an emotional leader all in one.
McDermott is also terrific at defending, which is something some prolific scorers do not do well. The best example of his versatile defensive prowess on Sunday came with about 16 minutes left in the second half when he stayed in front of Villanova guard Ryan Arcidiacono and forced a shot clock violation without fouling the sophomore point guard.
Most defenders in the college game would lose discipline at some point during that sequence, but McDermott held his ground, kept his hands up and made a play that will go unnoticed in the box score.
It is little things like that that make the senior forward a joy to watch every time he steps on the court.
With a perfect skill set for the college game, McDermott deserves to be honored for his four years in Omaha with the National Player of the Year award when the season concludes. That should be the case no matter how well anyone else plays for the rest of the year.
Follow Joe on Twitter, @JTansey90. |
SKEPTOID BLOG: Providing evidence for evolution by Chad Jones February 16, 2013
What is the fossil evidence for evolution?
What can we learn about evolution from living animals?
Does evolution present any testable predictions?
What is the fossil evidence for evolution?
One of the common arguments against evolution is "where are the transition fossils". This is perhaps the weakest of all arguments against evolution. The transition fossils (or casts of the fossils) are Australopithecus to Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapien. They include evolution of invertebrates to fish. They even include the evolution of insects.
The fossil evidence is extensive, and the argument that we don't have fossil evidence is tired. Creationists quickly say things like "just show me the transition fossils" or "where is the missing link", but we actually have quite a bit of fossil evidence. Just this last week
Unfortunately, each time new evidence of this type is presented creationists treat the new fossil like the hydra from greek mythology - finding one transition fossil just creates two new transitions whose fossils haven't been found yet.
What can we learn about evolution from living animals?
The Laryngeal Nerve
This odd path is even more exaggerated in a giraffe, where the nerve travels 15 feet out of the way to wrap around the heart and return to the larynx - only a short distance from where it originally left the spinal chord.
So why does the nerve take such a convoluted path? Evolutionary theory describes an ancestor to all vertebrates much like modern fish. The same nerve in fish takes a much more direct path from the spinal chord to the larynx. As evolution progressed, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. With each generation, natural selection lengthened the neck and with it the laryngeal nerve.
Ensatina
A second modern day example of evolution is the Ensatina of California. These salamanders live in a ring around the Sierra Nevada mountains and give an interesting example of speciation. Where does one species end and a new species begin? A simple definition is that two animals are different species if they are unable to breed fertile offspring.
In this example, the salamander with the red label interbreed with the salamander with the yellow label, the yellow interbreeds with the blue and orange, and the blue interbreeds with the pink. However, the pink does not interbreed with the red. It is safe to say that the pink and the red salamanders are different species - but where did the speciation occur? Evolution does not happen in large jumps. It happens slowly, with changes every generation.
Does evolution present any testable predictions?
One important qualification of a scientific theory is that any new idea must provide some testable hypothesis. How can we know that we aren't just deceiving ourselves if we can't test the ideas we've come up with? So, does evolution provide any testable predictions?
Human Chromosome 2
Chromosomes are highly condensed structures made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA, of course, being the key building block of all life. DNA stores our genetic information.
not have the same number of chromosomes - humans have 23 pairs and apes have 24 pairs. This is actually a big problem for evolution as a viable theory. If at any point a chromosome was spontaneously lost or gained it would result in serious consequences (either miscariage, or a phenotypic disorder like Down Syndrome or Turner Syndrome). Evolutionary biologists predicted that at some point a chromosome fusion happened (that is, two chromosomes combined into one large chromosome). In this way, no genetic information would be lost and a difference in chromosomes would not disprove evolution.
As it turns out, Of course, showing that human chromosome 2 is fused is not enough to prove that we have a common ancestor with apes. However, this evidence is strongly supported by the identification in chimpanzees of exactly which chromosomes were fused to create human chromosome 2. To me this is a home run for the theory of evolution.
Conclusion
There is strong evidence for evolution, but just as my previous post was in no means a complete list of all the arguments used to refute evolution, this post in no way contains all the evidence. In fact, it's probable that I left out some of the most compelling evidence (and I'd love to hear them in the comments). However, in writing this article I chose the evidence that I see as the most compelling. Last week I pointed out some common misconceptions about evolution and arguments that are often used to support creationism. This week I would like to share some of what I feel to be the strongest evidences for evolution. I feel like too often in debates about evolution the focus seems to be on refuting creationism instead of correctly presenting evolution - and the science is really awesome. With the evidence I present here I seek to answer the following questions:What is the fossil evidence for evolution?What can we learn about evolution from living animals?Does evolution present any testable predictions?One of the common arguments against evolution is "where are the transition fossils". This is perhaps the weakest of all arguments against evolution. The transition fossils (or casts of the fossils) are available in every reliable natural history museum . Wikipedia has an extensive list of transition fossils . These fossils include the human evolution oftototo. They include evolution of invertebrates to fish. They even include the evolution of insects.The fossil evidence is extensive, and the argument that we don't have fossil evidence is tired. Creationists quickly say things like "just show me the transition fossils" or "where is the missing link", but we actually have quite a bit of fossil evidence. Just this last week Dr. Steven Novella wrote a great article on feathered dinosaurs - an excellent example of transition fossils.Unfortunately, each time new evidence of this type is presented creationists treat the new fossil like the hydra from greek mythology - finding one transition fossil just creates two new transitions whose fossils haven't been found yet.The Laryngeal Nerve An interesting evidence for evolution is the laryngeal nerve - the nerve that supplies motor function and sensation to your larynx. If you were to design the nervous system in an obvious way the laryngeal nerve would leave the spinal chord somewhere in your neck and travel directly to the larynx. Instead, the laryngeal nerve leaves the spinal chord at the neck, travels down into the chest, wraps around an artery leaving the heart, and then travels back up the chest, up the neck, and finally ending at the larynx.This odd path is even more exaggerated in a giraffe, where the nerve travels 15 feet out of the way to wrap around the heart and return to the larynx - only a short distance from where it originally left the spinal chord.So why does the nerve take such a convoluted path? Evolutionary theory describes an ancestor to all vertebrates much like modern fish. The same nerve in fish takes a much more direct path from the spinal chord to the larynx. As evolution progressed, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. With each generation, natural selection lengthened the neck and with it the laryngeal nerve.A second modern day example of evolution is theof California. These salamanders live in a ring around the Sierra Nevada mountains and give an interesting example of speciation. Where does one species end and a new species begin? A simple definition is that two animals are different species if they are unable to breed fertile offspring.In this example, the salamander with the red label interbreed with the salamander with the yellow label, the yellow interbreeds with the blue and orange, and the blue interbreeds with the pink. However, the pink does not interbreed with the red. It is safe to say that the pink and the red salamanders are different species - but where did the speciation occur? Evolution does not happen in large jumps. It happens slowly, with changes every generation.One important qualification of a scientific theory is that any new idea must provide some testable hypothesis. How can we know that we aren't just deceiving ourselves if we can't test the ideas we've come up with? So, does evolution provide any testable predictions?Chromosomes are highly condensed structures made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA, of course, being the key building block of all life. DNA stores our genetic information. Human chromosome 2 gave a testable hypothesis for evolution. If apes and humans truly have a common ancestor, then we should have the same number of chromosomes. As it turns out, we dohave the same number of chromosomes - humans have 23 pairs and apes have 24 pairs. This is actually a big problem for evolution as a viable theory. If at any point a chromosome was spontaneously lost or gained it would result inconsequences (either miscariage, or a phenotypic disorder like Down Syndrome or Turner Syndrome). Evolutionary biologists predicted that at some point a chromosome fusion happened (that is, two chromosomes combined into one large chromosome). In this way, no genetic information would be lost and a difference in chromosomes would not disprove evolution.As it turns out, human chromosome 2 is a fusion of two chromosomes . There are four telomeres (which begin and end a chromosome) and two centromeres (which are found at the center of a chromosome).Of course, showing that human chromosome 2 is fused is not enough to prove that we have a common ancestor with apes. However, this evidence is strongly supported by the identification in chimpanzees ofchromosomes were fused to create human chromosome 2. To me this is a home run for the theory of evolution.There is strong evidence for evolution, but just as my previous post was in no means a complete list of all the arguments used to refute evolution, this post in no way contains all the evidence. In fact, it's probable that I left out some of the most compelling evidence (and I'd love to hear them in the comments). However, in writing this article I chose the evidence thatsee as the most compelling. by Chad Jones @Skeptoid Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Show Your Support The Skeptoid weekly science podcast is a free public service from Skeptoid Media, a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. This show is made possible by financial support from listeners like you. If you like this programming, please become a member. Other ways you can help Donate: $5 $10 $15 $25 $35 $50 $75 $100 $150 $200 $250 $500
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Australia becoming smartphone addicted: report
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Gen Y addicted to smartphones (ABC News)
A report out today confirms what many already suspected - Australians are becoming addicted to their smartphones.
The survey of smartphone users by the technology company Cisco reveals that the daily ritual for Generation Y Australians begins with texting.
Many of those surveyed admit they are checking for messages and updates at least once every thirty minutes and become anxious when their phone goes missing.
One out of five people are texting while they're driving, and it just speaks to these addictive, compulsive, behaviours that we're seeing. Kevin Bloch, Cisco
Cisco's chief technology officer Kevin Bloch says many people, especially from Gen Y, are crossing the border into a smartphone addiction.
"Literally as they open their eyes the alarm clock, which is probably on their phone, goes off. They reach out for the alarm clock, look at their updates, maybe on Facebook, maybe Twitter etc, maybe go through their email, and then they get out of bed," he observed.
"Nine out of 10 of the survey of 3,800 people under 30 years old are addicted to their smartphone and, in fact, one out of five are checking their smartphone every ten minutes."
Dangerous habits
Mr Bloch says the addiction to smartphone use is so strong for many that they have developed dangerous habits, such as texting while driving.
"It's happening subconsciously, and one out of five people are texting while they're driving, and it just speaks to this addictive, compulsive, behaviours that we're seeing," he said.
"You know, can you not put your phone down whilst you're in your car? I mean, we're talking not just about using the phone for voice, we're talking about texting while you're driving, and that's a really dangerous thing."
The Cisco report finds that it is not only Gen Y who are addicted to their mobile devices, but that the type of use varies with age.
"For example, under 30s, most of whom may not be married, their addiction will be just to be connected to their social lives, some of whom also to be connected to their work lives and so on," Mr Bloch observed.
"As you go on in life and you're established, you've got a family and so on, the addiction changes. It may be you're worried about your family so you want to stay connected and so on, but there will be different types of addictions or compulsive behaviour.
"But I think what is becoming consistent is that that smartphone is becoming the central point of contact to other services and people no matter what age you are."
Separation anxiety
Kevin Bloch says when someone's smartphone goes missing or it even starts running out of battery, they often start getting anxious.
"In the report they talk about, you know, the human body's got 206 bones and the smart phone's your 207th bone, and you'll know about it if you don't have it," he joked.
I think it does have a whole lot of negative impacts on your personal life and your personal relationships. Kevin Bloch, Cisco
Cisco's report has also found gradual changes in the etiquette surrounding mobile phone use, with more people now using their devices at the dinner table and in bed.
"Three-quarters of the people surveyed use their phone in bed, and the question about romance and all that sort of thing comes up," Kevin Bloch said.
"I think 46 per cent will use their smartphone whilst at the dinner table, and if most of the table are texting while you're trying to eat I would consider that rude, and with my family I definitely try to stop it.
"I think it does have a whole lot of negative impacts on your personal life and your personal relationships, no doubt."
Mr Bloch says people need to re-evaluate their smartphone use.
"I think people need to take a step back and understand from their own personal perspectives how addicted they are, like any drug, I guess if I could put an analogy on it," he advised.
"Because, you know, it could touch on or infringe on things like your manners, all the way through to your work-life balance, all the way through to your personal safety."
You can follow Peter Ryan on Twitter @Peter_F_Ryan or on his blog.
Topics: mobile-phones, social-media, information-and-communication, australia
First posted |
While the long, strange saga of Duke Nukem Forever finally concluded with 2011's heavily panned release, the aftershocks of the game's development continue to this day. Case in point, Gearbox has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent Duke Nukem creators 3D Realms and Apogee Software, along with developer Interceptor Entertainment, from using the Duke Nukem IP as planned in a new game.
The three defendants in the case started teasing Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction as "an isometric action role-playing game for PC and PlayStation 4" earlier this month, promising more information to come. But in a federal lawsuit filed in the Northern Texas district, Gearbox notes that it purchased the Duke Nukem IP in 2010 when it took over work on Forever. Consequently, the suit alleges, 3D Realms no longer controls the rights necessary to allow Interceptor to create a new game with the Duke Nukem name and characters.
"Apparently, after selling its Duke Nukem IP rights to Gearbox in 2010, [3D Realms] sought to privately convince others that the sale never happened," Gearbox writes in the suit. "By attempting to license the unlicensable, assign the unassignable, and effectively re-sell the exclusive rights that Gearbox already purchased in 2010, [3D Realms] breached the terms of its [asset purchase agreement] with Gearbox, as well as Gearbox’s exclusive, federally-protected intellectual property rights."
Interestingly, 3D Realms' George Broussard and Scott Miller apparently replied to a cease-and-desist order from Gearbox earlier this month. The declaration 3D Realms sent in response seems to acknowledge that 3D Realms signed over the rights to the Duke Nukem franchise in February 2010 and that Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction is therefore "a material infringement of Gearbox's rights."
Aside from laying out the issues of IP ownership, Gearbox also goes out of its way in the lawsuit to deride 3D Realms' stewardship of Duke Nukem Forever during that game's decade-plus development.
"It is worth remembering: Prior to Gearbox’s involvement, 3DR languished for over 12 unsuccessful years trying to get the Duke Nukem Forever ('DNF') videogame off the ground and was famously incapable of achieving its goal," the lawsuit reads (emphasis in original). "Desperate for help—and on the verge of even further ruin, now that 3DR could no longer fund either development or litigation—3DR effectively asked its friends at Gearbox for a life preserver... to complete the technological jigsaw puzzle of a videogame that 3DR had been calling DNF."
In the suit, Gearbox goes on to call the work product it received from 3D Realms "sorely deficient" and containing "a mountain of problems." Gearbox also casts itself in the lawsuit as a "rescuer" that managed to salvage the unsalvageable work into a shipped product for "those DNF fans who had patiently waited."
Gearbox is seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the use of its Duke Nukem IP, as well as unspecified statutory, compensatory, and exemplary damages. Ars attempted to contact Interceptor but did not hear back before the time of publication. |
In “The other Silicon Valley,” Al Jazeera takes a look at how California’s tech boom affects the working class. This is part three of a seven-part series.
SAN FRANCISCO — For countless travelers around the world, Airbnb and other home-sharing services are a convenient alternative to traditional hotel and hostel bookings. To countless owners and renters, those services are a good way to convert their home or a spare room into extra cash. But Mike Casey, the longtime president of the hotel workers’ union UNITE HERE Local 2, sees something very different when he looks at Airbnb and comparable websites: an existential threat.
“There’s probably several hundred jobs a year that are lost as a result of people selecting Airbnb over a unionized hotel,” he said. “But probably of even greater impact than that is the impact it’s having on affordable housing.”
Casey cited a March 2015 report from left-leaning advocacy group the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), which says the prevalence of Airbnb units in Los Angeles gives landlords and homeowners an opportunity to seek tourism dollars where they would have otherwise rented housing to city residents. As a result, the report’s authors say, Airbnb is helping constrict housing supply and drive up rental costs. LAANE also alleges the growing popularity of Airbnb could kill hotel jobs and replace them with a handful of lower-paying domestic worker gigs.
San Francisco “is going to be like Manhattan very soon, where there’s the pretty well-off and affluent and then there’s the very poor and there’s not much middle class or working class left,” said Casey. He believes Airbnb is accelerating that transformation — but not without a fight.
