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The Bulgarian parliament approved at first reading on Wednesday a bill proposing a ban on the wearing in public places of garments concealing entirely or partially the face.
A total of 108 MPs voted in favour of the bill, proposed by the Patriotic Front (PF). Only eight lawmakers were against and none abstained.
At the beginning, the second largest opposition party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), proposed withdrawing the bill and including it in the bill on countering terrorism. However this proposal was rejected.
MPs from DPS and its splinter DOST, which is headed by former DPS chairperson Lyutvi Mestan, expressed opposition to the bill, saying that it does not really resolve any of the considerable problems and that it was the result of a political deal.
The bill will be applicable to all official institutions and sites which provide administrative, educational or social services as well as places for public relaxation, sport, culture and communications
Prior to entering the plenary chamber, the bill underwent approval by several parliamentary committees.
In the meantime, the municipal councils of Pazardzhik, Stara Zagora, Sliven and Burgas have approved a similar ban in their respective municipalities. |
The intriguing, yet somewhat malodorous, topic of poo transplants is in the news. A study published today found poo transplants are better at treating a particular type of diarrhoea than an antibiotic or placebo (a fake or dummy treatment).
The study collated and analysed the results from earlier studies in how effective poo transplants were in treating diarrhoea caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.
Researchers have been interested in alternative treatments for this condition due to the rise in resistance to standard treatments (including antibiotics). So this type of diarrhoea has quickly developed into a more life-threatening disease.
Read more: Poo transplants and probiotics – does anything work to improve the health of our gut?
The study findings are in line with recent European advice strongly encouraging setting up centres specialising in poo transplants to treat C. difficile diarrhoea.
Despite the apparent success of poo transplants for this particular condition, there is still much we don’t know about this therapy. It’s important to figure out how long the effects last, and which bugs in the poo transplant help us cure disease and which don’t.
How do poo transplants work?
Poo transplants (or “faecal microbiota transplantation”) involve transferring poo from a healthy donor to a sick recipient. The collective community of bugs and compounds (the gut microbiota) in the donor’s poo is then believed to establish itself in the recipient’s gut.
The scientific consensus is poo transplants work if the recipient’s gut microbiota is “restored”. The most consistent measure of this has been an increase in the diversity of the community of organisms in the recipient’s gut. By encouraging a more diverse and beneficial community of organisms in the gut, the idea is that this allows the recipient to resist being overwhelmed by the “bad” bugs.
Before donating their poo, donors’ poo and their blood is screened for many infectious agents such as C. difficile, HIV and viral hepatitis (A, B and C). This is to make sure a donation doesn’t transfer pathogens (disease causing microorganisms) by accident.
The screened donor poo is then delivered to the recipient in a number of ways.
Delivery methods from above involve recipients swallowing a poo capsule (or “crapsule”) containing frozen poo. Alternatively, a diluted sample can be delivered through a plastic tube inserted into the nose down to the stomach or small bowel (nasogastric intubation).
Samples can also be delivered from below via colonoscopy, where a tube is inserted into the rectum and goes deep into the gut to the caecum (just above the appendix). Or recipients can have an enema, where fluid is infused through the rectum.
What works?
Poo transplants made their way into the medical literature a long time ago with the first successful result in 1958. Interest in poo transplants was ignited in 1989, in Australia, when various conditions including irritable bowel syndrome responded to therapy.
However, it was not until 2013 that the first controlled trial for C. difficile diarrhoea was carried out, which showed the treatment was better than antibiotics and placebo.
The trial was stopped early as the ethics committee considered it unethical to withhold this therapy from the control group. The research out today backs these findings.
Read more: The brain and the gut talk to each other: how fixing one could help the other
There is also evidence that poo transplants may be beneficial for patients suffering from the gut conditions colitis and Crohn’s disease, a range of infectious or inflammatory liver conditions, and in eliminating antibiotic-resistant bacteria from recipients’ guts.
Preliminary studies also suggest benefit for coeliac disease (in a single person), irritable bowel syndrome (in mice), and for bowel and behavioural symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorders (this was a small study).
What doesn’t work?
Some studies have not shown a benefit from poo transplants for some of the above conditions. For example, a study in 2015 that looked at the effectiveness of poo transplants in patients with ulcerative colitis (a type of chronic inflammatory bowel disease) did not find a significant benefit.
The likely reason poo transplants do not work for all people is because we are still some way away from a defined, consistent form of this therapy.
Future research will focus on which bugs lead to poo transplants not working. For instance, work by our group suggests the Fusobacterium group of bacteria is one to watch. And other studies suggest certain viruses that infect bacteria (bacteriophages) could play a key role in the effectiveness of poo transplants.
We also need to keep in mind both “good” and “bad” bugs may differ according to the disease.
Poo transplants can also lead to generally mild side-effects like wind, cramps and constipation. There are also reports of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases worsening after therapy but this was found to be marginal and it’s unclear if the therapy itself was the cause.
What we still don’t know
There are many aspects of poo transplants we need to study in more detail. We still don’t know:
how many transplants are needed per treatment
the best delivery method
how long the effects last
the long-term safety
the best mixture of bugs to transplant (and what they do).
All these factors also depend on the type of medical condition being treated.
For instance, a recent meta-analysis (analysis of a combination of earlier studies) shows ulcerative colitis symptoms improved with a greater number of transplants and when these transplants were given through a lower route.
We now need to conduct other well-designed controlled studies on the conditions mentioned above as well as other conditions, and update treatment guidelines for the medical community.
In a nutshell
While there is much we don’t know about poo transplants, there is growing evidence they can work for certain conditions.
If you’re thinking about this type of treatment for yourself or a loved one, consult your GP and gastroenterologist, and only use practitioners experienced in this therapy.
This article was co-authored by Professor Thomas J. Borody, founder and medical director of the Centre for Digestive Diseases (CDD). He declares a grant to CDD from Australia Research LLC, for research into faecal microbiota transplantation, and he has filed patents in this field (numbers US5443826 and US6645530). |
This MOD adds full XBOX 360 controller support for playing Mass Effect 1.The Mass Effect game shipped with all the original XBOX controller interfaces but in a very broken state with some functionalityremoved. This mod corrects these issues and re-implements features where necessary. The MOD switches over to use all the xboxuser interfaces, with the exception of mini games/loadsave and settings. These exceptions have been adjusted to work with thecontroller.Installing this MOD will break some elements of the keyboard and mouse support. The console will work fine. If you want to playwith keyboard and mouse, uninstall this mod.- Adding a 50% drop in right stick sensitivty when zoomed in.There are TWO INSTALLATION DIRECTORIES. One inside your user profile, one inside the game directory.Install order: ME1 -> DLC -> MEUITM -> ME1Controller1. Copy the contents of Config (Backup originals first) to :C:\Users\ \Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect\Configthese files are marked as "read only" to prevent the game modifying them on startup. If you want to modify them youmust change them back to "read only" before launching the game.2. Copy the contents of "Mass Effect" directory to your install directory overriding the originals (Back them up first). These filesshould override the original files. (Example directory : D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Mass Effect)(If you are using MEUITM use the binaries from the Mass Effect MEUITM dir)This mod uses the same controls as the xbox 360. These can be found here:Excellent XBOX 360 Controller MODs for Mass effect 2 and 3 by Moonshine can be found here :me2-controller-support-power-wheel-t1703.htmlme3-controller-support-power-wheel-t1838.htmlIf you want to adjust the sensitivity of the controller (Never has a number been discussed more). Open bioinput.ini and modify:LookRightScale=24LookUpScale=20The Y axis can be inverted in the setup menu.**** Remember to set the bioinput.ini file back to "read only" before you launch the game.- Moonshine for his work on ME2 and ME3 which inspired me to make this MOD.- Heff for all his techincal support.- Machine4578 and eezonaut for there relentless enthusiasm and testing.- BarderothReturns for her config only mod which found all the xbox interfaces that weren't broken.- For extra testing: libm, daninthemix, MotokoKusanagi34, b3ft, Gikoku, Daiyus, rjms1974, Mivey and arkhamtheknight2.- The creators of the tools used: ME1Explorer, JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler and UE Explorer. |
Product Details
''You want to be cheap, be cheap. But you want to flex your muscles? Go ahead and do it. Do it right. You're driving one of the world's mightiest megacorporations. You have credits like most people have red blood cells. Now, you can use it. Lock up your servers. Safe.''
-Ulrich Heiner, ice programmer and designer of Draco
What Lies Ahead adds muscle and theme to each of the seven different factions in Android: Netrunner. Its sixty new cards (three copies each of twenty different cards) intensify the game's action as each of the corps receives a new agenda and a flavorful piece of ice, perfectly tailored to its base strengths.
On the other side, the runner factions launch into the ongoing cyberstruggles with new icebreakers and support cards. Meanwhile, fans of the Anarchs and Haas-Bioroid should find the Data Pack particularly rewarding as each gains a new identity.
CONTAINS CARDS 1-20 of the ''GENESIS CYCLE.''
This is not a stand-alone deck. An Android: Netrunner The Card Game core set is required to play. |
In 1619, the pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler published Harmonices Mundi in which he analyzed data on the movement of planets and asserted that the laws of nature governing the movements of planets show features of harmonic relationships in music. In so doing, Kepler provided important support for the, then controversial, model of the universe proposed by Copernicus.
In the latest issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers at the University of California in San Diego suggest that careful analyses of the electrical signals of brain activity, measured using electroencephalography (EEG), may reveal important harmonic relationships in the electrical activity of brain circuits.
The underlying premise is a simple one -- that brain function is expressed by circuits that fire, and therefore generate oscillating EEG signals, at different frequencies.
High frequency EEG activity called gamma, for example, might reflect the activity of fast-spiking cells which are often a subclass of inhibitory nerve cells containing parvalbumin. Represented musically, this would be a high pitch, i.e., toward the right side of the piano.
Lower frequency EEG activity, called theta, might come from cells that fire with a lower frequency.
As circuits interact with each other, one would see different "musical combinations," like the chords of music, emerging in the EEG signal. Abnormalities in the structure and function of brain circuits would be reflected in cacophonous music, chords where the musical "voices" are firing at the wrong rate (pitch), volume (amplitude), or timing.
It is increasingly evident that schizophrenia is a disorder characterized by disturbances in the "music of the brain hemispheres." This new report describes relationships between low- and high-frequency EEG oscillations in the human brain produced when high frequency auditory stimuli are presented to a research subject. The authors observed relatively slower oscillations and reduced cross-phase synchrony (for example, peak of theta coinciding with peak of gamma) in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy study participants.
Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, commented, "The new findings highlight the importance of understanding the relationships between different circuits. It seems that cortical abnormalities in schizophrenia disturb brain function, in part, by disturbing the 'tuning' of brain circuits in relation to each other." |
The hacks that hit Yahoo in 2014 cost CEO Marissa Mayer a lot of cash, and General Counsel Ronald Bell his job, the company said today in its annual report to the SEC.
The board’s Independent Committee investigating the hack, which took place while Mayer was CEO, decided that she should not receive her cash bonus for last year.
In addition, after “discussions with the board,” Mayer “offered to forgo” her 2017 annual equity award. The board accepted her offer.
Yahoo has not yet disclosed executives’ compensation for 2016. In 2015, Mayer made about $36 million, including a $12.4 million annual equity award. Her deal with the company says that she’s to receive at least $12 million in the annual awards.
The company says that Bell resigned today, and “no payments are being made to Mr. Bell in connection with his resignation.” He received $4.5 million in 2015.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by MCP/REX/Shutterstock (1141286p)
Yahoo offices, Los Angeles, America
Various Rex/Shutterstock
The Independent Committee found that Yahoo’s information security team had “contemporaneous knowledge” of the 2014 state-sponsored attacks, “as well as incidents by the same attacker involving cookie forging in 2015 and 2016.”
It adds that “it appears certain senior executives did not properly comprehend or investigate, and therefore failed to act sufficiently upon, the full extent of knowledge.”
For example, the information security team knew that the attacker had “exfiltrated copies of user database backup files containing the personal data of Yahoo users” — though it’s “unclear whether and to what extent such evidence of exfiltration was effectively communicated and understood outside the information security team.”
Investigators “did not conclude that there was an intentional suppression of relevant information.”
Said Mayer: “I am the CEO of the company and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant this year and have expressed my desire that my bonus be redistributed to our company’s hardworking employees, who contributed so much to Yahoo’s success in 2016.”
Yahoo says that it will “soon” submit an amended proxy to the SEC that will enable it to “move forward with scheduling a special meeting of Yahoo shareholders” to approve Verizon’s $4.48 billion offer for the internet company’s operating assets. That deal is still “expected to close in the second quarter of 2017.”
Last month Yahoo agreed to cut $350 million from its sale price.
Today’s report notes that it paid $5 million last year to investigate and fix the hacks, plus $11 million for “nonrecurring legal costs.”
What’s more, “we have subsequently incurred additional expenses related to the Security Incidents to investigate and take remedial actions to notify and protect our users and systems, and expect to continue to incur investigation, remediation, legal, and other expenses associated with the Security Incidents in the foreseeable future,” the company says.
It does not have cybersecurity liability insurance. |
James A. Guilliam / Getty Images Oreo cookies
If you have ever found yourself unable to resist just one more Oreo, you’re not alone. That “stuf” is like crack, neurologically speaking.
A new study from Connecticut College shows that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine, at least for lab rats. According to the new study, eating the iconic black and white cookies activated more neurons in the rat brain’s “pleasure center” than drugs such as cocaine.
“I haven’t touched an Oreo since doing this experiment,” neuroscience assistant professor Joseph Schroeder said in a school press release.
(MORE: 100 Years of Oreos: 9 Things You Didn’t Know About the Iconic Cookie)
The research looked at the rats’ behaviors and the effects the cookies had on their brains. Rats were put into a maze and given the choice of hanging out near rice cakes or Oreos. The tasty sandwich cookies won that popularity contest handily. Those results were compared to a different test, where rats were given the choice of loitering in an area of a maze where they were injected with saline or in another corner where they could get a shot of cocaine or morphine.
The rats in the study liked the cookies about as much as they liked the drugs, congregating near the cookie side of the maze as much as they would on the drug side.
Much like humans, rats also prefer the delicious creamy center to the cookie. “They would break it open and eat the middle first,” said Jamie Honohun, one of the students who worked on the study.
“These findings suggest that high fat/sugar foods and drugs of abuse trigger brain addictive processes to the same degree and lend support to the hypothesis that maladaptive eating behaviors contributing to obesity can be compared to drug addiction,” Schroeder’s team writes in a statement describing the study.
Not addictive? Rice cakes. “Just like humans, rats don’t seem to get much pleasure out of eating them,” Schroeder said.
MORE: Cookies n’ Creme Oreos: The Most Meta Snack Ever
MORE: The Double Stuf Oreo May Be Missing Some Stuf |
Last year, I looked at AV Retention Rates, a measure of how sticky a team’s composition was from year to year. We’ll get to the methodology in a minute, but let’s start with two examples.
Cincinnati was very consistent from 2014 to 2015. Andy Dalton was the quarterback both years, and Jeremy Hill, Giovani Bernard, and A.J. Green were the three leaders in yards from scrimmage in 2014 and again in 2015. The offensive line was unchanged, with Andrew Whitworth, Andre Smith, Clint Boling, Kevin Zeitler, and Russell Bodine as the main five in both years, although Smith and Zeitler missed some time in 2014. The big change on offense wasn’t external, either: it was the return from injury for both Tyler Eifert and Marvin Jones, which dropped Mohamed Sanu down in the pecking order.
On defense, Geno Atkins, Domata Peko, and Carlos Dunlap were starters on the defensive line both years, with Rey Maualuga manning the middle and Reggie Nelson and George Iloka at safety. Adam Jones and Leon Hall were two of the three cornerbacks to play 60%+ of defensive snaps in both years, with the main change in the secondary being being Dre Kirkpatrick replacing Terence Newman (Minnesota). On the line, the big change was the return of Michael Johnson from a one-year stint in Tampa, with Wallace Gilberry dropping from 73% of snaps to 58% as a result. And at linebacker, Maualuga, Vincent Rey, Vontaze Burfict, and Emmanuel Lamur were the four to see the most snaps in both 2014 and 2015, though the pecking order changed a bit.
In other words, the 2015 Bengals looked a whole lot like the 2014 Bengals. But in Washington, turnover was the story of the 2015 season. In 2014, Kirk Cousins started 5 games; last year, he started all sixteen. Matt Jones and Chris Thompson combined for over 50% of snaps at running back last year, reducing the heavier load endured by Alfred Morris in 2014. Tight end Jordan Reed caught 11 touchdowns and led the team in targets last year, but started two games and didn’t score in 2014.
On the offensive line, only LT Trent Williams was a holdover. With RG Chris Chester in Atlanta, 5th overall pick Brandon Scherff took over and started all 16 games. Morgan Moses, a third round pick in 2014 who started just one game as a rookie, took over at right tackle, relegating 2014 starter Tom Compton to the bench (he’s now in Atlanta with Chester). Kory Lichtensteiger (center) and Shawn Lauvao (left guard) both started in 2014, but were lost early in the season with injuries, putting Spencer Long (G) and Josh LeRibeus (C) into the lineup.
At safety, Ryan Clark, Brandon Meriweather, and Phillip Thomas were replaced by Dashon Goldson, Kyshoen Jarrett and Trent Robinson. At corner, Bashaud Breeland was the consistent presence year over year, but David Amerson (one of the lone blunders from Washington’s front office last year) and E.J. Biggers were replaced by Will Blackmon and DeAngelo Hall (limited to just 3 games in 2014). The front seven was relatively consistent year over year, though Jarvis Jenkins and Brian Orakpo were gone in 2015, with Preston Smith, Ricky Jean-Francois, Terrance Knighton coming on board.
Of course, going team-by-team can be pretty tedious, so I whipped up a formula to measure retention rates.
I calculated the amount of turnover each team had from 2014 to 2015 using the following methodology:
1) Calculate the percentage of team AV gained by each player in 2015.
2) Calculate the percentage of team AV gained by that player for that team in 2014.
3) Take the lower of those two values.
4) Sum the values of each player for each team to derive a team retention grade for each franchise.
Using this methodology, 71.7% of the Bengals value was retained from 2014 to 2015, compared to just 44.7% for Washington. In the graph below, I’ve plotted each of the 32 teams, with their AV retention rate on the Y-Axis and winning percentage in 2015 on the X-Axis. Washington, seen in the bottom right, has the lowest AV Retention Percentage of any team to make the playoffs, while Cincinnati and many of the best teams from last year are in the upper right corner of the graph.
I have presented the same information below in table form, and also included 2014 win percentage and the difference between team winning percentage in 2014 and 2015 for each franchise. As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.
Rk Team AV % 2014 Win % 2015 Win % Improvement 1 CIN 71.6% 0.656 0.750 0.094 2 SEA 67.8% 0.750 0.625 -0.125 3 GNB 63.7% 0.750 0.625 -0.125 4 PIT 61.8% 0.688 0.625 -0.063 5 CAR 58.7% 0.469 0.938 0.469 6 MIN 58.7% 0.438 0.688 0.250 7 BAL 58.2% 0.625 0.313 -0.313 8 ARI 57.3% 0.688 0.813 0.125 9 DAL 56.8% 0.750 0.250 -0.500 10 NWE 55.7% 0.750 0.750 0.000 11 DET 55.3% 0.688 0.438 -0.250 12 STL 54.8% 0.375 0.438 0.063 13 PHI 54.4% 0.625 0.438 -0.188 14 HOU 54.1% 0.563 0.563 0.000 15 IND 53.6% 0.688 0.500 -0.188 16 BUF 53.3% 0.563 0.500 -0.063 17 NYG 52.5% 0.375 0.375 0.000 18 NYJ 51.6% 0.250 0.625 0.375 19 DEN 50.9% 0.750 0.750 0.000 20 KAN 50.8% 0.563 0.688 0.125 21 MIA 49.2% 0.500 0.375 -0.125 22 CLE 47.6% 0.438 0.188 -0.250 23 SDG 47.1% 0.563 0.250 -0.313 24 ATL 46.9% 0.375 0.500 0.125 25 JAX 45.5% 0.188 0.313 0.125 26 TEN 45.3% 0.125 0.188 0.063 27 WAS 44.7% 0.250 0.563 0.313 28 NOR 43.7% 0.438 0.438 0.000 29 TAM 42.6% 0.125 0.375 0.250 30 CHI 41.4% 0.313 0.375 0.063 31 OAK 41.2% 0.188 0.438 0.250 32 SFO 40.3% 0.500 0.313 -0.188
The Bengals really stand out here, as the only team over 70%. Only three other teams — Pittsburgh, Green Bay, and Seattle — were over 60%. The Packers and Steelers are rightfully famous for having homegrown rosters, but the Bengals consistent success with homegrown players is an underrated NFL storyline. |
I want to say first of all, that this is not a personal attack on any specific employee of CCP. To blame CCP Fozzie in particular has become something of a meme within the community and while I have my disagreements with many of the views he has expressed, it doesn't seem constructive to lay blame upon any individual for the actions of a group.
This is a plea, in hope, that after a disastrous series of design decisions throughout the last 18-24 months, we might finally begin to see new positive changes based upon the messy mechanical and political reality of this game, rather than a rose-tinted idealised version that exists only in the realm of imagination.
The SH1-6P fight in Tribute last night is another great example of EVE Online at it's best. An experience for both participants, non-involved players, and commentators that simply does not and could not ever exist in any other game. Almost 2,000 players participated in the battle which represents the largest single loss of ISK since the famous "Battle for B-R" more than 2 years ago. And yet despite this, it has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many. The objective of this fight was simple, Pandemic Legion had reinforced a Circle-of-Two SCSAA. PL had formed in full force to attack it with NC. aware and ready to form should it be needed, and CO2 had formed in full force with their allies in hopes of saving it. The tower itself was killed by a very modest PL super fleet supported by a sizeable T3 Cruiser fleet, however as it passed half structure, a CO2 cyno was lit ~80km off the PL super fleet and through it poured the full might of CO2's super fleet. While I was not there, I can guarantee you there was at least a momentary panic in PL's command channel while they scrambled to work out what was going on, as moves like this are rarely made against you without your opponent having a great deal of confidence in a plan that great efforts have been made to ensure you don't know about.
As it turned out, CO2 had simply performed an incredible feat of hubris in grossly underestimating the number of FAXes and reinforcements that PL could flood in when needed. Within an hour NC. were on field the fight was all but decided. TEST dropped an extremely large number of dreadnoughts 50km off the NC. super fleet which had they been dropped initially on the PL super fleet at the same time as CO2's super fleet came in could have done some serious damage, but alas arrived far too late to achieve anything. The flood of allied fleets from both sides eventually tipped the subcap battle in favour of the CO2 side and they were luckily able to clear tackle quick enough losing only 6 titans and no supers, as opposed the many times greater loss it would have been had that not happened.
So in conclusion, a huge battle happened, both sides took massive losses, the defenders lost the objective, however most importantly, everyone had fun and people will be telling stories of this fight for months if not years to come. Like I said in the beginning, no other game can provide an experience like that.
So why is this relevant to an article about the future of EVE Online? This fight could not and would not have escalated in this way under the future mechanics CCP are currently working hard to introduce. In this fight, PL brought their super fleet because that was genuinely under the circumstances the best thing they could bring to kill the tower. They had a sizeable T3 fleet but it would have taken the better part of an hour to grind it down with subs. So of course, they brought supers and titans. Even if you take issue with that fact, the next best thing would have been dreads and any alliance worth their salt in this game can field a decent number of those on alts easily. Because PL brought their supers, CO2 dropped their supers, which made NC. bring their supers, which made TEST drop their cap fleet, which made more people show up, which meant a huge brawl. No PL super fleet == No huge brawl.
The long term plan on CCP's part is to replace a SCSAA pos with an XL Industrial Array. Based on what CCP have said so far in regards to pricing, it sounds like 30-50B is a reasonable estimate for the build cost of one of these structures. When you consider that Fortizars are still selling in Jita at 40-80% over build cost and Keepstars are essentially unobtainable for less than 250B, it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume this structure will cost 80-100B around the time they start getting dropped. Supercapital construction is typically done as a solo alt-heavy endeavour, or on a corp level with a small handful of people chipping in their time and effort. Based on the corp history of the CEO, it seems to be the latter here. The initial infrastructure cost is about 4B for the faction POS, CSAA and XLSMA. That considered, this fight might not even have happened at all because the group in CO2 who owned this SCSAA might not even have been building in the first place.
So let's assuming they were building, and had the gall to be doing so in this highly valuable structure in striking distance of PL and NC. Well due to the damage cap mechanic on citadels, there would be absolutely no reason for PL to bring supercaps in the first place. Citadels are an incredible powerful force multiplier. A Fortizar will kill an Apostle with PL's fit roughly every 60-90 seconds with the help of the Standup Void Bombs, so even if the enemy didn't show up, you'd be looking at a 30-50B+ SRP bill in Apostles if they have anything close to the defensive capabilities of a Fortizar. In light of that, no, you don't bring the super fleet in the first place because it'd just be a pointless feed.
Given all that, for 2 or 3 supercarriers in build 100% confirmed by spy information? They might not even bother. I mean why would they? That is a huge, huge amount of losses for really not a lot of gain. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Either way it's not fun for the defenders, and it's not fun for the attackers.
The bottom line here being, this time next year that fight wouldn't happen. Think I'm wrong? Look at all the debates about Aegis Sov. Every objection raised by FCs and alliance leaders has come to pass exactly as described and today everyone is feeling it. Even scarier look at the debates about moon mining. As I see it, there are 3 things which in combination, stand to quite possibly kill this game when fully implemented:
Phoebe Jump Mechanics Aegis Sov The replacement of POS's with Citadels
Allow me to qualify a couple of those points, as I know these are big claims. Fatigue is a good mechanic, but the rate at which it accumulates combined with the huge range nerf (most ships were more than halved) is far too drastic. Especially so post-cap rebalance where there is a response to a ball of Aeons besides getting up from your computer and going outside. In regards to point to 3, it isn't the addition of Citadels that is the problem, but the removal of POS's. R64 mining towers are the single remaining reliable high end content generator left in the game, and they day they are removed without a viable replacement content generator will be the day that almost every major content creator in the game unsubscribes.
Phoebe Jump Mechanics
It's coming up on the 2nd anniversary of their introduction. I have friends that recently bought their first super who didn't even play the game when they were first introduced, that's how long it's been. I don't think in 8 years of online gaming I have ever seen a single event in any game generate such an incredible exodus of the active playerbase as this patch.
To take a real-world example of the impact of this patch, I'm going to show a route I did once upon a time about 8 months before the patch. The alliance I was in at the time lived in Cobalt Edge and had announced they wanted to disband. I felt like trying out some solo PVP in Facwar space, so I loaded up my carrier in our Cobalt Edge home system, and jumped past the evac point to Vestouve to go try it out. This route required 6 cynos, and I had 2 characters who could run them, so I'd take one a few jumps, light the cyno, jump, then log out and log in to the other character while it's cyno was burning. This isn't an alt heavy activity, you could do this with 1 character and it took me about an hour or so. To move from the heart of Cobalt Edge to the edge of Syndicate with 2 accounts. In theory you could do that in ~90 seconds if you had the cynos already in place, but it was rare you'd be that prepared.