Local 2, its allies on the Board of Supervisors and other San Francisco groups are embroiled in a prolonged struggle to impose tighter regulations on short-term rental businesses. They face opposition from other city officials, local Airbnb renters and the company. Whatever the outcome, San Francisco’s regulatory skirmish over Airbnb has the potential to influence how short-term rentals are regulated in other cities around the country.
While Local 2 and its allies have assailed Airbnb for what they say is its role in fueling San Francisco’s housing crisis, the company insists it serves as an economic boon to the city. According its website, Airbnb “generates approximately $56 million in local spending and supports 430 jobs” in San Francisco. And rather than contributing to the city’s affordability crisis, the company argues, it is helping San Franciscans remain in their homes by providing them with an extra source of income.
Airbnb declined to comment on the record, but Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky addressed the criticism in a recent interview with the radio program “Marketplace.”
“I’m totally sympathetic to the complaints. Ultimately, we want to enrich the cities we’re in. When we launch, these other externalities happen,” he said. “That being said, I fundamentally believe Airbnb is a really good thing for the city of San Francisco, New York, many other cities.”
In the same interview, Chesky seemed to reject the notion that Airbnb displaces unionized hotel jobs. “As we’ve grown, hotels have grown. Hotels have record occupancy rates,” he said. “And a lot of people, when we launched, thought we couldn’t coexist. But we are fundamentally a different way to travel.”
In March the market research firm PKF Hospitality Research projected a record 65.6 percent occupancy level in 2015. As for housing costs, University of British Columbia professor Thomas Davidoff, in a research paper commissioned by Airbnb, found that short-term rentals exert some upward pressure on citywide rents — roughly a $19 difference per month in San Francisco. The effect may be largely confined to the more desirable neighborhoods where Airbnb listings are most prevalent.
Airbnb and similar businesses are already regulated under an October 2014 city ordinance that formally legalized home-sharing arrangements and set up a registration process for the rooms being put on the market. The legislation was sponsored by then-Supervisor David Chiu, who is now a member of the California State Assembly. It was passed in the midst of a hard-fought Assembly race between Chiu and fellow Supervisor David Campos, an opponent of the legislation. Two Airbnb investors sided with the ultimately victorious Chiu, donating thousands of dollars to his campaign.
Airbnb praised the legislation in a statement released shortly after the vote, saying it was “a great victory for San Franciscans who want to share their home and the city they love.”
Back to the drawing board
The company should be pleased, according to some of the leading city advocates for tighter regulation. Casey said his union was shut out of the negotiation process, and Campos — who recently introduced an amendment intended to strengthen regulation of home rentals — said Airbnb “essentially drafted this legislation.” Shortly after the law was implemented, the city’s Planning Department declared that it was impossible to enforce in its current form.
“In a very short period of time, it’s become very clear that it’s not workable,” Campos told Al Jazeera, roughly one month into the law’s implementation. “There is simply no way of verifying that people who are supposed to be registered are in fact following the rules. And in fact, as of a couple of weeks ago, only a few dozen people had registered, when we know there are thousands of people who are using Airbnb.”
He also criticized a provision of the law that caps short-term rentals at 90 days per year when the owner is not occupying a room in the unit but does not mandate any cap when the owner is staying there. Said Campos, “There’s simply no way of knowing whether the host is actually present.”
Supervisor Scott Weiner, who voted for the current version of the law, told Al Jazeera that one month was not long enough to judge whether the regulation is effective. He criticized the Planning Department for calling the law unenforceable so early into its implementation.
“I think the Planning Department needs to do its job and make every effort to properly administer this legislation rather than coming out of the gate a month after the legislation is in effect and declaring it unworkable,” he said. “I was very, very surprised to hear those remarks from the Planning Department."
The amendment introduced by Campos — along with fellow supervisors Eric Mar and John Avalos — would allow the neighbors of renters to sue them over alleged violations of the law, impose a 60-day cap on rentals regardless of whether the host is present in the apartment and require companies like Airbnb to turn over information about the hosts who use their services.
That last provision may be the most controversial. Airbnb has denounced any proposal that would “fundamentally alter the online privacy protections that most Californians have come to expect.” The consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has agreed, calling such policies “an unwarranted intrusion into users’ privacy [that] inappropriately requires the home sharing platform to do the enforcement work that should be rightfully done by the city.”
Campos, nonetheless, has pressed forward, as has Casey. Local 2 is part of a coalition called Share Better San Francisco, which is pressing for a ballot measure similar to Campos’ legislative proposal. Opponents of that measure, including the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle, argue that changes to short-term rental regulatory policy should be made by the Board of Supervisors. Judson True, a legislative aide to Chiu who also worked for him during his time on the Board of Supervisors, told Al Jazeera that working through the board “in a collaborative way” was preferable to locking in sweeping changes through a single popular vote.
“It’s not surprising that the mayor and some supervisors might see a need to tweak the law, and that’s why it makes sense for this issue not to be settled at the ballot box,” he said.
To that end, Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Mark Farrell have proposed their own changes to the law, which would set a cap at 120 days and create a city agency, the Office of Short-Term Rental Administration, to enforce regulations. The mayor’s proposal does not require Airbnb and other companies to turn over information regarding their users. In a recent op-ed for The San Francisco Examiner, Campos derided the compromise measure, saying it “leaves major loopholes that make it impossible for the city to enforce the law” and fails to penalize short-term rental services for regulatory infractions.
At the same time, Airbnb and some of its users are pushing for a relaxation of the Planning Department’s guidelines on how to legally register. Departmental rules require hosts to appear at the department’s office in person, submit an application, provide documentation proving they are permanent residents of their domiciles, obtain a certificate from the Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office and provide proof of liability insurance, among other hurdles.
“There are lots of ways in which we think the red tape can be simplified and made more streamlined,” said Peter Kwan, the founder of Home Sharers of San Francisco, a group of short-term rental hosts loosely affiliated with Airbnb. “I think that a lot more can be done electronically. We are sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s, to me, astounding that this city still would require an applicant to telephone and leave a voice mail, wait for them to call back to make an appointment and then turn up in person to submit the application. We should be able to do this all online."
Kwan, a 54-year-old retiree, said he keeps a spare room in his house for when his sister visits from Hong Kong. When she isn’t occupying the room, he rents out it out through Airbnb. The money he derives from hosting “certainly helps,” he said, but “the pleasures of hosting are equally if not more important than just the monetary compensation."
“I also found myself really enjoying being a host,” he said. “There is joy in showing visitors the neighborhood and the city I’ve come to call home."
Short-term rental is relatively recent phenomenon, and attempts to regulate it are even more recent: Airbnb was founded in 2008, and San Francisco’s short-term rental legislation officially went into effect barely three months ago. In other words, there is no standard for how cities should deal with short-term home-sharing — particularly cities in the midst of serious housing crises. Without any clear examples to follow, San Francisco will probably spend a long time grappling with how best to regulate companies like Airbnb. The city’s current regulatory model is likely to be in just the first of many iterations.
Whatever the final result, proponents of tighter regulations are under no illusion that policing Airbnb will solve broader affordability issues. Campos said that cracking down on some Airbnb rentals would free up much-needed housing stock but that building more affordable housing would still be essential.
“We know that to maintain the level of displacement that we have right now — in other words, so that we don’t have more people evicted or displaced in this city — we need to make more housing that’s affordable available to people,” he said. “We need to, in the next few years, create about 15,000 new units of affordable housing.”
For emphasis, he said it again: “New units." |
There was unity in Wichita Sunday night after a tense week for activists and law enforcement in the community, as well as nationwide.
Sunday night's event in Wichita's McAdams Park drew a crowd of nearly 1,000 people. The name of the gathering was the 'First Steps Cookout.'
Many people who spoke to Eyewitness News reporter Deedee Sun say the event was largely a positive step to bring the Wichita Police Department closer to the community it serves.
A large crowd gathered in McAdams Park enjoyed free food and the opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with law enforcement.
"Very good vibe. Very good vibe. It's everything I was hoping for," says Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay.
The barbecue took place instead of a planned protest for Sunday night.
Ramsay suggested the event to community leaders following a Black Lives Matter protest in the city last week.
Ramsay had said the barbecue was an opportunity for citizens and police to be introduced and to have positive interaction. Nearly 400 people pledged their intention to attend the event with an RSVP. More than double that amount attended.
Leading up to the barbecue, there was a lot of positive support in response to the event on social media. People at the barbecue said it is the right way to respond to the unrest going on across the country.
The Wichita Police Department brought the burgers and grilled up and served food. Many others also brought food, contributing what they could to the barbecue.
The turnout at the barbecue was especially encouraging for some following the events that unfolded earlier in the day in Baton Rouge with three officers fatally shot by a gunman.
"Especially after what happened in Baton Rouge today, just makes it all the more painful. But I just feel very proud of my city that there's so many people here," says Margaret at the 'First Steps Cookout.' "It's wonderful."
Civilians and officers say the barbecue was a concrete step toward bridging the gap between people and police.
Part of the event included a Question and Answer session with Ramsay. Some in attendance did take this opportunity to voice frustrations.
One man says he viewed the cookout as an attempt to take attention away from real cause of the tension between some citizens and police.
Ramsay says his department is committed to making things better.
"This isn't something we're going to change overnight or tonight," he says. "It's just going to take continual effort on everybody's part. And work on policy changes, relationships. And that's what's going to get to the heart of the issues." |
According to voter registration records , Ariel Castro, the Cleveland kidnapper, is a registered Democrat. He was also the alleged leader among the three Castro brothers, who were arrested this week, and the owner of the house at 2207 Seymour Ave., where the three abducted local women had been kept in captivity for over a decade.
Why is this important? Whenever a crime or a scandal captures national attention, the pattern in the mainstream media is to either identify the culprit as a Republican or hold silence -- in which case we can rest assured that the culprit is a Democrat.
When the identity or the party affiliation is yet unknown, the pattern is to speculate publicly about the possibility of the criminal being a conservative, Christian, white, Republican, and a Tea Party member -- and never that he could be a Hispanic Democrat voter playing bass in a meringue band.
In today's divisive climate, the identity of a perpetrator is always a political issue, especially when a crime is committed by men against women. According to the Daily News, "What the neighbors saw was terrifying and dehumanizing: Naked women on dog leashes, crawling in the dirt. A lady clutching an infant and pounding on a window for help."
If any of the brothers were a Republican, this news would have been trumpeted by the mainstream media as tangible proof of the Republican War on Women -- a narrative invented by Democrat strategists and maintained by the media in a successful effort to defeat Republican candidates in the 2012 election cycle.
However, when a real act of war on women is perpetrated by a Democrat voter in the manner that even the most zealous Democrat strategist couldn't have dreamed up in their worst nightmares -- involving abduction, imprisonment, rape, torture, malnutrition, beatings while pregnant, and killing babies -- the media doesn't think the party affiliation is relevant.
I'm not saying that in this case it is. What's relevant is the relentless media bias, taunting, and bullying of conservatives and Republicans.
Unhappy with the overall media coverage, one of our readers decided to do his own research of the Castro brothers' party affiliation and contacted this author with his findings with this note:
I couldn't find anything on their political views in the newspapers, which is a sign they are NOT Republicans. I then searched public nation-wide voter registration records and found this giant file. It's now official: the Cleveland kidnapper is a registered Democrat. This answers the question, which side actually 'wants women barefoot, illiterate, and pregnant'.
Another good question is, what had prompted this reader to even think about doing this research? Apparently, he is one of many Republicans whom the continued media slander is causing to constantly look over his shoulder and, at any sign of trouble, check whether the guilty could be Republicans, and sigh with relief when they aren't.
It isn't a symptom of a healthy nation when a large segment of the country's population, including men and women of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, is being systematically and unfairly defamed and pestered by another segment of the country with the help of the media and the political establishment, creating a hostile cultural and work environment, which leads to persistent feelings of worry, unease, frustration, and fear.
Perhaps it's time to expand the dictionary definition of harassment as follows:
POLITICAL HARASSMENT: systematic and continued tormenting of one party or a group, including insults, slurs, and demands intended to disturb, upset, and demoralize political opponents. The purposes may include prejudice, personal malice, attempts to apply pressure on Congress to pass a bill, force someone to resign or to grant political favors, blackmail (I'll out you to the boss unless you change your stand on certain issues), or merely sadistic pleasure from making someone fearful or anxious.
In a way, the Democrat political machine, which includes the mainstream media, are trying to do to the Republicans and the rest of the country what the Castro brothers did to the women they abducted and forcibly put in their "care."
That's why the news that Ariel Castro is a Democrat may be relevant after all. |
The weekly JoBlo Movie Show Podcast is home to the discussion of the latest movie news, reviews and more, but oftentimes we'll also be fortunate enough to have a guest on-hand to talk up their latest work. Earlier this morning we spoke with actor/director Jay Baruchel about his work on GOON: THE LAST OF THE ENFORCERS, the George Miller JUSTICE LEAGUE movie that never happened, and of course, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3. Jay was reluctant to discuss Hiccup's age or whether or not we would finally see some more Night Furies, but he did offer up a few tidbits regarding his thoughts on the story and its progress. Check it out!
Jay Baruchel on the progress of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3:
I've already done a number of recording sessions for that one. Once every 2-4 months I will work for 2 hours and then that happens over the course of 3 years and then before I know it I'm at Cannes with a movie that people are like, 'You don't understand! This movie is the most important thing in the world to me!' I felt like I fell ass-backwards into STAR WARS! It's really cool. We're well on the way to doing it. They take a lot of time to make so I don't know when it's coming, exactly.
Regarding the story of the new film:
I'm not allowed to say anything. This is what I'll say, and for whatever it's worth I do swear that this is not just promo nonsense. It's by far, the strongest of the stories (of the 3). It's the movie that the series requires and deserves and it's the rightful third chapter or third act, I should say. I don't think anybody will be disappointed.
It was an absolute pleasure speaking with Baruchel and and while you can listen to the man himself on next week's episode of the JoBlo Movie Show Podcast, I can tell you that he has a wealth of interesting information and anecdotes. In terms of actors who also write and direct, Baruchel is the real deal. Check back here next Friday and listen for yourself!
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 is scheduled to open in theaters on March 1, 2019. |
We are sometimes alone. In those solitary moments when we attempt to make sense of the world, we may harmlessly come across certain books which strike us as vague and obscure, written by ‘philosophers’ and critics whose knowledge of politics, literature, and cognition appears extensive, backed up with thrilling and unique terminology and numerous hand-picked quotations from physicists and biologists. Looking at such prestigious scientists with their theories and experiments, we might even say ‘Where’s my theory? I want one too,’ with the profound thoughts of postmodern or poststructuralist authors neatly filling this theoretical void.
But things are not as they seem. We are beyond doubt at the wrong side of the library, as the following brief survey of a selection of po-mo supporters will hopefully show. Through a combination of word-play and fractured syntax, these charlatans have released a madness on the world. It should go without saying that the works of the following authors are not necessarily and entirely filled with the exploitation of scientific and philosophical concepts (what Deleuze said about education, for instance, seems sensible enough, if not common sense). But the overwhelming tendency amongst all of them is to produce intentionally and aggressively obscure work largely to intimidate their (mostly privileged and Western) audiences into deeming it insightful, radical, and clever.
But before we observe the wreckage, a few general comments can provide an important framework. Anthropologist Mary Douglas observes in The World of Goods that the standard techniques to maintain intellectual superiority are ‘to erect barriers against entry, to consolidate control of opportunities, and to use techniques of exclusion.’ As certain graduate students of politics and critical theory are aware, the person trying to maintain an illusion of intelligence must work to control the discourse, ‘Otherwise, his project to make sense of the universe is jeopardized when rival interpretations gain more currency than his own, and the cues that he uses become useless because others have elaborated a different set and put it into circulation.’
The rhetorical barriers often appear quite sturdy. After all, if what the postmodern and poststructuralist enthusiasts are actually saying (beneath the layers of catchphrases like ‘symbolic centre,’ ‘interpolated,’ ‘what Baudrillard called,’ ‘différance,’ ‘problematized,’ ‘logocentrism,’ ‘How, then, are we to proceed?,’ ‘s/Subject,’ ‘heterogeneous structure,’ along with the obligatory poetic French or German phrase) can be understood by the person who cleans their windows, then of what use are their jobs? Placing production into the hands of workers, for instance, does not need to be spelled out in polysyllables and can be articulated in terms a child would easily understand.
The widespread unequivocal trust in postmodernist ramblings may reveal something else: that we are afraid of words, afraid of ‘those big words which make us so unhappy,’ as Stephen Dedalus said; afraid too, perhaps, of digging too deep into what Hume called ‘the mysteries of nature.’ Perhaps the sweeping generalisations and comprehensive ‘theories’ of the postmodernists and ‘semiologists’ allow us to feel more at ease, safe in the knowledge that the Marxist’s iron laws of history have offered us the best explanatory account of human affairs.
Of course if by ‘theory’ we mean ‘a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment’ (as the American Association of the Advancement of Science puts it), then the use of the term in departments of literature and politics is misleading to say the least.
Though quick to assure us they are more radical than thou, the proponents of postructuralism, the Lacanian ‘psychoanalysts,’ are rarely found, strangely, at community and activist organisations struggling to defend the kinds of oppressed people (perhaps the ‘subaltern,’ for the initiated) they claim to support, preferring to sit in their offices or bedrooms with annotated copies of Spivak and Gasiorek, whose writings, to borrow a phrase from Forster’s A Room with a View, ‘won a great victory for the comic muse.’
Alan Ryan puts the matter well: ‘It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth … Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it … But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess’ – hence why your favourite graduate Marxist reading group gathers round the fire to chant the odes of Deleuze and Foucault.
A typical defence of such authors is that they do, in fact, occasionally write revealing critiques of imperial or neoliberal power. Firstly, considering their wages and position of relative privilege, it’s fair to say that they better had say something interesting every once in a while! But secondly, these defences miss a more crucial point; that their actual presentation and writing style renders needless confusion, not least because the majority of the time they speak in riddles to deflect instant rebuttal. Or, they fabricate an understanding of classic philosophical works before setting their own misinterpretations of texts as a gauge to separate the worthy from the unworthy (‘You mean to say you don’t see, as Žižek does, Leibniz’s monadology as a prescient critique of the atomising effects of social networking sites? Then get out!’).
Surely one of the most stupid things to have emerged in the two billion years of organic evolution is the feminist ‘philosopher’ Luce Irigaray’s argument that E=mc2 is a sexist equation because ‘it privileges the speed of light’ – a patriarchal force, like capital letters – ‘over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us.’ Her critique of fluid dynamics is also inspired, no doubt, by her revolutionary spirit: fluids have been shamefully neglected by physicists, she argues, since ‘masculine physics’ privileges rigid, solid things over fluids.
Though their doctoral ‘research’ may beg to differ, obscurantist writers like Irigaray are in fact kicking feminist movements in the teeth by associating them with the irrational, careerist sub-disciplines of Princeton and Yale’s comparative literature departments. To get a sense of what similar contributions by other paid academics are like, any ‘postmodern generator’ paints a fairly accurate picture (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/). A quick game of Žižuku will also suffice (http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=219), as will faking your way through Hegel (http://pervegalit.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/how-to-fake-your-way-through-hegel/).
Woody Allen’s short stories also often touch on the related theme of pseudo-intellectualism. The Whore of Mensa does this brilliantly, as does My Philosophy: ‘I remember my reaction to a typically luminous observation of Kierkegaard’s: “Such a relation which relates itself to its own self (that is to say, a self) must either have constituted itself or have been constituted by another.” The concept brought tears to my eyes. My word, I thought, how clever! (I’m a man who has trouble writing two meaningful sentences on “My Day at the Zoo.”) True, the passage was totally incomprehensible to me, but what of it as long as Kierkegaard was having fun?’
Similar uses of parody as a means to expose pretension and obfuscation seem to have presented themselves to the young James Joyce, who was asked by Father George O’Neill at the oral examination for his English BA at University College, Dublin, ‘How is poetic justice exemplified in the play of King Lear?’ Joyce answered, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Oh, come, Mr. Joyce,’ O’Neill prodded, ‘you are not fair to yourself. I feel sure you have read the play.’ ‘Oh yes,’ replied Joyce, ‘but I don’t understand your question. The phrase “poetic justice” is unmeaning jargon so far as I am concerned.’ He later told his close friend Francini in Trieste that ‘Ideas, classifications, political terminologies leave me indifferent; they are things one has passed beyond. Intellectual anarchy, materialism, rationalism – as if they could get a spider out of his web!’
As Richard Ellmann records in his monumental biography, Joyce, unwilling to embrace the church, state, or intelligentsia, ‘went through a series of violent changes and emerged from them sombre and aloof, except with the few friends to whom he exhibited his joy, his candour, his bursting youth; even with these he was a little strange, never wholly companionable because each time he laid bare his soul he importuned greater loyalty, until friendship became for them almost an impossible burden of submission.’ Joyce’s parody poem of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ also reveals with a typically subversive wit his intellectual allegiances. Even at the age of 16, in an essay entitled ‘The Study of Languages,’ Joyce had detected in the distasteful ‘tidier’ Matthew Arnold (whose spirit, along with that of Raymond Williams, to this day shines with a soft, tender glow through the halls of English Literature departments) a mind of ‘little opinion.’
Arnold’s brother, Thomas, demonstrates a greater penetration than his brother when he explores in one of his letters, with stirring honesty, the hostility which the radical mind must feel towards society: ‘Take but one step in submission, and all the rest is easy … satisfy yourself that you may honestly defend an unrighteous cause, and then you may go to the Bar, and become distinguished, and perhaps in the end sway the counsels of the State … All this is open to you; while if you refuse to tamper in a single point with the integrity of your conscience, isolation awaits you, and unhappy love, and the contempt of men; and amidst the general bustle of movement of the world you will be stricken with a kind of impotence, and your arm will seem to be paralysed, and there will be moments when you will almost doubt whether truth indeed exists, or, at least, whether it is fitted for man. Yet in your loneliness you will be visited by consolations which the worlds knows not of; and you will feel that, if renunciation has separated you from the men of your own generation, it has united you to the great company of just men throughout all past time; nay, that even now, there is a little band of Renunciants scattered over the world, of whom you are one, whose you are, and who are yours for ever.’
These timeless struggles between clarity and honesty on the one hand, and obfuscation and pretension on the other, can often be detected in the classic misgivings between analytic and continental philosophy. In Invitation to Learning, Russell says the following of Hegel’s Philosophy of History: ‘[It] is a very important book indeed, judged by the effects it has had, and a totally unimportant book judged by any truth it may contain. [It is] important, partly because it presented a pattern in history – a scheme, a system – according to which historical events were supposed to have developed, which of course people like. It is a simple formula and they think “now we understand it all” … I think the course of history is subject to laws and is probably for a sufficiently wise person deterministic; but nobody is wise enough. It is far too complicated and nobody can work it out; and the person who says he has done so is a charlatan.’
The renowned Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator Emmanuel Lévinas falls clearly onto Hegel’s side. One of his many studies of the phenomenological school of philosophy bears the exciting title Discovering Existence with Husserl. Like Hegel’s Phenomenology, its words would no doubt be welcomed amongst small groups of mid-teens narrating their first experiences with LSD: ‘To say one doubts reflection is to suppose that reflection at least gives us this doubt itself. Furthermore, when one says that states of consciousness are modified by reflection, one presupposes that the non-modified states are known, for otherwise one could not even suspect the modification, nor even the possibility of reflection itself.’ Lévinas’ internationally celebrated study continues in much the same rhetorically inflated vain, having been translated into a number of languages, though not, oddly, Hebrew. But perhaps this is for the best – the Jews have suffered enough.
Though his suspicious gaze was cast primarily on eloquence, Francis Bacon’s remarks could easily be seen as a valuable lesson to contemporary cultural, literary, and critical studies: ‘[M]en began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after … tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter … [and] soundness of argument.’ Along with Judith Butler (winner of the journal Philosophy and Literature’s 1998 ‘Bad Writing Competition’), the theological jargon of corporate-speak falls prey to a love ‘words’ over ‘matter,’ with its talk of ensuring that it’s the responsibility of employers to continually provide access to low-risk high-yield benefits and promote personal employee growth whilst collaboratively administering economically sound user-centric materials and to authoritatively negotiate market-driven technology, assertively integrate high-quality synergistic infrastructures to exceed customer expectations and stay competitive in tomorrow’s world.
But unlike economists, postmodernists typically reject the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, promote a cognitive and cultural relativism which views science as merely a ‘narration’ or social construction (Paul ‘anything goes’ Feyeraband and Thomas Kuhn come to mind), and engage in theoretical speculations removed from any empirical test. It is not at all clear that any substance can be taken from these views, as Alan Sokal (he of the eponymous affair) and Jean Bricmont’s devastating study Intellectual Impostures makes clear. Through exposing postmodernist’s abuse of scientific concepts to lend their own work an aura of prestige, they follow closely in Bacon’s footsteps, as do the words of Michael Albert in a review of the book: ‘There is nothing truthful, wise, humane, or strategic about confusing hostility to injustice and oppression, which is leftist, with hostility to science and rationality, which is nonsense.’
Sokal and Bricmont reveal the infectious nonsense in the works of Deleuze, Derrida, Guattari, Irigaray, Lacan, Latour, Lyotard, Serres, Virilio, Baudrillard and Kristeva. The savage debunking these authors receive in Intellectual Impostures provides the reader with vital intellectual self-defence: If Baudrillard writes that modern warfare takes place in a non-Euclidean space, then I shall know he is a member of the Clown Brigade and will be very careful with him. Equal caution should be paid when we read Derrida, who often appeared to say (if he can be understood at all) that the world should be interpreted from a purely textual perspective, thinking as he did of ‘the text’ as an object of profound, even mystical power, to be regarded with fear and awe, and not simply a product of behaviour (like cave etchings or an artist’s canvas).
It is equally ‘difficult to see,’ write Sokal and Bricmont, observing Lacan’s posturings, ‘how the mathematical notion of compact space can be applied fruitfully to something as ill-defined as the “space of jouissance” in psychoanalysis.’ Where Irigaray sees too much masculinity in science, Lacan can’t get enough: Trying, in his words, to ‘mathematize’ everything in sight, he even likens ‘the erectile organ’ with the square root of -1. ‘Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place in jouissance … as a part lacking in the deserved image: that is why it is equivalent to the √-1.’
In her addition to her remarks on Einstein’s equation, Irigaray makes some other astonishing claims. Nietzsche, for all his flaws, certainly never ‘perceived his ego as an atomic nucleus threatened with explosion,’ not least because of the nucleus’ discovery being over a decade after the German philosopher’s death (she may as well have argued that Thomas Aquinas, when not viewing his kneecaps as πr², had nightmares about his music taste contracting diabetes).
Demonstrating a peculiar disrespect towards the universe, she continues her attack on the laws of nature by asking the following question: ‘But what does the mighty theory of general relativity do for us except establish nuclear power plants and question our bodily inertia?’ Sokal and Bricmont comment of the general thrust of Irigaray’s work by suggesting her writings ‘fall straight into mysticism. Cosmic rhythms, relation to the universe – what on earth is she talking about? To reduce women to their sexuality, menstrual cycles and rhythms (cosmic or not) is to attack everything the feminist movement has fought for during the last three decades.’
In contrast to this intellectual elitism, the anarchist prince Peter Kropotkin noted in his memoirs a passage that eloquently draws on the assumption on the universal longing for individual inquiry: ‘The masses want to know: they are willing to learn; they can learn. There, on the crest of that immense moraine which runs between the lakes, as if giants had heaped it up in a hurry to connect the two shores, there stands a Finnish peasant plunged in contemplation of the beautiful lakes, studded with islands, which lie before him. Not one of these peasants, poor and downtrodden though they may be, will pass this spot without stopping to admire the scene. Or there, on the shore of a lake, stands another peasant, and sings something so beautiful that the best musician would envy him his melody, for its feeling and its meditative power. Both deeply feel, both meditate, both think; they are ready to widen their knowledge – only give it to them, only give them the means of getting leisure.’
Similar ‘theorists’ to Irigaray also often make peculiar use of Marx’s claim that ‘capitalistic production begets with the inexorability of a law of Nature is own negation.’ How they rejoice in borrowing this and similar phrases in discussing how the ideas of their colleagues, on occasion, bring about their own negation etc.! Perhaps epitomised best through the stylish work of Slavoj Žižek, empty paradoxes and meaningless reversals are without doubt the order of the day. Anyone who has read Žižek will most likely regard his books as a dreary sub-genre of science fiction, their bizarre and often outlandish interpretations of important philosophical texts and popular culture bearing an uncanny resemblance to the work of someone born and raised in a René Magritte painting.
The egotistical and self-obsessed values of our brazenly artificial society can be critiqued quite easily without resort to the inflated jargon of Living in the End Times or The Sublime Object of Ideology: In a lecture delivered at The New School, Chris Hedges explained how ‘The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to drain us emotionally, confuse us about our identity, blame ourselves for our predicament, condition us to chase illusions of impossible fame and happiness, and keep us from fighting back.’ He opens his book Empire of Illusion by comparing the ideologies and narratives which structure the professional wrestling industry to the mainstream media’s coverage of political elections. If he wanted to, he could have given such similarities an obscure ‘theoretical’ name before adding baseless parallels to cosmology or a footnote of Kant’s; but, lacking such temptations, he made a choice frowned upon in departments of comparative literature and cultural studies: he wrote in plain English.
As Hedges develops in his extensive journalism, popular culture, the mass media, and positive psychologists promote a surreal form of cheerful conformity, assuring us that if we close our eyes and wish for what we want, if we believe in ourselves, if we adhere to the cultural orthodoxy of saving money for fab nights out, if we unleash our hidden strengths, if we concentrate on happiness, we will be, in a sense, main characters – drinking our wine, laughing at our sitcoms, and giving each other generous eye contact; smiling protagonists in a tragic-comic episode of an ongoing series of consumerist fantasies, with the only hope of the illusion ending lying in popular efforts to take back the power of socio-political organization from a handful of privileged elites.
But the clear and sensible prose of Hedges does not impress those academics loyal to the doctrines of ‘theory,’ cognitive relativism being one of the most pernicious. As the self-appointed protector of ‘womanhood’ Germaine Greer explained in a typically scornful article against trans-women that ‘feminist fundamentalists hold that biology is a cultural creation.’ Postmodernist urges for the similar cases of moral and aesthetic relativism purposefully dodge the questions surrounding the origins of universal biological principles which structure our ‘moral grammar’ and sense of beauty (the work of John Mikhail and Semir Zeki is especially useful here).
In short, saying ‘it’s all relative’ is an easy way to avoid the more difficult task of naturalistic inquiry, as is repeating truisms – a game enjoyed by the proponents of postructuralism, which even Wikipedia confesses is ‘difficult to summarise,’ though it takes a shot: Adopting a standard assumption amongst biologists that science has limits, it ‘denies the possibility of a truly scientific study of “man” or of “human nature”’ (with the word ‘truly’ being noticeable), before converting this simple observation into multi-volume works reviewed with much enthusiasm by Le Monde and the TLS.
Régis Debray also achieves an astounding feat of imagination when he draws the following arbitrary connections: ‘Ever since Gödel showed that there does not exist a proof of the consistency of Peano’s arithmetic that is formalizable within this theory, political scientists had the means for understanding why it was necessary to mummify Lenin and display him to the “accidental” comrades in a mausoleum, at the Centre of the National Community.’ One wonders how many Žižuku-inspired games it’s possible to invent from this sentence. As Hobbes said in similar circumstances: ‘When men write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make others so?’
Mad or not, it is nevertheless common to hear ‘claims of chaos theory being “applied” to history or society,’ as Sokal and Bricmont add: ‘But human societies are complicated systems involving a vast number of variables, for which one is unable (at least at present) to write down any sensible equations.’ Indeed if, as the philosopher and linguist Wolfram Hinzen argues, a naturalistic account of even the simplest lexical items (house, water) is beyond our cognitive reach, then we can forget about ‘mathematizing’ political and cultural phenomena.