Let's compare that route to today:
20 Cynos, 18 mids, crossing such a vast number of sov null systems you couldn't possibly own them all. With current mechanics, you'd have maxed out your fatigue at the 5 day cap after the 4th jump and have a 2hr 43 minute reactivation timer before you could jump again. If you properly waited out your fatigue every jump, it would take a little over 16hrs, and if you did the optimal effort reducing strategy of jump, wait 10-20 mins, then blitz the next 2 jumps, it will still take you an entire week of logging in for about an hour every single day to do that trip. I ask honestly, do you believe this is a reasonable use of your time in what is ultimately a video game? I know this example seems extreme, but my point is to illustrate how utterly absurd the current state of affairs is. I've also done roughly that route taking a few gates to cut down 3 or 4 jumps with both titans and supers on more than one occasion. When you consider that the Drone Regions are by far the largest producer of supercapitals on the map and also the least likely place for them to be used, it's truly not an unreasonable example.
You can see in this image I made before the jump ranges how many uncrossable dead spots and choke points there are in the map. My particular favourites being Mai, Erila, Athounon and Oijanen.
I don't mean to suggest that we revert back completely, but surely there is some middle ground here?
It's not even just about travel either, it's about combat logistics too. Let's look at invading a region, take Fountain for example. It's directly connected to Aridia via gates, so presumably you would at first stage in low sec?
Well that's a bit useless. Let's take that gate into the region:
Really not much better, it's only a tiny part of the region and it's not even a station system so you couldn't live there without dropping 20B on a Fortizar. I show you Fountain because it is the best single region to cleanly demonstrate this issue, but I can assure you if you go looking round the map there are a huge number of examples like this. For example you cannot jump from Aridia to Delve without taking a gate or a ton of mids, a fact which has already bit GSF while trying to move in.
Like Napoleon said, "The amateurs discuss tactics, the professionals discuss logistics", and it's especially true of EVE. If it's too much work and not enough fun to get yourself and your alliance in fighting shape, then wars just aren't going to happen.
My Suggestion: Double the range of all caps (excl JFs and Blops), halve fatigue. While this sounds like more room for groups like PL and NC to be oppressive with their supers, it's actually much more of a buff to groups keen to counter-drop them. It also lets people like, actually move without taking a 4 day weekend off work to do it.
Aegis Sov
I was kindly invited to join the recent Nullsec focus group by The Judge from CO2, so I've recently spent a lot of time trying to distill my thoughts on the problems with this system. Before I get into my views though, I just want to point that group has representation from TISHU, CO2, GSF, PL, TRI, BASTN, FCON, Darkness, Provibloc, Phorde, The-Culture and TEST, and every single person without exception in that group agreed with the following points:
Entosis is a horrible mechanic and should be completely replaced.
The node system (i.e. spreading objectives across multiple grids/systems) disincentives fights.
The biggest problem with it is that bringing a fleet that's designed to fight isn't the most effective way to win a timer.
I would have liked to see a little more Russian and QFC representation there, but I know from talking to XXDeath on the matter in the past and a couple other Drone Region FCs that they would all roughly agree with that. That said, the summation of my views on it are a little simpler: The emphasis of the system is far too much on the ownership of sov than the conflict in taking/defending it.
Generally, if you sit down and talk to players of any age who've spent time in null sec and ask them about their favourite times in EVE, they'll tell you about one thing: wars. While there are some enthusiastic PVE'ers out there (I'm no exception), that isn't what the EVE Experience™ is about. They'll tell you about crazy fights, huge welps, espionage, great victories and souring defeats. Most conversation about Aegis sov especially coming from CCP has been about top-down vs bottom-up income, "the little guy", accessibility, etc. It seems like no one ever stopped to ask the question "is the next B-R really going to happen over TCU Node B85".
But anyway, let's talk details:
"It's less grind"
No it isn't, it's actually more. If you are attacking an ostensibly "undefended" system, it's probably going to have an ADM of 1.8 or 2. That's Strat index 4 or 5 with an IHUB in system, 0 Military (ratting) and Industry (mining) indexes. Let's say it's a station system too. It's going to take 25 minutes for you with a T1 Entosis link to reinforce the TCU, IHUB and Station. Let's say you have 3 people, so it does infact take you 25 minutes because you can do it all in one go.
2 days later, you come back with 5 of you this time to handle the timers. Again, 25 minutes per node. You have to run 12 nodes for each timer, 25 minutes each, 3 timers, 36 nodes total, 15 hours of entosis time, divided by 5 of you that's 3 hours of entosising each. Also that is just time actually cycling the module, not counting time going system to system to find nodes and waiting for them to spawn, so it's probably more like 3.5-4hrs. You then need to come back again in 2 days and run 20x 15 minutes on nodes to take the now freeport station. In all, this has taken you 4-5hrs to take a single system. But hey you only needed 5 people right?
Well actually, not really. Let's ignore for a moment the absurd notion that you could infact find a truly undefended station system worth owning and only had 5 people and would have any hope of defending it against an aggressor. Under the old mechanics, if you brought 25 dudes in Blaster Taloses (a ship that costs about 100m and might actually be interesting to fight, it would take half the time. 2.5hrs of grinding, in total, across all timers for the IHUB, station and TCU. The more people you bring, the more trivial this becomes. If you're willing to bring just a single dread or two, things speed up enormously. Even now under current mechanics, you could likely count the number of sov holding entities who couldn't do that on one hand.
"It got rid of renting"
It didn't. The Legion of xXDeathXx renter program is going just as well as ever, Period Basis is mostly renters, as well as much of the far south east. Renting is actually more prolific now than it was immediately following Phoebe.
"It gave the little guy a chance"
Firstly, I'd strongly question the moral imperative to give The Little Guy™ a chance. EVE is at it's most meta a game about power and politics. If you start to look around the map and then cross-reference those smaller groups with eve-skunk standings, you'll quickly start to discover that they aren't so much the little guy striking out on his own, as they are serfs subjugated by the local power who feel it's better to let a pet keep the ADMs up. The drone regions are entirely filled with smaller groups who will follow lockstep with whatever Legion of xXDeathXx tell's them to do, same in the South East with Stainrus. These people are all unashamed PVE'rs only interested in ratting, mining and site running, so if they went against their master they'd just get blops'd senseless and leave. I know I'd be setting myself up for failure to claim that it is literally zero, but truly, if you thought this was true go open dotlan, run round the map and try to find truly independent groups of <100 members. You'll struggle.
My suggestion: Scrap the whole thing, go back to Dominion mechanics, but halve the HP of all structures again (it was halved in the patch after Phoebe), and keep ADMs as a method of scaling resists on those structures between 0% and 60% depending on the ADM level. The goal is that it should be strongly encouraged, but not strictly necessary to use caps on high ADM timers, and not necessary at all on low ADM timers.
Replacing POS's with Citadels
This is the big one. If you look at most of the large fights in EVE over the last 5 years, they've pretty much all been over one of two things: Dominion IHUB/Station timers or r64s. Asakai is often pointed to as a exception here, but even then, what do you think the titan was fail bridging to? A fleet shooting a money moon.
In my own experience with Black Legion this was the one we always knew would work, especially pre-Phoebe. If you hit a Dyspro moon that made 6B/month profit, you could be damn sure someone was going to turn up in force to defend it. Moon campaigns would typically start with a few initial great fights, a couple more minor ones, then once a victor had emerged it'd be a quick grind with max dreads that would take a couple weeks. You'd then clean up, and deploy elsewhere. This fight over a Thulium moon in Aridia is still one of my favourite ever fights in EVE. PL owned the moon and were living in Amamake at the time, we hit it, they came down in carriers, loaded napocs into their SMAs, and undocked. Was a great fight, everyone had fun on both sides, not really even sure who won the objective.
Again, that fight would never happen in current_year EVE due to all of the mechanics lined out above. This is the one that really scares me. See all the above points are things which turned out badly in just the ways I expected, but this one hasn't happened yet, and I know how much of the fun I derive in EVE comes from it. POS's provide the perfect escalation platform and incentive for both sides, they have solid intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for winning the timer, and both attacker and defender have an interesting meta game in defing the timer. You can hit at various times as the attacker and also stront kite. As the defender you can ruse people with weird stront timers and set it exactly if you're quick enough.
Citadels/Industrial Arrays with their damage caps, strong defensive capabilities and fixed vulnerability windows remove most of those fun aspects of the game. Also there's an even stronger and more terrifying insinuation that there's going to be some kind of active mining involved which focuses far too heavily like Aegis Sov on forcing PVP-centric alliances to engage in PVE activities as a goal unto themselves.
I don't want to come across as if this is just aimless whining. I am genuinely worried about the direction that this game I love is headed. I'm concerned that at every corner, CCP has been told by the playerbase exactly what the negative consequences of major design decisions will be. They've then brushed aside those concerns and went ahead anyway, only to have those consequence play out exactly as expected. CCP, please, it's time to listen, you've done it once before and can do it again. Please, listen to what your most loyal and long term customers are telling you before you lose them forever. |
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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Sheriff’s deputies were searching for a man Monday who made threats while traveling on a Metro bus through Lincoln Heights.
According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a man and a woman boarded the bus from Line 33 around 1:45 p.m. at Venice Boulevard and Hoover Street.
KCAL9’s Rachel Kim spoke with Metro spokesperson Paul Gonzales about the incident.
The man, who was wearing a surgical mask, proceeded to tell the driver “Don’t mess with me; I have Ebola,” according to authorities.
Officials said the driver continued to drive but called Metro Operations Control, who instructed him to keep driving.
“This is a very serious thing,” said Gonzales. “Someone who does a thing like that is trying to cause fear in the population.”
Before getting off at Venice Boulevard and Western, the man took off his mask and dropped it on the floor of the bus.
Metro Operations Control the proceeded to tell the driver to get the passengers off the bus and take it to a station in the 700 block of Mission Street.
The bus was sequestered for about two hours while paramedics and officials examined the scene.
The driver asked to be taken to a hospital but shows no signs of any illness at this point.
“No bodily fluids were transmitted,” said Gonzales. “No blood. No spit. Nothing like that.”
The bus will remained taped off until hazmat crews and officials conclude the investigation.
Los Angeles County Health officials believe this incident was a hoax.
Detectives said they believe there is a very good chance of finding the person and bringing him to justice for the crime he committed. |
CNN brings you the stories of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from those who know them best in two CNN Special Reports, "Unfinished Business: The Essential Hillary Clinton" and "All Business: The Essential Donald Trump." The documentaries air back-to-back starting Monday at 8 p.m. ET. For a look at Clinton, click here.
(CNN) Heir to a construction fortune, business magnate, New York City tabloid obsession, reality TV star and now, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee. For more than 40 years, Donald Trump has sought, found and sustained a global celebrity. But few understand his personal story -- the source of the drive that has put Trump within touching distance of the White House -- like journalist and writer Michael D'Antonio.
In a wide-ranging conversation, the author of "The Truth About Trump," an unauthorized and comprehensive biography, D'Antonio took CNN.com inside the new GOP standard-bearer's untold journey.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
CNN: Trump's wealth and business credentials have been central to his appeal to voters. Was he born into great wealth, as critics note, or has that been overstated?
Michael D'Antonio: When people ask me about Donald's wealth and whether he's a self-made man, I have to remind them that he was born into one of the wealthiest families in America.
In the 1970s his father was worth $200 million, so Donald will say, "Oh, I got a loan of a million bucks from my dad," and that's true too, but he also could access all that wealth in addition to all of his political connections, so there's some who estimate that if he had parked that money in a mutual fund he'd be just as rich today as he is now with all the machinations of his business life, but hey, he kept us entertained, so let him be a developer, let him be a serial entrepreneur. It's fun to watch.
Donald Trump and father Fred Trump at opening of Wollman Rink.
Donald was born to a father of German heritage. His grandfather actually came to America and made a fortune out in the Yukon, where he served up meals and alcohol and beds to the miners who were seeking their fortunes in the gold fields. His mother is of Scottish stock. She was of Scottish stock. She came over in the late 1920s.
At the time, the Isle of Lewis, where she was born and raised, was very poor, and they actually had lost most of the young men in a terrible incident at sea where a ship carrying the troops home from World War I sank almost within sight of the island, so many of the young women left for North America hoping to find not only a new life and new opportunities, but perhaps a husband, and she did.
She found Fred Trump.
How was Trump's life as a child and how much of his parents do we see in the candidate now?
Anyone who would have known Fred, and I've met a few people who did, and also know Donald, would see there's a direct line from father to son. Fred was actually quite engaging, quite fun to talk to. Everyone said he had a great personality, but he was also steely in his ambition, so he wanted not only to be rich, but to be very rich, and he wanted to be powerful and have powerful friends, so Fred, very early on, got involved in politics.
He donated to many, many candidates, and I think he demonstrated for Donald how to work with relationships, how to play with people. He made sure to grease the right palms, and that helped him become a developer in Queens and Brooklyn who at one point controlled 16,000 apartments.
Donald Trump with Alfred Eisenpreis, the New York City Economic Development Administrator, look over a sketch of new 1,400 room Renovation project of Commodore Hotel in 1976.
The father was also incredibly workaholic, so this is a man who got up before the family rose in the morning and got home just in time for dinner and worked into the night. On weekends he worked as well, and he told his kids, "If you want to spend time with me, you come along to me and maybe you'll absorb something as I do my work in the field."
His mother, quite poor in her beginnings in life, was a very theatrical person.
Donald would describe her as someone who loved attention, could tell a story, and at parties would be the center of everything. She was rather sickly after Donald's last sibling was born, Robert, and I think Donald missed out on quite a bit of mothering and I think he missed out on quite a bit of attention from his dad, so when people see this very driven man who's endless in his appetite for attention, I think what they're seeing also is a kid who might not have got enough attention and has been trying to make up for it ever since.
By the time he was a young teen he was out of the house and enrolled at the New York Military Academy. What was that like for him?
Donald's exile from his family and enrollment in military academy at age 13 must be seen as the formative event of his childhood.
Imagine you're a 13-year-old kid in 1959 and all of a sudden your dad announces on a summer day that you're not going back to school, you're going to a military academy and it's 60 miles away, near West Point. You'll no longer be with your family. You'll no longer be in this comfortable, luxurious home. That's quite a jarring episode in Donald's life.
In fact, I think he had to have felt somewhat abandoned as he was deposited in this place. It was sort of like a private academy, but it was nothing like people imagine when they consider Phillips Exeter or Andover.
This was a place where every kid was put into a scratchy, stiff uniform and handed some Brasso and told to polish the belt buckle and shown a room and a barracks, so at 13 he never would be in his family's home again until he was a student at Fordham in college, and all the kids who went there had trouble adjusting.
Donald Trump, center, from his days at the New York Military Academy.
Donald's main influence at the school was a fellow named Ted Dobias, and Ted had been in the Army in World War II and literally marched up the length of Italy with the American troops that took control of the country from Mussolini. In fact, he saw Mussolini swinging from a rope. This guy comes back and he gets a job at New York Military Academy and keeps it for life. Donald described to me that these were men who would think nothing of punching a kid and barked at them all day long. He adjusted, and I think he adjusted by excelling at pleasing these fellows.
Dobias told me that Donald was the most manipulative student he ever met, and he said it both in a critical way but also in an admiring way, to demonstrate that this was a guy who learned how to get what he wanted at New York Military Academy.
When most people think about a military academy, what follows is discipline. Trump is not perceived as the most disciplined politician or public figure. How do you square that -- is it fair?
It's ironic to talk about Donald as disciplined when we think about the wild statements he makes on the campaign trail and the rubber-faced presentation that he makes. He really is a showman, but there actually is a discipline behind it.
This is a person who is single-minded in his pursuit of what he wants. You get in Donald Trump's way and you're going to get run over, and I've had people observe to me the straight-backed posture that Donald always seems to affect when he's in public, and he's that way privately too. He's very forward, very aggressive, but actually very disciplined. For all of his wild talk, there's a point to it all.
In fact, when people imagine that he's freelancing, I don't think he is. I think he goes into public settings, has a few points that he's going to make, and in fact, many of the things that he says are things that he's been saying since the 1970s.
This whole idea of America doesn't win anymore, other people take advantage of us. In the '80s and '90s it was the Chinese and the Japanese who were taking advantage of us. Today, in Donald's message, it's the Mexicans, but the idea that someone's doing evil to the U.S. and we're somehow suckers is a message he's been disciplined about delivering over and over again for about 30 years.
When did Trump get his first taste of fame and how did he then sustain it over all these years?
Donald has actually been pursuing attention and fame since the 1960s. This is something most people don't know, but the first business activity ever undertook was the production of a Broadway play. It wasn't a very good play. It closed in about 10 weeks, but I think Donald's attraction to show biz was evident then.
He was even the leader of the Corps Cadets that paraded down Fifth Avenue in the Columbus Day Parade when he was at the New York Military Academy, so being out front, being noticed. In fact, it was so important to him to be noticed during that parade that he complained and got his group put ahead of the Girl Scouts to be first in the line of march.
In 1976 Donald Trump announced plans to build a $100 million dollar Regency Hotel. (Photo by John Pedin/NY Daily News via Getty Images)
So Donald's always sought attention, always been a rather theatrical character, and as he sought success in New York City he realized that his name, his image, even his appearance -- and he cut a pretty dashing figure around Manhattan in the 1970s -- could be assets. He promoted himself in the press. Before he had ever put two bricks together, Donald was in the New York Times as a rising tycoon. How he was a success and a developer and a tycoon when he hadn't yet built a single building is beyond me, but he pulled it off.
In fact, he was on a TV show in Manhattan as Manhattan's up-and-coming new developer, and this was 1975. He hadn't done anything but he knew how to get attention, and at every stage of his life, whether it was the tabloid newspaper wars with Rupert Murdoch and the Post and the Daily News or it was People Magazine or it was Robin Leach and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," Donald Trump was present, he was the star of the show, and everybody knew his name.
This guy just throws out ideas and sparks like nobody's business and gets attention, and in a place like New York, which was the media center of the world and still probably is, he was perfectly positioned to not only establish himself locally, but eventually as a national figure.
There was a time in the 1980s when repeated year-end polls ranked Donald Trump among the 10 most admired people in America. You don't do that without trying, so Donald had this strategy of seeking attention from the beginning, doing what it takes to get it, and implementing the strategy, and it's always worked.
So, for a person who has sought the limelight and courted the press, he projects a great disdain for reporters. How does he really view journalists and the news media?
In the current campaign, we've seen, at almost every event, Donald begins by excoriating the press. He'll point them out, and the reporters will have to stand there while the crowd turns and looks at these people he describes as terrible people, the scum of the earth, they're really horrible, and I think that the public, especially people who are true Trump followers, love this. This is red meat to his loyalists.
In fact, Donald doesn't think that. This is a pose. This is a way to set up an enemy and also to discredit the press so that he becomes the reliable source, so if Donald says, "These reporters are terrible. They're not going to tell the truth. They're lying," then who is the faithful Republican voter, or independent voter, to believe? Well, they're to believe Donald Trump.
He doesn't hate the press. He loves the press. The press has been the oxygen for his lungs and the air that pumps up the balloon that is his ego. He started, every day of his life before the campaign, by reviewing where he appeared in the media.
The name Donald Trump would be circled on the pages or highlighted in yellow, and he took a lot of pleasure from all the attention. I don't think he's got the time to look at all the mentions now, but he's certainly aware of everything that's being said, written, and noted about him, and he takes pleasure in all of it.
By all accounts, Trump has a very tight-knit family. His three oldest kids spend a lot of time on the the trail with him. They're almost always lined up behind him during important moments. Given his very high profile divorce from their mother, does it surprise you how close they are?
If you know Donald Trump only through the tabloid headlines, including "The Best Sex I Ever Had," which appeared in the 1990s when he was going through the terrible scandal with Marla Maples and the breaking up of his marriage, you would think that Donald might have a fractured family life. In fact, his kids are pretty devoted to him.
Yes, they were angry, especially Donald Jr. at the time of the divorce. I think no kid would be able to weather seeing their mother and father on the front page of the New York Post and the Daily News well. This is a hard thing to adapt to, but in the Trump family there's this sense that blood matters more than anything else, that you can trust your father, your brother, your sister, maybe more than almost anyone in the world, and they would be the people that support you when all else fails, so his kids are very loyal.
Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump on the live finale of 2008 season of The Apprentice.
I think that Donald was not the most attentive father. Though I think he probably was more engaged as a dad than his own father had been. He certainly didn't dispatch any of his kids to military academies because they annoyed him, but their attention, their care for him, is quite sincere, and some of it is family, the natural support that kids would offer to a parent.
I think they also anticipate the day when they're going to be taking over the Trump empire and they're aware of the responsibility that comes with it, and if they somehow denigrate him or criticize him I think they would feel that they're also damaging the brand. They know he's a divisive character, but they also believe in their family and they're not going to abandon him.
When someone like Mark Cuban criticizes Donald for hiring his kids and argues that he's not being a creative, bold businessman by relying on family, I think he doesn't understand what the Trump brand really is. Trump is about the family, it's about the name, and it's about attaching the name to different products or pieces of property. They license the name.
It's not a lack of imagination that leads Donald to hire his kids. I think it's a loyalty to the brand and the people he trusts the most.
Trump has flirted with running for president for decades. He's teased the media. A lot people thought it was just a stunt. Was there anything that led to finally do it and why does he believe he's the man for the job?
When we think about Donald as a political creature, and especially as a person who aspires to the Oval Office, it helps to understand that he really thinks of himself as the best person in the world.
This is going to sound very strange to most of us, but he believes that, almost genetically, he is gifted beyond everyone else who might aspire to the presidency, so the idea that he would go from no political office and no public service immediately to the White House is not outrageous to him. I think it's natural.
In the case of Barack Obama, I think he admired Obama's abilities to rally the country. He told me Obama was once a good cheerleader, and believe me, to Donald Trump, being a cheerleader is a meaningful thing. It's not a thing that he says to denigrate someone. Trump is a cheerleader himself, so he admires that ability to rally people and inspire them. There had been a time somewhere between 2008 and 2011 when Donald saw that it was to his advantage to become an Obama critic.
Now, I think there was something inherently racist in the birther movement that Donald came to embrace and lead. It's hard to deny that the very first African-American president is somehow subject to all of this intense innuendo and false suggestion that he wasn't actually an American and not see that there's a bit of racial anxiety in all of that, and long after other people had abandoned the birther cause Donald held onto it.
There was an inevitable collision set up by his birther activities and the fact that Obama is not the kind of person who's just going to take it, so in 2011 at the White House Correspondents' dinner, Obama made Trump the butt of most of his jokes, and there's tape of him sitting there painfully taking it. You could see that Donald was suffering. He was the object of ridicule, and that's not something he takes lightly.
After the Correspondents' dinner he said, "Oh, it wasn't so bad. At least he was talking about me," things of that sort, but that was a cover. I think Donald was seething, and probably on that night he decided he was going to run. There's nothing that Trump would relish more than taking the keys to the Oval Office from Obama's hand in January.
Donald is now devoted to it and he's going to pour himself into the task of avenging this humiliation.
The birther campaign against Obama was not Trump's first dip into racially charged politics. Race has really been in of the recurring themes in his public life. You've spent time with him, followed him and studied him -- is Donald Trump racist?
No one can look into someone else's heart and make that call. I'm not going to sit here and say, "Oh, he's an unmitigated racist," but he is a person who's repeatedly chosen to side with the white resentment side of an issue, and I'll give you a good example.
The very first time Donald was quoted publicly talking about anything to do with race revolved around the Justice Department's prosecution of a complaint against the Trump organization in 1973. There had been many reports made to city and state and federal officials that Trump properties did not rent to black people, and an investigation was done and it was discovered that staff at these buildings had been told to redirect black applicants or to inform them that there were no apartments available. So when the Justice Department notified the Trump organization of the complaint, Donald's immediate impulse was to cry reverse racism.
This is not the usual thing.
Other landlords, big landlords like Samuel LeFrak in Queens, had been served with the same complaint, and they had engaged the Justice Department in a process of making things right. Instead, Donald sued the Justice Department, alleging $100 million in damages, and his lawyer called the Justice Department lawyers Gestapo using storm trooper tactics. This is kind of the seminal moment for Donald and race relations, and he opted to fight and to agitate and to complain rather than to work with others to make equality and racial acceptance part of his company's process. In the end, his countersuit was thrown out and the Trump organization had to agree to certain changes that would make their apartments more available to minorities.
A pro death penalty Donald Trump took out The New York Times.
The next time Donald appeared dealing with race was 1989. There was this terrible Central Park jogger case where a young woman was assaulted in the park and almost killed and headlines captures the case and people were terrified by what they learned about her experience. Five young man, who were all minority, were arrested and, we now know, railroaded into confessions. They were all minors. They were denied access to their parents. Donald's response to this was to buy a full-page ad in the newspapers saying, "Bring back the death penalty." There was nothing more inflammatory that he could have done than to buy a full-page ad, sign it Donald Trump, and call for the death penalty in the wake of this case.
When these men were later exonerated and freed, he insisted that they were not good guys and somehow they didn't deserve the restitution that they received because they had negative records, so Donald is again, in '89, given the chance to do something either healing for the city, healing for race relations, or provocative. He chose provocative.
In the same year, Bryant Gumbel did a special on NBC about race and he interviewed Donald Trump as a prominent American businessman, and Donald's complaint at that time was, "Black people have an advantage," and he would much rather be an educated young black man than a white man in 1989 America.
There could be no more ridiculous statement about race relations that a businessman could make. Black men were at a distinct disadvantage in 1989 and are still at a disadvantage when it comes to employment, education, and other opportunities, but instead of working with people, instead of trying to bridge differences, Donald tried to provoke resentments, and it's happened again and again.
And yet, he seems again to have a very loyal group of family and staff around him. Politics aside, what about the man so attracts people on a personal level?
For all of his flaws and all of the provocation that he dishes out on the campaign trail and things that he says that upset a lot of people, Donald has a lot of positive qualities that come out, especially in private.
When you're with him, he's able to focus on the conversation at hand. He's rather kindly. He smiles. He can make fun of himself, and with his staff you can see that there's a loyalty and a mutual admiration that goes back and forth among them.
Donald has hired a lot of people and given them more responsibility and more reward faster than, I think, any other major executive ever would, so if you go into his organization as a gifted young person and you show that you can handle an assignment, he'll give you a tougher one and a tougher one, and he'll reward you if you succeed. I even think that if you fail and he understands why you failed and the circumstances around that failure he'll give you a second chance, and this is contrary to the "you're fired" image that people get from "The Apprentice."
In fact, one of the warmer stories about Donald is that a kid had a Make-A-Wish granted to him, and the wish was to go to Trump Tower in his little business suit with his little briefcase and be fired by Donald Trump. The kid gets to the boardroom and Trump is there and he can't fire him. He just can't bring himself to say the words.
Now, I think that's rather beautiful and it shows a side of Donald Trump that we may not see when he's at the microphone bellowing about his opponents.
How do you think a President Trump would would govern?