But the charge of cultural illiteracy and conceitedness, of course, is not reserved strictly for po-mo enthusiasts – it can also be directed at many scientists. Popular science books by Hawking, Penrose and Kaku all display similar levels of historical ignorance, their concluding feel-good chapters on the relationship between science and religion being an obvious case in point. Together with the postmodernists, they often fail to address the history and nature of science and philosophy, spouting clichés about the incompatibility of the two (the same could be said of the various forms of ‘spirituality,’ as David Webster – although himself a firm postmodernist – reveals in his scintillating and concise Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish and Unhappy). Though philosophy has fractured into various domains, much of it is simply early cognitive science (including the theory of ideas, the seventeenth century shift from ontology to epistemology, aided by Locke and Newton, and speculations on the nature of perception).
One of the greatest contemporary philosophers, Galen Strawson, opens one of his essays on metaphysics with the following Russellian statement: ‘Philosophy is one of the great sciences of reality. It has the same goal as natural science. Both seek to give true accounts, or the best accounts possible, of how things are in reality. They standardly employ very different methods. Philosophy, unlike natural science, usually works at finding good ways of characterizing how things are without engaging in much empirical or a posteriori investigation of the world. It has a vast field of exercise. Many striking and unobvious facts about the nature of reality can be established a priori, facts about the structure of self-consciousness, for example, or the possibility of free will, or the nature of intentional action, or the viability of the view that there is a fundamental metaphysical distinction between objects and their properties.’
The thoughts of Deleuze, Lacan, and Kristeva suddenly appear less overwhelming. Countering their exploitation of ‘folk-scientific’ intuitions (regarding, for instance, the nature of ‘language’ and ‘truth’) requires not only dismantling the grip of postmodernist dogmas on the humanities; it also needs what John Cooper Powys called an ‘insanely intense and incorruptible concentration on the mystery of words.’ Group study, discussion and popular activism play enormously important roles in this, as does thoughtful and individual study – since, as Cicero reports Cato as saying, ‘never is a man more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself.’ But as Aldous Huxley was all too aware: ‘Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.’ |
Real Housewives of New Jersey star Joe Giudice got emotional while opening up about the possibility of facing deportation once he completes his upcoming 41-month prison sentence.
"Anything can happen, you know? There is nothing in life that is certain," Joe shared with ET's Jennifer Peros during an exclusive sit-down interview -- his only before going to prison -- on Tuesday at the Renwick Hotel in New York City, where he was joined by his wife, Teresa Giudice. "We will deal with that when I get out."
"We're just taking it day by day," added Teresa, who was released from prison in December after serving 11 months of a 15-month sentence. The couple were convicted of several fraud changes, including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and bankruptcy fraud in October 2014 and were allowed to serve time separately, so that one of them could be home to take care of their children.
WATCH: Teresa Giudice Says She's 'Happy to be Home' in First Post-Prison Red Carpet Interview
The question of Joe's impending stint behind bars weighs heavily on the entire family, including the couple's four daughters who, despite their young age, understand the situation their father is facing.
"They go on computers, they know everything," said Joe when asked if their kids knew why he was going to be away from home for the next 41 months. "I mean my daughter Milania tells me, 'You're going away for a lot more months than mommy.'"
With Joe's sentence starting on March 23, Teresa will once again be separated from her husband of 16 years. The 43-year-old reality star got candid about what she would miss the most by not having Joe at home.
WATCH: Joe Giudice Opens Up About Teresa's Life Behind Bars: She’s Really Not OK
"I'm going to miss sleeping with him at night and cuddling with him," said Teresa, jokingly adding: "I'm going to miss the passion, and I can't say any more than that."
Back at home, Teresa has a full plate. In addition to being
a fulltime parent, she’s filming the new season of the Bravo series, promoting her
memoir, Turning the Tables, and renewing
her focus on charity.
"As you know, I was on Celebrity Apprentice to support Matthew Levine and the NephCure
Foundation,” said Teresa as March marks Kidney Awareness Month. “I continue to
support NephCure by joining Sydney Levine to help raise awareness to find a
cure for Matthew and all those that suffer from FSGS. She is doing 31 days of marching
to raise awareness.”
While Joe said he's going to miss his family while he's gone, he admitted that prison could be a good way to kick-start a healthier lifestyle.
WATCH: Teresa Giudice Gets Candid About the First Time She Had Sex With Husband Joe After Prison
"I haven't stopped drinking in I don't know how long, so I could definitely use it just for that, you know?" Joe shared. "[It's] probably going to be a good thing for me, health wise anyway."
Despite the legal setbacks and impending hardships, the couple is looking to the future, where they envision a bit more privacy. When asked where they see their family in five years from now, Joe said, "Home, where the gates are closed," where there will be "no cameras."
For more from Teresa and Joe's emotional interview tune into Entertainment Tonight Wednesday, March 2. Check here for local listings and show times.
WATCH: Teresa Giudice Shoots Down Pregnancy Rumors: 'Believe Me, I'm on the Pill' |
Michael Bisping has yet to face a No. 1 contender since winning the UFC middleweight championship 15 months ago, and that’s why some people see interim titleholder Robert Whittaker as the true champion.
Derek Brunson, who came closer to beating Whittaker in the Octagon than anyone when they fought in Melbourne last November, is not completely against that idea.
"Why not?” Brunson told MMA Fighting. "I have nothing against Bisping and I have nothing against how he does his business. It is kind of ridiculous, he’s holding up the division. I know he’s waiting for big fights, he’s about be done with his career, so I kind of give it to him in this aspect. At the same time, we’re trying to get this division going, the champ being active and everybody moving up.”
Bisping won the title with a first-round upset against Luke Rockhold on short notice, and defended it in a rematch with Dan Henderson last October. There’s a possibility “The Count” retires after his upcoming clash with Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217 on Nov. 4, and Brunson believes he would come out on top.
"Man, that’s such a tough one,” he said of who wins at Madison Square Garden. "I might go with Bisping. I might go with Bisping in a point-fighting situation. But I can see GSP holding him down, ground and pound. But I might take Bisping.”
Brunson went 1-1 since losing to Whittaker last November, dropping a close decision against former middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva and coming back with a first-round knockout over Daniel Kelly. He’s currently scheduled to take on Lyoto Machida in the main event of UFC Sao Paulo in Brazil on Oct. 28. |
The uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was tried in a military tribunal on Thursday and summarily executed according to reports from Pyongyang’s state media.
An article appearing on the official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday announced that Jang Song Thaek, the uncle of current leader Kim Jong-Un, had been tried in a special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security on Thursday. According to an English translation of the article provided by NK News, Jang was accused of being a traitor for all ages. More specifically, the state accused Jang of having:
“brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.”
The article said all of these crimes had been proven against Jang and the accused had admitted to them. The court reportedly handed down a death sentence and Jang was summarily executed for the crimes. In characteristically bombastic language, the KCNA report said that “Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.”
It went on to detail how Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un had all placed enormous trust in Jang, who abused this trust by secretly plotting to seize power. Following Kim Jong-Il’s death in December 2012, Jang allegedly “began revealing his true colors, thinking that it was just the time for him to realize his wild ambition in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced.” To that end he allegedly sought to prevent Kim Jong-Un from consolidating his power over the DPRK in hopes that Jang himself might become the absolute leader of North Korea.
The report goes on to claim that when Jang’s plot failed and Kim Jong-Un successfully inherited power, Jang was “so arrogantly and insolently as [to be] unwillingly” to stand up “from his seat and [only] half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people.”
Jang’s trial and execution comes just days after North Korea officially announced that Jang had been stripped of his titles and removed from his positions for secretly plotting to seize power from Kim Jong-Un.
As The Diplomat noted earlier today, with Jang’s purge and execution, “Kim Jong-Un effectively signals his unwillingness to tolerate any alternate locus of power.” The execution also underscores the seriousness of the defection of Jang’s fund manager who fled to South Korea with several important documents and other information about the internal state of the Kim regime. Additionally, Jang’s execution is sure to send a strong message to China which valued Jang as an important and pragmatic interlocutor. North Korea’s Ambassador to China, Ji Jae-Ryong, was a close associate of Jang’s and may soon be purged himself.
According to WantChinaTimes, based on reports by Seoul’s North Korea Strategy Information Service, Kim Jong-Un’s older brother (the second oldest current-generation Kim) arrested Jang Song-Thaek. Lee Yun-Keol of the aforementioned agency stated that “in fact, even Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae would not dare to carry out the arrest. Kim Jong-un’s own second oldest brother Kim Jong-chul ordered the guards to complete the arrest in the end.” If true, the reports could indicate that Kim Jong-Un could be planning on expanding his older brother’s role in the North Korean regime. Kim Jong-Nam, the oldest Kim brother — who gained infamy by squandering his chances at the North Korean leadership by trying to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland with a fake passport — might also be a future candidate for a purge according to certain reports. |
Bloomberg/Getty Images Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) tweeted his support for an investigation of Exxon on Friday.
Two Democratic presidential candidates indicated on Friday they support an investigation of oil giant ExxonMobil for concealing research on fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change, following a call by two House Democrats for a Justice Department probe into the matter.
“We held tobacco companies responsible for lying about cancer. Let’s do the same for oil companies & climate change,” former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) tweeted on Friday, linking to an article about the House members' request for an inquiry.
We held tobacco companies responsible for lying about cancer. Let’s do the same for oil companies & climate change. http://t.co/mS4fMEEduy — Martin O'Malley (@MartinOMalley) October 16, 2015
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed a similar sentiment on Twitter, but stopped short of explicitly endorsing the inquiry.
“#ExxonKnew the truth about fossil fuels and climate change and lied to protect their business model at the expense of the planet,” he tweeted.
#ExxonKnew the truth about fossil fuels and climate change and lied to protect their business model at the expense of the planet. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 16, 2015
Those are the only public comments O’Malley and Sanders have made about the ExxonMobil controversy.
As of Sunday, neither of the Democratic presidential candidates responded to The Huffington Post's request to confirm that they endorse the House Democrats’ calls for an inquiry or offer a more detailed statement on their positions.
Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Friday asking her to initiate an investigation of ExxonMobil for conducting a “campaign to deceive the American people about the known risks of fossil fuels in causing climate change."
The letter is based on reports from Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times earlier this month detailing Exxon’s efforts to cast doubt on the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change, despite knowledge of its causes dating back decades.
Inside Climate News told the story of how one of Exxon’s own scientists told the company’s management in 1977 that carbon dioxide emitted through the burning of fossil fuels was the "most likely” driver of global climate change.
And the LA Times documented how Exxon “sought to downplay the certainty of global warming,” even as it charged its scientists with assessing how to prepare for the phenomenon.
Lieu and DeSaulnier compared Exxon’s conduct to cigarette companies’ public denial of the harmful effects of tobacco decades earlier.
ExxonMobil denied the charges in an email to HuffPost. "We unequivocally reject allegations contained in the letter to Attorney General Lynch from Representatives Lieu and DeSaulnier," said Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for ExxonMobil. "The media reports that are the basis for their allegations are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil’s more than 30-year history of climate research that was conducted in conjunction with the Department of Energy, academics and the UN International Panel on Climate Change."
UPDATE: This article has been updated with ExxonMobil's response.
Kate Sheppard contributed reporting.
Also on HuffPost: |
Protesters in Atlanta angry with white supremacist violence in Charlottesville marched to Piedmont Park Sunday night, spray painting a statue of a Confederate soldier and chanting slogans decrying President Donald Trump.
There was virtually no police presence as demonstrators walked from Woodruff Park up Peachtree Street, snarling traffic as they went. When they arrived, some climbed the statue - which shows a Confederate soldier laying down his weapon at the end of Reconstruction - and defaced it. One protester was hurt by metal falling from the edifice.
Tensions rose as the lone policeman on the scene was surrounded by black-clad antifa protesters shouting “pig.” Black Lives Matter protesters put themselves between the police officer and the antifacism crowd.
The gathering soon dispersed.
The memorial and march were organized by All Out Atlanta but drew many other participants.
Separately, in Decatur, several hundred residents with candles were joining together on the square in a much calmer vigil.
The rallies come a day after violence erupted in Charlottesville as white supremacists clashed with counterprotesters. Events turned deadly when James Alex Fields, 20, allegedly drove a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of people. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and 19 were injured. Two Virginia troopers monitoring the protests from a helicopter were also killed.
In Atlanta, there was a tone of sharp defiance.
“It’s clear now. Love doesn’t trump hate. Love doesn’t stop bullets. Love doesn’t stop moving cars,” said Amario Garcia, who was at the Woodruff Park rally.
That sentiment was echoed by many of the speakers. One person who spoke briefly of reconciliation was met with boos and catcalls.
A news release sent by All Out Atlanta states, “Liberal society has blood on its hands” and accuses the American Civil Liberties Union of being “spineless” in its defense of “fascists’ right to assemble” in Charlottesville.
The group organized in 2016 to counter a white supremacist rally at Stone Mountain, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
All Out Atlanta is made up of progressive and other left-leaning groups, including student groups, anti-fascist organizations and labor groups, as well as elements of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy movements.
A memorial to the Charlottesville victims on the square in Decatur PHOTO: JOSHUA SHARPE/AJC
In Decatur, the mood was more somber.
On the Decatur Square, white candle wax dripped from people's hands as they bowed their heads in a moment of silence for Charlottesville and the world.
"It's a disgrace," attendee Dan Vogel said of the events in Charlottesville. "I think people need to stand up and say that. It shouldn't be happening in 2017."
Vogel was standing with Helena Herring, who held a sign calling for an end to white supremacy.
As a white woman, she said she benefits from it.
"And we have to stand up and fight it," she said.
Local civil rights groups gathered to march against the violence that broke out during a white nationalist rally.
Know what’s really going on with crime and public safety in your metro Atlanta community, including breaking news, trial coverage, trends and the latest on unsolved cases. Sign up for the AJC’s crime and safety newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox. |
UN climate science panel's full report shows how climate change could pan out differently across the many regions of the world
Europe has been warming faster than the global average over the last 30 years, the UN's new climate report reveals.
This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released part one of its scientific report in full.
Among some of the most significant findings from a summary of the report released a few days ago are that humans are responsible for at least half of the warming experienced in recent decades. The report also predicts higher sea levels and further warming worldwide if greenhouse gas emissions continue.
The full report also looks at how climate change could pan out differently across the many regions of the world. There will be much more on this when the IPCC releases the second part of its climate report in March 2014. But the first part provides some valuable insights about how climate change affects Europe.
Changes so far
Since 1979, the land in Europe has been warming faster than the global average of 0.27 degrees Celsius (°C) per decade - but some parts have been warming faster than others.
In northern Europe - the region encompassing countries such as the UK and Sweden - temperatures have risen by 0.48°C per decade. In the central Europe region, where countries like France and Germany sit, temperatures have risen 0.44°C per decade. Temperatures in southern Europe and the Mediterranean have risen a little slower, at around 0.34°C per decade.
Image by Carbon Brief, created using data from page 46 - Chapter 14 of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. Photograph: /CarbonBrief
In addition to the warming trend, it's also very likely - which means scientists are 90 per cent certain - that Europe has experienced a greater number of warm days and nights since 1950s, according to the report. Since the 1950s, it's also likely that the number of heatwaves in Europe has risen.
The IPCC report states that it's likely mid-latitude regions like Europe have, overall, experienced more rainfall since the middle of the 20th century. A number of studies the report cites suggest extreme or heavy rainfall events have become more intense and frequent in Europe, but there is some variation across regions and seasons.
Other signs of past changes in European climate are less clear, as is the case with droughts.There's not enough data to say whether the number of droughts has changed across Europe as a whole. However certain areas, such as the Mediterranean, have likely experienced more frequent and intense droughts since 1950.
At this point, there's no clear evidence suggesting how flooding may have changed throughout Europe, but the second part of the IPCC report will discuss in greater detail how floods vary from country to country.
Similarly, there's still discussion among scientists about whether climate change has indirectly contributed to Europe's recent cold winters. The report cites a small number of studies which have linked the decline of Arctic sea ice with the changeable winter conditions in Europe. The research suggests that warming in the Arctic could weaken the jet stream - allowing cold polar air to reach south to places like Britain. More work is needed, however, before scientists can be sure of a link.
Future prospects
Greenhouse gas emissions' disruptive effects on the climate are set to continue, warns the report. In all parts of Europe, and across all the seasons, temperatures are predicted to rise. The speed of warming by the end of the century is likely to be much faster than at present.
Climate models suggest that some parts will warm faster than others, however. The IPCC report predicts that under a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in the near term but stabilise by the end of the century ( RCP4.5), north Europe would warm fastest.
Temperatures there are projected to rise 2.7°C higher than the 1986-2005 average by the end of the 21st century. Central Europe is projected to warm just slightly less, with temperatures rising 2.6°C. Southern parts of Europe will warm least, say the projections, with temperatures rising 2.3°C higher than 1986-2005 levels.
Image by Carbon Brief, created using data in Table 14.1 - Chapter 14 of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. Photograph: /CarbonBrief
Different patterns emerge when climate models simulate rainfall patterns in the future, too. North and central parts of Europe are projected to get wetter, with an average increase in rainfall of eight and four per cent, respectively. Again that's compared to the 1986-2005 average. Meanwhile, Southern parts of Europe are projected to become drier, with five percent less rainfall on average. When rain does fall it's likely to be in heavier bursts, the report says.
Image by Carbon Brief, created using data in Table 14.1 - Chapter 14 of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. Photograph: /CarbonBrief
As for heatwaves, it is "very likely" Europe will experience longer, more frequent or more intense warm spells (or both), the report says. Recent research also included in the report suggests that the drying out of soils may actually be amplifying the problem of heat waves.
Climate models progress
Scientists writing the new report say they have much greater confidence in their ability to model past and future changes in European climate since the IPCC's last big review of science in 2007.
It's not possible to be 100 per cent certain about exactly how much warming and rainfall the continent will experience in the near term, since the region has notoriously complicated weather. Two major circulations in the atmosphere and oceans affect the European climate from one decade to the next, making it difficult to pin down changes in the short term.
But that doesn't change the long term projections in the IPCC's report. Expect more detail when part two of the IPCC report is published next March, but for now it looks like Europe's in for hotter days and heat waves, with many northern and central countries getting wetter while southern parts get drier.
• This article was first published by The Carbon Brief |
A growing number of Brits are citing alcohol as a contributing factor in their divorces -- and it's the wives who have the drinking problem in the majority of the cases, according to one divorce attorney.
Family law attorney Amanda McAlister told the Daily Mail Wednesday that she sees 40 to 50 divorce cases every year where drinking played a part in the marital breakdown. By her calculations, the number of men citing alcohol as a cause in these cases has risen by 70 percent in the last five years.
"Husbands will often initially cite a different reason for divorce, such as that their wife doesn’t work or help around the house," McAlister told the newspaper. "It only later comes to light that the reason she’s not doing so is because she’s often drunk or nursing a hangover."
It's not the first time the link between drinking and divorce has been in the news as of late. In February 2013, researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that heavy drinking and incompatible drinking -- where one spouse consumes far more alcohol than the other -- increase the chance of divorce. The risk of divorce was especially high when the wife was the one imbibing.
Click through the slideshow below to see how our readers said drinking affected their marriages, then head to the comments to share your experiences.
Did Your Ex's Drinking Play A Role In Your Decision To Divorce? SEE GALLERY |
Former US Postal Service and RadioShack manager Johan Bruyneel has said that he would like to speak publicly about his role in the Lance Armstrong affair but his lawyers have told him not to. Related Articles Bruyneel will not attend Belgian federation hearing
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Armstrong confessed to doping during his time at US Postal Postal under Bruyneel’s management and confirmed that there was a systematic doping programme in place on the team.
“After a long silence, I am eager to speak my mind but my lawyers have instructed me to stay quiet,” Bruyneel told Belgian magazine Humo. “The current procedures make it impossible. But I can say one thing: I’m no devil. The public may think that but eventually everyone will get a better understanding of the situation and that image will change.”
Bruyneel was removed as manager of the RadioShack squad in October following the publication of USADA’s Reasoned Decision on the Armstrong case. He is mentioned repeatedly in USADA’s dossier on the doping culture in place on the US Postal Service team.
A nine-page section titled “Johan Bruyneel’s involvement in doping” includes rigorous detail of the Belgian’s organisation of the doping programme at the team and states: “The overwhelming evidence in this case is that Johan Bruyneel was intimately involved in all significant details of the US Postal team’s doping program […] He was on top of the details for organising blood transfusion programs before the major Tours, and he knew when athletes needed to take EPO to regenerate their blood supply after extracting blood.”
Bruyneel did not refute those allegations outright in the Humo interview, but he did deny that he had placed his riders’ health at risk. “These accusations hit me very heavily and when my mother calls me in tears because she has read something bad about me, that breaks my heart,” Bruyneel said. “I can look anyone in the eye, I’ve never put anyone’s health at risk.”
Bruyneel also expressed his belief that the details of US Postal’s doping programme would never have been uncovered had Armstrong not come out of retirement in 2009 and had RadioShack offered Floyd Landis a contract in 2010. Landis’ emails to USADA in April 2010 triggered the federal and sporting investigations into the US Postal Service team that ultimately led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life.
“If Armstrong had not come back and if I had included Landis in the squad again, all of this would never have happened. I am two hundred percent convinced of that. Without those two facts, we would be talking completely differently,” Bruyneel said. |
Last week was a trifecta for Cultural Marxism in the comic-book world. Archie Andrews was shot to death trying to protect a gay senator, Captain America became black, and the Mighty Thor had a sex change.
Archie Andrews, the freckle-faced, milkshake-drinking ginger who has epitomized American wholesomeness since 1941, was murdered last Wednesday in Life With Archie #36. His friend Kevin Keller, an openly gay white senator with a black husband, was campaigning for gun control and was being threatened by some stereotypically rendered right-wing gun nut. But Archie stepped in and “heroically” ate a bullet for him.
“Archie is not a superhero like all the rest of the comic book characters,” explained Jon Goldwater, co-CEO of Archie Comics. “He’s human. He’s a person. When you wound him, he bleeds. He knows that. If anything, I think his death is more impactful because of that.” (The company’s other co-CEO is Nancy Silberkleit, who has been sued for sexual harassment by reportedly referring to all male employees as “Penis” rather than their names. She denied such harassment was even possible since males are not a “protected class.” At press time, I could not verify whether she also uses tremendously annoying words such as “impactful.”)
“What they”re doing goes far beyond mere “cultural appropriation.” This is cultural pillaging.”
I”ll bet you didn”t know that before he gave his life to save a gay senator, Archie also spawned an interracial baby with a black woman.
Marvel Comics announced last week that the role of Captain America”who, like Archie, has existed as a Caucasian since 1941″will be assumed by a black man from Harlem who until now has played a sidekick known as “The Falcon.” The original Captain America”the white one”is giving his role over to The Falcon because he is now 90 years old and too feeble to be a superhero anymore. All-New Captain America is slated to launch in October.
“In 2014, this should be a thing that we shrug off,” says Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort about the new black Captain America. “It shouldn’t be seen as revolutionary, but it still feels exciting.”
So if it’s no big thing, why did you do it in the first place, and why does it feel “exciting” to you?
Marvel also announced last week that the Mighty Thor, who has existed as a muscular male thunder god in Nordic folklore for millennia and became a male comic-book hero in 1962, will transmogrify into a woman starting in October, since the male Thor has been deemed “unworthy” to wield his legendary hammer. “This is not She-Thor,” said series writer Jason Aaron. “This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before.”
In Norse mythology, Thor has a golden-haired wife named Sif. They could have easily made her into a comic-book superhero and thus avoided meddling with ancient European cultural tradition. The fact that they didn”t suggests that the primary motive is meddling with ancient European cultural tradition.
But last week’s three cases are hardly the first instances of PC injecting itself virus-like into the comic-book world in an attempt to mold impressionable young minds.
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The Obama holdovers in the Justice Department finally seem to be getting the message — it’s now OK to identify illegal immigrant drug dealers as illegal immigrant drug dealers.
You might say the Obama hacks are learning how to Make America Great Again — one press release at a time.
“That is good,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions told me Thursday on my radio show. “You should tell the truth about that, unless you’re trying to cover up something.”
Which is exactly what the PC mandarins during the Obama-Holder-Lynch years were trying to do.
Speaking of the criminals promoting the nation’s opioid epidemic, Sessions said, “People want to know what town they’re from, what country they’re from.”
The latter more than the former, because if you’re in the U.S. illegally, you’re not really a “Boston man,” despite what the Just-Us, I mean Justice Department insisted on telling us for the past eight years, for obvious reasons. They didn’t want the low-info Hillary-Obama voters to get the facts about the undocumented Democrats swarming across the border.
“You don’t get to come to a foreign country,” Sessions continued, “to commit crime and then they just let you stay here.”
Oh, but we have let them stay here. And at least since 2009, it appears that it was discouraged, if not officially verboten, for many U.S. attorneys to identify illegal immigrants as illegal. It just wasn’t Politically Correct.
For example, just two months ago, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston announced the arrest of 23 alleged heroin dealers. In the DEA’s own accompanying affidavit, they identified six as illegal immigrants, but in his press release the holdover acting U.S. attorney refused to acknowledge that any were Dominicans. I had to call Sessions’ office to pry the facts out of the Boston office — that at least 10 of the 23 were Dominicans.
But on Thursday, the feds in Providence announced the breakup of another three-state heroin ring, identifying the three brothers who ran it as “Dominican nationals … who allegedly reentered the country after having been previously convicted of felony drug crimes and deported.”
And for good measure, the acting U.S. attorney in Providence pointed out that the illegal immigrants were using “what are alleged to be stolen identities.” And as they were arresting the Dominicans, the cops “detained two individuals on administrative warrants for removal who they encountered.” In other words, they lugged two just run-of-the-mill illegal immigrants.
Still, after all these years, it’s difficult for some of the various U.S. attorneys to make the transition from PC cover-up to truth telling. Here’s an example from Portland, Maine, earlier this month headlined: “Portland Man Sentenced to 14 Months for Misusing a Social Security Number.”
Now, why would a “Portland man” need to commit identity theft, unless of course he wasn’t really a Portland man? In the second paragraph, we learned that the perp is in fact “a citizen of the Dominican Republic, (who) entered the United States without proper documentation.”
On the other hand, give the Maine feds credit for identifying the illegal immigrant as “aka ‘Kelvin Valle-Alicea.’ ” Nice touch, putting those quotation marks around the alias of so-called Portland man. Compare these small outbreaks of veracity to the arrests in 2015, at the height of the Obama regime, of a gang of heroin dealers in southern New Hampshire. One was recently convicted: “Lawrence Man Jailed for 57 Months on Heroin Conspiracy Charge.”
Lawrence Man. Even Bernie Bros know what that euphemism means. But the original 2015 press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Concord, N.H., began: “Eight individuals were arrested …”
Five of the individuals seem to be Americans, the other three “Lawrence men.” The Americans got top billing, naturally. The obvious clue about the Lawrence men, if you just arrived on Earth from Mars yesterday, was that the second police agency listed was “Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Homeland Security Investigations.”
Of course, the involvement of ICE in the bust was only mentioned in the final paragraph of the release.
It’s going to be a long road back to law and order after eight years of chaos and crime. Even if the feds are in the early stages of recovery, many states are still enforcing the Obama-era PC regimen. Gov. Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker here in Massachusetts seems to have next to no interest in curtailing the crime wave.
And here’s the headline on a story Friday out of New Jersey: “2 Texas men indicted after N.J. cocaine bust.”
Where is Jeff Sessions when you really need him?
Buy Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at his website, howiecarrshow.com. |
A mother was arrested early Friday morning after she passed out in a running car on Barrington Drive in Roswell, police say.
Melissa Rae Tomesh, 35, was allegedly drunk and high when police found her behind the wheel and breastfeeding her nearly 3-year-old child, according to a police report.
A concerned citizen called police about 2:30 a.m., Roswell police spokeswoman Officer Lisa Holland told Channel 2 Action News.
“When the officers arrived they had to wake up the driver,” Holland said. “And after talking to her, they realized she was under the influence of something, possibly drugs or a combination of different medications.”
More upsetting than the apparent driving under the influence charge, officers said, was that Tomesh was breastfeeding.
“You don’t even want to text and drive or be a distracted driver, and here you have a child in your lap breastfeeding,” Holland told Channel 2.
Tomesh is no stranger to Roswell law enforcement. She was arrested in August 2014 on child cruelty charges related to leaving her then 9-month-old in a hot car while she went shopping at a CVS, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. Fulton County court records show Tomesh pleaded no contest in 2015 to a misdemeanor reckless conduct charge related to the arrest.
Holland said Tomesh is charged with DUI and child endangerment.
“The child was turned over to a family member, but the Division of Family and Children Services has been notified,” Holland said in an email.
Tomesh was in the Roswell jail Friday afternoon. |
The Austrian announced his retirement from racing earlier this week, after a career that included three grand prix podiums and two victories in the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Despite no longer wanting to compete, he made it clear in a statement that he was eager to remain involved in motor racing in some capacity.
"My future will still evolve around racing, it's in my blood after all," he said. "Anyone who knows me, knows that I always have lots of projects on the go which includes growing my road safety and race track design business."
Manor offer
In the wake of the resignation of Manor chiefs Graeme Lowdon and John Booth, team owner Stephen Fitzpatrick has approached Wurz about a role at the Banbury-based outfit.
It is unclear how interested the Austrian is in the position, however, with him believed to have offers from other teams on the table too.
"I can confirm I was approached by Stephen but I would rather not say anything else," Wurz told Motorsport.com.
"I think Stephen buying the team was a super smart move, and with Mercedes and Williams technical support, it shows a promising direction." |
Editor’s Note: Neither my Catholic upbringing nor my Episcopal adulthood exposed me to the repetitive “praise” singing typical of Evangelicals. Still, my eventual reaction to the words to religious songs is similar to the description below written by a former pastor. Once I started really listening to the words, I realized how gruesome they could be.
=========================
By Jim Mulholland
I’d probably sung the song a hundred times, swaying to its gentle melodies with arms uplifted and eyes closed. It was one of those praise choruses evangelical Christians love to sing, a few words repeated over and over again –
“You alone I long to worship. You alone are worthy of praise.”
We sang until we were oblivious to our surroundings and open to the Spirit. Having practiced this form of spiritual reflection often, I was startled when my inner voice said, “That can’t be true.” I opened my eyes, looked over at my wife and said it out loud,
“That can’t be true.”
Later, as we drove home, she asked what I’d meant. I explained that God couldn’t be the only one worthy of praise. It suddenly made no sense to me. Every human life had worth. Nearly everyone did something worthy of praise. Why did we have to lift up God at our expense? Why did God’s majesty require our abasement? Why did God need to be constantly and repeatedly praised? Was God insecure? Though I didn’t realize it at the time, my theology was shifting and my belief in god was beginning to crumble. All I knew on that day was that Christianity’s opinion of humanity seemed inadequate and inaccurate.
Of all the religions I’ve studied, Christianity has the poorest opinion of human nature. Christian theology, rhetoric and music often praises God’s magnificence at human expense. According to orthodox theology, we are born into sin, doomed from our first breath. Though Christianity says we were created in God’s image, that image was quickly and irrevocably broken and twisted by sin. No matter how much we try to do good, we will always fall short of the glory of God. A single sin makes us unworthy of relationship with a holy God. Without the atoning death of Jesus, all of humanity is destined to destruction. There is nothing praiseworthy in being human. God alone is worthy of praise.