I've not seen any evidence that, under pressure, Trump opts for moderation.
I've seen the contrary. I've seen that, under pressure, Donald Trump doubles down on what Trump does, and that is provoke, argue, and push ahead. Now, there are some would say that that's what America needs, a person who will provoke, argue, and push ahead, and in some areas perhaps that's true, but I think in a complex world that's dangerous and filled with peril, we might want someone who thinks a little more coolly.
The remarkable thing is that the Donald Trump you see on the campaign trail, in public, even on "The Apprentice," is essentially the real Donald Trump. He's been creating himself for 40 years as a character to present to the world. He now inhabits it fully. The man you see in public is the man you're going to get if you elect him to the White House.
Donald and Ivana Trump in their home in Trump Tower.
This is a man who baffles even those who have known him for decades. I'll give you a great example of it. I interviewed Ivana Trump, who's known him since the mid-1970s, was married to him for decades. She said at the beginning of our interview, "Oh, I think I understand him. I think he's a little boy who didn't get enough attention and has been seeking attention ever since."
But when our interview was nearing its end, she interrupted me and said she'd been thinking about that question and, in fact, she doesn't know him at all. She couldn't figure him out, so if someone who's been married to him, who's had three children with him, and has known him for decades hasn't figured him out, I don't know how we're supposed to figure him out, so this is a really difficult challenge for us.
Let's look then at his political bloodline. We have a pretty good idea of who is advising him now, but how about 20, 30 years ago? What school of politics does he come from?
Besides his father, the man who had the most influence on young Donald Trump was Roy Cohn.
Roy was famous in his own right. He was Joe McCarthy's right-hand man and chief inquisitor during the Army-McCarthy hearings, which are famous or rather infamous now as an example of prosecution by innuendo and character assassination and one of the most disgraceful periods in American life, and Roy was the leader of that, and he was disgraced, as McCarthy was disgraced, and retreated to New York City where he was very well-connected in politics and high society, and when Donald became a young man, it was Roy Cohn that he turned to as a mentor.
Roy introduced him around New York. He got him access to the private clubs, and he became Donald's lawyer and mentor, so much of what Donald practices today in terms of politics, and you can see it in the way that he tries to flip issues.
A good example is if I say something racially insensitive and people start calling me a racist, I'll try to flip the issue around and say, "Oh, no, you're the ones who are racist for raising the issue, for noticing that I said something." This is classic Roy Cohn doublespeak and it's the way that he operated, and this fellow was Donald's mentor.
In fact, he was the mentor for Roger Stone, who is now Donald's friend and has advised him in politics since the 1980s. There's a whole crew of people who were attached to Roy Cohn, attached to, actually, Richard Nixon and his campaign, including Paul Manafort, one of Trump's top aides now.
All of these people worked together, understood each other, and understood a way of doing politics that was incredibly aggressive and no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoner approach to politics, and it's Joe McCarthy to Roy Cohn to Donald Trump.
Trump's slogan, "Make American Great Again" -- when do you think Donald Trump believes America was truly great?
I think when we consider Donald's desire to make America great again, we have to remember that he is the quintessential baby boomer. He was born in the first year of the baby boom generation, 1946, and at every stage of his life he sort of reflected the baby boomer ethos.
When Tom Wolfe wrote about the "Me" generation in the 1970s, Donald was really the leader of the me-centered narcissistic generation that he was born into, and I think that for him and for many people of his age this idea that the 1950s was ideal, a kind of "father knows best" time when life was easy, orderly, predictable, is a romantic thing for him. And you could extend that to the 1960s when, despite the political and social turmoil, the economy was booming.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California on June 2, 2016.
It was relatively easy, especially compared with today, for a person to support a family on an average middle-class wage, and that reality is gone, and I think that when Donald talks about making America great again, he talks about going back to that time, the 1950s, maybe a bit of the 1960s, when America could be perceived as great if you were a white male person in the middle class or wealthy.
For people who knew that life it may seem like that's when America was great.
Trump is often called a bully, but he tends to argue that, no, he's just responding to others. He's just "hitting back hard" against their criticism. How does he, in his own mind, assess what makes a fair target?
Donald is the master of game playing, so he starts out every game by defining the terms, and one of the things that he always claims for himself is, "I'm a counterpuncher. I don't hit people until they hit me, but then I hit them back 10 times harder."
Now, the assumption here is that disproportional responses are acceptable. "Oh, if you attack me by pointing out my hair is a little funny I'm going to go after you a hammer and tong. I'm going to criticize everything about you," and the fact is that Donald doesn't wait to be attacked before he does. He loves the attention so much that he'll do something like tweet about (the now 83-year-old actress) Kim Novak's appearance when she gave out an award at the Oscars.
I'm having a real hard time watching the Academy Awards (so far). The last song was terrible! Kim should sue her plastic surgeon! #Oscars — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2014
Now, Kim Novak had been in seclusion for many years. She was a very self-conscious person. She's not the kind of person who deserves to be humiliated when appearing once on television for the first time in decades, so I noted this to Donald, and I said, "So come on, what were you doing with that? That really wasn't fair," and his response to me was fascinating. It was like a kid getting caught with a hand in the cookie jar or a baseball that's gone through a window.
He said to me, "I don't think I got in too much trouble with that." Not, "I'm sorry I did it." It was, "Oh, I didn't think I got in that much trouble," so for him, what matters is not the fairness of something. Ten times harder is justified in his mind. You criticize my hair, I'm going to call you a big, fat, ugly person who's not worth the air that you breathe. It's all relative, and it's all, is it fair to me? Does it mean that I'm getting my ego stroked or somehow being ignored or diminished?
If you diminish Donald Trump, he's going to come after you hard. |
KALAMAZOO, MI -- A "natural grocery" and a handful of retail shops will use the building that is under construction in front of the Costco store in the new shopping center at Drake Road and Stadium Drive.
"Natural grocery" is the only title or description given for a 13,000-square-foot grocery that is expected to locate there, according to filings with Oshtemo Township.
Will it be a the next location for Phoenix-based natural foods retailer Sprouts Farmers' Market? Perhaps an addition to Texas-based natural food store chain Whole Food Markets?" How about a Trader Joe's, the California-base chain of store that market themselves as "your neighborhood grocery store?"
Trader Joe's is the name that continues to surface in connection with the project. But the developer will not say.
Project developer Joe Gesmundo said terms of his agreement with the potential store operator prohibit him from disclosing who will use the space.
And Trader Joe's isn't being definitive. In an email Tuesday, Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said, "Unfortunately I don't have anything to confirm."
Trader Joe's has more than 460 stores that sell organic, vegetarian, GMO-free and gourmet foods as well as imported foods, wine and beer, pet food, plants, flowers and other goods. About 80 percent of what the stores sells are products sold under brand names owned by the company.
The next closest Trader Joe's is on 28th Street in Kentwood. It opened in September 2015.
The natural grocery store will use a large part of a building that has been under construction since April. It will use about 13,260 square feet of a structure that will be about 25,700 square feet in total. The balance of the space, some 12,441 square feet, is being developed for two to three other retail tenants that have not yet been named.
More development planned near Costco and Field & Stream The build-out of the Corner@Drake continues with the construction of new commercial space.
Of tenants for that adjacent retail space, Ben Clark, zoning administrator for Oshtemo Township, said, "It is our understanding that it will, generally speaking, be smaller restaurants, that sort of thing."
He said he has heard nothing about who the potential tenants will be and does not know the identity of the natural grocery.
Clark said a large patio with an outdoor seating area, a space for socializing, is planned for the area between the natural grocery building and another building that is on the drawing board to the immediate east of it. (The building is seen in a conceptual drawing of the site.)
Although no building plan has been submitted for that structure, filings with the Oshtemo Township Planning Commission, indicate the building just east of the natural foods grocery structure, will provide another 7,655 square feet of space for at least three other retailers.
According to a statement in the filing by Gesmundo, the two new buildings will occupy space that could be the most visually prominent point in the Corner@Drake, the "lifestyle" shopping center that was established off the northwest corner of Drake and Stadium with the November 2014 opening of the Costco warehouse membership club.
The natural grocery store project is, thus far, owned by a Michigan limited liability corporation controlled by Gesmundo, who is a principal in AVB Inc., a developer, builder and manager of commercial and residential properties in Portage and Kalamazoo.
"Situated at the top of the large landscaped stone wall that defines the two major road frontages of the Corner@Drake development, the proposed placement of these structures will help to further emphasize the corner," according to the filing, "and will be readily seen by motorists on Drake Road and especially Stadium Drive."
Of the development thus far, Gesmundo has said he is pleased with its progress. He offered no time frame for when the grocery store project is to be completed.
Clark, of Oshtemo Township, said, "We've been pretty pleased with the developer's performance on this. They've done a nice job."
The project sits on the west side of Drake Road, the Oshtemo side of its municipal border with the city of Kalamazoo. |
Tension prevailed off Farmakonisi island on Wednesday morning, when Turkish coastal guards called a Slovenian patrol boat of EU-Border agency FRONTEX to leave the area and a Greek patrol boat was rushed to clear the territorial issue of the island.
Greek media report that the captain of the Turkish boat called the Slovenian boat to ‘withdraw from Turkish territorial waters”.
The captain of the Slovenian boat refused to obey the Turks, arguing that this was part of the international unit Frontex combating illegal immigration.
A Greek coastguard boat rushed to the spot and reminded the Turkish officers that the Farmakonisi area is in Greek territorial waters and that the Frontext is full licensed to operate in the Eastern Aegean Sea.
According to news portal Zougla.gr:
The captain of the Slovenian boat informed the operation centre about the incident that occurred at 3 a.m. The operation centre sent a Greek coastguard. The Turkish captain called the Greek boat as well to withdraw from the area. However he received the answer that the area was Greek and that he had to go away. The Turkish boat attempted to ram the Greek boat, but the Greek captain managed to avoid the ramming and eventually turned towards the Turkish boat causing both boats to collide. After some very tense moments where even weapons were ‘unlocked’ on both sides, the Greek captain manage to diffuse the dangerous situation. The Turkish boat left after the area.
Farmakonisi, a small island belonging to Dodecanese group, with some fishermen as residents and an army unit. Turkey does not recognizes it as Greek, although it is 5.5 nautical miles away from the Turkish coast and Turkish sea borders extend just 3 nautical miles off the coast.
Greek Foreign Ministry reportedly prepares a protest note to Turkey.
The Navy or the Defence Ministry did not issued any press release as the Coastal Guard is assigned to Greek Police.
PS All Greeks needed right now would be a confrontation with Turkey over allegations on “disputed zones“. |
Here is what you need to know on this Sunday, September 4, eight days before the Washington Redskins open their season against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Timeline
—Today's schedule: Off day, no availability
—The Redskins last played a game that counted 238 days ago. It will be eight days until they host the Steelers in their 2016 season opener.
—Days until: Cowboys @ Redskins 14; Browns @ Redskins 28; Redskins @ Ravens 35
Checking in on the Redskins’ draft picks
WR Josh Doctson (1st round)—He is now off of the active/PUP list because there isn’t one after the cut to 53. The wide receiver is now eligible to practice for the first time since OTAs. But that doesn’t mean that he will. We won’t really get a read on that until Thursday, when the Redskins issue their first injury report.
LB/S Su’a Cravens (2nd)—He was all over the place during preseason games. Although he played inside linebacker during those games, it wouldn’t surprise me if they have been carving out an additional role for him during the practices that have been closed since after the second game. Cravens may not always be where he's supposed to be but he does make plays.
CB Kendall Fuller (3rd)—There were concerns about his knee coming in but he was very nearly a full go from the moment he arrived for the offseason program. He appears to be in competition with Dashaun Phillips for the nickel cornerback role. For the moment it looks like Phillips is ahead but it could be decided in practice this week.
DL Matt Ioannidis (5th)—The only draft pick to get cut today, he has to qualify as a disappointment, at least in these early stages. It’s possible that he could land on the practice squad, work on his fundamentals, and land back on the roster as a productive player whether it’s later this year or in 2017. But for now, I'm looking at a defensive line that got no help from the draft and at all of the wheeling and dealing for future picks that Scot McCloughan did around the fourth and fifth rounds in the draft and wondering if he could have done better. He was the third highest drafted player to get cut.
QB Nate Sudfeld (6th)—It’s a good thing he wasn’t being judged by his preseason numbers. Sudfeld completed just 52.8 percent of his passes and gained 4.5 yards per attempt. But he didn’t throw an interception and that along with his steady improvement in practice since OTAs likely helped convince Jay Gruden and Scot McCloughan that he is worth trying to develop.
LB Steven Daniels (7th)—Daniels suffered a shoulder injury early on in camp and landed on injured reserve. He was a project and may not have made the 53 even if he had been healthy. Daniels will get a year to go to meetings and the injury happened early enough so that there is a good chance that he will be ready to go for the offseason program.
RB Keith Marshall (7th)—We’ll never know what he would have done with his chance to make a case for a roster spot during that third preseason game against the Bills because he suffered a sprained elbow on his first carry. Marshall has the physical tools to be a good back but he has to learn to stay on the field.
Tandler on Twitter
A nice sunset in Ashburn tonight. pic.twitter.com/v1pOthhH3R — Rich Tandler (@TandlerNBCS) September 3, 2016
In case you missed it |
LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 04: Lantz Lamback of the United States celebrates after winning the gold in the Men's 50m Freestyle - S7 final on day 6 of the London 2012 Paralympic Games at Aquatics Centre on September 4, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) - The mayor of Los Angeles has notified the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) that the city is interested in bidding to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
Los Angeles has hosted the Games twice before, in 1932 and 1984, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the USOC the city was keen to try for a third time.
"On behalf of the City of Los Angeles, I am pleased to confirm our enthusiastic interest in bidding to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games," Villaraigosa wrote in a letter to the USOC.
"We are proud of our city's sports heritage and tradition, and we stand ready to work with you to bring the Olympic Games back to the United States."
The U.S. has not hosted the Summer Olympics since 1996 and did not even apply for the 2020 Games after Chicago was overlooked for the 2016 edition.
The USOC had long been at odds with the International Olympic Committee, which votes to decide where the Games will be held, over broadcast revenues, but the organisations resolved their differences last year.
Although the USOC has yet to formally announce a bid for 2024, it sent letters to the mayors of 35 large cities last month asking for expressions of interest.
While LA is the only city to formally throw its hat in the ring, several other cities, including New York, are also expected to be interested.
Only Chicago and Detroit have ruled out a bid.
The USOC is scheduled to hold a media teleconference on Friday, with the topic of a possible 2024 bid sure to be on the agenda.
The next Summer Olympics will be held in Rio in 2016. The IOC will announce the host city of the 2020 Games later this year with Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo the final three candidates. |
World
Gaps Growing among Terrorist Groups in Idlib
TEHRAN (FNA)- Differences among commanders of terrorist groups in Idlib have increased only several days after a meeting between al-Nusra Front (Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at or the Levant Liberation Board) and other groups to set up an operations room against the Syrian army.
News websites affiliated to the dissidents reported on Thursday that gaps have widened between Ahrar al-Sham and Noureddin al-Zinki terrorist groups in Idlib in the past few days.
They added that the differences heightened following a meeting of terrorist commanders to set up a new operations room against the Syrian army, noting that a number of terrorists agree with unity among groups - for the danger of Idlib's collapse - and some others disagree for the presence of al-Nusra Front.
Sources said that given the military presence of Ahrar al-Sham in Southern Idlib, specially Jabal al-Zawiyeh, the final decision has not yet been made by the terrorist group to unite with other groups; also most military commanders of Noureddin al-Zinki are opposed to this unity given the bad record of clashes between the terrorist group and al-Nusra when they had united a few months ago.
Militant-affiliated websites reported on Tuesday that the al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups have agreed to set up a Joint Operation Room as the Syrian Army troops are rapidly advancing in Northeastern Hama and Southern Idlib.
The websites reported that the commanders of Al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Noureddin al-Zinki and Jeish al-Ahrar held a meeting on Monday to pave the ground for the establishment of Join Operation Room to slow down the army's advances in Northeastern Hama and Idlib province.
Abdullah Mohammad al-Muhaysini, the commander and Mufti (religious leader) of Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at (the Levant Liberation Board), Mosleh al-Alyani, Chief Commander of Al-Nusra Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, Chief Commander of Ahrar al-Sham Hassan Soufan, Chief Commander of Jeish al-Ahrar Abu Saleh Tahan and Chief Commander of Noureddin al-Zinki Tawafoq Shahab participated in the Monday meeting, the websites disclosed.
The websites reported that the terrorist groups agreed on four paragraphs, including setting up a Joint Operation Room (reestablishing Jeish al-Fatah), ending infighting between Al-Nusra and al-Zinki, releasing each other's prisoners and paying salaries of the members of Ahrar al-Sham and Jeish al-Ahrar by Al-Nusra in several phases.
Military sources said earlier today that the army units stormed the Al-Nusra gathering centers and strongholds in their push towards the villages of Abu Dali in Southeastern Idlib, killing or wounding over 50 terrorists.
The sources further added that other terrorist groups in Idlib province have rushed to assist Al-Nusra with fresh forces and military equipment to slow down the army men's advances towards Abu al-Dhohour base in Southeastern Idlib and also towards Morek and Khan Sheikhoun, the main bastions of the terrorists in Southern and Eastern Idlib.
The army soldiers are pushing towards Abu al-Dhohour base through Northeastern Hama, Ithriya-al-Shakousiyeh in Hama and Khanasser in Southern Aleppo. |
The European Union has reached an agreement with the Malian government to facilitate the return of migrants who have reached Europe but subsequently had their asylum requests rejected by the EU.
"It is the first time the EU establishes such a precise mechanism with an African country with regards to returning failed asylum seekers," said a statement from the Dutch foreign ministry, which signed the agreement on the EU's behalf.
The deal, which will be presented in Brussels on Monday, is "necessary," Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said.
Watch video 01:11 Share Inside Gao's trafficking business Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2Txql Inside Gao's trafficking business
The accord aims to fight "the root causes of illegal migration" and to "enable the return from Europe of Malian migrants," the statement said.
In November 2015 EU leaders met with their African counterparts at a summit in the Maltese capital, Valletta, where European leaders agreed to establish a 1.8-billion-euro ($1.9 billion) fund to address the root causes of migration.
In exchange, African leaders agreed to increase border controls and accept the repatriation of those who make it to Europe, but are deemed ineligible for asylum.
The EU-Mali agreement lays the ground work for schemes to help younger people find work, while also seeking to strengthen the country's security forces.
Crackdown on smugglers
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Mali and neighboring countries will also be expected to crackdown on people-smugglers and tighten border security.
A total of nine projects were adopted, with a budget in excess of 145 million euros.
The agreement says, "Malian civil servants will travel to EU member states to help determine the identity of migrants, in order to accelerate their return," according to the statement.
The flow of migrants from African countries - including Mali, Nigeria and Gambia - has increased substantially in recent years. They often put their lives at risk crossing the sea in a desperate attempt to reach the EU.
"Young Malians have so much to give to their country," Foreign Minister Koenders said. "We must help stop Malians travelling to North Africa or Europe from losing their lives or falling into the hands of people smugglers."
Germany calls for increased military support to Mali
Separately, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has called for the deployment of an additional 350 German soldiers to Mali to help the government fight off an assortment of rebel groups - including Islamic militants - that first appeared in 2012 in the north of the country.
Working in tandem with the UN, Germany already has 650 troops in Mali along with combat and rescue helicopters. But tamping down the insurgency has been a slow, hard slog. Despite a UN-brokered peace agreement, implementation of the accord remains in doubt amid periodic flare-ups in fighting.
Von der Leyen said the German troop deployment in Mali is "the most dangerous mandate that the German army is currently undertaking."
The German parliament is expected to decide on the proposed troop increase in January.
bik/kl (AFP, Lusa, dpa) |
A rarely seen live performance from Morecambe and Wise is to air on Channel 5 this month.
The comedy duo's 1973 performance Morecambe & Wise Live! will be screened as part of an evening of programming celebrating Britain's greatest double acts.
PA Archive
The show sees Eric and Ernie perform some of their best-loved comedy sketches in front of a live audience at Fairfield Halls, Croydon.
Accompanied by an orchestra, the pair close the show - which was organised by their longtime agent Billy Marsh and has rarely been seen in its entirety - with a rendition of 'Bring Me Sunshine'.
In 2012, Morecambe and Wise's breakfast routine was voted as the duo's 'most iconic' sketch.
Morecambe & Wise Live! airs on Saturday, April 12 at 10.10pm on Channel 5.
Watch the Morecambe and Wise breakfast scene below: |
I do remember the year 2000. One of the games that accompanied the Gore-Bush presidential elections was the swapping of the votes between different leftists. A Ralph Nader voter in a swing state was viewed as damaging for Gore. So a Gore voter in a different state found him, promised to vote for Nader instead, and the Nader fan had the duty to vote for Gore, after all.
In that way, Gore was supposed to win the swing states where every vote mattered. On the other hand, Nader got the same number of votes in the whole U.S. You may remember that these groups of leftists ultimately didn't succeed, Gore lost, and Nader became pretty much irrelevant, too. But could they have succeeded? Hasn't the vote-swapping worked in the opposite direction than they intended?
Scott Aaronson celebrates this "wonderful" idea in 2016, too. Gore has been replaced by Hillary and Nader has been replaced by candidates such as Jill Stein.
This trading of the votes is just borderline legal and people who participate do run the risk of prosecution. Vote-swapping is not quite ethical, at least according to some people, and this fact leads to extra damages for the left in the election results that Aaronson et al. foolishly or arrogantly overlook. The vote-swapping commitments cannot be verified in a way that would be legal. The whole scheme incorrectly assumes that both sides of the "trade" are at the same frequency and can trust each other. Some people may generalize the vote-swapping and switch to real sales of their votes for money or material goods which is surely illegal. The exchange rate of the swapped votes is almost certainly incorrectly calculated and a compensation for that defect would be illegal. Vote-swapping is really not how democracy should work. People should pick their best candidates and those – rather than the voters – should negotiate before and after the elections. Focus on similar technicalities affecting a small number of votes shows that some partly dirty tricks are more important for the participants than their careful and impartial analysis of or debate on the issues and values.
Maybe we can extend that beyond vote swapping: I’m in Canada so cannot vote for the more exotic candidates, but I promise that in exchange for a vote for the sane candidate I will write a paper arguing that spacetime is discrete at the Planck scale, or engage in a passionate argument (making up the rules as needed) on whether we live in a simulation, or even whether reality is really real (that last one will really have to be for a close swing state).
People like Aaronson are bigots and technologists of power. They don't discuss politics, their understanding of the political questions – especially subtle ones – is extremely superficial. But they want to be disciplined servants of their extreme left-wing ideology and invent the right methods to make this ideology conquer the world.Once people like Aaronson take over a country, they become secretaries responsible for the logistics – deciding e.g. how to get the deplorables to a Gulag with a limited number of buses etc. There are several fundamental flaws in this whole way of thinking:Let's discuss all those topics in some more detail.As I wrote, the vote-swapping has been labeled legal by a court. But you know, it was surely a subtle matter because the straight sales and purchases of the votes are illegal. They're illegal for a good reason. The country doesn't want the whole power over the system to be bought by a rich person, let alone interests connected to some foreign entities etc.Because the decision of the court was non-trivial – the vote-swapping "right" is surely not any fundamental right in any sense – you should always be worried that because of some technicality, what you're doing will be found illegal and you will be fined or arrested.Even if the vote-swapping exercises are labeled legal, they are surely viewed as morally problematic by many people, including the people who are just thinking hard whether they will vote for The Donald or a non-Donald.Many of these undecided voters will notice – and are already noticing – that the anti-Trump activists are involved in vote-swapping which will look like a dirty deal from their viewpoint. And this feeling may very well push them to the Trump side because the Trump camp doesn't seem to be involved in similar dirty tricks.As a result, the existence of the vote-swapping may very well lead to a bigger support for Trump than what he would otherwise have. It's totally plausible that similar dirty tricks actually helped George W. Bush to win the 2000 elections.This is a (not so) hidden expense that the fans of the vote-swapping are overlooking or at least not taking into account. Overlooking some important costs (or benefits) is a frequent fallacy of the leftists who commit it many times a day.They often see or want to see just one side. It's great to switch from coal plants to wind turbines, some of them say, completely ignoring the extra costs connected with the wind energy that make it unequivocal that it's a bad idea to switch from coal or nukes to wind, at least at this moment.Similarly, climate alarmists are overlooking the fertilization effect of increasing CO2 concentration – that is far greater than the hypothetical "damages" caused by CO2 through a warmer climate.More generally, leftists love to regulate everything, force you to fill extra forms and do many things like that and these nasty jerks just don't give a damn about the consequences, poor citizens who have to find out what to do with the extra forms, how to earn the extra money to pay the extra taxes, and so on. They only see one side – the side that is linked to "their pockets". Most leftists are parasites who are trying to suck as much blood out of the system as possible (through redistribution, taxes, fees for renewable energy, you name it) – out of the productive animal called a nation – and they don't really care about the well-being of the animal. They only care about their own well-being.So when people like me who have lived in a totalitarian society for years tell the Americans that the current U.S. progressives think (and want to act) in the same way and may be much more dangerous for the very Western system than the communists were decades ago, not everyone believes me. But the more dirty tricks similar to vote-swapping are taking place, the more people will believe me that I am right and that the threat posed by the leftists should be assertively neutralized.This is a technicality. But it matters. The ballots are secret and you can't really take a picture of your voting and show it to third parties. For that reason, the two sides of the vote-swapping contract have to trust one another. This is problematic because their interests are sufficiently different.People like Aaronson always assume that everyone except for the "basket of deplorables who are already awaiting their bus to Auschwitz or a Gulag" has exactly the same priorities as he has. Aaronson et al. are already mentally living in a "1984" society. So he thinks that it's just some random fluctuation that makes people prefer Jill Stein over Hillary.But it's not a random fluctuation. People who prefer Jill Stein over Hillary in a swing state probably have a good (from their viewpoint) reason to do so. They differ from Hillary's voters – and they may even sometimes think in a way that is closer to average Trump voters. They may very well vote for Jill Stein even if they formally sign a vote-swapping contract. The point is that this decision to vote for Jill Stein anyway is legal. In other words, the vote-swapping deal can be in no way legally enforced. Any attempt to enforce such a deal is illegal!Similarly and even more clearly, Jill Stein's voters simply cannot trust Hillary's voters. You can't really trust anyone who supports Hillary, especially not Hillary herself. These individuals are lying 24 hours a day and 365 or 366 days a year. If they tell you that they are as healthy as ever, they may easily suffer from pneumonia at the same moment. It's bizarre to make deals with them that rely on their "honor". You wouldn't give them the responsibility over the toilet paper in your restroom and a vote may be a more important thing than one roll of the toilet paper.I was absolutely shocked to see a comment by Moshe Rozali, a string theorist whom I know and who lives in Canada:If I understand well, Moshe Rozali offers to write crackpot papers that he knows to be rubbish if it helps to subtract one vote from Donald Trump. Are you serious, Moshe? Sorry but if you wrote this comment seriously, then you are not a scientist with the scientific integrity but – if I have to stick to a highly polite and diplomatic vocabulary – a worthless piece of corrupt šit. If some average people were selling their vote, the price would be some $10 a vote (the social democrats were buying gypsy votes in Czechia for $2 some decade ago). Is $10 how much you value what should be your scientific integrity?Also, as Scott Aaronson has been capable of telling you, such a deal – a crackpot paper for a vote – is definitely illegal. Regardless of the knowledge of the laws which may be complex, I am terribly disappointed that you don't see that what you propose is totally immoral. A scientist simply cannot sell his integrity in this way – not for money and not for votes.Moshe, I always wanted to "subtract" people like you from the dishonest left-wing vermin that has polluted much of the Academia. But I may have been completely wrong. Everyone who fails to fight against this terrible pandemics fails because he or she lacks the morality.The normal counting assumed that one Nader/Stein vote has the same value as one Gore/Hillary vote. If there were a free market, it would certainly not be the case. There's no reason for this "same price" of two things in an absolutely asymmetric situation.I believe that that Nader or Stein votes are significantly more valuable than the Hillary votes because they're more scarce. After all, a Nader/Stein voter who "transfers" his Nader/Stein vote to a different state isn't helping his candidate at all – because it's just the overall federal count that matters for these hopeless candidates.On the other hand, the Gore/Hillary voter would benefit. Now, would it still be legal to exchange a Stein vote for 2 Hillary votes in a different state? It would surely be illegal to exchange it for 1 Hillary vote and a bottle of wine.Elections should measure how many people choose this politician or another as their #1 candidate – while all considerations about the future (including the ability of the candidate to win and make a difference) are taken into account. Such elections produce some results and the politicians who get some mandate must deal with the result. They may create coalitions, trade favors with other politicians etc. They may also create coalitions before the polls. But voters have clear options and it's assumed that each voter expresses his or her own opinions. That's how things should normally work, how the democratic system was designed.If you insert a whole new layer of trading to the stage of elections, you are challenging the assumption that there exists a "right answer" concerning the support for various candidates or parties. Because some votes were transferred from one state to another, the results in individual states no longer reflect the actual opinions in that state. You admit that the result may be affected by many variables and those variables are allowed to be adjusted by various schemes.But once they may be adjusted, voters are de facto trading their votes for material benefits, too. You know, for a member of a "class" etc., having one candidate in the White House may literally be more pleasant financially – which is sometimes or often if not mostly the reason that makes the people vote in one way or another. So exchanging the vote may be viewed as an exchange of some material goods, anyway. Vote-swapping is just a case of barter trade.I have already expressed the same point from different angles. But I chose a separate entry because what I want to say in this section is that democracy should measure the opinions of the voters in some least corrupt and accurate way and vote-swapping makes the things more corrupt or less accurate and more "buyable", whether or not judges say that it is legal.That also brings me to the final point.Aaronson et al. would be better humans and better citizens if they spent at least a tiny fraction of their time not by dirty anti-Trump tricks but by listening to someone who understands politics better than they do, and even Trump is surely an example, learning as much as they can, and trying to think about these matters rationally. Dan Richardson was more or less the only commenter on Aaronson's blog who wanted make the other folks think more carefully about the topics – e.g. what Obama has done in foreign policy and whether the Americans should really want this process to continue.I have already mentioned a similar point but now I will use different words. Elections are a process in which a large animal – a nation – is deciding what is best for it. Different organs may provide different answers but they should still think as a "whole" of some sort. To do so, the organs have to carefully answer the question "what we, the nation or the animal, actually are?". And that decision may be hard because you need to figure out how to make the rest of your nation – the animal – live happily and productively for you and for the whole animal – the nation.Extremists such as the Aaronson leftists don't do this work because their primary identity is to be a part of an organ or a parasite that sits on the nation and sucks its blood. Aaronson et al. don't think what is actually good for the animal – a difficult question – because what they're actually obliged to care about is just the amount of blood being sucked from the animal according to a fixed pre-determined algorithm.Thankfully, they don't represent the majority of the electorate. |
101- The best lyricist, the Indian Film Industry ever had
Image & Text contributed by Amla Shailendra Mazumdar, Dubai. U.A.E
This is a photograph of an incredible team who marked the beginning of a golden era in Hindi Cinema’s music.
Shailendra, (my father, whom we called Baba) Hasrat Jaipuri, Shankar and Jaikishen came together to create some of the most powerful and beautiful songs of the Hindi film industry, and it was none other than Raj Kapoor who discovered and brought this foursome together.
My father, Shailendra (extreme right with a cigarette in his hands) came from a very humble background. As a young boy in Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) he used to sing Bhajans (Religious Songs) in temples but after my grandfather lost all his money, they relocated to Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). It seemed that the times were always hard on his family. By 1948 he was an apprentice at a Railway workshop in Bombay and was struggling to make ends meet. Poetry, however was his savior & first love, and he wrote about social issues of the time and would often be invited to recite his poems at small cultural events. He came from Bihar,had lived in Rawalpindi, Mathura which made him skilled in various hindi & urdu dialects and their expressions.
On one such evening at a Poetry Soiree organised by the Progressive Writers’ forum, my father’s recitation of his poem on Partition of India, titled “Jalta Hai Punjab” caught the attention of another attendee, actor and director Raj Kapoor. It was about the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike during partition and how it left those who witnessed it scarred for life.
Raj Kapoor, who introduced himself to Baba as Prithviraj Kapoor’s son, insisted that he wanted the same poem for his then under production film Aag. Of course the firebrand poet that my father was, and barely 25 years old, he refused point blank with a terse comment “My poetry is not for sale!” Raj Kapoor then scribbled his name and address on a piece of paper and told him “If ever you change your mind, this is where you will find me”.
When my parents were expecting their first child, my brother Shailey, the hard times only got worse and Baba knew it was time for some tough decisions. He went back to Raj Kapoor who welcomed him and gave him the first break in ‘Barsaat’. The songs “Barsaat mein hum se mile tum sajan, tum se mile hum” and ” Patli kamar hai, tirchhi nazar hai” were to bear testimony to golden times ahead.
“Awara Hoon” and “Mera Joota Hai Japani” were two songs that won global acclaim and are popular even today. Both songs have been translated in several languages including Russian and Chinese. In fact the song ‘Aawara hoon’ even got a mention in Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn‘s novel ‘The Cancer Ward.’
I think Baba’s genius was in his ability to express the deepest and most profound thoughts in plain and simple Hindi. His songs thus reached out to the masses but without compromising on their literary appeal.
His genius also lay in expressing a grievance without offense. In an industry where composers would recommend lyricists to producers, Shankar-Jaikishan promised Shailendra that they would recommend him around, but then forgot about it. Baba then sent them a note with the lines, “Chhoti Si Yeh Duniya, Pehchaane Raaste Hain. Kahin To Miloge, Phir Poochhenge Haal” (The world is small, the roads are known. We’ll meet sometime, and ask ‘How do you do?). Realizing the hidden meaning in the message, Shankar-Jaikishan then not only apologized but turned the lines into a popular song. The song was then featured in the film Rangoli (1962)
It was a meteoric rise for him since Barsaat, the movie that launched him. Amongst his memorable works are songs from Sangam, Sri 420, Jagte Raho, Madhumati, Guide, Kathputli, Bandini, Anarkali to name a few. He worked with each and every well known music director in the Industry, including the first ever Bhojpuri film “Ganga Maiya Tohe Piyari Chhadaibo“, with music director Chitragupta. Baba also won three Filmfare awards. “yeh mera diwana pan hai“, from Yahudi, “sub kuchh seekha humne“, from Anari and “Main gaoon tum so jao“, from Brahmachari. The last was earned posthumously.
He also produced the film Teesri Kasam based on a story by Phaneswar Nath Renu for which he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal. The film was initially considered a failure and took a toll on Baba, but ironically over time won huge critical acclaim and is now considered a huge success.
Interestingly, Barsaat was the first film for all four people in this photograph. And Baba wrote lyrics for each and every Raj Kapoor film thereafter with Mera Naam Joker as his last. He passed away on December 14, on the birthday of his mentor Raj Kapoor. I think what Hasrat Jaipuri once stated in a TV-interview was accurate “Shailendra was the best lyricist the Indian film industry ever had.” His songs would never let us and his future generations forget that. |
Alongside growing competition or a weak yen, companies now mention the risk of the Trump administration doing what it says it will do.
Pool / Getty Images
When CEOs talk about President Donald Trump's economic policies in public, they tend to focus on the common ground they share with the president: lower taxes, less regulation. The economy is looking "growthier" since the election, the Goldman Sachs CEO said, and optimism about the economy is "palpable," according to the Bank of America chief. But in financial disclosures to investors, they need to be a bit more careful, using closely vetted language to explain the various risks facing their business in the year ahead. These "risk factors" are often painfully generic — things like increasing competition, or foreign currency fluctuation hitting export earnings. They can also, sometimes, be strangely revealing, like when Chipotle warned climate change could crimp its ability to serve affordable guacamole. In the case of the Trump administration, the biggest companies in the United States are beginning to roll out new language in their risk factors. Here's the ones we've spotted so far: PayPal
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
"We are limited in our ability to recruit internationally by restrictive domestic immigration laws or policies," PayPal said in its most recent filing — a line that was not in last year's annual report filed with the SEC. A PayPal spokesperson did not comment on the addition to report. PayPal was one of over 100 companies that supported the Washington state suit against the Trump's administration's travel ban. PayPal also mentioned this year that tax reform efforts, including in the US, "could increase our effective tax rate." American tax reform efforts were not mentioned in the previous quarter or previous year's filing. Microsoft
Jason Redmond / AFP / Getty Images
"Changes to U.S. immigration policies that restrain the flow of technical and professional talent may inhibit our ability to adequately staff our research and development efforts," Microsoft said in its most recently quarterly report. While previous financial filings have said US immigration rules restrict the company's ability to recruit internationally, the mention of changing policies inhibiting Microsoft's R&D efforts was only added in the latest disclosure. A Microsoft spokesperson did not comment on the change, but pointed to the company's public statements on the Trump travel ban. The Container Store
Scott Olson / Getty Images
The Container Store warned of "increased uncertainty with respect to tax and trade policies, tariffs and government regulations affecting trade between the United States and other countries as a result of the recent presidential and congressional elections" in its latest quarterly report, filed in January. Many retailers are opposed to the tax reform plan being touted by many House Republicans. The so-called border adjustment tax would revamp the corporate tax code, preventing companies from deducting the cost of imports from their taxable incomes — a scenario that would be costly for retailers who import most of their goods. Last year's filing mentioned more generic risks around trade, "including the United States retaliating against protectionist foreign trade practices and political unrest."
A Container Store spokesperson did not respond to request for comment. Amazon
Gerard Julien / AFP / Getty Images
Amazon generally provides a laundry list of government actions that could pose a risk to its business, and the list is as long as you would expect from a company that is involved in so many different sectors of the economy.
But a new one was added in its recent annual filing for 2016, released in January: the risk of new "protectionist measures." The was no mention of protectionism in the same filing last year. An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Levi Strauss
"Recent sociopolitical events, including the results of the November 2016 U.S. election ... have introduced greater uncertainty with respect to future tax and trade regulations. Changes in tax policy or trade regulations, including import tariffs, could have material adverse effect on our business and results of operations," Levi's said in its recent annual filing. In both this year and last year's filing, the jeans company warned that restrictions on its imports could hurt it. But this year it got more specific, adding the risk of new tax policies that could hurt retailers — "disallowance of tax deductions on imported merchandise" or the "the imposition of new tariffs on imported products" — and referencing both the US election and the UK's decision to exit the European Union. A Levi Strauss spokesperson declined to comment beyond the filing. Lockheed Martin
David Mcnew / AFP / Getty Images An Israeli F-35 fighter jet in the Negev desert, near the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva, Dec. 29, 2016.
Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!
Lockheed Martin's notoriously expensive ($379 billion) project to build the next-generation of fighter jet has been a frequent target for criticism by Trump.
In a section of its annual filing devoted entirely to the "Status of the F-35 Program," the company said "there is also uncertainty regarding actions that may be taken by the new Presidential Administration in light of recent criticisms of the F-35 program. President Trump has publicly expressed concerns over past cost overruns and delays in the program as well as overall program cost and has publicly requested that a competitor price out an alternative." The company also said that despite its chief executive meeting with Trump in December, "we may continue to face pressure to reduce costs from the new Presidential Administration relating to the F-35 program and ongoing contract negotiations." United Technologies
Mike Segar / Reuters |
Chapter 18: Coffee with Strangers
Blake Belladonna
"I could do your shift," Blake offered over the counter towards the conversation Fox and Coco were failing to have discretely. The young Spanish waiter lit up bright with a smile, but the manager's groan cut him right short. Behind sunglasses, black as the pit of her vengeful soul, Blake knew she had upset a demon.
"Like hell you will! You have too many hours already, I won't be paying you overtime!" Blake figured it was approaching that. Ever since the Vytal Festival it was nothing but begging, pleading for hours. It wasn't even the money, it was just the work. The plodding monotony that demanded all her focus and time. She could pour beers for others instead of needing one for herself. Think about patrons' orders not the strength of Yang's borders. Mr. Port had taken to these requests well, giving her hours she could only ever dream of, topping over 40 weekly. He paid her with a jolly smile, but Blake's manager did not share her father's pleasant view of this new workaholic lifestyle. Even though it seemed like those sunglasses should make her blind in this light, Coco seemed to see right through Blake.
"You don't need to pay me overtime, it's not like I'm going to file a complaint against you if you don't," Blake argued, not caring much about the money. Working without stop had built her a decent savings in a short span and lived with a lack of free time to spend it on much of anything.
"Oh, I should say so!" Coco lied as it was her custom, brushing the colored twirl of hair behind her ear as she did. "Committing a crime to give you more hours, nothing morally or responsibly bankrupt about that idea, don't you agree, Velvet?"
The usually quiet and calmly tempered Australian roommate nodded her head in agreement. The pair had formed into a team of worrywarts and nosy Nancies, unhinging Blake's beloved and barely benign borderline self-destruction. "Blake, you can't keep doing this. You hardly rest, and don't lie about it, we sleep in the same room."
Blake just twitched behind the bar bench, hands stalling in their task to wash the wood. She knew her expression was giving Velvet an unfair grimace, the girl was just trying to be reasonable, to pull Blake out of her self-imposed exile. One issue, she was not done dancing in the dark. "So I read a lot. I was always nocturnal, Velvet. I work in a god damn bar after all! At twenty I don't need you babysitting me. I got this."
"It's not a bar, it's a pub," Coco grumbled back, tensing up immediately. This was some insult apparently, though Blake in all her life of travels and adventures, could not honestly fathom the difference.
Jaune approached the heavy gathering with no sense of subtly, hands in his blue jeans, a surprisingly muscular guy hidden under his white-yellow striped shirt and a meek disposition. He was going to get eaten alive. "Coco, I was hoping you could—"
"Lad, you need to sit right back down, you know?" the manager muttered just loud enough to send a shiver down the pub's wooden spine. Jaune stood still, afraid motion would excite whatever eyes hid behind those dark glasses. Blake was the only one unafraid, and she saw an opportunity.
"What's wrong, Coco, you have a patron? We're both on the clock, aren't we?" Blake spun her web, casting her in a shell of a commitment. The brunette clenched her jaw tight, like she had Blake's head between her teeth. This would end badly later, but for now, it was a shot towards freedom.
"Fine," Coco muttered, fixing her beret so as not to admit defeat in a state less than positively fabulous, "Both of you get to work, and Fox, you sit right still. Blake's not taking your shift. Got it?" Fox sweat, Jaune shook, and Blake chuckled, silently of course. She enjoyed what victories she could get.
"If you're working, can I get a Coca-Cola?" Velvet's familiar voice pulled Blake away from her momentary win, an unpleasant reminder that for every friend she shook off, another person cared too damn much.
"Yeah, of course," Blake replied, pulling a glass bottle from underneath the bar and popping the top off in one swift motion. Honestly, there was no staying angry with Velvet. She was sweet and, dressed in a brown hoodie and a little skirt with warm leggings, she looked like a petite bunny just trying to do what's right. There was no kicking her way. She was and always would be someone Blake never treated quite the way she deserved.
"Blake, I don't know how to say it any other way, but I'm worried about you." Velvet was never one for beating around bushes, she hopped right into the subject, her cool headed voice softly hit the mark. "I don't understand. You wanted to put some space between yourself and Yang, now that she's left. It's like she took you with her." Velvet certainly did hit that mark, even if in a more unfortunate manner than the young girl had hoped. Yang's shroud of heart entrapping air was suppose to go away when she did. Instead, when the miasma cleared and left her in the street, butt on the pavement, hand on her chest, but no heart beating beneath, the feeling didn't change. This was not the plan.
"I thought," Blake started, not really knowing where the truth sat, "I thought it was what I wanted, but I feel like. I feel like I missed something. There is like a solid mass weighing down on my stomach, and it won't go away till I do something. I can't till she's back. So for now I work."
"There is more to your life than Yang," Velvet offered, reaching her hand out, warming to Blake. The touch was nice, friendly, not even demanding, but there was another note to that. More than an innocent statement. A hope Velvet held far too long and Blake ignored way too much. She was right, life was way too big to be all about Yang, even if she felt like it all the time. Velvet just wasn't the right piece to fit that same space.
"And there should be so much more to your life than me," Blake countered, grabbing back on her friend's hands. Velvet got the message, her eyes watered, and tears calmly traced down her pale cheeks. "I'm sorry Velv, don't wait for me to be better. Be happy," Blake added, squeezing that hand, pulling Velvet back to their world. She shook a little, emotions running hard in her body.
"I don't know how when you're miserable," she answered one of the conversation's dual meanings. Even if it was from the wrong person, Blake felt a great deal of warmth knowing someone cared about her so immensely.
"I'll be okay. I really have been through worse. Velv, I promise I'll be okay." Blake believed that. As dark and intense as these things are, one day Yang would be back. They would face whatever ruined them, and if she got her heart broken, Blake would live the stray life again. It wasn't impossible. "How about if sometime we binge watch an anime of your choice, just to give us both much needed rest?" It wouldn't be as good as work, but it would be something for them both.
"Okay," Velvet muttered, hiding the tiniest of sobs. Their hands departed and a comfortable silence replaced the tense conversation for a brief moment, giving the brunette time to dry her eyes. "But I'm going to pick something dumb and cheesy and you are going to hate me," Velvet joked, making both of them crack a genuine smile.
"I've seen K-On!, there is nothing you can put me through that I have not already done to myself." The proper air filled the room, Blake got to mixing a drink that was needed, Coco was coming back to chew everyone in the pub out in a moment, all things were normal.
Then Yang Xiao Long walked through the door.
No one said anything, but sure as hell anyone that was there that night stopped and turned to look, petrified by her gaze. Unable or unwilling to be awkward, that beautiful golden girl struck a small pose leaning against the doorway with a smile. "Hey guys."
Yang was beautiful. Whatever scars from the crash Ruby had mentioned were gone, her skin retaining its slightly tan and cruelly perfect complexion. Of course she dressed beautifully as well, dark tan jacket with rolled up sleeves that showed off the chest the way she liked to, dark black short skirt that matched her dark black leggings. The added touch of leather fingerless gloves were both fashion and evidence of her own ride. Of course her blonde locks were long and unchecked, of course she walked in like she owned the place, of course her velvet eyes traveled the short distance to Blake, of course she began to walk that way, and of course Blake could breath again. Breathe in that thick miasmic want.
"Blake, you're getting those hours you wanted so badly. Fox you're clocked in, starting now, Blake you're off and taking that shift. Even." No one was arguing with Coco, Blake was barely paying attention to her. Yang was coming her way, swaying her hips back and forth in a hypnotizing and harmonic metronome. "Fox, get behind that bar and Blake, get the hell out!" Coco shouted, snapping both of them awake. Fox jumped to the other side, sliding over the top. Blake tried not to look hurried, lifting the bar and walking out without a rush. She was already feeling self conscious, aware she was just in black jeans, a white dress shirt, but nothing snappy, nothing that might distract from the tired bags under her eyes.
"Hey, Blake." Yang was on them before Blake could even think to worry if her makeup wasn't a lazy mess from this morning. She froze as Yang stopped only a few feet infront of her, smiling, arms down, non-threatening. Blake could not mutter a reply.
"She's off, so you know," Coco answered for her. Yang smiled hearing that, Coco did as well. Velvet stayed away and the rest of the college corner awaited something, evidence that they were allowed to dismiss for the day without missing a touch of drama.
"Where the hell did you go?" Blake surprised herself once she actually found some words to say. Harsh, but true to her. The question that haunted her still. Velvet had no answers, Ruby had no answers, not even Taiyang, or at least nothing he would say.
"Somewhere else," Yang muttered, a little taken aback by the directness of Blake's question. It was intense in a way that contained some distant familiarity, the way they use to speak a year ago. "I checked out, I guess, traveled for a bit. Blake?" Yang seemed to ask, though it lacked the core of a question.
"Yes?" Blake replied, unaware of what she wanted. The young bartender wanted this to reach some conclusion, some understanding. To finally clean out the mess last Vytal Festival revealed they were stewing in.
"Can we talk, like go get some coffee or something?" Yang seemed to contain herself, her attitude tempered a little by whatever stood between then and now. It was strange, how the golden girl was both her and decisively not. Like two people were taking up the one space. Going with her now would be paramount to coffee with strangers. Maybe that was what they needed to be at first. Maybe with so little understanding, they had always been.
"Coco sent me home for today," Blake answered without answering. Never quite able to drop her mask even when she wanted nothing more than to chase her through the streets.
"I was going to bust you out of here if she didn't," Yang joked with a smile, her lilac eyes animating in a subtle way, real way. Blake appreciated that she stared at her like that, more so that she didn't even seem to notice Pyrrha was here, and if she did, there was no lilac light for her.
"You would not have survived the attempt," Blake replied, trying her best not to smile. Yang did that brightly enough for the two of them.
"I might not be champion anymore, but neither is Coco," Yang countered, flexing an arm in a faux subtle way that only muscled idiots like her cared about. Well, Blake could appreciate those guns in a different way. Her strong limbs could hold like nothing else in their existence, and she could still remember how they felt.
"Yes, but she cheats," Blake continued the chain, happy for a moment, just to joke like they had before everything went to hell. A brief respite, but eyes were still watching, things still needed to be dragged into light, and they both could use doing that by themselves first. "I assume you have a place in mind?"
"Absolutely not," Yang mocked with a chuckle, divulging she was as unprepared as ever, "Didn't think you'd actually say yes, but hey. It's Spain. Cafés are matched only with bulls and flamenco dancers for our national exports."
"Yang, living here two years now I've never seen either bulls or flamenco dancers."
"But you will see a café." Yang thought she was cute, and she was. Unfortunately.
The walked to a suitable café lacked their usual jesting jabs and commentary. Leaving the pub a somber sort of quiet drifted between them. It was awkward, but not awful. Blake found silence a somewhat comforting companion, and as they walked together, passing other families, friends, couples, stores, and cafés, Yang was using this time to think, prepare just as much as Blake was.
It wasn't until Plaza de Mistral that Yang even began to slow down. Her steps ended outside the Greco-Roman statue, its spear pointed to the low hanging sun, head facing off to the sea. Its marble form almost reminded Blake of a masculine Pyrrha, but she forced those thoughts out of her head, turning away towards Yang whom studied the several competing cafés and restaurants that formed the plaza's stoned in edge.
"What do you think?" Yang asked as if it even mattered. She was still stalling like a kid.
"I think you need to stop delaying this," Blake knew to cut through Yang's bullshit. It wasn't out of malice, but two years together taught them both tricks of their opposing trades. "There is a shop a handful of meters from where you're standing, I think this place has about as good a coffee as any other."
"You're bossy," Yang shot back, half-heartedly. She knew better than to seriously bite back when Blake was right. "I just wanted to get you the perfect coffee, you want something subpar." Yang tried leaned herself against the stone base of the statue for support. The sun light casted her skin in bronze and colored her hair in thicker a glowing gold. Offensively pretty.
"You and I both know I prefer tea," Blake muttered, realizing she was going to have to make the first move if they were to ever get anywhere. "Here is good enough." Blake walked away knowing, or hoping, Yang would follow. Thankfully she did.
Blake was quick to find a seat under the shade of one of the café's many cabanas. Yang twirled her stool around backwards, laying her chest against the back, hugging it tightly. Half style, half defense. A young waitress with dyed auburn hair nodded to them as if to acknowledge their seating and that she would be with them soon. Neither of them moved to signal the woman back, eyes locked on each other, no feint disinterest, no shy shots towards the other building corners that encased the square or passersby on their late afternoon soirees. No, it was them.
"How do we start this?"
"I don't know, Yang."
"You're suppose to know things."
"If I knew everything we wouldn't be fighting." Punctuating with a groan, Blake leaned back, the conversation falling short of anything close to solving the issue ahead of them. Both struggled, tongues moving to say something, but never really forming anything strong enough for sound. Blake almost had a thought before the waitress interrupted, swiftly picking up their similar request for café con leche. Left in silence, both of them twitched in uncomfortably, playing with their fingers, tapping and sighing with unnatural frequency. Blake knew the ball was in her court.
Yet Yang spoke first. "Before anything else, I want to be clear on something that's still bugging me," Yang turned her head away from Blake, more ashamed than embarrassed, something the golden girl was definitely not accustomed to, or Blake for that matter, "That night. I pushed you. You crossed a lot of lines, but that wasn't okay. I should have never gotten to that point, and I'm sorry for that. Not for what I said, but for what I did." Blake hardly remembered that, it wasn't hard, it caught her off guard at the time, but even then she was far too focused on everything else. The thought Yang even cared about something as small as that made Blake crack a smile, only for a moment.
"Well, I'm sure my butt appreciates you regret the damage done, but it was hardly anything—"
"No, it was," Yang cut her off, sharp eyes deep purple, unwavering in its sincerity, "I'm bigger and stronger than you, a lot stronger. Getting physical with you isn't cool as is, but the power dynamic makes keeping my cool a must. No matter what relationship we have, if we have one, that won't be a part of it." Blake cringed at the way she said if, though that was far from the likely end to their coffee shop stop. Neither spoke immediately, their drinks arriving while they kept up mutual grimaces. Blake felt her throat dry up when she tried to reply, mixing the brown drink with sugar, she pressed it to her lips and tried to rid herself of that constraint.
"I appreciate that," simple, underwhelming, but true, "That's not the end of the conversation. I said some awful things to you. I'm a little more hung up on that. I don't think I fundamentally understand you the way I thought, Yang." Blake gave into the truth, knowing shadows simply wouldn't do. She kept composure, but her hard exterior had to loosen.
"I'm trying this 'being real' thing, I really am, and trust me this is not my way," Yang cut herself off with a chuckle, shaking her head in disbelief of herself, "But being real, I'm starting to think I don't fundamentally get all of me either, like, I know what's important to me. I know a lot more about the Yang I want to be than anything about the Yang I am. So I'm taking steps." She smiled with her mouth and frowned with her eyes. The golden girl's usual reservations being aired open, and normal exuberance restrained, Blake did not know how to handle this new her.