This is what I was taught in Sunday School and theology class. This is what I preached, though I always tried to downplay the ugliness of this portrayal and emphasize God’s goodness in saving and forgiving us. Unfortunately, this negative view of humanity was hard to escape. It wasn’t just the music that praised God at our expense. The first time I officiated at communion I cringed as I lead the congregation in reciting,
“We are not worthy to eat the crumbs from beneath your table.”
Gradually, this self-flagellation began to grate on me. It didn’t match my experience.
When my children were born, I didn’t look at them and despair. I didn’t grieve their immaturity and imperfections. I marveled at their complexity and celebrated their vast potential. They had within them the possibility of great and wonderful accomplishments. While I knew they would make mistakes, I saw this not as a moral failing, but as a necessary process. What I expected from them was not perfection, but eventual maturity, the ability to live life with wisdom and sensitivity. What they needed from me was not a continual reminder of their frailties, but my praise when they did well and my encouragement when they failed. Eventually, I realized my opinion of my children was more praiseworthy than God’s opinion of me.
Thankfully, when it came to raising my children, I trusted my intuition and not my religious training. As a pastor, I worked hard to deconstruct this theology of human depravity. I adopted Judaism’s more nuanced interpretation of the events in the Garden of Eden. I saw Jesus as more of a teacher and less of a sacrificial lamb. I abandoned a belief in hell and damnation, imagining a God who was at least as good at parenting as I was. I borrowed the lessons of Buddhism, seeing the goal of life as gradual enlightenment rather than spiritual perfection. Yet, even with all these adjustments, I found myself frustrated. In the end, it may have been the music that drove me from religion.
In my last year of pastoring, I vowed to avoid songs that maligned humanity. I broke that vow after a couple of weeks. Even in my liberal Christian hymnal, God was consistently praised and humanity forever diminished. Grace was amazing, but humans were wretches. We were weak and God was strong. I found a few songs with a positive bent, but my congregation soon grew tired of singing them, requesting the familiar regardless of the message.
When people ask me why I left Christianity, I tell them it wasn’t working for me any longer. I usually leave it at that. But, when I think carefully about what wasn’t working, one of the nails in the coffin was the music. I couldn’t sing those songs any longer. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t think them accurate or healthy. In a world where living can be a challenge, I saw no purpose to disparaging human effort. Every life was worthy. Everyone could use some praise.
==================
Jim Mulholland spent twenty-five years as a pastor. He wrote several best selling Christian books and spoke nationally. In 2008, he resigned when his faith faltered. After several years of transition, Jim published the book “Leaving Your Religion” and began writing a blog on becoming post-religious. You can read more of Jim’s story and reflections atLeavingYourReligion.com. The above post is reprinted with permission from http://leavingyourreligion.com/2014/03/praise-worthy/
Photo credit http://leavingyourreligion.com/2014/03/praise-worthy/ |
Edit: you can find a much more detailed tutorial and all the answers to your questions (hopefully :)) here!
No, you’re not mistaken - I have indeed made a Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks clock! I was inspired by this wristwatch, but that was a bit too expensive for me to buy and too difficult for me to make myself.
So instead I made this on a 20x20 cm canvas, onto which I decoupaged the clock’s face (the numbers and John Cleese’s upper body :P). For the clock’s hands I cut out suitable legs from this image and did a bit of photoshopping to improve the image quality. I then used a harder kind of plastic folder, onto which I decoupaged and afterwards cut out the legs. These I glued onto regular clock hands which I had bought (and later cut off so only the attachment at the top remained for adding the legs to the clockwork). I made a hole in the middle of the canvas, put in a clockwork, attached the hands — aaand done!
Things I bought:
Canvas
Clockwork and hands
Decoupage glue and brush (and any other stuff needed for decoupage)
Things I printed:
Clock face with numbers and upper body
Legs for clock hands
Other things I ended up needing:
Plastic folder
Black marker (for hiding white edges)
Awl
Razor blade
Wire cutters
Small brush for touch-ups |
Dear Editor,
My attention has recently been brought to an article in the Penal Code (Title 28, Article 2:344).
I wonder if certain decisions made by members of the Gumbs Cabinet after they were the subjects of a vote of no confidence in Parliament, could open the possibility of those members being prosecuted personally? I read about the awarding of garbage contracts, I hear about political appointees and other temporary workers in various government jobs quickly being made permanent Public Servants, I again hear about a slew of Taxi and Bus licences being made ready for issuance, I hear about Government Long Lease Land about to be issued in a Trump-like "huge" hurry.
Irrespective of my well-known personal anti UP Party political views before and after the 2014 election, after the Gumbs Cabinet was put in place by Theo, I felt that with people like Marcel Gumbs, Dennis Richardson, Martin Hassink and Claret Connor in Ministerial positions, at least we would not have to worry about the absence of transparency, or the issue of integrity. According to me, at least these four Ministers out of a total of five and later a total of seven would carry the integrity torch high and not allow partisan hanky-panky to take place during the change of guard. Are they now proving me wrong?
Michael J. Ferrier |
Late Thursday night, the Senate Finance Committee voted to approve its tax plan, sending it to the Senate floor for a vote that could happen as early as just after Thanksgiving. While there are still major obstacles ahead, particularly when it comes to Republican Senators Ron Johnson, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and John McCain, all of whom have expressed reservations about the bill, one would have thought the incremental step would be cause for celebration. But for Senator Orrin Hatch, the 83-year-old Finance Committee chairman, the excitement was overshadowed by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who had the audacity to point out—in public!—that the proposed bill sacrifices low-income earners and the middle class in order to give corporate America, and by extension the 1 percent, a gigantic tax cut. To be clear: everyone knows this. Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which said earlier this week the plan would raise taxes on low-income Americans in just a few short years, knows this. Voters, 61 percent of whom said this week that they believe the G.O.P. plan will benefit the wealthy, know this. But Republicans are still trying to claim that their plan is all about the little guy, so you’ll have to excuse Hatch if he exploded when Brown blew up his spot.
“This bull crap you guys throw out there gets really old after a while,” Hatch told Brown, who had said it would be “nice just tonight to just acknowledge this tax cut is really not for the middle class; it’s for the rich.” The Utah senator then banged his gavel nine times in an attempt to silence Brown, point out that he, Hatch, “came from the lower-middle class originally, so don’t spew that stuff on me.” Hatch also seemingly took issue with the timing of Brown’s critique: “to do it right at the end of this, it’s just not right,” he lamented. He did not suggest an alternative time to discuss the matter of screwing over a large portion of the country, but perhaps someone in his office will check and get back to us.
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Trump official: chief executives didn’t understand the question when they were asked if a tax cut would spur investment
Earlier this week, Donald Trump’s National Economic Council director Gary Cohn suffered through yet another humiliating episode in a series of humiliating episodesthat have made up his tenure at the White House. In this case, it was during an appearance at The Wall Street Journal’s annual C.E.O Council, where editor John Bussey asked the executives in the audience to raise their hands if they planned to increase their investments should a corporate tax cut pass—a concept that comprises the centerpiece of the G.O.P.’s argument that their tax plan is a boon for the common man. Unfortunately for Cohn, only a handful of people raised their hands, prompting an awkward, “Why aren’t the other hands up?“ from the former Goldman Sachs president. But when asked on Friday about the fact that the very people whose cooperation is necessary for the plan to maybe work do not appear to be on board, Kevin Hassett, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, explained that the C.E.O.s were either confused or lying:
He also claimed, as we assume he is contractually obligated to, that tax cuts will pay for themselves. “It’s just not economically rational” to suggest the plans would increase the deficit, he said, even though virtually every analysis has shown the plans doing just that, including a report from the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, which showed that the House bill would cost $1.98 trillion over the next decade.
Trump gearing up to blame widening trade deficit caused by tax cuts on Mexico
As you’ve probably heard because he constantly brings it up, whether in reference to Mexico or Germany or Japan, Donald Trump is upset about the United States’ trade deficit and will reduce it A.S.A.P., just after he signs a tax bill that would do the opposite. Per The New York Times:
A wide range of experts agree that cutting taxes is likely to increase the trade deficit, which measures the difference between what the United States imports from other countries, like televisions and fruit, and what it exports, like cars and meat. In fact, a larger trade deficit is not a byproduct of the tax plan—it is the heart of the plan. The administration has said its $1.5 trillion tax cut will not balloon the federal budget deficit because the plan will generate enough economic growth to essentially pay for itself. The most optimistic projections of the likely economic benefits of the tax cuts are driven by increased trade deficits. “I do expect a major trade deficit, absolutely, as part of this,” said Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University who supports the proposed tax cuts and whose analysis of the economic benefits has been cited by the White House. “If this tax plan works, it works because the U.S. becomes more open to trade.”
Kotlikoff also said, “this is a White House that does not know economics,” so, you know, sleep well tonight.
Elsewhere!
Wells Fargo Executive Fired After Complaining About Regulators (W.S.J.)
Tax Talks Advance Without an Analysis of Economic Impact (W.S.J.)
Wall Street Will Be Riding the Boom from Tax Plan, Mnuchin Says (Bloomberg
Oklahoma Tried the G.O.P.’s Tax Plan. Now, It’s Electing Democrats.(New York)
Interior Department Says It Can’t Explain Zinke’s Private Jet Use Because of Obama (The Hive)
How Morgan Stanley Outdid Goldman in Old Commodities Rivalry (Bloomberg)
Bitcoin Adds $41 Billion to Market Cap in 6 Days as It Hits All-Time High of $7,998 (CNBC)
SkyBridge Boss Grouses Over Sale Approval Delay (Reuters)
A French Challenge to Gundlach’s “Disaster” Bond Theory (Bloomberg)
Ohio Supreme Court justice says he’s been intimate with “50 very attractive females,” including one in a hayloft (USA Today |
We constantly see consumers put on a Vive for the first time and immediately ask where they can get one.
Today, we’re announcing a few new purchasing options for those of you in the U.S. and China looking to buy a Vive. Through these new offers, we’re going to expose more users to the great room-scale VR experiences that only Vive can offer and reduce upfront costs when purchasing a Vive.
We’re offering three new options for buying a Vive Bundle in the U.S.
0% Financing for 6 months for a total monthly cost of $138.00 (plus tax and shipping)
0% Financing for 12 months for a total monthly cost of $66.58 (plus tax and shipping)
7.99% Financing for 24 months for a total monthly cost of $40.13 (plus tax and shipping)
For China:
0% Financing for 3 months for a total monthly cost of ¥2,296 (tax and shipping included)
0% Financing for 6 months for a total monthly cost of ¥1,148 (tax and shipping included)
0% Financing for 12 months for a total monthly cost of ¥574 (tax and shipping include)
We’ve done similar options and have seen great success in Europe with several retailers in the UK, Germany and France. This offer makes it easier for consumers to get into a Vive right away with zero down.
Of course, included in the Vive Bundles are the following four critically acclaimed titles:
The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed, Zombie Training Simulator, Richie’s Plank Experience and Everest VR. |
Hmm... We got the 9-12 dry hump, promoting his Dick and Jane Glenn Beckifesto. Check. Got the Glenn Beck desk before the Nazi march job. Cute. What tragic historic events will Glenn Beck dry hump next? Perhaps he'll photoshop himself riding shotgun with Jack Kennedy through Dealey Plaza. Ooh! Maybe he'll have the boys (who'll "do your homework for you") work up a My Lai massacre barbecue, starring Glenn Beck in a "Kiss the Cook" apron. That would be adorable. Remember the 9/11 tourist on the WTC hoax? Yeah. That's right up his alley. I know! maybe he should work himself into Hiroshima, stratched out on a deck chair with one of those suntan reflectors and the whatchamacallit on his nose! Yeah! Such "entertainment" makes Glenn Beck look like so much more than a malicious pundit, it makes him look like an actual historic figure! |
A senior Iranian leader threatened to capture and hold 1,000 American soldiers for ransom if the United States were to attempt to strike his country, Al Arabiya reported on Sunday.
The warning was issued in an interview with Iran’s Channel 2 by General Mohsen Rezaee, former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and current Secretary General of Iran’s Expediency Council.
The Expediency Council is an administrative assembly appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader. It is tasked with resolving differences between the Iranian Parliament and the Guardian Council, in addition to acting in an advisory role to the Supreme Leader.
Regarding the ransom money Iran might receive in exchange for the soldiers, Rezaee claimed that, “Iran would be able to solve many of its economic problems with the dollars that such a ransom would produce.”
He also commented on the ongoing negotiations with world powers on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that the Americans, “are today alone in the P5+1 negotiations, and have no choice but to agree,” on a deal with Iran.
Rezaee also responded to reports that, in the case of the failure of negotiations, the United States would still consider all possible options, including potential military action, saying that, “the Americans are handicapped and incapable of launching an armed attack on Iran, just as they will not be able to tighten sanctions on it, and they have no option but agreeing.”
Rezaee’s comments came one day after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called on Iran to be prepared to fight the United States after the end of the negotiations, in order to confront what he called, “the Global Arrogance.” |
Van Arsdel Sample App Released! By Kalita Saintonge / Program Manager, Windows Developer Team Share Share Skype
We’re excited to announce the public release of our feature showcase sample app, Van Arsdel!
The Van Arsdel, Ltd. end-to-end UWP sample app makes extensive use of the improved density and new controls in the Windows UI Library as well as powerful underlying features of the UX framework and composition.
This complete sample demonstrates the features in the 1809 SDK and is built on top of WinUI 2.0, giving you a full immersive example of how to build a rich, productive experience (in this case, selling lamps).
The app is available on the Microsoft Store and its source can be downloaded on GitHub.
Spotlight Features
Van Arsdel uses many new and exciting features that were launched in the latest release, some of which include controls that were requested from our community.
Horizontal Navigation View
The sample app sports a sleek horizontal NavigationView with an in-line back button and Pivot-like visuals while maintaining a compact and CommandBar-like feel.
This particular NavigationView has also been modified to add “tabs” of new lamps when you click “Create your own” on the shop page:
If you’re curious about how to develop a similar experience for your app, please check out the GitHub for the source on how we did this!
Compact UI Density
XAML has also become more compact in the latest release! Van Arsdel sports two, more compact versions of our controls.
One version is our new standard sizing and the other is our new Compact Density sizing. Both can be viewed on the “Create your own” lamp page when you click the “Buy” button. Shift-clicking that same button will reveal the Compact Density mode (seen above on the right).
Command Bar Flyout
Controls can now be much more robust with the ability to display a new control called CommandBarFlyout! This control works very similarly to our standard CommandBar control – even taking AppBarButtons within it! – but this new control also allows for MenuFlyoutItems to be placed in the overflow menu; in this case, enabling a more complete text input experience.
Learn More
To learn more about these exciting new controls, be sure to check out our design guidance site. |
3, 2, 1 ... Bake Off! The Mission To Make Bread In Space
Enlarge this image toggle caption C. Lüthen for Bake in Space C. Lüthen for Bake in Space
Crumbs may seem harmless here on Earth, but they can be a hazard in microgravity — they could get in an astronaut's eye, or get inhaled, causing someone to choke. Crumbs could even float into an electrical panel, burn up or cause a fire.
That's part of the reason why it was a very big deal in 1965 when John Young pulled a corned beef sandwich out of his pocket as he was orbiting the earth with Gus Grissom.
"Where did that come from?" Grissom asked Young.
"I brought it with me," Young said.
Young took a bite and then microgravity took over, spreading bread crumbs throughout the spacecraft.
Enlarge this image toggle caption S. Marcu/ Bake in Space GmbH S. Marcu/ Bake in Space GmbH
Today, instead of bread, astronauts usually eat tortillas: They don't crumble in the same way and they're easy to hold with one hand as the astronaut floats about.
But for many Germans, tortillas just don't cut it. So when a man named Sebastian Marcu heard that German Astronaut Alexander Gerst is returning to the International Space Station in 2018, that got him thinking: "Shouldn't we do something to enable him to have fresh bread in space?"
Bread is a really big deal in Germany — there are thousands of variations of different kinds of bread there. To Marcu, a German astronaut in space without fresh bread seemed like a preventable problem.
Marcu was working in the space sector, and he and his friend, an engineer, started a company called Bake in Space in March 2017.