"Taking steps towards what?" Blake asked, holding her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting, "Or are you just trying to get me to 'real' talk first?" Blake tried to smile, as subtle as her's were, to take the sting out of the joking accusation.
"Nah," Yang replied with her own, slightly more earnest grin, "I'm, after three years of college, about to be a freshman. I can't possibly be smart enough to trick you."
"Freshman?" Blake asked, tilting her head at the world, as if trying to digest it. "You're dropping your program? Yang, you have one more year!" They were going to graduate together, a thought that both excited and horrified Blake a year ago. She had plans, dreams to chance, and so did Yang. They would split apart, but at least for another year it would be them together. Not graduating with Yang was... it wasn't even a consideration.
"One more year, and what?" Yang asked rhetorically, "Work at a shitty restaurant, working like a dog so I don't starve? That's just working to keep on living, to keep on working. That's a hamster wheel, a hamster wheel that tastes and smells like fine cheese products, but a hamster wheel regardless."
"You're dropping out? For what? Kickboxing full time? You can't just do that!" Blake felt a rush of worry that always accompanied Yang's companionship. Thoughts slammed into her skull. Were there any championships around with liveable rewards? Could she afford the training? She didn't have any titles, would any sponsor sign her? Were there sponsors for female kickboxing in this country to begin with? Fear, fear that Yang would walk herself off the roof of the world chasing her thrills. Blake had quit team manager to get away from that fear, the worried twinge whenever Yang got struck, the panic whenever she gambled too much on a match. Blake quit team manager, but her worried feelings never quit her.
"I'm not," Yang replied, shaking Blake from her anxiety with the serious catch in the blonde girl's voice. "I'm going to try taking kickboxing more seriously, double down on training, retake my title next year and see if I can find some underground leagues in Compostela that might get me a name, but I'm not dropping out. I'm entering Pyrrha's program. I'll learn how to manage myself there, how to do this right. All that stuff applies to my dreams, but if I can't be champion, I can teach the next fighters. I know my style in and out, knowing how to run maybe a gym or a kickboxing school might help me find a way to merge what I want and what I can get," Yang breathed in, finalizing her speech and holding on the last bit, the real part. The motivation for all this change. "I don't like talking about this stuff, but I can't live my life without this, it's too much of me, it's the only thing that feels like me. My Tao, and without it being a part of me, I'm a husk. Alive, but not wanting to be. After I lost the match I felt like something integral to my very existence was stolen from me, a year after you walked away from me. I couldn't lose both, maybe one, but not both. Yet I did. Without either I died, then tried to die." Yang looked at her drink, not at Blake. She seemed so ashamed, so hateful of herself for admitting these things, it couldn't last. Yang smiled and Blake saw the joke coming. "Looks like Ruby will be my senior. You think she'll notice me?" Blake wanted to slap her.
"Yang, that night are you trying to say..." Blake couldn't finish the words too terrible to mutter first, "Please, never even—" Blake reached her hand out toward Yang's from over the table. Just before impact, before her fingers could run over the brawler's knuckles to reassure her it was all okay, Yang forced herself back, keeping away from the touch.
"Look, I'm not here to fight, but you don't get to care, stop, and care again, okay?!" Onlookers glanced at them, noticing Yang's reaction, but likely unable to understand their English. Her eyes hinted at fire and Blake withdrew, unable to retort the truth. "I don't want to hate you, but I haven't forgotten you, how you smashed my heart and then blamed me for it. I'm going to get my shit together, with or without you, but that doesn't wipe away everything either of us did, especially not you."
"Yang, I'm sorry, I'm not saying it excuses everything, but there is so much you don't understand," Blake explained without explaining. No one ever meant it when they said they loved her, why would Yang be the first? Why should she believe her? This was a liar's Earth, users and thieves. She found it hard to believe now, if she believed it at all, then. Yang gave her every reason to run away.
"Well, unlike you, I'm actually trying to understand!" Yang shouted, hands gripping the ends of the table, ready to crack it in half, "I want to get you. I was off to escape the world and the first place I ran to was your home. I went to Venice, trying to understand, trying to get you. I met Adam, I know what happened, and I know you ran away, but I'm not Adam! I don't get it Blake, make it make sense, please?"
"It's not just Adam!" His ghost would haunt her forever, but it wasn't just their nightly crimes that shaped the scared girl. There was a whole world out there to terrify her. "When I left for the Peace Corps, I thought I'd see a different world, and I saw a lot of good people making a difference, but you know what I saw more of in East Africa? Companies abusing the hope of the poor people, and the desperation of poor governments. I saw Weiss' little family logo on mines working people to death, hoping their kids would have some shot at a future. They never do, they're just used. I saw that it's all the same selfish work, and you know what? I'm the same. I joined to feel like I was doing something good! Why? Because I wanted to be clean again. Everyone wants something. Even you."
"Yeah," Yang never denied it, her eyes locked onto Blake, all the shouting was over. "I did, I do. I want to be happy, I wanted to be with you, and I did want you to be happy. I wanted that most of all. It's why I pretended for a year." Yang's eyes watered, but didn't drop. The fighter kept hard, desperate to not be taken as a joke, though no one was laughing. "I'm not any of those people, what I wanted was real, it wasn't bad. I'm not them Blake, I'm Yang Xiao Long." The lilac gaze finished for her, reminding Blake of who that was, what that meant. A girl that fought like hell, loved quick, but never dishonestly. It reminded her who Yang Xiao Long was.
"And I'm Blake Belladonna, and I'm so scared of being used by you," Blake lacked the compulsion to avoid tears, and they began to flow quietly with dignity, "because I know I can't stop you, not when you look at me like that." It was Yang's turn to move, reaching over slow, hand cupping Blake's tear stained cheek, thumb quick to brush away the forming drops before they ran loose.
"You don't need to be scared of me, I don't want to use you, I never did. I don't even know how. Did you forget I'm a stupid twenty year old freshman?" Yang's joke was coated with sweetness, her voice softening for comfort, hand staying right where it was so Blake could grasp it.
"You met Adam, I have a thing for idiots," Blake muttered, somehow able to smile together. It had been years since she said that name in a way that made her smile.
"You certainly know how to pick winners," Yang added, letting go and pulling away slowly. Blake snatched her hand on the way down.
"I do now," Blake squeezed Yang's hand, but felt it go slack and saw the golden girl lose her grin.
"We can't just restart like nothing happened," Yang reminded.
"And we can't just pretend we feel nothing anymore," Blake countered.
"We're two idiots lost in a forest."
"Then we should pick a direction and start walking," Blake breathed a sigh, letting go, of the pain, of the fear, just trying, "and I would like it best if we could walk together."
There was silence for a second, but Yang's grip returned with her sly smile. "Is Blake Belladonna asking me out on a date?" The golden girl loved to revel in victories.
"Well at least we know you can understand metaphors," Blake joked, letting it slide. She deserved this, "Saturday, I'll get it off somehow, we can get a few drinks. Do things properly this time." They deserved this.
"No banging in a hotel? I'm out of my natural element," they both breathed at the pause and for the first time, the miasma of Yang felt warm in Blake's lungs, "but I'll do my best." Letting go was hard, but hardly the hardest part of today. Their drinks were cold, the day ending. Night was starting soon, heavy clouds moving in, yet Blake found herself desperate for time. A few more moments.
"Now, tell me all about your trip."
Hours followed, rain began to pour, only pushing them to hide under the cabana for even longer. Yang had an army of stories about the places she had seen and touched, and Blake had a hunger to hear her talk, just for a while longer. They tore away only when Yang got a call to give Ruby a ride. Blake didn't fight that, Yang needed to be a big sister and the other girl needed to go home, a paper on whether or not Don Quixote was the first novel ever written needed to be taken out back and shot. After all that, they never even finished their drinks. Such a waste.
At arrival, the dorm was unusually still. The place was devoid of life, Velvet should have been back, but Blake predicted she was still getting plastered at the bar with Coco, probably a little heart broken. Jaune and Pyrrha must have been there as well, missing meant they were together. Penny also gone, or in her room. Only animate bodies Ren and Nora doing homework, or rather Ren doing homework and Nora collapsing on top of his lap like a needy dog. They were a cute pair.
What wasn't cute, was Blake's open dorm door. "Ren?" Blake asked, knowing the question spoke for itself. He looked up, a deep set worry on his face, one not matched by Nora.
"Weiss," Ren started, not shocking Blake in the least, "there was some crashing from her room, she walked out, saw Glynda, both of them grabbed something from your room. Glynda left, but Weiss is still in her room," Ren listed it all like a line of facts, uncomfortable selling out the German. Blake knew that besides Ruby, Ren was the closest to her, sharing some sort of kinship between walls. Whatever it was, Blake lacked the patience.
"Weiss Schnee!" Blake shouted as she knocked on the ice princess' dorm. Off and on they were arch enemies, as it seemed destined. The Schnee family was exactly the kind of people Blake devoted her life trying to stop. Yet, a daughter isn't the father. Ruby saw something after all.
"The door is unlocked. Open it yourself!" Blake didn't flinch from the strange responses, slamming the dorm room door wide open, ready to unleash a hailstorm. It appeared at first glance it would be the second one today. The room was wrecked, a shattered guitar was burst into pieces that had scattered across the floor, a dent in the corner from where the instrument was smashed against. Many of the precious notes and equipment the girl kept on her desk were thrown off, some of it had to be broken. The one monitor that didn't even make it to the floor was pushed against the back, screen shattered. Weiss' hand, wrapped up and sprinkled with red stains, suggested exactly who had done all of this. The girl herself was staring into an open first aid kit, tears running down her face as she made no attempt to hide them or give into a single sob or sniffle.
"Glynda said the first aid kit was stored in your room. I didn't take anything else if you've lost something." Weiss' voice was steady, but haggard, like she had exhausted her vocals of all but the most ragged of ranges. Blake was baffled.
"It's okay." And she decided it probably was. The door left open hardly seemed like a big deal right now. Seeing a Schnee crying, surrounded by broken things, didn't feel as rewarding as Blake thought it would be the day her father got fired from the glass blower factory. Now it felt sad, tragic considering Ruby absolutely had to have been involved. "What happened?"
"Dinner with my family, Ruby was invited. Went well, obviously." Weiss closed her eyes, a quake running through her as she resisted a sob. Alone in her chair. Blake didn't go to her, but she wouldn't leave, not right now.
"I'm sorry." That explained Yang's text, Blake noted, "Are things over between you two?" she offered, unsure of what else to give. Weiss's jaw clenched, her eyes opened up to show red rings and a fire inside.
"I don't know," Weiss admitted, hands clenching down, "But I'm not."
*** Before anyone asks, yes the title is a reference to the famous coffee with strangers. Thought it might be nice to pay a little nod to what is probably considered one of the rwby fanfic canon. Other than that there isn't too much to say about this one, hope you all enjoyed and let me know what you think, and of course thank you to Lazykatze for editing. She has an incredibly demanding course load, day job, sports, and all that can not and will not let her edit, yet she weasels her way into doing that in spite of literally everything.
In the original version of the Yang side story (also known as the 'Chosen' arch of choice) Yang was going end up with Pyrrha and Blake with Velvet, the two of them unable to reconcile the choices made before the series. This was changed during the first Blake chapter for three reasons. One Pyrrha and Velvet simply lacked the time in scene to be real fully featured characters. Two, the chosen arc was all about being forced to accept what choices led up to now and where to go from there, having them get back together in this way made felt more right. They do not deny the past, but aren't decided by it, a more healthy end. Lastly, I felt it would be more interesting to have Yang shut down by Pyrrha because of straightness, having something out of her control fit better for her breakdown. |
How cool are cat whiskers, you wonder? Well, did you know cats have whiskers on their legs? So, why do cats have whiskers? What can your cat's whiskers tell you?
Why do cats have whiskers? Cat whiskers don’t just look cool — they’re the Swiss Army knife of your cat’s sensory and communications tool kit. Not only do they help her figure out where she’s going, they also tell her whether she’ll fit through openings, and they serve as an obvious demonstration of her mood. Here are seven interesting facts about cat whiskers — from why cats have whiskers to what exactly they do!
1. Cat whiskers are exquisitely sensitive
Cat whiskers are rooted much more deeply in the skin than ordinary fur, and the area around cat whiskers has a very generous supply of nerves and blood. This makes the whisker tips so sensitive that they can detect even the slightest change in the direction of a breeze. Because of that sensitivity, it can actually cause your cat pain if you mess with her whiskers. Eating out of a bowl that presses on your cat’s whiskers can also be disturbing, so consider feeding your cat on a plate or buying her a wide, flat feeding bowl.
2. Cat whiskers aren’t just on the nose
In addition to the eight to 12 cat whiskers your cat has on either side of her nose, she also has shorter whiskers above her eyes, on her chin, and on the backs of her lower front legs.
3. Whiskers help her figure out where she’ll fit
The whiskers on your cat’s nose are generally about as long as your cat is wide, so they help her to figure out how wide an opening is and whether she’ll fit through it. Some people say that if cats gain weight, cat whiskers get longer; I haven’t seen enough evidence to know whether this is true.
4. Cat whiskers help your kitty position her prey
Cats are farsighted — they can’t see well up close — so when they catch their prey, whether that prey is a mouse or their favorite feather toy, they need some way to sense that their prey is in the proper position for the fatal bite. The whiskers on the back of your cat’s forelegs, and to a lesser extent, those on her chin and the sides of her nose, are crucial for that purpose.
5. Cat whiskers are an emotional barometer
The position of your cat’s whiskers can be an indicator of her mood. If her whiskers are relaxed and sticking out sideways, she’s calm. If they’re pushed forward, that means she’s excited and alert. And if they’re flattened against her cheeks, she’s angry or scared. Of course, you’ll need to check her “whiskergram” against her other body language, such as the position of her ears and tail, to confirm what those cat whiskers are telling you.
6. Cat whiskers should never be cut
Although your cat does shed a couple of whiskers from time to time, you should never trim cat whiskers. She’ll become disoriented and may begin acting dizzy and confused because she’s no longer receiving those vital navigation signals. Imagine if somebody grabbed you and put a blindfold on you and you couldn’t take it off for a few weeks — that’s about what it’s like for a cat whose whiskers get cut off.
7. Cat whiskers can change color
Don’t be surprised if you find a white whisker growing in your pure black cat’s fur as she ages: Cats do start going gray with age, but it’s not noticeable unless your cat’s fur is a dark, solid color.
Tell us: Do you know any other facts about cat whiskers? Do you have any questions about cat whiskers? Share them in the comments!
Thumbnail: Photography ©Анатолий Тушенцов | Thinkstock.
This piece was originally published in 2017.
Read more about cat behavior on Catster.com: |
Pervert to be beheaded and crucified in Saudi Arabia BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A man who kidnapped and raped five children, one of whom was left in the desert to die, has been sentenced to be beheaded and his body publicly crucified. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/pervert-to-be-beheaded-and-crucified-in-saudi-arabia-28501921.html
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A man who kidnapped and raped five children, one of whom was left in the desert to die, has been sentenced to be beheaded and his body publicly crucified.
The 22-year-old was caught when he offered a child a lift home from school in his car, the Okaz newspaper said.
One of the victims, aged three, survived after being left for dead in the desert.
The court of appeal in Riyadh approved the death sentence handed down in June.
The man's victims were aged between three and seven.
Muhammed Basheer al-Ramaly, from the city of Hail, in Saudi Arabia, will be beheaded by sword then his body tied to a wooden cross and his head stuck on a pole as a deterrent.
Al-Ramaly was found guilty in February of abducting and raping five boys, the eldest of whom was 7 and the youngest just 3, who he left out in the desert to die.
His modus operandi was to pick up the boys in his car and take them off to a secret location and rape them. Most of them were found a day or two after they were abducted, and told police that they had been abused.
Saudi reports said that police used one of the survivors, a seven-year-old boy, to scour the area where he was molested, looking for the suspect's vehicle.
Al-Ramaly allegedly confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death by a court in Hail, but appealed to a higher court in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
That court yesterday upheld the sentence and ordered his immediate execution. While Saudi Arabia carries out numerous beheadings -- 102 last year, according to Amnesty International -- crucifixions are relatively rare. The last one appears to have been in May, when the headless body of a sex murderer was displayed in the capital.
Amnesty said there were reports that al-Ramaly may have been suffering from a psychological disorder.
One Saudi web forum claimed that police had been surprised when he laughed as he confessed to the rapes and murder.
Saudi Arabia has come under fire from human rights groups in the past for its high number of executions.
About half of the 1,695 executed between 1985 and 2008 were foreign workers unable to pay the blood money that relatives of murder victims can demand in lieu of the death penalty, according to Amnesty.
Belfast Telegraph |
Twelve steps, a jump, and his body was over the bar at 7 feet, 1 inch. Wally Ellenson had broken the Marquette University high jump record in his Golden Eagle debut. He had cleared that height in high school (setting the Wisconsin state record in the process) and during limited practices with MU last fall. “All business,” he called it.
His sights were set on greater heights, and he quickly reached them, all the way to 7 feet, 5.75 inches. Pretty good for someone who balances a busy schedule as an NCAA championship contender and a member of the Marquette men's basketball team.
MORE: Running Our Mouths Podcast, Ep. Seven | Rio 2016 track and field schedules
“Coming into Madison and having a great jump to start was perfect,” Ellenson said of his work in the Wisconsin Open on Jan. 17. “I’m ready to go and get a national championship. I’ve never felt the pressure and whenever it’s a big meet, I’ll rise to the occasion and set a personal best.”
At the time, 7-5.75 was the best jump of 2015 by an American and the third-best in the world. Ellenson was the 12th-best American in 2014, but his performance in Madison put him among the top seven from a year ago. The top three performers at this year's U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships will represent their country at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing.
Ellenson knows he has a chance.
“This year is about just improving in height,” he said. “Each centimeter that I can get higher will just make my chances better to compete for Team USA and head to Beijing.”
2014: Eugene
Quick flashback to last June: Ellenson is gearing up for a jump at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Hayward Field. He raises his arms to begin the slow clap for support, to no avail. The crowd is fully engaged in cheering on one of their own, Oregon's Laura Roesler, to a national title in the 800 meters.
As Roesler pulls away in the final stretch, Ellenson takes off. Roesler crosses the finish line. Ellenson clears the bar. The crowd goes wild as Ellenson comes off the mat throwing his left arm up in the air and jumping for joy.
“I think I got a little carried away,” he recalled. “It was a pure adrenaline rush because of how perfectly executed everything was and being able to improve when it meant the most.”
The reaction from his fellow competitors, as usual, is much different. Who is this basketball player from Minnesota coming out of nowhere?
“They give me strange looks at first and then they see me jump,” Ellenson joked. “Every high jumper I’ve met thinks they can play basketball pretty well because they can jump and dunk. You don’t hear the opposite from basketball players, but it’s still great to have that dynamic of being good in both.”
As Ellenson boarded a plane back to Minneapolis, the victory in Eugene would wear off quickly as his attention shifted to finding a school for the fall.
'A basketball decision'
Ellenson was one of several new faces on the Marquette campus last semester. Head basketball coach Buzz Williams had left the program to try to resurrect the Virginia Tech program. Soon after, the spirit of Al McGuire delivered Steve Wojciechowski from Mike Krzyzewski's staff at Duke to take the reins.
The 6-6 guard opened the recruiting process when he decided to transfer from Minnesota after playing in 18 games for the Gophers over two seasons.
Wally Ellenson, then a Gopher, skies for a layup attempt against Ohio State. (Getty Images)
Soon after visiting Marquette with his younger brother Henry, a five-star recruit, he decided to play in his home state (he's from Rice Lake, which is about 4 1/2 hours northwest of Milwaukee).
“Coming here was purely a basketball decision,” Ellenson said. “I wanted to get in a better environment. Wojo is an unbelievable coach and it’s been awesome working with all these other coaches that thrived in their own college careers. After a semester, I know I made the right move.”
He has to sit out the 2014-2015 basketball season because of NCAA transfer rules, but he is eligible to compete for the indoor and outdoor track team. When the basketball team is on the road, Ellenson trains with the track team.
“He’s an Olympic-level track athlete. We want to give him the opportunity to pursue that passion.” Wojciechowski said. “On the court, he’s a fighter and hard worker. Behind the scenes, he’s been a key part and he’s making our team better. The thing is, you just can’t see that now.”
The process is new to Wojciechowski; most of the players he encountered at Duke had a basketball-only focus. Nets forward Mason Plumlee jumped 6-8 in high school, but only played basketball for the Blue Devils.
“When you’re talking the Olympics, that’s the best of the best and it’s hard to match up to that in two sports,” Wojciechowski said.
At Minnesota, Ellenson joined the track team the day after basketball season ended.
“Basketball has always been my first love,” he said. “High jump has been a great experience, especially in college. I haven’t seen the ceiling to the heights I can clear yet.”
One day, he may have to leave behind that first love to seriously pursue a shot at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He’s not ready for that day yet.
“Right now I’m doing both sports and I’m going to push them both to the limit,” he said.
The sports gene
The Ellenson gene pool is one of the deepest in the country. The height traces back to Ellenson’s grandparents, and Wally's great uncle Jessie played professional basketball in Australia. Wally's father, John, was a high jumper in high school and competed at the Wisconsin state championship. John oversaw Wally's development as a high jumper at Rice Lake High School. Mother Holly coaches at Rice Lake.
Wally was the first to come into the world and was quickly followed by Ellwood, Henry and Ella. Ellwood plays for NAIA Valley City State University in North Dakota. He transferred from NCAA Division II Bemidji State to play for VCSU coach Jeff Kaminsky, whom John has known for close to two decades.
Henry is among the top five recruits in the class of 2015 and will join with his brother at Marquette next season. Ella is a sophomore at Rice Lake and already receiving Division I attention.
“A lot of bonding has always taken place on the court and at events like AAU tournaments,” Wally said. “At the same time, whenever I’m on the court against any of them things will get intense.”
This winter has been a particularly busy one for Ellenson's parents with four basketball teams and an indoor track team to follow. Even though Wally can't be on the court at BMO Harris Bradley Center for Marquette home games, the family is there to take in the atmosphere ahead of Wally and Henry being teammates in 2015.
As soon as Wally’s body cleared the bar in Madison, John and Holly celebrated briefly before heading to their car to go watch Henry play, and then Ella.
His parents were not in attendance Friday for the Panther Tune-Up Meet at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. That didn't bother Ellenson, who won with a jump of 7-3. Not a bad day at the track for someone who rushed over after basketball practice.
Minutes after the victory, Ellenson packed his bag and rushed back to Marquette’s campus for a basketball team meeting ahead of Saturday's Big East home game against Villanova.
Even as he sits atop the NCAA in high jump, basketball comes first for Ellenson at the end of the day.
This article has been corrected, Ellwood Ellenson's school was incorrect in previous versions. |
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[UPDATE 2] Heists are now back up and running.
[UPDATE] Rockstar Games has passed along a statement addressing GTA Online's issues.
"We are aware of some issues today with players having problems connecting to GTA Online, as well as issues with the Xbox Live service," a representative said. "We are working to restore full access to GTA Online as quickly as possible. In the meantime, players can monitor the performance of all platforms on our GTA Online status page, located here."
The original story is below.
The release of Grand Theft Auto V's long-awaited online Heists mode today hasn't gone entirely smoothly. Fans are widely reporting connectivity issues that are, in some cases, preventing them from forming a crew and taking on some of the new four-person Heist jobs available in GTA Online.
GameSpot attempted to form a four-person crew to take on a Heist job, but was unable to get all players into a party at the same time to start the mission. Eventually, it worked, but clearly GTA Online is experiencing some teething problems.
We've been able to connect to GTA Online just fine, but accessing and completing Heists has been particularly problematic.
Players are reporting GTA Online issues across all platforms. For its part, Microsoft has issued a service alert for Xbox 360, notifying users of connectivity problems.
Server woes are nothing new for GTA Online. When the mode launched in October, it faced widespread issues. These have been largely corrected, and Rockstar Games even thanked players with free in-game currency and more for their troubles.
GameSpot will continue to monitor GTA Online's status, updating this post with new information as it becomes available. We've also reached out to Rockstar, asking for further insight into what might be going wrong and when a fix will be deployed.
For now, if you're experiencing technical troubles, you can visit the GTA Online support page. |
It was bound to happen eventually. All good things must come to an end, and great things are under that rule, too. This season was one for the ages. A truly remarkable and historic season. The best conference improvement in Pac-12 and CU history. One of few double digit win seasons in history. And, of course, a return to what CU fans know CU football to be. Fast and tough and victorious. Unquestionably, the Buffs rode the defense to many of these victories. They were aggressive, playmaking, and stout. Truly a joy to watch. It’s hard to write about this season and this D without getting too philosophical or hyperbolic, but this defense was a bunch of guys that decided they weren’t going to give points up. Remember the Dolphin’s "no-name defense" of their undefeated season, led by CU grad Dick Anderson? The college version, at least in 2016, was your Colorado Buffaloes.
Much of that is owed to Jim Leavitt. Everywhere he’s been, he has engineered miraculous defensive turnarounds. His schemes aren’t crazy and his players aren’t individually dominant. But every single player gives every single ounce on every single play. They lay it all out on the field and dare other teams to out-will them. They usually don’t.
But before I wax poetically too much about this D (save it for the season review), let’s get to the point of this article. The country took notice of the Buffaloes, and specifically, the defense. Jim Leavitt was a hot commodity for big names in football. Oregon shot their shot and gave him an offer that many of us couldn’t refuse. He is now (supposedly) the most paid Pac-12 assistant EVER by around 500,000 dollars, at 1.2 million per. There are very few programs that can match that offer for a defensive coordinator, and even fewer west of the Mississippi. But, alas, Oregon snags one of the best coordinators in the country. CU is left looking for a replacement. Here’s who I think could step in and do just fine.
Joe Tumpkin
This is most likely the next hire, and one that I would be completely fine with. Tumpkin has a few factors going for him. He has coordinator experience at Central Michigan, improving that defense incrementally while there (up to 29th in the country in raw points allowed per game, though advanced stats weren’t as kind). He obviously is currently on staff at Colorado as the safeties coach, who had three standout performers this year with Ryan Moeller, Afolabi Laguda and Tedric Thompson. Tumpkin is credited with moving Ryan Moeller to the OLB position for the Oregon game, an experiment that shows his creativity and knowledge of the current personnel. Tumpkin also has been a great recruiter for CU, with his connections to Detroit, Houston, and Miami, three talent hotbeds. Keeping Tumpkin would help strengthen those connections. He also has LB coach experience at Pittsburgh if CU so desires to move him there as DC. I suspect that Tumpkin will turn in his resume in the form of the bowl game defense. If we successfully shut down Oklahoma State, or slow them down, Buff fans and coaches alike will be more than comfortable with Tumpkin taking over.
The added benefit of Tumpkin is that we know he’s a great position coach and recruiter, and he frees up a spot to look for an ace LB recruiter and coach. With Tumpkin keeping the safety responsibility as well as DC duties, the new LB coach would have plenty of time to hit the trail. Erik Chinander is an intriguing name. He’s the DC of Central Florida, who had a surprisingly tough defense this year. He followed Scott Frost there, and was Oregon’s OLB coach from 2014 until last year. West Coast ties and a young defensive mind. Another name to keep an eye on would be Tyrone McKenzie, who coached in Boulder as a GA and did the same for Stanford last year. The players loved him and he now has a solid foothold in the West as well Tampa, where he played for Leavitt at USF.
Tim DeRuyter
This name has been popular to throw out for the fans. DeRuyter interviewed for the job that Mike MacIntyre has now, coming off a successful interim season as Texas A&M’s head coach. DeRuyter has a long history of solid defenses under his tenure, but he’s on the market due to his failure as Fresno State’s head coach this year. However, he checks all of the boxes for CU: Consistently good defenses, experience in Texas, Colorado, and California, and he’s obtainable. He also runs an aggressive 3-4 defense, very similar to what CU ran this year.
Kacy Rogers
This is an intriguing name for me. Kacy Rogers has NFL experience with Mike MacIntyre, with Rogers coaching the defensive line and MacIntyre coaching the secondary under Bill Parcells. Rogers is relatively young, and he’s an NFL defensive coordinator right now for the New York Jets. Right now, it looks like that coaching staff may not survive the offseason. Rogers would have the pedigree and resume, but there a few big hang ups when considering him. Would he move down from NFL DC to college DC? Can he recruit in the Pac-12 when so much of his experience is East? Can CU hire him in time for spring camp or signing day? He’s someone to keep an eye on.
Peter Sirmon
Another intriguing name. He has a wealth of experience in the Pac-12, serving under Steve Sarkisian as LB coach at UW and then as assistant head coach, linebacker coach, and recruiting coordinator at USC. There’s a lot to like. He’s a great recruiter, he’s young, and he has experience with the 3-4. However, unlike the previous three candidates, Sirmon does not have much experience as a DC. 2016 was his first season calling the D, and Mississippi State’s strength was definitely the offense. However, when you look a little closer, it gets a little more optimistic for Sirmon. His unit, the linebackers, was the most effective of the defense by far, posting a 47th ranked havoc rate and the three leading tacklers of the defense. This would be a risky hire, but recruiting would see an uptick.
Demetrice Martin
My sleeper pick. He has been considered for a few DC positions in the past. As DB coach for UCLA, he has recruited and developed some ballers. He obviously the recruiting chops required. He’s been recruiting and coaching in the Pac-12 sine 2008, and has a positive track record for development and scouting. He’s relatively young at 43, and may look to jump ship from Jim Mora. The problem with Martin is that he coaches DBs, so he would have to replace a coach currently on staff. I don’t know if any CU fans want any change in the secondary coaches after the no-fly zone that was this year. |
“Are my children safe?”
It’s a thought that crosses the mind of Eugene School District 4J parent Constance Van Flandern when she drops her kids off at school.
“Nobody wants to talk about children dying,” Van Flandern notes, but with a massive earthquake predicted to hit Oregon, she says the time has come to have a community conversation about the earthquake resilience of Eugene’s schools.
As of now, information is limited, and parents whose children attend these schools find the ambiguity troubling. Some call for better planning and more vision on the part of local school districts, pointing to other districts around the state like the Beaverton School District near Portland, which has taken steps toward creating schools that double as emergency shelters, built to the highest standards.
When the Cascadia Subduction Zone triggers a mega-earthquake, parents want to know that school buildings will not collapse and, ideally, whether they could serve as shelters in the aftermath.
Every year, the Oregon Department of Education issues each Oregon school district a report card, which purports to give information on earthquake resilience. On last year’s report card for Eugene School District 4J, under the heading “seismic safety rating,” the report offers a link that promises to provide a “detailed report for each school.”
Clicking the link, however, leads to a hodgepodge of information, short on detail and confusing to piece together. From the reports alone, it’s difficult to discern which schools are earthquake safe, which ones aren’t and which will withstand the inevitable Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, which has a 15 to 20 percent likelihood of hitting Oregon in the next 50 years, according to the latest research from Oregon State University.
Van Flandern, whose daughter goes to South Eugene High School, says she worries about the timeline and scope of 4J’s seismic planning.
“We’re working on borrowed time,” Van Flandern says. “The earthquake could happen right now.”
According to Ben Brantley, 4J’s facilities manager, all schools in the 4J system were updated in the mid-1990s and early 2000s to meet the seismic code of that era. Brantley says occupants should be able to safely exit the building in the event of a moderate earthquake.
A 2007 study by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) found that six 4J schools had a high risk of collapsing in a large-scale earthquake. The assessment used rapid visual screening to grade risk and did not factor recent upgrades into its scores.
“Most of the district’s schools also have had additional retrofitting to limit structural damage and make it more likely that the facility could be repaired for continued use after a moderate earthquake,” Brantley adds.
What “moderate” means is up for interpretation, but scientists do know that the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a giant fault along the West Coast of the United States, has produced 9.0 magnitude earthquakes in the past, and it will happen again. The last earthquake occurred in 1700, and the next could happen at any time.
According to the Oregon Resilience Plan, published in 2013, Oregon strives to have schools up and running a month after the earthquake hits. It’s unclear if 4J’s buildings will meet that goal.
Kari Parsons, a member of the parent council at Edison Elementary School, says she’d like to see 4J adopt a comprehensive plan related to earthquake preparation, with more clearly stated information on the safety level of each building in the event of a large earthquake.
“There needs to be some visionary, solution-oriented planning,” she says.
While schools aren’t required by law to be built to Category IV, the standard of hospitals and fire stations, it’s certainly an option. 4J’s new schools are built to Category III with the standards required by the International Building Code — these standards “allow occupants to safely evacuate the building and reduce damage to the building, and increase the likelihood it would be able to continue to function after an earthquake,” Brantley says.
But when schools are built to the highest level of resiliency, they can serve the community as emergency shelters.
According to Michelle Taylor of the American Red Cross, Eugene has 50 buildings that could serve as potential shelters after a mega-earthquake. Taylor says the Red Cross doesn’t distribute the list because the volunteer-based organization can’t guarantee that all shelters will survive an emergency event like an earthquake.
“We use a lot of churches and a lot of schools, but in a list of 10, we might have two that are available for shelter,” Taylor says. “We don’t know which shelters will actually be standing or habitable after a catastrophic earthquake.”
Once the earthquake happens, Taylor explains, the Red Cross will survey shelter sites and determine which ones are still safe to inhabit.
Kent Yu, a Portland-based structural engineer and leader in community resilience planning, says that school buildings have the potential to serve as excellent emergency shelters after the mega-earthquake, should communities choose to build their schools with resilience and recovery in mind.
He recently co-authored a paper that looked at the Beaverton School District and its leadership in planning to build seven new schools “to exceed building code requirements in certain critical aspects to better support the community as resource centers and emergency shelters.”
Schools are uniquely positioned to serve as shelters due to their even distribution throughout neighborhoods and because they often have large, open spaces like cafeterias and gymnasiums that easily convert to sleeping areas.
“It can be so expensive to retrofit buildings that owners of businesses are gravitating toward these minimum levels of safety to assure people get out of the building, but then you have to deal with the building afterwards,” explains Chris Poland, a consulting engineer and resiliency expert who worked with the Beaverton School District in its planning. “Schools are a special building cluster because, from a recovery standpoint, getting children back in school so families start to feel settled is very important.”
The more resilient the school building, the more likely it is to be open soon after the mega-quake and even serve as a shelter in the aftermath of the disaster.
In Beaverton’s case, the district is using a $680 million bond to design its new schools to double as emergency shelters and be functional shortly after the earthquake happens. Its new high school, costing $98 million, is designed with an emergency generator, as well as plumbing and electric wiring constructed with emergency services in mind. The features cost the district $900,000, only a fraction of the total cost of the project.
Yu suggests that communities have conversations about school resilience before putting bond measures to vote — additional resilience features can bolster the usefulness of an already important school building.
“It becomes an equity piece and a community asset,” Yu says.
But first, the conversation needs to happen.
“The question your readers need to ask themselves is: ‘Is it sufficient to know that we have minimum safety or do we want to upgrade our buildings so we can get them up to service in a month, or better, so they can serve as shelters?’” Poland tells EW.
According to 4J’s long-term facilities plan, another bond measure could emerge in 2018 or 2019. The plan proposes to replace or completely renovate North Eugene High School and Camas Ridge Elementary. It also looks at renovating Edison Elementary, one of the oldest and most historic schools in the district, as well as a yet-to-be-determined additional elementary school.
The bond measure could be 4J’s chance to incorporate seismic resilience into its planning.
For parents like Van Flandern and Parsons, the knowledge that disaster could strike at any time is frightening.
“When parents are getting together, they’re doing calculations of the likelihood their kids will be in school when the earthquake hits,” Parsons says.
Van Flandern says she wants to see schools in Oregon pursuing federal funds for resilience planning.
“It’s very small-minded thinking to be throwing this back on taxpayers,” Van Flandern says. “This is a statewide problem that needs immediate attention.”
But, she says, it doesn’t help anyone to sweep the issue under the rug. “We should be having these conversations all the time,” she adds. |
Steps is a book by a Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosiński, released in 1968 by Random House. The work comprises scores of loosely connected vignettes or short stories, which explore themes of social control and alienation by depicting scenes rich in erotic and violent motives. Steps won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1969.
Overview [ edit ]
Steps was Kosiński's second novel, a follow-up to his successful The Painted Bird released in 1965. It consists of a series of short stories, reminiscences, anecdotes and dialogues, loosely linked to each other or having no connection at all, written in the first person. The book does not name any characters or places where described situations take place.[2]
The book has been interpreted as being about "a Polish man's difficulties under the harsh Soviet regime at home played against his experiences as a new immigrant to the United States and its bizarre codes of capitalism."[3] The stories reflect upon control, power, domination and alienation, depicting scenes full of brutality or sexually explicit. Steps contains remarkable autobiographical elements[4] and numerous references to World War II.
Reception [ edit ]
Despite its commercial failure, especially when compared to The Painted Bird, Steps met with generally positive critics' reviews and eventually won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1969.[5] Canadian critic Hugh Kenner in his review of Steps in The New York Times compared it to the works by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Franz Kafka.[3]
American novelist David Foster Wallace in 1999 described Steps as a "collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that's like nothing else anywhere ever." "Only Kafka's fragments get anywhere close to where Kosinski goes in this book, which is better than everything else he ever did combined", he praised.[6]
In 1975, a freelance writer Chuck Ross, in order to prove his theory that unknown authors always find their books rejected, sent out excerpts from Steps to four different publishers, using the pseudonym Erik Demos. All four did not accept the sample. In 1977, Ross sent out the entire book to ten publishers, including Random House, which had originally published the book, and thirteen literary agents. Again, the book was rejected, also by Random House, having not been recognized, despite being an award-winning work.[7] |
Metro: Last Light is the sequel to 2010’s Metro 2033, a survival horror game that I wasn’t too fond of. Yet, despite not liking the first game, I decided to give Last Light a chance and to be honest, I’m really glad I did. Metro Last Light puts you in the position of a man named Artyom, a Russian man who almost everyone seems to know by name. The year is 2034 and basically everyone fucked up and launched nukes at each other because that’s the best way to solve problems, right?
Turns out that makes everything worse, and what’s left of humanity is forced to go into hiding underground in the Russian metro system. The surface is extremely contaminated, because one nuke won’t cleanse the sin of butthurt, millions of nukes were launched. Since these atomic missiles tend to be well, atomic, the surface is heavily irradiated, leaving everything horribly mutated and hating your guts. Great job, diplomacy!
The developers paid close attention to drowning the player in delicious immersion. Let it be known that any other time you’ve ever felt attached to the story or characters, Last Light takes that experience and smashes it into the pavement.
I was honestly surprised, I went into the game with the standard “meh, this game is probably not that great and it’s just overhyped” but I found myself unable to keep up that attitude.
I was trying to avoid battles, listening intently to side conversations, exploring every nook and cranny, panicking when monsters started to get close by, slowly creeping around and taking out Nazis (oh also, Nazis magically survived the apocalypse, it was probably explained in the last game better) by shaking them in the face rather than shooting them.
It’s way more stealthy than Dishonored, which is surprising considering that Dishonored is a game based on stealth (and is hard as hell to actually do). And when you do manage to screw up the stealth, the combat isn’t that bad (it is a huge improvement over 2033’s). Bullets are rare, and when you run out, legitimate fear sets in. This is a game that has a realistic melee attack (in which it’s not an instant kill and has a believable range), which is dreadful when you have to fallback on it.
Even with its delicious atmosphere, I actually found myself hitting the “Oh I haven’t seen [INSERT CHARACTER NAME HERE] in awhile, I wonder where they are,” and then shortly afterward you’ll be catching up with them. Normally when games do this, there’s this sort of unreal aspect to it, like “if they were going to get here before me, why didn’t they just give me a fucking ride to the destination?”
Amazingly, Metro manages to subvert the NPCs can travel at the speed of light to a destination through various means, but the most important thing to take away from it is that the story doesn’t leave a billion plot holes everywhere and then try to tie things up at the very end.
The biggest problems I have are actually just things I would have liked to see implemented, such as subtitles on minor character dialogue that still is related to the story. In one instance, the game fails to put subtitles on a scene where a couple bandits were setting up a trap, and unless you were listening super closely, you totally would have missed it.
Overall, the graphics are beautiful, the soundscape is fantastic and the atmosphere is quite wonderful. However, whoever was in charge of the sound the grass makes in the game, fuck you buddy. It sounds like a million monsters breathing down your neck and it is the most horrifying, spine chilling thing to hear when the sound kicks in.
All in all, Last Light is one of the best I’ve played in awhile.
Verdict: BUY |
John Cena’s role for Survivor Series has been revealed.
On Wednesday morning, SmackDown Live Commissioner Shane McMahon announced that “free agent” John Cena will be the 5th and final member of Team SmackDown in the men’s traditional team elimination match.
Further proving #SDLive is the superior brand, I'm happy to announce @JohnCena will be the 5th member of Team Smackdown at #SurvivorSeries. — Shane McMahon (@shanemcmahon) November 8, 2017
Cena replied:
I am ready to answer the call where ever and whenever I’m needed.
Where? #SDLive
When? #SurvivorSeries https://t.co/SMn9vlKcdT — John Cena (@JohnCena) November 8, 2017
It had been rumored that John Cena would be the guest referee for the Brock Lesnar vs. Jinder Mahal main event, but WWE apparently changed course and decided to book a title change for Tuesday’s SmackDown, setting up Universal Champion Brock Lesnar vs. new WWE Champion AJ Styles.
Rusev, who had been campaigning for the final open spot on Team SmackDown, joked that Cena qualified for the match fair and square.
Congrats to my friend John Cena who qualified for the survivor series fair and square…… go get them TIGER — Rusev (@RusevBUL) November 8, 2017
With John Cena added to Team SmackDown, the teams are as follows:
Team SmackDown:
Shane McMahon (captain)
John Cena
Randy Orton
Bobby Roode
Shinsuke Nakamura
Team RAW: |
TEHRAN, Iran — The general feeling in Tehran was mixed when Catherine Ashton, high representative for foreign affairs and security policy for the European Union, arrived on March 8.
Government officials, especially those at the Foreign Ministry, celebrated Ashton's visit as solid proof that their months-long efforts had borne fruit in lifting the diplomatic siege that Iran had endured over so many years.
According to one senior official in the Hassan Rouhani administration, Ashton's visit, following on trips to Tehran by the foreign ministers of Belgium, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden in the last few months, was "a clear indication the EU wants better relations with Iran after many concerns were raised." The official added, "The former administration presented the country in a different way. They never took into consideration others' perception of us. They only wanted to say, 'We are strong,' but failed to deliver the extra mile by diffusing concerns."
In the meantime, conservatives turned a wary eye toward Ashton's time in Tehran, posing questions about next steps and whether Rouhani's team was agreeable regarding what transpired during her visit. "How did they agree that Ashton meet those women involved in the 1388 [post-2009 presidential elections] crisis, which was disgraceful," wondered one conservative source. He also asked why Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his aides had not taken Ashton to meet the children of assassinated nuclear scientists. According to him, "That should have been a priority. Ashton should have felt the pain the families are going through and their position on the nuclear talks."
The government in Tehran dealt with critics without directly commenting, as there was, according to the government official, a real need to engage in a different way with the West. "They need us, and we [them]. There are a lot of complicated things to sort out with the Europeans. We want better relations, but in accordance with our rights. We have the full right to have a peaceful nuclear program. They have to admit this."
Ashton and Iranian officials touched on several issues related to the region. When asked about their talks by Al-Monitor, Michael Mann, Ashton's spokesman, offered, "Mrs. Ashton discussed [the] broader issues, including both Syria and Afghanistan." He added that the potential exists for better relations, but everything depends on developments with respect to the final nuclear deal.
Not much information is being offered by the European side as far as the results of Ashton's visit, but sources in Tehran believe that it represents the actual start of long-term cooperation between Iran and the EU. According to Al-Monitor's source, President Rouhani told Ashton that common ground and mutual interests between Iran and the EU should serve as the impetus for greater cooperation in several areas, including combating terrorism and extremism, dealing with the situations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq and improving economic conditions.
The source revealed that differences arose, however, when the two sides discussed Syria. The Iranians suggested a solution could be reached through elections, at which point the European envoy asserted that the problem is much deeper and much more complicated than elections could resolve. She emphasized that there is a real need for change to pave the way for a real solution. No agreement was reached on details for resolving the crisis, but both sides agreed that a political solution was the only way to limit the bloodshed.
Concerning the nuclear issue, Ashton met with Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Adm. Ali Shamkhani, secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council, thus giving her an opportunity to better ascertain what the top-level leadership is thinking. Velayati, a former foreign minister, drew Iran's red lines, and according to Al-Monitor's source, explained to Ashton the leadership's approach in this respect, as did Shamkhani.
The source explained that Ashton and her team were mainly listeners, and that the impression in Iran is that they were in Tehran to gain insight into Iran's perspective, not to explain their position. The visit had a diplomatic purpose, but it was not directly related to the nuclear talks. Moreover, it was not even aimed at changing or affecting the diplomatic track. |
Kerry and other Western leaders do not want to understand that Abbas is not authorized to make any concessions for peace with Israel. For Abbas, it is more convenient to be criticized by the U.S. and Israel than to be denounced by his own people. Ignoring these facts, Kerry tried to pressure Abbas into making concessions that would have turned the Palestinian Authority president into a "traitor" in the eyes of his people. Abbas knows that the people he has radicalized would turn against him if he dared to speak out against the killing of Jews.
Not a single Palestinian Authority official has denounced the wave of terror attacks on Israel. They, too, are afraid of being condemned by their people for denouncing "heroic operations" such as ramming a car into a three-month old infant.
The recent spate of terror attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank did not come as a surprise to those who have been following the ongoing incitement campaign waged by Palestinians against Israel.
This campaign escalated immediately after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's last failed "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. Kerry's "peace process" actually put Israelis and Palestinians on a new collision course, which reached its peak with the recent terror attacks on Israelis.
Kerry failed to acknowledge that Palestinian Authority [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas does not have a mandate from his people to negotiate, let alone sign, any agreement with Israel. Abbas is now in the tenth year of his four-year term in office.
Nor did Kerry listen to the advice of those who warned him and his aides that Abbas would not be able to implement any agreement with Israel on the ground. Abbas cannot even visit his private house in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and he controls less than 40% of the West Bank. Where exactly did Kerry expect Abbas to implement any agreement with Israel? In the city-center of Ramallah or Nablus?
What Kerry and other Western leaders do not want to understand is that Abbas is not authorized to make any concessions for peace with Israel, and has even repeatedly promised his people that he would not make any concessions for the sake of peace with Israel.
In a speech in Ramallah on November 11, marking the tenth anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas declared: "He who surrenders one grain of the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem is not one of us."
This statement alone should be enough for Kerry and Western leaders to realize that it would be impossible to ask Abbas to make any concessions. Like Arafat, Abbas has become hostage to his own rhetoric. How can Abbas be expected to accept any deal that does not include 100% of his demands -- in this instance, all territory captured by Israel in 1967?
Abbas himself knows that if he comes back with 97% or 98% of his demands, his people will either spit in is face or kill him, after accusing him of being a "defeatist" and "relinquishing Palestinian rights."
This is precisely why Abbas chose to walk out of Kerry's nine-month "peace process." Realizing that Israel was not going to offer him 100% of his demands, Abbas preferred to abandon the peace talks last summer.
For Abbas, it is more convenient to be criticized by the U.S. and Israel than to be denounced by his own people for achieving a bad deal with Israel.
Ignoring these facts, Kerry tried to pressure Abbas into making concessions that would have turned the Palestinian Authority president into a "traitor" in the eyes of his people.
Instead of being honest with his people and telling them that peace requires painful concessions also on the part of Palestinians, and not only Israel, Abbas has chosen -- ever since the collapse of Kerry's "peace process" -- to incite Palestinians against Israel.
Abbas has since held Israel responsible for the collapse of Kerry's effort. Abbas has used both the media and fiery rhetoric to tell his people that there is no peace partner in Israel. He has also been telling his people that Israel's only goal is to seize lands and carry out "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" against Palestinians.
Abbas's recent charges that Jewish settlers and extremists are "contaminating" the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem need to be seen in the context of the massive incitement campaign that escalated in the aftermath of the failure of Kerry's "peace process."
During the past few months, Abbas, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have radicalized Palestinians to a point where it has become laughable even to talk about any peace process with Israel.
Abbas is well aware that his people will condemn him if he ever returns to the negotiating table with Israel. That is why he has now chosen a different strategy -- to try to impose a solution with the help of the United Nations and the international community.
Abbas wants the international community and UN Security Council to give him what Israel cannot and will not offer him at the negotiating table.
The incitement campaign against Israel is reminiscent of the atmosphere that prevailed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately after the botched Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Then, Yasser Arafat also walked away from the table after realizing that Israel was not offering him all that he was asking for, namely a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
Upon his return from Camp David, Arafat also unleashed a wave of incitement against Israel; eventually the incitement led to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000.
Now Abbas is following in the footsteps of Arafat by stepping up his rhetorical attacks on Israel. This time, Hamas and other terror groups have joined Abbas's incitement campaign by openly calling on Palestinians to use cars and knives to kill Jews in order to "defend" the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Abbas's refusal to condemn the recent terror attacks on Israel may be attributed to two motives: fear of his people, and the belief that violence will force Israel to make far-reaching concessions. By refusing to denounce the attacks, and even praising the perpetrators as heroes and martyrs (as he did in the case of Mu'taz Hijazi, the east Jerusalem man who shot and wounded Jewish activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick), Abbas is indicating his tacit approval of the violence.
Not a single Palestinian Authority official, in fact, has denounced the wave of terror attacks on Israel. They, too, are afraid of being condemned by their people for denouncing "heroic operations" such as the stabbing murder of a 26-year-old woman or ramming a car into a three-month-old infant.
Victims of what official Palestinian Authority media organs call "heroic operations": Left, Dalia Lamkus, 26, run over and then stabbed to death by a terrorist on Nov. 10. Right: Three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, murdered on Oct. 23 when a terrorist rammed a car into her stroller. Several other victims were killed or injured in these attacks.
Abbas is hoping that the terror attacks will keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of the world's agenda at a time when all eyes are turned toward the threat of the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq. He also knows very well that the people he has radicalized would turn against him if he dared to speak out against the killing of Jews. |
Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Artificial Intelligence,Big Data,Cybersecurity etc
Archive for interest: 1997. People often tell me that only computer nerds and "sad people" use the net. How wrong they are.
Almost four out of ten homes in the US already have a personal computer and one in three of these has a modem enabling the computer and telephone to be connected. By the year 2000 at least 20% of all US households are expected to be on-line. At present, the median age of users is 32 years, 64% have college degrees and 25% have an income larger than $80,000 so the image of the long haired student computer freak is quite wrong. Half of internet users have managerial or professional jobs and 31% are women. There are now (May 1996) more than a million web sites for them to visit.
They use it for e-mail, to receive up to date financial information, for writing reports, for research and also for entertainment during work breaks. The net has moved from being primarily a university tool to a major source of commercially valuable information. Some spend huge amounts of time connected. One survey of men in New York found that around one in five spent forty hours or more a week on the net, while 62% spent more than two hours a week on it. The average weekly use by men and women was 6.5 hours. Six out of ten said that they had cut down on television as a result, with some pundits predicting that internet use could exceed television audiences at Prime Time in some US cities.
Internet addiction is becoming a medically recognised problem with signs of irritability following withdrawal. Some people get a huge buzz out of zipping around the world via their computers.
Children at risk?
More than a million children are estimated to be net users, raising fears of exposure to all kinds of undesirable influences. The net is a composite of everything that is good and everything that is bad in publishing, radio and in television as well as the murkier side of the video industry. Anarchists, bomb-makers, drug dealers, paedophiles and sellers of obscene materials can all operate almost without fear of control in the cyber-world.
Since the net is becoming so secure it is hardly surprising that it has acted as a magnet for people who have something to hide. And since the internet search engines are so powerful, it is a matter of a few seconds to locate the one person in a million with a particular rare (and possibly dangerous) obsession or interest. For example, there is a fairly continuous stream of information on bomb-making which is easy to access - just type "bomb-making". A few months ago I was surprised to find detailed instructions on making a home-made grenade.
The unabomber attack in Oklahoma was said to have been aided possibly by bomb-making information on the net. A couple of weeks after the bombing, two teenagers in New York were injured making a pipe bomb. The internet listing for pipe bomb instructions was still visible as late as September 1996, although the web site link had been disabled. Human beings have never had so much power to link so rapidly with others of like mind. In ancient societies one's social circle was limited to a village, town or tribe. Even expressing an eccentric wish or deviant thought would have been to risk ostracising or worse. Today, the darkest of dark thoughts can be revealed anonymously in cyberspace with pointers for people of like mind to get in touch via e-mail. However, such people are taking risks that others drawn to their e-mail boxes may be looking to gain evidence leading to a prosecution.
Buying and Selling on the Net
The internet is used widely to trade and persuade. More than two and a half million people have already bought goods and services using their computers. The value of the trade in 1996 was around $1 billion, with growth expected to reach anywhere between $7 billion and $170 billion a year by early in the next century. Music sales are popular. One site sells 25,000 CDs every day, allowing people to hear samples before they order. The world's busiest site is a CD site, able to send out a staggering 100 megabits every second - that is the equivalent of 6,000 volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica every minute.
Magazines are also picking up large readerships. Just a few months after launch, the electronic EMAP magazine collection was receiving 350,000 "hits" or different access requests every week.
Every big company you could think of is clambering on the internet band-wagon - or thinking of doing so. No less than 82% of corporate users aim to have their own server computers by the end of 1997, and people selling server facilities are expecting to earn at least $3 billion a year. Most of these new web-sites will provide far more than just an advertisement for their owners. In addition, many companies which already have web-sites of their own are planning to expand them. This means yet more free gimmicks and useful ideas to draw us to their sites. In the first four months of 1996 alone the number of major sites (domains) on the web rose from 170,000 to 300,000. This is a vast investment, with each site costing up to $1 million.
Every site is now competing with the rest for attention and the pressure is on to develop ever more interesting, entertaining and exotic features. This should hardly surprise us.