They're partnered with the German Aerospace Center, which is basically Germany's NASA. Their goal is to make an oven that can successfully bake dough on the International Space Station by 2018.
But there are a lot of obstacles that make baking in space difficult.
First, the oven needs to function on about a tenth of the power an oven here on earth does.
And it's pretty much impossible to preheat the oven, because if it gets hot and then the door is opened, a giant hot air bubble could leave the oven and float into the spacecraft.
"It could just sit there in mid air and the astronauts could basically burn himself if he flies through it," Marcu says.
Which is clearly not ideal.
Then there's the problem of the dough — at low heat, bread has to bake for a longer period of time, but the longer it bakes, the drier it gets. And crumbling must be avoided at all costs because of the havoc bread wreaks in space.
Despite all the technical challenges, Marcu predicts that his company will be able to have Alexander Gerst bake the first loaf of sourdough in space next year.
Enlarge this image toggle caption NASA/ Bake in Space GmbH NASA/ Bake in Space GmbH
"It's not just about making one German astronaut happy with fresh bread," Marcu explains. "There's really a deeper meaning to bread in space."
He says bread is ubiquitous. It's made its way onto our dinner tables, into our religion, our slang. Breadwinner and dough stand for money, for well being, for quality of life. We break bread with strangers as a gesture of good faith.
"Well, it would definitely be a big symbol of peace to break bread with an alien life form I think," he says.
But most importantly to Marcu, freshly baked bread in space will offer astronauts a little slice of home.
Paige Pfleger reports for WHYY's health and science show, The Pulse. This story originally appeared on an episode of its podcast called Leap of Space. |
In an interview aired Sunday, Donald Trump told "60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl that he would deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants after he takes office next year. It remains to be seen whether the president-elect will fulfill this pledge, and if he does, how quickly he would seek to do so. In any case, two new analyses confirm that deportations could have severe consequences for the American economy.
One of the analyses, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Monday, offers the first detailed estimates of how a policy of mass deportation would affect specific industries. The authors, Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega of Queens College, City University of New York, came up with a few unexpected results.
Unsurprisingly, the greatest number of undocumented workers — 1.3 million — were employed in leisure and hospitality, followed by the construction sector, which employed 1.1 million. These two sectors were followed by professional and business services, which is not a sector often associated with unauthorized employment but included nearly 1 million undocumented workers, by Edwards and Ortega's estimate.
The two economists relied on census data from 2011 to 2013 to estimate the number of undocumented workers in each industry. While the census does not ask respondents whether they are undocumented, the records do show when they arrived, what country they came from, and whether their occupation required a license — information that can be used to estimate the likelihood that a person is undocumented.
According to a recent estimate from the Pew Research Center, there are about 8 million unauthorized workers in the United States in total.
If all undocumented workers were immediately removed from the country, Edwards and Ortega forecast a decline of 9 percent in agricultural production and declines of 8 percent in construction and leisure and hospitality over the long term.
These are the industries most dependent on undocumented labor. Relative to the overall economy, however, the most important effect would be a decline in manufacturing output of $74 billion over the long term, followed by somewhat more modest declines in wholesale and retail trade and financial activities.
There are relatively few undocumented workers in the financial sector, but they make a disproportionate economic contribution. The sector employs just under 200,000 undocumented immigrants, but their weekly earnings are $1,132 on average — roughly twice the average across the economy for unauthorized workers, which is $581.
“When we think about unauthorized immigrants, we tend to think about poor Mexican workers with low education in agriculture,” Edwards said. In other sectors, he added, “they're highly trained, highly paid professionals, so their removal has a pretty large effect.”
Edwards and Ortega estimate that undocumented workers are responsible for about 3 percent of the U.S. economy overall. Deporting all of them would result in a substantial contraction.
For his part, Trump has argued that removing immigrants will benefit U.S. workers who compete with them for employment. “The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants or however many there may be,” Trump said in August. “There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.”
Most economists who have studied the effects of immigration have found only minimal effects on native-born workers' wages, and one recent review of the research concluded that those most negatively affected by immigration are immigrants already living in the country — who tend to be most similar to the new arrivals in terms of education and skills and thus compete with them most directly.
In any case, many analysts are skeptical that Trump will deliver on his campaign promises for punitive immigration policy. “We do not anticipate significant changes on immigration policy, but incremental restrictions seem likely,” Sven Jari Stehn and Alec Phillips of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to investors on Saturday.
They added that major changes to the country's immigration system, including deportation on a major scale, would require congressional approval. Many lawmakers in Congress favor less radical measures, including Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the Republican from Wisconsin and the speaker of the House, who supports eventual legal status for those here illegally.
Stehn and Phillips did consider one of Trump's proposals: requiring all employers to verify electronically that their personnel can work in the country legally. They estimated that this requirement would force about 2.5 million people to leave the country over two years and that the policy would reduce gross domestic product by one-half to three-quarters of a percentage point.
“Such a policy would have significantly adverse effects on the economy,” they wrote. Unemployment would decline at first as employers hired legal workers to replace their unauthorized workers, but many positions would have to remain vacant. As the economy's overall capacity to produce declined, unemployment would increase again, and so would prices. |
Share. "I don't rule it out, but nothing really has clicked..." "I don't rule it out, but nothing really has clicked..."
No film adaptation of Fallout is currently in the works, but Bethesda's Todd Howard recently confessed he isn't totally against the idea.
"We've had a couple of in-roads, particularly with Fallout, which is a bit stickier than Elder Scrolls, but everybody's kind of asked and I've taken a number of [Fallout movie pitch] meetings over the years and nothing quite clicked where I felt, 'Oh, that would be as good as the game,'" Howard told GI.biz in an interview.
"And that may happen. I don't rule it out, but nothing really has clicked where - the games are popular enough and that's their identity."
Exit Theatre Mode
According to Howard, making a film based in the apocalyptic setting of Fallout risks potentially influencing fan opinions of the games in a negative way.
"Fallout 4, if there had been a Fallout movie, you'd feel different about Fallout when we'd announced Fallout 4 and one of them wouldn't be quite right and you wouldn't want that to be the game, where the movie takes it in another direction," he said.
"I would say we have a pretty high bar as far as what we would want it to be if it ever happened and nothing's quite clicked. Even little things like, 'What does the vault suit look like?' - every little thing we obsess over so the game is the thing where it really exists."
We might be waiting a long time for a potential Fallout movie, but players don't have to wait much longer for new content in Fallout 4. Bethesda recently announced its DLC release plans over the next few months, which includes this month's Automatron for $10.
Read IGN's Fallout 4 review to learn more about nuclear thunderstorms and apocalyptic base-building.
Exit Theatre Mode
Cassidee is a freelance writer and the co-host of a freelancing podcast and a geek culture podcast. You can chat with her about comics, video games, and Corgis on Twitter. |
242nd Independence Day celebration in the USA
About US Independence Day (4th July)
4th of July Celebrations and Fireworks
Independence Day Facts
Why is the Fourth of July the national holiday of the United States?
What was the Continental Congress?
Who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
Did the Declaration of Independence end the Revolutionary War?
When did Americans start celebrating the Fourth of July?
How has Independence Day been observed over the years?
On Wednesday, July 4, 2018, the citizens of the United States will celebrate the 242nd Independence Day. The year 1776, holds immense significance in the history of the US as this year the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in a meeting at the Pennsylvania Statehouse in Philadelphia. The American colonies were declared free and independent states by the Congress.Fourth of July witnesses celebrations across the entire country. It is the perfect occasion to indulge in festivities along with your family and friends. People have a lot of reasons to be excited about as the day is marked by fireworks, barbeques, bonfires, parades, musical events, and other amazing activities.But of all the events, fireworks are the ones to watch out for. In case you want to have an experience of a lifetime then head out to Brooklyn Bridge where you would be greeted by a spectacular display of Annual Macy’s 4th of July fireworks. Other places where you can watch fireworks are National Mall Independence Day celebrations in Washington D.C., Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, Wawa Welcome America! in Philadelphia just to name a few.Grilling is another major activity that marks Independence Day. Majority of Americans cook barbeque on this day in celebration of 4th of July. It has been estimated that around 76 percent of the population that owns grills cook barbeque on Independence Day.Held every year on Independence Day is the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest where the person who eats the most hot dogs and buns within 10 minutes is declared the winner. The origin of the contest dates back to 1916 when the first one was held at the original Nathan's Famous at Coney Island. In 2011, men and women competed separately in the contest.So, make the most of 4th of July by indulging in your favorite activity, celebrating with family and friends, or just relaxing by the beach.Independence Day in the United States of America is celebrated on July 4. The day commemorates the Declaration of Independence of the United States from Great Britain. The Fourth of July celebrates the country’s freedom, and displays the patriotism and unity of the people.The Fourth of July in the US is a federal holiday. Some of the prominent leaders of the United States, including(the first president of the USA),(the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence) and many other founders of Continental Congress, declared July 4, 1776, as the US Independence Day. However, there are many people who do not know why the Fourth of July is celebrated.This is most important day in the history of the United States, as on this day Americans finally decided to declare independence from the British rule. Initially, there were 13 states that had collectively participated in the Declaration of Independence. People in all the 50 states of the country celebrate Independence Day with great enthusiasm.On the eve of Fourth of July, Americans pay tributes to all those soldiers who died in the war of Independence and to all the great leaders whose efforts resulted in the Americans getting the country free from the British rule.I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America , and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.Fourth of July is celebrated in various ways around the country. Celebrations comprise parades, barbeques, fireworks, carnivals, fairs, concerts, political speeches and ceremonies all in praise of the freedom and greatness of the country.The Fourth of July celebrations date back to 1777. The year saw 13 gunshots fired in salute, both in the morning and evening, in the states of Rhode Island and Philadelphia. The next year saw a doubling of the ration of rum for soldiers, as well as an artillery salute. In 1779, Fourth of July fell on a Sunday hence the celebrations were shifted to the next day. It was only in 1938 that the Fourth of July became a paid federal holiday.There are various acts that have become customary while celebrating the Fourth of July. There is in general an outburst of patriotic fervor among the crowds. Most celebrations are held outdoors. Many public events are held and people generally indulge in picnics barbeques, getaways and family reunions.The public and private places throughout the country are decorated in red, white and blue colors, which symbolize the American flag. Earlier, the eve of the Fourth of July celebrations were marked by bonfires. An earlier custom of a gun salute with one gun per state (known as the "salute to the Union") was also an essential feature.It is also customary to sing songs of American patriotism such as the national anthem, "God Bless America", "America the Beautiful", "This Land is Your Land" and "Stars and Stripes forever."But nothing is more synonymous with Fourth of July than a display of fireworks. Many states across the country celebrate the day with the bursting of fireworks. In fact, the use of fireworks for Fourth of July celebrations can be traced back to July 3, 1776, a day before the Declaration of Independence.on this particular day was reported to have stated that "the day will be most memorable in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, bonfires and illuminations (fireworks) from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."It was thus that year onwards that fireworks played an important and indispensable role in the celebrations. Even in the very first celebration of independence, fireworks were part and parcel of the display.All in all, this holiday is a symbol of freedom celebrated throughout the country. It is also a source of inspiration to people seeking freedom from oppressive rule.It was on the Fourth of July, 1776, that the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. They had actually voted to declare independence from Great Britain two days earlier, on July 2, but did not finalize the document until the 4th. Future President John Adams and others even predicted after the vote that July 2 might become America’s national holiday, but it turned out that the date of the Declaration of Independence’s finalization became far more well-known amongst the public.The Continental Congress was made up of delegates from the American colonies during the Revolutionary War. The object of the First Continental Congress (in 1774) was to make joint decisions regarding colonial rights in the face of the British rule, while the Second Continental Congress (1775-1776) had to decide what to do about the future in the light of the military conflicts that had already taken place. All of the colonies were represented except Georgia, which later sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress in time for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Continental Congress governed the United States during this time and instituted its first federal government with the Articles of Confederation. Later on, all of this would form the basis of the U.S. Constitution, and everything that defines the nation as we know it today.The Declaration of Independence was signed by a total of fifty-six men representing the thirteen original colonies of Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia. The largest and most famous physical signature on the document is that of John Hancock, who was the President of Congress at the time. It also includes the signatures of notable Founding Fathers such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Historians have often debated whether the Declaration of Independence was, in fact, signed on July 4th rather than a later date. The truth of the matter can never be completely known, but a large number of historians believe that it was not signed at once, and that many of the signers added their names on or after August 2, 1776.The main author of the Declaration of Independence is considered to be Thomas Jefferson, one of the major Founding Fathers of the United States. However, it is known that the Continental Congress made some changes to the document in order to make it acceptable to all the representatives of the various colonies. The Declaration of Independence was also never intended to be an expression of any one person’s opinions, but a summation of the colonies’ frustrations with Great Britain and their intentions to break away from the rule of its government.The American Revolution had been raging for a year before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, but the most decisive battles were yet to come. After the revolutionary forces suffered some major defeats, the British demanded that the Declaration of Independence be withdrawn in exchange for peace. This was not done, and the battles continued for several more years. Finally, in 1783 the Treaty of Paris was signed thereby ending hostilities between Great Britain and the United States, and acknowledging the American claim to independence.Americans have been celebrating the day since the Declaration of Independence was first signed in 1776. However, it took a long time for it to become the official national holiday of the United States. “Independence Day,” as it began to be called in the early 1790s, was recognized by some states but did not become a federal holiday until the year 1870. Nevertheless, this important anniversary has been recognized by most Americans, whether formally or informally, since the birth of the nation.Americans traditionally celebrate their Independence Day with picnics, barbecues, nighttime firework displays, and other patriotic acts such as flying the American flag. Many of the earliest celebrations, which still continue to this day, encompass military demonstrations such as the thirteen gun salute in honor of the thirteen original colonies. There are also tons of unique or whimsical celebrations, like the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in New York (said to have resulted from a dispute between four immigrants as to who was the most patriotic). The 4th of July has come to be one of the most beloved holidays among the American people, signifying both the potential for summer fun and the pride that comes along with freedom. |
"We're making very good progress, we're going to go when we have the votes," House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said about the GOP's plans to push forward a health-care plan on April 26. (Reuters)
THE MORNING PLUM:
Republicans have once again shelved their plan to vote on replacing Obamacare, depriving Donald Trump of a fake accomplishment he had hoped to tout on the 100th day of his presidency (even if it had passed the House on the 100th day, there’s no telling what would have happened in the Senate). A lot of explanations are circulating: A rushed vote would have complicated keeping the government open; Republicans balked at opposition from the powerful AARP; poor messaging and GOP infighting; and so forth.
I’d like to propose another explanation. What if the GOP repeal effort once again failed because the Affordable Care Act has actually helped a lot of people, and this whole process has made that a lot harder for Republicans to deny?
GOP leaders said they put the latest version on hold because the votes weren’t there for it. The new changes had won over House conservatives who had previously objected, but many of the more moderate or pragmatic Republicans were still opposed. Indeed, the changes that swayed conservatives — which would have allowed states to scrap the requirement that insurers cover Essential Health Benefits and gut protections for people with preexisting conditions — appear to have made it harder for Republicans from less conservative and more contested districts (such as Colorado’s Mike Coffman) to support it.
If you read through the public statements of many of the Republicans who objected to the latest version, you’ll see a common thread. They say either that passing the new bill would drive up premiums for people with preexisting conditions (because it would allow insurers to jack them up); or that too many would lose coverage, partly because of the phaseout of the Medicaid expansion. A number of the Republicans who opposed it this time had previously made statements to this effect about the older version, and those objections were still operative.
“The reality is most of the moderate hard Nos were already opposed,” Matt Fuller, a reporter for HuffPost who has followed this more closely than anyone, told me today. In short, many Republicans objected to the new version on the grounds that it would take coverage away from untold numbers of poor and sick people.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the first 100 days of the Trump administration, grading him poorly on health care. (Reuters)
At the same time, though, many of these Republicans avoided openly crediting Obamacare with achieving the very protections for those with preexisting conditions and the vast coverage expansion via Medicaid that they now want to preserve. And they pledged to continue trying to repeal the law. These Republicans cannot affirmatively applaud Obamacare’s success in accomplishing ends they now recognize as imperatives, but they can stand up and say they won’t remove or badly weaken the provisions of it that are accomplishing those ends, provided they also say they’ll replace the law whenever some more acceptable alternative — which would also accomplish those ends — comes along.