Entertainment stations on internet
Commercial terrestrial television is entirely financed by brief adverts which fund long periods of high quality television. Television companies are independent of any advertiser, and sell space into programs they have already commissioned (with rare exceptions). However, on the internet the operation is becoming reversed, with major companies setting up their own entertainment stations, looking to tempt internet surfers into their area, and hold them there long enough to keep hitting them with adverts for their products. This is an all out war against other internet users and against conventional television.
The success of a campaign in future will be measured not just by television ratings but also by millions of mouse clicks. So long as a company can be sure of attracting a big enough number of participants (because internet audiences like to be very interactive), then they might be willing in time to cut television advertising budget and shift it into net entertainment. Internet users are a prime target audience because of their relatively high incomes, and because as we have seen, they are cutting down on television.
Success breeds success, and the more millions of dollars there are poured into free net entertainment and information services, the more people will use the service and the more people will make purchasing decisions while there. At the same time, television companies are struggling to make their own technology interactive. If they can do so, they will be onto a winner because the quality of interactive television is far better than anything that computers can cope with at present. In five to ten years it may be very difficult to know if you are enjoying interactive entertainment on a TV-quality computer system, or interactive entertainment on computer-powered television. In the middle of all this confusion will arrive large flat screens mounted across walls in rooms, providing high resolution, wide screen images and perhaps new three dimensional projections.
Television companies threatened by the future
All this will create a very exciting future, if you enjoy new technology, but a very nerve-wracking one if you are a television company. I was talking to a friend the other day who is a regular television presenter for several programmes. He tells me that senior executives are now uncertain what television will even look like beyond 2000, let alone what sort or programmes people will want to watch once they have 500 or more channels to chose from - not including a billion internet pages and tens of thousands of internet videos to connect to. Video-rental shops on street corners are likely to take a real hammering and many will go out of business unless they find a new product by 1999. It may turn out to be something like ultra-high resolution interactive CDs, containing such vast amounts of interactive television and animations that even a cable system cannot compete. I doubt it somehow.
Cable has huge untapped capacity, even without new systems to compress television transmission. However there will probably always be a market for hiring bits and pieces that are too expensive for people to buy. An example might be virtual reality headsets and gloves, allowing the user to see and feel a virtual world. A shop might hire out a set of four so that a whole family could go into a virtual world together, seeing each other and interacting not only with the others there but also with users in other cities or nations.
Internet advertising
While many internet sites at the moment are run by companies looking to sell their own products (banks are a good example), others have been set up to sell advertising space just like any other media company.
An example might be a virtual reality area which is free to join but which contains high profile adverts for a number of different products and services. IBM and Microsoft spent around $800,000 million on net advertising in 1996. Spending on internet ads rose by 83% in the first six months of 1996 to $71.1 million. Advertising works on the knowledge that the average net user looks at two hundred pages a month, and many of them are in upper income groups. Internet advertisers can be invoiced on the number of times a user selects their product pages. Each cluster of ten or a hundred visits then triggers another tiny amount onto the advertiser's bill. In this way advertisers know exactly what they are getting for their money.
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We’d like to introduce the first place winner of our $20k grand prize awarded to an outstanding project submitted to our second global hackathon, which concluded after 6 weeks on September 14th.
He goes by the alias ‘Mossid’ on GitHub. In real life, Mossid is a South Korean 12th grader named Joon. Joon started programming since 2011 — as an 11 year old. His tinkering in blockchains started with Ethereum, working with Solidity, before he became interested in Tendermint, “because of ERISdb,” Joon told us in a follow-up Q&A. “I’m interested in verifiable computing and functional smart contract language.”
This was his very first hackathon. Joon submitted the prize-winning proposal he named ETGate.
The idea is simple: build a gateway between Ethereum and Tendermint, hence ETGate, via relayers. Inspired by the Ethereum peg-zone design described in the Cosmos white paper and our Ethermint implementation, Joon built a communication mechanism, blending the pegged-chain concept with our Inter-blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, between Ethereum and Tendermint.
Mossid’s GitHub repo can be found here: https://github.com/mossid
Congratulations Joon! |
It seems we hear about stealerships trying to con their way out of an auction gone wrong on a nearly weekly basis. So when we heard that a New Zealand dealership accidentally listed a BMW with a $1 Buy-It-Now, we were expecting a prolonged legal battle.
Instead, the dealer honored the sale. Good for them.
A lucky buyer noticed the mistake and immediately bought the 1994 BMW 320i for $1. Normally, the dealer would expect around $3000 for the car. But once the car was sold for $1, the dealer honored the mistake.
When asked about it, the dealer gave an answer that made us want to trust car dealers everywhere:
We are firm believers in the auction process and for it to be fair to buyers and sellers alike.
That's it, we're buying our next car in New Zealand.
(Hat Tip to Doug!) |
(Edmonton) Three food science researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered how to reduce salt in bread by half without compromising its taste or texture.
The trick is to add bacteria that produce a taste compound called glutamate, revealed Michael Gänzle, a food microbiologist in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences.
The bread, known as sourdough because it’s been fermented with lactic acid bacteria, will have a savoury taste. Its other taste compounds, including bitter, sweet and sour, will harmonize nicely.
“Therefore, if you take the salt away, you still have a well-balanced taste,” said Gänzle.
In fact, his team found it’s possible to reduce salt levels from two to one per cent without harming the taste or texture of the bread.
Sourdough has long been considered the gold standard by bakers and consumers for fine-tasting and textured bread, although different bakers use different bacteria. What this research did was pinpoint exactly which bacteria produce glutamate that gives bread a savoury taste.
By comparing two strains of Lactobacillus reuteri that differ only with respect to glutamate accumulation, Gänzle and fellow researchers Wendy Wismer, an expert in sensory and consumer science, and Cindy Zhao, a PhD candidate in food microbiology, made the link that had been long suspected but not proven: the product of bacterial fermentation that produces savoury taste is glutamate.
The team’s second breakthrough—on salt reduction—occurred because they asked untrained tasters to describe the differences between bread with glutamates and without.
“What consumers told us is that there is a difference when there’s glutamate present, and if the glutamate is present they thought the intensity of the salty taste is higher,” said Gänzle. “That confused us, because glutamate is a savoury taste, not a salty one.”
So Zhao went to Switzerland and worked with a panel of trained tasters who can discriminate and measure minute differences in taste. They discovered that sourdough with the same salt levels as regular bread actually tasted saltier.
“So it means that the sourdough bread with glutamates does enhance the salty, because it tasted saltier,” said Zhao.
Therefore, reducing the salt would not unduly affect the taste. As for the texture, it was maintained because the sourdough can decrease the pH and also produce the sugar residues that contribute to the texture.
For consumers, the research means they can have healthier bread without sacrificing taste or texture. A bread industry firm in Europe is now testing the L. reuteri bacteria for that purpose.
Meanwhile, Zhao is conducting more research on L .reuteri and the ability of sourdough bacteria to produce taste-active peptides, including recently discovered peptides with taste-enhancing properties called “kokumi.” Its properties may allow her to bake bread with further improved taste.
“The work on peptides will help us to better understand how to make tasty bread without adding too much salt or sugar,” she said. |
Here is an actual headline that appeared in the New York Times this week: Prison Rate Was Rising Years Before 1994 Law.
It is an unusual departure for a newspaper, since what is being reported here is not news but history – or, rather, a particular interpretation of history. The “1994 Law” to which the headline refers is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act; the statement about the “prison rate” refers to the fact that America was already imprisoning a large portion of its population before that 1994 law was approved by Congress.
The media has stepped up to reassure us that the nightmare isn’t real, that this honorable man did the best he could
As historical interpretations go, this one is pretty non-controversial. Everyone who has heard about the “War on Drugs” knows that what we now call “mass incarceration”, the de facto national policy of locking up millions of low-level offenders, began long before 1994. And yet similar stories reporting that non-startling fact are now being published all across the American media landscape. That mass incarceration commenced before 1994 is apparently Big News.
Why report a historical fact that everyone already knows? The answer is because former president Bill Clinton, the man who called for and signed the 1994 crime bill, is also the husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Democratic voters are having trouble squaring his draconian crime bill with his wife’s liberal image.
That might be the reason so many of these stories seem to unfold with the same goal in mind: to minimize Clinton’s moral culpability for what went on back in the 1990s. Mass incarceration was already happening, these stories agree. And besides, not everything in the crime bill was bad. As for its lamentable effects, well, they weren’t intentional. What’s more, Bill Clinton has apologized for it. He’s sorry for all those thousands of people who have had decades of their lives ruined by zealous prosecutors and local politicians using the tools Clinton accidentally gave them. He sure didn’t mean for that to happen.
When I was researching the 1994 crime bill for Listen, Liberal, my new book documenting the sins of liberalism, I remember being warned by a scholar who has studied mass incarceration for years that it was fruitless to ask Americans to care about the thousands of lives destroyed by the prison system. Today, however, the situation has reversed itself: now people do care about mass incarceration, largely thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and the intense scrutiny it has focused on police killings.
All of a sudden, the punitive frenzies of the 1980s and 1990s seem like something from a cruel foreign country. All of a sudden, Bill Clinton looks like a monster rather than a hero, and he now finds himself dogged by protesters as he campaigns for his wife, Hillary. And so the media has stepped up to do what it always does: reassure Americans that the nightmare isn’t real, that this honorable man did the best he could as president.
Allow me to offer a slightly different take on the 1990s. I think today (as I thought at the time) that there is indeed something worth criticizing when a Democratic president signs on to a national frenzy for punishment and endorses things like “three strikes”, “mandatory minimums”, and “truth in sentencing”, the latter being a cute euphemism for “no more parole”. The reason the 1994 crime bill upsets people is not because they stupidly believe Bill Clinton invented these things; it is because they know he encouraged them. Because the Democrats’ capitulation to the rightwing incarceration agenda was a turning point in its own right.
Another interesting fact. Two weeks after Clinton signed the big crime bill in September 1994, he enacted the Riegle-Neal interstate banking bill, the first in a series of moves deregulating the financial industry. The juxtaposition between the two is kind of shocking, when you think about it: low-level drug users felt the full weight of state power at the same moment that bankers saw the shackles that bound them removed. The newspaper headline announcing the discovery of this amazing historical finding will have to come from my imagination – Back-to-Back 1994 Laws Freed Bankers And Imprisoned Poor, perhaps – but the historical pattern is worth noting nevertheless, since it persisted all throughout Clinton’s administration.
For one class of Americans, Clinton brought emancipation, a prayed-for deliverance from out of Glass–Steagall’s house of bondage. For another class of Americans, Clinton brought discipline: long prison stretches for drug users; perpetual insecurity for welfare mothers; and intimidation for blue-collar workers whose bosses Clinton thoughtfully armed with the North American Free Trade Agreement. As I have written elsewhere, some got the carrot, others got the stick.
The drug identified with black users (crack) was treated as if it were 100 times as villainous as cocaine
But what is most shocking in our current journo-historical understanding of the Clinton years is the idea that the mass imprisonment of people of color was an “unintended consequence” of the 1994 crime bill, to quote the New York Daily News’s paraphrase of Hillary Clinton. This is flatly, glaringly false, as the final, ugly chapter of the crime bill story confirms.
Back in the early 1990s, and although they were chemically almost identical, crack and powder cocaine were regarded very differently by the law. The drug identified with black users (crack) was treated as though it were 100 times as villainous as the same amount of cocaine, a drug popular with affluent professionals. This “now-notorious 100-to-one” sentencing disparity, as the New York Times put it, had been enacted back in 1986, and the 1994 crime law instructed the US Sentencing Commission to study the subject and adjust federal sentencing guidelines as it saw fit.
The Sentencing Commission duly recommended that the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity be abolished, largely because (as their lengthy report on the subject put it) “The 100-to-1 crack cocaine to powder cocaine quantity ratio is a primary cause of the growing disparity between sentences for black and white federal defendants.” By the time their report was released, however, Republicans had gained control of Congress, and they passed a bill explicitly overturning the decision of the Sentencing Commission. (Bernie Sanders, for the record, voted against that bill.)
The bill then went to President Clinton for approval. Shortly before it came to his desk he gave an inspiring speech deploring the mass incarceration of black Americans. “Blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong,” he said on that occasion, “… when there are more African American men in our correction system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African American men, in their twenties, are either in jail, on parole, or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal system. Nearly one in three.”
Two weeks after that speech, however, Clinton blandly affixed his signature to the bill retaining the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, a disparity that had brought about the lopsided incarceration of black people. Clinton could have vetoed it, but he didn’t. He signed it.
Today we are told that mass incarceration was an “unintended consequence” of Clinton’s deeds.
For that to be true, however, Clinton would have not only had to ignore the Sentencing Commission’s findings but also to ignore the newspaper stories appearing all around him, which can be found easily on the internet to this day. Here’s one that appeared in the Baltimore Sun on 31 October 1995, in which it is noted that:
Civil rights organizations had led a telephone campaign to pressure the president to veto the bill. At a rally last week in Chicago, the Rev Jesse L Jackson said that Mr Clinton had the chance, ‘with one stroke of your veto pen, to correct the most grievous racial injustice built into our legal system.’
It is impossible to imagine that Bill Clinton, the brilliant Rhodes Scholar, didn’t understand what everyone was saying. How could he sign such a thing right after giving a big speech deploring its effects? How can he and his wife now claim it was all an accident, when the consequences were being discussed everywhere at the time? When everyone was warning and even begging him not to do it? Maybe it didn’t really happen. Maybe it was all a bad dream.
But it did happen. There it is, Bill Clinton’s signing statement on the website of the American Presidency Project. Yes, the 100-to-1 disparity was finally reduced in 2010, but we liberals still can’t ignore what Clinton did back in 1995. Every historian who writes about his administration will eventually have to deal with it.
Until then, we have our orders from the mainstream media: Clinton didn’t mean it. Clinton has apologized. Things were bad even before Clinton got started.
It is a hell of a way to do history. Millions of proudly open-minded people are being asked to twist themselves into propaganda pretzels to avoid acknowledging the obvious: that the leaders of our putatively left party aren’t who we think they are. |
It's often asked, "Where does stupid stuff on the Internet come from?" In this instance, I think probably it came from me. Although I didn't originate the conceit, I'm pretty sure that I'm the one who put it in circulation. Er, sorry. Like The New Yorker, I never intended anyone to take it as anything other than a laughable example of ignorance.
The morning after Obama locked up the nomination, I was writing a "Trailhead" item that mocked the media's difficulty in figuring out what to call the now famous gesture. "Fist-pound," "knuckle-bump," and "fist-to-fist thumbs up" were among the funnier examples, but one of them--"Hezbollah-style fist jab"--was particularly risible. It came from the Web site for Human Events, a hard-right weekly. Unfortunately, I failed to note that its provenance was not the magazine itself but a reader comment posted below an unrelated column by Cal Thomas. I linked the phrase to the column but didn't explain that the words weren't Thomas'.
...
When I realized the confusion I'd helped cause, I posted a correction. But it was too late. Liberal bloggers from all over had already seized on the phrase. Time and Politico misreported that the words were Thomas'. Then, fatefully, Fox News anchor E.D. Hill jauntily paraphrased "Hezbollah-style fist jab" on air as "terrorist fist jab." Hill wasn't endorsing the phrase, but she failed to make clear that she was citing someone else's characterization. She apologized the next day but lost her show anyway. |
The last time England’s footballers came to Belo Horizonte, at the 1950 World Cup, they stayed in the luxurious and familiar surroundings of the British‑owned Morro Velho gold mine, despite which they ended up suffering the worst defeat in their history, 1-0 to the amateurs of the USA.
As the current England squad returns in a familiar state of dejection 64 years on, Morro Velho still seems a strangely potent image. The private gold mine that for all its wealth and privilege ends up doing nobody in an England shirt any good whatsoever. Hmm. Something familiar there.
Either way, and whatever it may be, England’s Premier League stars, 53 days from the start of the Premier League season, continue their summer break from the Premier League on Sunday night by arriving in Belo Horizonte already a cosseted irrelevance at this World Cup.
It will take time to digest fully England’s five-day exit from Brazil 2014. But with the wounds of defeats by Italy and Uruguay still raw, one of the most baffling elements of the customary instant autopsy has been the demand, variously taken up, that England’s players apologise for their results here. Wayne Rooney has even gone so far as to comply, offering a brief but convincing sorry to the general public on his Facebook page.
It is to be hoped no other players feel the need to follow suit, and that the whole vaguely preposterous idea of public apologies is quietly dropped. In fact, given half a moment’s thought, it quickly becomes clear this is a process that should if anything be turned on its head. If we really do care so much about England’s fortunes at World Cups that apologies are deemed necessary, then the roles should be reversed. It is we – the public, empowered component parts of a society that continues to produce game but under-skilled footballers – who should be apologising, both to the players and to each other.
Sorry for the disappearance of our vital inner-city and suburban green spaces. Sorry for standing by while the shared national treasure that is state-school sport atrophies into underfunded inactivity. Sorry for sitting on my sofa enjoying the brilliantly dressed product that is another six-hour soaraway Super Sunday, created by a system that while extremely successful in its staging, is clearly incompatible with also expecting English football to produce players capable of bestriding the globe at a World Cup.
Quite frankly there is a decent case for doing it properly, for the government to step in and organise special camps in parks and open spaces where members of the public can queue to file past Fraser Forster and Gary Cahill to apologise personally for the playing field sales, for the lack of proper public facilities, the absence of artificial pitches, all enacted by successive local and national governments. Lads, Roy – we’re sorry. This is, in part, why you aren’t better at all this.
Perhaps a million-signature petition could be delivered to Jack Wilshere’s house apologising for the disorientating effects of early overexposure, from too much concussive big-game football, a gruelling celebrity culture, to vast windfalls of disorientating lucre offered at an early age.
Maybe Gary Barlow could record a charity song to raise money for a memorial in Maidstone town centre apologising to Chris Smalling for all those people – yes, us – who used to yell on the touchline and tell him to get rid and who applauded whenever he sent it long into the channels because big, son, big, it’s got to go big.
What would an apology the other way around be for, anyway? The players have tried their hardest during this long summer away from home. The various conspiracy theories – Joe Hart didn’t save Luis Suárez’s shot because he was scared the ball would hit his face; the players are all running around out there thinking only about their cars and watches and ostrich-fur-lined helicopters – are all just noise. The players have just not been good enough.
Similarly Roy Hodgson did the best he could, given that he is indeed Roy Hodgson and not José Mourinho. A proper top-level, imported managerial giant might have dragged England weeping and sulking through their group by force of personality and squeezing the details. But it would have been a temporary fig leaf.
In the end England may still justify their Fifa ranking by finishing third in Group D, having also twice come from behind to equalise against better teams. And there really is no need to apologise for giving your all and falling short, no matter how exculpatory, how purging for the rest of us it might seem.
The fact is England have been identifiably undercooked ever since that last trip to Belo Horizonte, when they also lost to Spain in Rio and left the World Cup looking like visitors from the fuddled prewar past.
A record of one semi-final overseas in 64 years since points to the absence of any coherent remedial measures. The same flaws are there, chiefly the simple failure to produce high-quality, tactically state-of-the-art players, the result of a combination of societal neglect – we play too little; we have too little space to play – and an enduringly inadequate coaching culture, backed higher up by a failure to nurture and show patience with what talent does emerge.
To demand an apology for this from the current group of players seems a bit like raising a child without teaching it to cook and then demanding that child hurl itself at our feet in contrition at the age of 18 for being unable to bake the perfect soufflé.
At the end of which here we are once more, England. Albeit with some of us – clue: the ones in boots and shorts – having given their all, fruitlessly, in the heat of Manaus and the chill of São Paulo.
I’m sorry the system has failed once again. Wayne Rooney is sorry. Perhaps, after waiting those three or four hours in the queue for Danny Welbeck and Raheem Sterling, you’ll get the chance to say sorry too.
Now. What are we all actually going to do about it this time? |
When something is “lost in translation,” it could have been due to a simple mistake or because one language was not quite able to capture the essence of a word’s meaning in another language. This conflict is the idea behind New Zealand-based designer Anjana Iyer’s “Found in Translation” series of images, which try to explain the meaning behind the beautiful words in other languages that have no direct equivalent in English. There’s no word for the German schadenfreude or the Inuit iktsuarpok in English, so the best we can hope for is to approximate or explain these untranslatable words’ meanings.
Iyer drew the images as part of the “100 Days Project,” a website that invited and encourages artists to spend 100 days straight doing and creating what they love. Iyer is roughly half-way done with her project, so be sure to follow her and see what other cool words she will come up with next! And if you’re creative, as we know many of our bored pandas are – consider starting your own 100-day project!
Scroll down to see the illustrations of weird words being explained below!
Source: 100daysproject.co.nz | Behance (h/t)
1. Fernweh (German)
2. Komorebi (Japanese)
3. Tingo (Pascuense)
4. Pochemuchka (Russian)
5. Gökotta (Swedish)
6. Bakku-shan (Japanese)
7. Backpfeifengesicht (German)
8. Aware (Japanese)
9. Tsundoku (Japanese)
10. Shlimazl (Yiddish)
11. Rire dans sa barbe (French)
12. Waldeinsamkeit (German)
13. Hanyauku (Rukwangali)
14. Gattara (Italian)
15. Prozvonit (Czech)
16. Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
17. Papakata (Cook Islands Maori)
18. Friolero (Spanish)
19. Schilderwald (German)
20. Utepils (Norwegian)
21. Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan)
22. Culaccino (Italian)
23. Ilunga (Tshiluba)
24. Kyoikumama (Japanese)
25. Age-otori (Japanese)
26. Chai-Pani (Hindi)
27. Won (Korean)
28. Tokka (Finnish)
29. Schadenfreude (German)
30. Wabi-Sabi (Japanese) |
Gregg Carlstrom is a correspondent in Tel Aviv for the Times and the Economist.
JERUSALEM—Sara Netanyahu surely felt some sympathy for her guests. Like the Trumps, Israel’s first family has been plagued by an endless drip of scandals, many of them dredged up by a few dogged investigative reporters. So a few minutes after Air Force One landed, Sara, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tried to offer President Donald Trump a few sympathetic words. “The majority of the people of Israel, unlike the media, they love us,” she explained. “We have a lot in common,” Trump replied with a smirk.
Mired in controversy at home, the president has received a royal welcome in the Middle East, first in Saudi Arabia, then in Israel. On Monday he met with the Israeli president, toured Christian and Jewish holy sites in the Old City and had dinner with “my friend” Netanyahu. On Tuesday, he met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, where he remarked “I intend to do everything I can to help” achieve peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Trump has said he hopes to accomplish “the ultimate deal” in solving what’s turned out to be one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. “I have a feeling that we’re going to get there eventually,” he said at a joint press conference with Netanyahu on Monday.
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Good luck to him. When it comes to forging peace in the region, Trump currently faces all the roadblocks of his predecessors, and more. The right-wing government in Jerusalem is loathe to make any concessions to the Palestinians, who are themselves split between Fatah and Hamas, the Islamist faction that controls Gaza. Trump himself may not have much political capital to spend on the peace process. Most of all, at this point, the conflict is stagnant; officials on both sides have learned to live with the status quo. Despite three Gaza wars, a string of stabbing and shooting attacks, and the daily indignities and violence of the occupation, there is a sense that the conflict is “managed.”
But the real wrench in Trump’s ambitious peace plans isn’t likely to be stagnation—it’s what’s going to change over the next four to eight years. Nothing stays static in the Holy Land for long. Likely by the end of his first term—and almost certainly by the end of his second if he is reelected—Trump will confront an entirely different political map in Israel and the occupied territories that he sees today. The Palestinians will likely plunge into a power vacuum and emerge with a new leader lacking any credibility. The Israeli prime minister could be hobbled by a slow-burning criminal probe. And the long-simmering crisis in Gaza will once again come to a boil, with a new war looming on the horizon.
Even if Trump surprises everyone and makes a serious effort to bring peace, he may quickly find himself overtaken by events. “It’s quiet here, but then you think about what’s coming,” said an Israeli army officer in the West Bank. “And you realize we’re on a cliff.”
***
A few weeks after Trump’s election, Husam Zumlot chuckled unhappily when I asked him about his upcoming move to Washington. “The worst job in the world,” quipped the incoming Palestinian ambassador to the United States. It was an understandable concern: The president who vowed to be “Israel’s best friend in the White House” didn’t seem inclined to make much time for the Palestinians.
To their surprise, though, Trump has been receptive. The president arrived in Washington without much knowledge of the conflict, and the Israelis were slow to present a diplomatic strategy; Netanyahu arrived for their first meeting armed with only a few platitudes. The Palestinians and their allies, by contrast, worked hard to flatter Trump, to convince him that he could strike “the ultimate deal.”
But that deal will require the assent of Zumlot’s boss, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is 82, overweight, and a heavy smoker. He has already undergone two heart surgeries. He has done almost nothing to plan for a successor, though. In a spring meeting with Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s special envoy to the region, Abbas bristled when asked about who might come next. “My father lived to be 101,” he said, according to two Western diplomats briefed on the talks. “I’ll be around for a long time.”
If his prediction proves wrong, the Palestinians will find themselves staring into a deep vacuum. The most popular candidate to replace Abbas is Marwan Barghouti, a prominent leader of Fatah. Many view him as the only candidate capable of bridging the internal divisions between Hamas and Fatah. Both sides respect him, and see him as above the partisan fray that has consumed Palestinian politics for the past decade. But Barghouti faces one major obstacle to becoming president: He is in prison, convicted by an Israeli court and serving five life sentences for his role in deadly attacks during the second intifada. No prominent Israeli leader—certainly not the current government, the most hawkish in decades—is prepared to release him.
Beyond Barghouti is a list of plausible but dull candidates. There is Mahmoud Aloul, 67, appointed earlier this year as the first deputy Fatah leader in a decade. Uncharismatic and media-shy, he was chosen for his loyalty to the president; he barely has a public following. On a visit to Ramallah last week, I showed a succession of young Palestinians his photograph. Not one recognized him.
Or there is Jibril Rajoub, 64, the gravelly former head of internal security, a job that earned him the trust of the Israeli generals he worked alongside—they used to call him “Gavi Regev,” a Hebraization of his name. It also earned him the enmity of many Palestinians: His force was responsible for arresting, torturing and killing dissidents. He has spent the past decade as the head of the Palestinian football association, where his main accomplishment is his repeated failure to convince FIFA to sanction Israel for allowing settler clubs to play in its national league. (The association punted again earlier this month, postponing any vote on the subject until 2018.)
Many Palestinians have simply given up on politics. Abbas’ term officially ended in 2009; he refuses to call new elections, and marginalizes and jails his critics. The legislature has not legislated in a decade. The economic situation is grim, with official unemployment at 16 percent in the West Bank, and the diplomatic process is a failure. Two-thirds of the public wants Abbas to resign. A majority also wants him to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, the limited self-government in the occupied territories, effectively “handing the keys” back to Israel. But the leadership is utterly disconnected from the mood on the street. “We’ve started a process of renewing the political scene in Palestine,” Rajoub crowed last month, pointing to what was then an upcoming municipal election, the first ballot in five years. The vote was a flop. Just 53 percent of registered voters bothered to turn out. Fatah ran virtually unopposed, as both Hamas and several leftist factions decided to boycott—and it still failed to win a majority in major cities.