The absurdity of this basic dynamic continues to elude direct recognition. Byron York reports that Republicans privately say that as many as 40 or 50 House Republicans secretly don’t want to repeal the ACA, and one key reason appears to be a lack of political courage. As one Republican puts it: “We have members in the Republican conference that do not want Obamacare repealed, because of their district.”
But the reason for this is not stated as forthrightly as I think it should be. Even if the primary motive here is that taking coverage away from people — and gutting protections for those with preexisting conditions — will alienate voters, this is just another way of saying that voters will recoil from efforts to roll back the help the law is providing to countless numbers of people. It is often said that taking away “entitlements” is politically difficult, which is true as far as it goes. But another way to say this is that even many Republicans now recognize that sustaining the law’s achievements is now imperative — and that Republicans have not come up with an alternative that would do this in a way that their public ideological pre-commitments permit. Of course, they can’t put it quite this way out loud.
After failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Republican leaders said it will "implode." Health-care experts disagree, saying the ACA is stable under current law — but President Trump and congressional Republicans could change that. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)
The GOP replacement is a non-starter for these Republicans partly because it is wildly regressive. It would roll back coverage for millions of people — 24 million in total; 14 million on Medicaid — while delivering an enormous tax cut to the rich. The polls and the angry town halls suggest that the public clearly decided it prefers the ACA — which is now in positive polling territory — to this alternative. Whether moderate Republicans are refraining from this alternative for moral, substantive or political reasons, the deeply regressive outcome that it would bring about is a key driving factor.
My point here is not that Obamacare doesn’t still have plenty of problems — it does — or that the GOP repeal push will never succeed. It very well may. But if it does, it will be either because Republicans finally figured out how to make their alternative less damaging to the ACA’s coverage expansion — which would be hard to do without alienating conservatives — or because enough moderate Republicans decided the moral or political risk of scuttling the law’s accomplishments on behalf of their own constituents is worth taking, for other reasons entirely.
*********************************************************************
* HEALTH BILL FAILURE IS A BLOW TO PRIEBUS: An interesting nugget buried in the New York Times overview of the collapse of the latest GOP health bill:
The lost opportunity was perhaps the biggest blow to the future prospects of Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who has a long relationship with Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Priebus had pushed aggressively for the House to schedule a vote this week, according to several people who spoke with him within the West Wing and on Capitol Hill.
Awww. This diminished a guy who demanded a rushed vote on a bill that would impact millions, solely so that Trump could boast of a fake achievement on his 100th day. So sad!
* TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDERS DON’T AMOUNT TO MUCH: The Post takes a comprehensive look at the executive orders that Trump has signed, and finds there is less there than meets the eye:
More than half of the 29 orders issued as of Thursday have merely called for reviews, have commissioned reports or established panels to issue recommendations. The documents lay out a dizzying schedule of 90-, 120- and 180-day increments for federal agencies to evaluate the feasibility of White House policy goals and report to the president. They hardly represent the immediate action the president and his aides had heralded they would bring to Washington.
Trump really should hurry up and sign a half-dozen more between now and tomorrow (his 100th day).
* TRUMP SAYS ‘MAJOR CONFLICT’ WITH NORTH KOREA IS POSSIBLE: Trump, in an interview with Reuters, said this:
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely … We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult.”
One imagines that Trump sees this as shrewd positioning in an ongoing negotiation.
* TRUMP SAYS SHUTDOWN WOULD BE THE FAULT OF DEMOCRATS: Also in the Reuters interview, Trump had this to say about a possible government shutdown:
“If there’s closure, there’s closure. We’ll see what happens. If there’s a shutdown. It’s the Democrats’ fault. Not our fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. Maybe they’d like to see a shutdown.”
A frequent Trump tactic is to always assert he has the upper hand regardless of reality, in order to make it so, but given that Republicans control everything, it’s hard to see how they’d skirt blame.
* IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT HUMORING TRUMP: Paul Krugman looks at all the ways in which Trump’s staff props up his falsehoods and fantasies — searching for “proof” Barack Obama tapped his phones; rushing out a one-page tax “plan” before the 100-day mark — and concludes:
Every report from inside the White House conveys the impression that Trump is like a temperamental child … being an effective staffer seems to involve finding ways to make him feel good and take his mind off news that he feels makes him look bad … Don’t pretend that this is normal … No, what we’re looking at here isn’t policy; it’s pieces of paper whose goal is to soothe the big man’s temper tantrums.
The rot of bad faith runs very deep with this White House, and it starts here.
* AND TRUMP EXPECTED PRESIDENCY TO BE ‘EASIER’: A final tidbit from the Reuters interview: Trump actually claimed that “this is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” That’s bad enough, but then this happened:
Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map. “Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”
It was always about winning, and never about what would happen after. |
President Trump signed an executive order halting all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, among other provisions. Here's what the order says. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
This post has been updated.
[UPDATE 1/31
Commentary about this post was unusually vigorous. Let me try to respond. I asked a question: “Do you have an alternative explanation [other than that it was driven by Trump’s business dealings] of why, say, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are exempted from the ban? What is it?” Many of had an alternative – the one also provided by Press Secretary Spicer over the weekend: “the seven countries that we’ve identified [were those] that, in fact, the Obama administration had previously identified needed further travel restrictions.”
The reference, as many of you pointed out, was to the list of 7 countries affected by President Obama’s 2015 Executive Order. That Order amended the Visa Waiver Program, which allows citizens of 38 countries to travel to the United States without obtaining visas (and gives Americans reciprocal privileges in those countries). The Order removed from the Visa Waiver Program dual nationals who were citizens of four countries (Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Syria), or anyone who had recently traveled to those countries; three more countries (Libya, Somalia, and Yemen), were added to the list in early 2016.
So in the spirit of reasoned discussion, I agree: I asked for a plausible alternative explanation, and that is a plausible alternative explanation. I appreciate the efforts of those who took the time to write.
It’s an odd explanation, to be sure. I thought a major thrust of Trump’s view on anti-terrorism was that Obama had done a terrible job and made a real hash of things. To simply pluck the list from Obama’s list – to say “The Obama Administration designated these as the bad guys, so we’ll take their word for it” – as part of a measure vastly broader in scope than the one for which the original list was prepared, and one in which lives, actually, are at stake, strikes me as odd (though I concede: not impeachable, standing alone).
So where does this leave us? Now there are two alternative explanations, both consistent with the facts. Which is true?
This is a problem, as the “alternative facts” debacle of the first week illustrated, that we will be facing over and over again in the coming years. A number of commenters said: The President, and his explanation for his actions, deserve respect.
I disagree. I think he has forfeited, by the manner in which he has consistently manipulated the truth, that respect. It may well be that he just lifted the list from the one on the shelf; it may well be that he is in hock to a Saudi bank and the Saudi royal family for a gazillion dollars, and that influenced his decision. We don’t know.
And that, of course, is the problem. I recognize that Trump’s plan for dealing with his conflicts of interest is already old news – but we should not let it disappear from view. He has information about his business dealings that he has chosen not to share with the American people so that we can judge his actions accordingly, and I don’t think he is able to fulfill his constitutional responsibilities until he does so.]
My co-bloggers Ilya Somin, Jon Adler, Orin Kerr and Will Baude — not to mention Ben Wittes’s withering critique over at Lawfare — have already dissected President Trump’s executive order (misleadingly titled “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals”) (full text here) and addressed many of its more appalling features, including its cruelty, ineffectiveness and the truly staggering incompetence with which it was drafted.
But there’s more. Wittes correctly points to the absence of any “rational relationship” between the countries targeted by the ban and “any expected counterterrorism goods.”
The 9/11 hijackers, after all, didn’t come from Somalia or Syria or Iran; they came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt and a few other countries not affected by the order.
[interstitial_link url="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/30/trumps-refugee-ban-could-get-much-much-worse-thats-why-it-must-be-stopped-now/"]Greg Sargent: Trump’s refugee ban could get much, much worse. That’s why it must be stopped.[/interstitial_link]
But there could be, it turns out, an explanation for why some countries are inside, and others outside, the ban. It has nothing to do with counterterrorism. You should take a quick look at this graphic (and accompanying documentation) put together by Bloomberg News. Here’s the list of predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East covered by Trump’s order:
Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen.
Here’s the list of predominantly Muslim countries where the Trump Organization has done business:
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan.
What a coincidence; there’s no overlap. The places where the Trump Organization has done business are exempted from the ban.
Even Saudi Arabia, for goodness’ sake! The one country we know for certain has allowed, if it did not actively encourage, emigrants who attacked the United States on 9/11. But Trump has business interests in Saudi Arabia, and a guy shouldn’t have to give up his business interests just because he’s going into “public service,” now should he?
This adds up to malfeasance of the highest order. Can we now stop the debate about whether Trump’s business interests might influence his policymaking, and move on to the more important question, which is how do we protect ourselves from this despot and start the work of getting him removed from office?
[Update: Some commenters, fairly, suggested that there could be alternative explanations for the inclusion/exclusion, and that this doesn’t, standing alone, constitute malfeasance. Fair enough — perhaps the answer to the question I posed in the headline is: “We’re not sure — but it sure as hell could be. But we can’t really know without knowing more about Trump’s business activities, which he has continued to withhold from the American people.” So I’ll modify my call for impeachment, and ask instead, in the face of potential conflicts that can cause untold misery and hardship for many thousands of people who are among the most vulnerable on the planet, he step down until he releases all of his financial information so we can figure out for ourselves whether or not our fears are justified.
And I could have been clearer: I don’t think that the possible use of presidential power for personal gain is the only – or even the most serious – problem with this Executive Order; other commentators, though, in the postings cited and elsewhere, have already covered its many other repellent (and potentially impeachment-worthy) characteristics.]
In his inaugural speech, Trump said that from now on, “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
That was, not to put too fine a point on it, bulls—. Some will be made to benefit Trump.
I know some VC readers still count themselves among Trump’s supporters, and are interested in engaging in serious discussion of his presidency. In that spirit, I’d ask you: Do you have an alternative explanation of why, say, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are exempted from the ban? What is it? Or do you think that Trump allowed business interests to interfere with his public policymaking, but you don’t think that constitutes an impeachable offense? |
This afternoon, as the Koch PR arm was blasting out a memo about the War for Cato, the libertarian think tank’s board was meeting to talk about membership. Before today, the sixteen-member board had seven members affiliated in some way with the Kochs. That put them very close to majority control. Today, the board’s majority agreed to simply expand to 20 members, invoking a bylaw that allows that many people to serve if it’s so desired. They added four people – William A. Dunn, John C. Malone, Lewis E. Randall, and Donald G. Smith – who are more supportive of the non-Koch faction. “We now have a 13-7 majority,” said Ed Crane, Cato’s president since 1977. “It was a contentious meeting.” When was the last time the board had 20 members? “I don’t think we ever have.”
I talked to Crane about the latest Koch accusations and about the new moves. A lightly edited transcript follows.
Slate: I wanted to get your response to this umpteenth he-said, he-said letter. The argument in here is about how their ideas for the organization are being expressed – they say you’re not telling the truth about what they’re trying to do.
Crane: You’ve seen the names of the people they’ve nominated for our board. They’re all conservative, Koch Industries supplicants. My god, if they’re not trying to take over for Koch’s purposes – it’s so transparent, it’s obvious. Charles likes to create his own reality, build a bubble around him, but they’re pretty hamfisted about the way they’re going about this. David Koch was a friend of mine until Charles said, not anymore.
Slate: When was that?
Crane: I guess it became contentious at a board dinner we had. Nancy Pfotenhauer – they’d put her and Kevin Gentry on our board. Both of them were Republican activists, and social conservatives. Never been to a Cato event, never given a dime to Cato. Nice people, but didn’t have the stature to be on our board. At this dinner, she starts lecturing us on how Cato’s spending too much on physical capital and not enough on human capital. She has no clue! So I tell her, this is a proper thing to bring up at a board meeting. But this is a dinner. She kept talking! So I got up and maybe yelled at her a little, stomped out, and that’s the excuse they’ve been using to say I’m not civil. David’s memo is just off the wall. My goodness, you’d think I was Simon Legree or something.
Crane: The really insulting thing is that he talks about five shareholders, and one is a “former Koch employee.” It implies, “we could have gotten rid of Crane at any time.” Well, the longtime employee has a name. It’s George Pearson. He’s a man of incredible integrity. The idea they could have forced him to kick me and Bill Niskanen out is insulting. It’s just the way they are. And to say it the way they said it – or whoever wrote it for them, David can’t write – it’s indictive of what they do.
Slate: One thing that the letter mentions, specifically, is that you criticized the Kochs when you talked to Jane Mayer for her New Yorker story about them.
Crane: Jane knows I’m pissed at her. I told her that off the record. I told her at the top of the interview. First off she says, I’m doing a story on the libertarian impact on the Tea Party movement. I was suspicious of that to begin with. Within five minutes, it’s clear that she wants to do a hatchet job on the Kochs. She’s a better journalist than that. You don’t need to lie to people. I said, look, I’ll tell you things about the Kochs. Ninety percent of this was positive. I admire them as businessmen, I agree with their philanthropy. The most critical thing I said – she asked, I heard they had a fallout over “market-based management.” I said, Well, we had some disagreements on that. I think it’s a case of “the emperor has no clothes.” Everybody tells him how brilliant this book The Science of Success is, and in my mind it’s one of the worst books ever written. The fact-checker calls me up, and I say, yes, I said that, but it was off the record. Go back to the tape and check it. He says, She said the tape recorder didn’t work. Well, in those circumstances, when you think the tape recorder is working so the reporter is not taking extensive notes, you infer that things are off the record. I was not happy about that.
Slate: The Mayer incident is the the basis for this argument: “As Ed has shown, he will partner with anyone – including those that oppose Cato and what it stands for – to further his personal agenda at the expense of others working to advance a free society.”
Crane: That’s a bald-faced lie. There are very few people in town here who do more to help other organizations that are on the same philosophical path as I have. I help all these groups. As far as my personal agenda is concerned, I have told the Kochs – through Bob [Levy] – that if you want me to step down, I’ll step down. I want to save Cato. I’ll step down if it ends this thing. It can’t be a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries. Who the hell is going to take a think tank seriously that’s controlled by billionaire oil guys? It’s just nuts!
I feel the same way about Americans for Prosperity. Why, if you have a grassroots group activist group – and I’m a free market guy, I’m for AFP – but why do you make an oil billionaire the chairman? Soros does a lot of this stuff, but he’s a hell of a lot more clever about it. To say that I will compromise my principles, or that I’ll team up with anybody, that’s not true. That Jane Mayer thing is the only substantive thing they can point to, and that was not intended to be public.
Slate: The letter also says “Ed recently e-mailed Cato’s donors, telling them that he ‘can understand why you might not want to contribute to our capital campaign.’” The implication is that you’ve got a rule-or-ruin strategy, it’ll either be Cato independent of Kochs, or it’ll be scorched earth.
Crane: That email – well, we had a strategy meeting on how to deal with the crisis of contributions. Our contributions have dropped precipitously from people who like us. They call in and say, until this thing’s settled, I’m not giving you another dime. My position, in writing to contributors, was, look: We still are Cato. We still are a libertarian think tank doing what we’ve always done and we need your money. Then I said, if your concern giving to the capital campaign means that down the road the Kochs will have that money, I understand that. But it was an appeal. It was a responsible thing for a CEO to do in a crisis environment. We’re not just losing contributors, we’re losing scholars.
Slate: You say you’d leave if it ended the Kochs’ move. What exactly would need to happen before you left?
Crane: We end the shareholder agreement and we have a majority on the board of directors who are not part of the Koch group. |
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