Not for nothing do young Palestinians joke that their next intifada, when it happens, will be against their own leaders instead of Israel.
And yet, despite his unpopularity, Abbas may be the last Palestinian capable of pushing through a two-state solution. He has a solid grip on his own party, and has proved adept at dispatching rivals; his successor, whoever it is, will likely find himself mired in internal battles. But the window is closing fast: Abbas’ seemingly endless tenure has left Palestinian politics adrift. “We’re in violation of our constitution in every aspect of life,” said Khalil Shikaki, the director of Palestine’s top polling shop. “It may eventually blow up in our faces.”
***
An Israeli diplomat jokingly offered a thought last week on how Netanyahu could impress Trump at their first dinner: “He could give Trump some advice on how to choose a friendly FBI director. He’s gotten very good at this stuff.”
The Israeli police have spent the past six months nipping at Netanyahu’s heels, investigating a spate of bizarre corruption cases that threaten to unseat Israel’s second-longest serving prime minister. He is accused of taking lavish gifts from wealthy benefactors, including the producer of the film “Pretty Woman,” who supplied him with Cuban cigars and his wife Sara with pink champagne. Investigators are also looking into tapes of Netanyahu colluding with Arnon Mozes, the publisher of Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest paid daily newspaper, to ensure favorable coverage.
Perhaps the most explosive case deals with Israel’s $1.3 billion purchase of three new German-made submarines. The prime minister’s personal lawyer, David Shimron, served on the board of ThyssenKrupp, the German conglomerate that manufactures the subs, which the government agreed to buy even though Israeli army officials—including the ex-defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon—said they opposed the contract. The implication is that Shimron, and perhaps Netanyahu, received some kind of quid-pro-quo. (Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing in all three cases, as does Shimron.)
For now, at least, the cases are moving slowly, and many Israelis believe that’s on purpose—that Netanyahu’s allies are trying him keep him out of a courtroom. The attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, worked previously as Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, and the two men are thought to be personal friends. Police chief Roni Alsheich, another Netanyahu appointee, has made several decisions that were seen as an effort to protect the first family.
But if the police do recommend criminal charges, a lengthy trial would hobble Netanyahu’s premiership—and, by extension, any U.S.-led negotiations. The same thing happened to his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who made a serious effort to pursue peace with the Palestinians. The talks stalled when it became clear that Olmert would not survive a series of corruption probes (he eventually resigned, and is now in prison).
On this side of the border, too, there is no clear successor if Netanyahu is forced to resign. Polls suggest that the Zionist Union, the main center-left party, will crater in the next election, winning as few as 10 seats, less than half of its current total. A trio of moderate retired generals has hinted at running for office, but none of them have found a political home yet. The leading contender, according to the polls, is Yair Lapid, a centrist politician who largely avoids taking clear stances on controversial issues. He would struggle to cobble together a coalition, and even if he did it would be an unruly one, spanning from the center-left to the nationalist right.
One might think that a center-left government would be more successful at making peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu is a conservative, and much of his coalition is even further to the right: Just four of his 20 ministers openly support a two-state solution. But historically, it has been the hawks who made difficult decisions in Israel: Menachem Begin relinquished the Sinai to Egypt; Ariel Sharon evacuated the settlements in Gaza. The left already supports making concessions; a hawkish prime minister has the credibility to bring some of the right on board, too.
A centrist successor might lack both a mandate and a vision to pursue a solution. Many of Netanyahu’s possible replacements envision a peace process that would outlast their own terms in office. Isaac Herzog, the Labor party opposition leader, believes that Israel should wait at least a decade before launching any meaningful effort with the Palestinians. Lapid thinks it will take 20 years. One of Lapid’s top aides, when I asked about his views on the peace process, kept trying to steer the conversation to subjects like road safety and traffic police. “I realize these aren’t the things you want to hear about,” he said. “But they’re very important to us.”
***
Driving through Shuja’iya, in Gaza, one could almost forget that Israel and Hamas fought a devastating war three years ago. The neighborhood was one of the hardest hit, with entire blocks reduced to rubble. Some families spent years living in tents or makeshift tin shacks. But on a visit this spring, the piles of mangled concrete and rebar were almost entirely gone, replaced with rows of freshly painted homes.
The progress may be short-lived: Israel and Hamas are quietly marching back to war.
In the past few years, Abbas has approved a series of “unity pacts” meant to end the schism between Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. A reconciliation would have put the PA in charge of Gaza, ending the cycle of wars.
In recent weeks, though, Abbas seems to have given up on trying to reassert control. Last month he reduced the salaries of about 58,000 Gazan public servants on the PA’s payroll. Most have not worked in a decade: Hamas appointed its own bureaucrats after it seized power. But Abbas continued to pay them, a way to maintain a power base in Gaza. Then he ended the PA’s subsidies for the electricity that Israel provides to Gaza, which account for half of the strip’s already inadequate supply, and suspended shipments of medicine and baby formula to Gazan hospitals. All of this has further immiserated a territory where nearly half the population is unemployed, and three-quarters rely on international aid to survive. It will also further tax an already unpopular Hamas, and the group has been clear that it will respond by lashing out at Israel. “[These moves] are going to explode in [Abbas’] face, and in all directions,” said Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas leader.
The Israelis were surprised by Hamas’ resilience during the last war. The group (and its allies, like the militant Islamic Jihad) fought for more than seven weeks, until literally minutes before the final cease-fire. But the militants were disappointed. Though they fired routinely on Tel Aviv, and even lobbed rockets as far north as Haifa, a city that is closer to Lebanon than to Gaza, the long-range projectiles were basically useless. They were highly inaccurate to begin with, and any residual threat was neutralized by the Iron Dome missile defense system. All of the Israeli civilians killed by rockets and mortars lived within about 20 miles of Gaza.
So in the next war, Hamas and its allies plan to focus on bombarding the “Gaza envelope,” the towns and kibbutzim near the border. They also hope to stage high-profile attacks with a network of attack tunnels. Israel has moved aggressively to neutralize the passages with new, classified technology; nearly a dozen have mysteriously collapsed over the past few years. But Israel may be a victim of its own success. Hamas views the tunnels as a waning asset—one it should use while it still has the opportunity.
Hamas’ goal is to cause enough damage to pull Israel into a ground operation deep in Gaza. “We can’t fight Israeli planes,” explained one member of Islamic Jihad’s military wing. “But if we can lure Israel into a ground campaign, we even the fight.” Netanyahu’s critics lambasted him during the last war for his refusal to send troops all the way to Gaza City (one of those critics, Avigdor Lieberman, is now the defense minister). There would be fierce public pressure to decisively end the conflict with Hamas.
If they do go back to war, it would be a grinding, bloody battle: Israel lost 66 soldiers in 2014, and more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians; more than 100,000 Gazans were left homeless, and the strip’s infrastructure was shattered. Hamas and its allies appear ready to do it all over again, but both sides suspect that it will be for the last time. Any Gaza-based ground war would likely end with Israel once again in control of the territory.
Gaza is a problem that no one, Israeli or Palestinian, wants to tackle. But a fourth war there would certainly put any peace negotiations on shaky ground. For one, it would tie Abbas’ hands. There could be no peace talks while his people were being bombed. It would also send a clear message to Israelis: Their one effort at evacuating territory was a mistake, one that should not be repeated.
***
In the short term, at least, Trump and his aides do not expect to make major strides toward ending this century-old conflict. The Palestinians have presented a list of modest economic demands, from new industrial zones to 24/7 access at the Allenby Bridge, the sole crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. In return the Gulf states have offered Israel its own incentives, like overflight rights for Israel’s El Al airlines, a step that would shave hours off flights to the Far East.
But any talk of the real issues—borders, refugees, Jerusalem—is still months away, if it ever happens. Few Israelis expect that Trump will succeed. The Palestinians are more optimistic, but their optimism, officials admit in private, is mostly a reflection of their despair.
It will probably be a moot point anyway. A new Gaza war would short-circuit any peace process: Abbas could not possibly negotiate with daily scenes of carnage on Al-Jazeera. Israel’s right-wing government would be even less inclined to give up any territory. And Abbas might not be the negotiator anyway. Trump is building relationships with two leaders who both seem to be teetering—unpopular, plagued by scandal, yet without any clear replacement. The president who hopes to make “the ultimate deal” may instead find himself simply trying to manage a period of turmoil. |
I'm on a 910f and have Flashed the latest release (21/11) yesterday, have to say...incredible rom! Everything works out of the box, quick flash guide: download rom, fix for non verizon users (910f/g), gapps, and in twrp flash in same order (rom, fix, gapps, yes you can add zip to flash all at once), reboot and you're done! fingerprint works, dpi scaling works incredibly well, gps works, data works, wifi works , bluetooth works, screen temperature settings, live display works(adapt color temperature depending on night , day, outdoor basis) , adaptive brightness works, total personalization of lockscreen, home, dpi scaling, grid size, swipe hand to wake when locked, wake when notification arrives, wake when pushing out of pocket, fast, no fc's (only 20 hours of testing to be honest), and op is updating continuosly to solve problems (yes bugs existsIf you want a nougat rom, fast, light, reliable and to use as a daily driver give this one a chanceflash happily, live happily |
This review is spoiler-free. It talks about, at most, stuff that's been revealed in promo photos, but not more than that.
Twice Upon A Time
Really rather special, this one. Appreciating that pretty much everyone knows where Steven Moffat’s final Doctor Who story – Twice Upon A Time – has to ultimately end (an ending that was sliced off the press preview), the journey the story takes is really quite something.
It kicks off, of all things, with the kind of recap that only Doctor Who could get away with, before resuming where things were left at the end The Doctor Falls. Two Doctors – David Bradley as the first Doctor, Peter Capaldi as the incumbent – holding off their own regeneration. Neither willing to succumb to the change and uncertainty that lies ahead.
In the midst of this is a 1914 World War I battlefield, where Mark Gatiss’ British soldier (and Gatiss is brilliant) is pointing a gun at Toby Whithouse’s wounded German troop. A stand-off, and not a happy one. That much has been revealed in photos from the episode. Everything else story-wise, I’m steering clear of for this spoiler-free preview. Anybody who even thinks of spoiling an episode like this deserves a very, very hard stare.
Instead, let me report that so, so much of Twice Upon A Time works. I found it a wonderful wallop of an episode, with strong emotional moments, an ensemble of characters where I cared and was engaged with every one. And, at the heart of it, the bickering between two Doctors, both in different ways exasperated with each other. David Bradley is clearly having an absolutely ball recreating William Hartnell’s first Doctor, a man confused with the state of what’s going on around him, and not afraid to voice it. Capaldi’s Doctor, meanwhile, is hardly in the best of shape, correcting his earlier self but also having his fair share of fun. There's a lot of laughs between the two of them, in the midst of an episode with an otherwise slightly more sombre feel.
Capaldi’s performance? Well, what do you think. From the moment he stepped into the world of Doctor Who, it felt like he owned the role. For his finale, his work is sublime. Generous, haunting, funny and utterly moving, his farewell is brilliant. Again, I’ll leave the detail there for now. We're sure going to miss him, though.
It’s premium Steven Moffat writing we get here, too, and finds him ending on a very high point as well. Moffat’s script gives him slightly fewer balls to juggle than he occasionally has tasked himself with, and it really pays dividends. The pacing of Twice Upon A Time is terrific. There’s no rush to suddenly wrap things up, there’s no skimping over the Doctor Who story at the heart of the episode (and there very much is one), and there’s time built in for some often really quite profound conversations. There are surprising moments that hit really hard, because they’ve been given the space to.
A word, too, for the sheer look of Twice Upon A Time. The preview we saw was projected onto an IMAX screen, and it looked at home there too. The lighting work isn’t often singled out in Doctor Who write-ups, but it really should be here. There’s a flavour of one or two classic movies, and a real sense of scale to some of the bigger moments. One of Moffat’s finest decisions on Doctor Who has been to get director Rachel Talalay involved, and her direction is really something. Here’s hoping Chris Chibnall hires her back.
Reports suggest that Murray Gold’s time on the show is at a close too, incidentally. His score is worth pre-ordering. I can comfortably say that.
But then the whole episode is. It really hit me hard, this one. There are themes at the heart of it that go beyond the inevitable emotion of everyone’s goodbyes, and I found myself utterly gripped by it. It’s not even that it doesn’t put a foot wrong, because there are little quibbles. It’s more that I was so swept up in it that I barely noticed.
My advice? Go into the episode cold, sit back, and let it take you in. Twice Upon A Time is excellent. A fitting finale, in lots of different ways. Loved it. |
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept has gained a lot of traction over the last couple of years. One of the main applications of IoT lies in the home automation space. Consumers have many options in this space, but none of them have the right combination of comprehensiveness, economy, extensibility and ease of use. We provided an introduction to IoT / home automation back in 2012, and the space has rapidly evolved since then.
As we ramp up our IoT / home automation coverage, we wanted to bring out a set of aspects that consumers should analyse in detail when choosing a home automation system. They will also help us in reviewing home automation systems / devices from a consumer's perspective. This piece will begin with a short overview of how home automation systems have evolved since our last coverage.
Introduction
There are a wide variety of home automation devices, but the common / popular ones fulfill one or more of the following:
Control state of an electrical outlet or switch Monitor energy consumption of an electrical outlet or switch Control light bulb intensity and/or color Monitor environmental data (parameters such as temperature, humidity etc. or detection of motion, open doors or windows, live video feed etc.) via connected sensors
It is also expected that a home automation solution will allow configuration and automatic triggering of events based on data collected from the component devices.
Why is Home Automation Hot?
It is an interesting exercise to look into why home automation and IoT tend to draw a lot of players (established companies, VC-funded startups and crowd-funding seekers) into the market. The potential for revenue is huge (multiple devices per household) and development of single-function components is not resource intensive (many home automation devices are simple to design and suitable even for undergraduate engineering projects). This is the reason why established companies go for an ecosystem of products, while others try to start with one or two devices.
Home Automation and the Cloud
The cloud has come as a messiah for all the IoT / home automation device vendors seeking venture funding. As mentioned earlier, home automation devices need to be controlled and/or monitored and their state needs to be actionable. This requires intelligence that has traditionally been resident in the in-house command center. Some vendors opt to offer service plans by moving this intelligence to the cloud and making all user interactions go via their servers. It also provides them with data mining opportunities. In certain cases, vendors can claim delivering of a better experience for customers using machine learning on the cloud side.
Open APIs
The presence of a cloud-based service-oriented model also makes companies hesitant to be part of an open ecosystem. It is desirable to have open APIs, or better still, a full description of the internal workings of the system and how to access it. For crowd-funded products and those from small startups, this is important for a couple of reasons: becoming part of the ecosystem of products controlled by devices like the Logitech Harmony Hub is easier and power users (typically having more weight for their word of mouth) can develop their own applications to interact with the device or integrate it with their existing home automation system.
The above points help us in understanding the current state of the home automation market. Armed with this knowledge, consumers should be able to identify hidden costs in any home automation system under consideration. Our next section will draw up a checklist for consumers in this area.
Drawing up a Checklist
In evaluating home automation devices, there are a number of questions that the consumer needs to ask before committing to a particular product family.
1. Does the unit require an always-on Internet connection? What are its capabilities in an 'Intranet of Things' scenario?
Devices which need the Internet all the time typically put all intelligence in the cloud and force the cloud component on the end user. Note that this is different from systems that use the cloud to make things easier for novice users. In the case of a forced cloud component, it would be desirable for consumers to get more clarification from the vendor. A purchase decision should be made only if one is satisfied with the answers provided.
What happens when the Internet connection in the consumer premises goes down?
What happens if the IoT product vendor's servers experience downtime at a critical juncture?
If the IoT product vendor were to go out of business, would the IoT device be rendered useless?
Is the consumer expected to 'purchase' the IoT device with the mindset that he is just leasing the product from the company with no guarantee of availability / operation in the future?
Is there a guarantee for security / hacker-proofing on the cloud side to ensure that the unit doesn't act like a Trojan horse for nefarious access into one's internal network?
Many companies try to justify a cloud-only model by trumping up the benefits of analytics in the cloud. Typically, they are useful for IP cameras (but, even in that case, there is nothing on the technical side that justifies preventing users from getting a less-featured local network-only experience).
Consumers need to fight back against pure-cloud plays in the home automation space
For most other home automation devices like thermostats, it is mostly a matter of data mining / customer lock-in, rather than user experience.
2. Is it possible for authorized third-party applications or devices to control the unit without compromising security?
This is another way of checking if the device has open APIs available for control. Even if open APIs are available, one has to check if the communication always passes through the device vendor's servers. In that case, all the concerns voiced earlier need to be considered here too.
In terms of security, consumers also have to look into how access is authorized (for both native and third-party API control). IoT security is a hot topic right now, and even the average consumer needs to be aware of the protection mechanisms on a device that has unfettered access to one's internal network.
Consumers must encourage devices with secure, but open APIs
On the other hand, control of devices can even be set up by integrating with cloud services such as IFTTT (If-This-Then-That). IFTTT is quite popular and encouraged / promoted even by the IoT device manufacturers. In those types of situations, consumers must think about whether such cloud services can be trusted with access to one's social media accounts. It can't be stressed enough - when dealing with home automation devices, consumers must always keep security on top of their mind.
3. Does the installation require new wires or 'hubs' in addition to the main unit? How is the command center implemented?
The rise in popularity of home automation can be attributed to the use of Wi-Fi as the communication medium of choice. Almost all Internet-connected homes have a Wi-Fi network, and hooking up a home automation device to it ensures that no other bridge devices are needed for communication. Unfortunately, 802.11ah, the version of Wi-Fi optimized for IoT (low-power and long range) doesn't seem to be taking off as fast as expected. In the meanwhile, Z-Wave and ZigBee continue to strengthen their install base. Some devices have also opted for Bluetooth. Bluetooth works well for wearables where the IoT device talks to a smartphone. However, it requires some adaptation for usage in a home automation setting (CSR's proprietary BLE extensions with mesh networking support, CSRmesh, is an example). Other than Wi-Fi, everything else requires some sort of hub device to interface with the IP network.
Lowe's Iris uses a smartphone app as the command center. A ZigBee / Z-Wave to IP hub can be seen in the top left
Legacy home automation systems often had a centralized command center / station where the components could be controlled and rules could be programmed. With the advent of mobile devices, command and control is achieved via mobile apps. The rules can be either stored in the cloud (and integrated with cloud-base rules services such as IFTTT (If-This-Then-That)) or locally in the device or a control hub.
4. What are the power requirements of the device? If powered via batteries, what type is used, and how often do they need to be changed?
Many home automation devices that fulfill duties such as door / windows closure sensing tend to be battery-operated. In such cases, it is important for consumers to identify the type of battery being used and their expected lifetime. Usage of Wi-Fi as a communication medium in such devices is not usually a good choice - low power protocols such as Z-Wave and ZigBee are better suited. AC-powered home automation devices don't need to worry about this aspect. That said, if Wi-Fi is being used, it would be an added bonus if the device were to sport a low-power Wi-Fi SoC. Data rates are not that big of a concern when it comes to IoT devices. Reduction in power requirements often trumps the bandwidth aspect.
Door/window contact sensors might use CR2 batteries or CR2032 coin cells, depending on the vendor
In case the device under consideration connects to a wired network (common in devices such as IP surveillance cameras), it would be an added advantage if PoE (power over Ethernet) were to be used in order to reduce cabling requirements.
5. Is the device a standalone product or a member of an ecosystem of products? What are the pricing aspects?
Consumers need to identify whether the device under consideration is a standalone product or one of many components in a product family. In the former case, the importance of open APIs and ability for third-party applications to control the unit is increased. Otherwise, the consumer is likely to end up with multiple mobile apps for controlling different devices. In the latter case, it is good to check if all the devices in the product family can be controlled via a single interface (usually a mobile app or a central home automation server).
Home automation solutions may have products for multiple use-cases (eg. Lowe's Iris & SmartThings) or have a narrow focus (eg. smart lighting with Philips Hue & LIFX)
The final aspect that consumers need to consider is pricing. Home automation has remained a niche market so far because not many consumers can afford the price of professionally installed systems. There is nothing wrong in going for such a high-priced system - if you can afford it. That said, home automation technology is becoming more and more user-friendly (in terms of ease of installation and operation). Devices are becoming more and more affordable. Some devices such as those that do energy monitoring / power outlet scheduling and temperature control often end up paying for themselves over the long run in saved electricity and heating costs. In any case, it is important for consumers to shop around for their home automation needs. There are many offerings providing the same functionality. In addition to being satisfied with the answers to the four questions above, being comfortable with the short and long-term costs is also an important aspect. Some devices have a monthly subscription fee for cloud-based access, and that needs to be considered in the overall cost structure.
Concluding Remarks
This piece has brought out a set of aspects that go beyond what the usual company press releases / tech press coverage shed light on. These typically also lead to the negative aspects (from a consumer perspective) of any home automation system. In order to bring out the true picture of any device / system targeting home automation in the IoT / IoE space, we will be carrying a summary table covering the following points in each of our home automation reviews:
Communication Technology (Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Z-Wave / ZigBee etc.)
Power Source
Hub / Bridge Requirement
Control Center (Local device / cloud / local server etc.)
User Control Interface (Mobile apps / web server / dedicated consumer premises equipment etc.)
Notes on Open APIs
Notes on Cloud Reliance (includes subscription aspects)
Notes on Security
Pricing
The aspects brought out in the preceding section were presented in the form of questions that the consumers need to ask. Note that most of them are open-ended ones, and a non-consumer friendly answer to any of them doesn't automatically make the product a disappointing one. For example, Dropcam - one of the more successful exits in the home automation / IoT space - has always actively prevented local access to the video feed. This didn't prevent them from selling a large number of cameras. The intention of this piece is to educate consumers - they should vote with their wallets to encourage open devices and systems. Hopefully, the next Dropcam's product family members will be as much friendly to power users as they will be easy to use. |
This is part of a limited series, “14 Days, 14 Stories”, about ordinary Pakistanis who are doing extraordinary things in order to give back to Pakistan.
So we all talk about how the world is becoming increasingly intolerant and everyone is just selfish and distrustful of people. Of course, events that happen around us, like this or this, don’t exactly help allay those fears, do they?
The world isn’t as dark, however. There are people who still give us hope. People who are selfless, giving and caring. People who make us proud to call ourselves Pakistani.
This vegetable vendor in Lahore makes Pakistan worth living in
Muhammad Habib has a vegetable shop in Main Market Lahore. He runs a business that is an ordinary shop by day and a place run by the power of ‘trust’ and with the help of the neighborhood, at night.
Habib leaves his shop open yet unattended at night
Yes, absolutely unattended. The shop is left open during the night so those who find it convenient can buy vegetables during that time.
Arsalan Mahmood Khan works in the vicinity and he noticed the shop during his commute. He posted about the vegetable vendor on Facebook.
The shop runs on trust and faith, during the evenings
According to Arsalan, the community is honorable enough to write into the receipts book the amount of vegetables bought so the next morning when Muhammad Habib or his younger brother Farukh Javed, who runs the shop with him, can make record and collect the amounts due.
His customers are caring, more careful while measuring quantity in his absence and the sales go on even when he’s sleeping.
Arsalan talked to one of the customers at the vegetable stall and they told him that the Muhammad Habib does this to facilitate the neighborhood and he has absolute faith in the goodwill and honesty of his customers. The gesture is indeed returned.
The honesty and faith in community by the vegetable vendor gives us hope
It is a testament that there are still people in Pakistan who aren’t jaded by this big bad world. Thankfully, the community does not give him a reason to become cynical about the world, yet.
“Yes, this is Pakistan”
In his conversation with MangoBaaz, Arsalan said that he posted about this unorthodox arrangement on Facebook because of how amazing it made him feel.
His post reads, “no legislation, no rules for such sales or protection of stock. Not yet interrupted by any authorities, hence working outstanding. No theft reported. All is the mutual understanding between people.”
For other stories in the series, check out “14 Days, 14 Stories“. |
Toby Walsh is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales and research group leader at Data61 , Australia's centre of excellence for information and communications technology research in Sydney, Australia. The views expressed are his own.
I've spent my life working on artificial intelligence (AI), and there are many reasons why I am fearful of the development of killer robots. Here's five of them.
1. Killer robots are near
You might be thinking of "Terminator" -- a robot which, if you believe the movie, will be available in 2029. But the reality is that killer robots will be much simpler to begin with and are, at best, only a few years away. Think Predator drone and its aptly named Hellfire missiles, but with the human controller replaced by a computer program. This is technically possible today.
2. There will be an arms race
Once this genie is out of the bottle, there will be an arms race to improve on the initially rather crude robots. And the end point of such an arms race is precisely the sort of terrifying technology you see in "Terminator." Hollywood got that part right.
Moore's Law predicts that computer chips double in size every two years. We're likely to see similar exponential growth with killer robots. I vote to call this "Schwarzenegger's Law" to remind us of where it will end.
3. Killer robots will proliferate
Killer robots will be cheap. And they'll only get cheaper. Just look at the speed with which drones have dropped in price over the last few years. They'll also be easy to make, at least crudely.
Get yourself a quadcopter, and add a smartphone and a gun or a small bomb. Then all you need is someone like me to write you some AI software. And the military will love them, at least at first, as they don't need sleep or rest, long and expensive training, or evacuation from the battlefield when damaged.
However, once the military start having to defend themselves against killer robots, they might change their mind.
4. Killer robots will be killing lots of civilians
According to The Intercept, during a five-month stretch of a 2011-3 U.S. military operation against the Taliban and al Qaeda in the Hindu Kush, "nearly nine out of 10 people" who died in drone strikes "were not the Americans' direct targets."
This is when we still have a human in the loop, making that final life or death decision. The current state of the art in AI does not approach the situational awareness, or decision-making of a human drone pilot.
The statistics for a fully autonomous drone will therefore likely be even worse.
Over time, they'll get better and I fully expect them to equal if not exceed human pilots. Different arguments then come into play. For example, killer robots will surely fall into wrong hands, including people who have no qualms at using them against civilians. They are a perfect weapon of terror. Killer robots will also lower the barriers to war. By further distancing us from the battlefield, they'll turn war into a very real video game.
5. Killer robots will be hard to regulate
Tesla updates their Model S car to drive autonomously on the highway with a simple software update delivered over the air. We have to expect therefore that simple software updates will in the future be able to turn systems that are either not autonomous or not lethal into lethal autonomous weapons. This is going to make it very hard to control killer robots.
And we are going to want the technologies that go into killer robots. They are much the same technologies that go into autonomous cars, most of which already exist. Each year, roughly 30,000 people die on the roads of the United States , and 1.2 million worldwide. This statistic will plummet once autonomous cars are common.
But just because something is going to be hard, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And even a ban that is partially effective, like that for anti-personnel mines, is going to be worth having.
My view that we need to regulate killer robots to prevent an arms race -- and the view that we need to act quickly is shared by many others in the know. An open letter calling for such a ban was released in July this year.
The signatures include many leading researchers in AI and robotics, the CEOs of Google's DeepMind, Facebook's AI Research Lab, and the Allen Institute for AI, as well as thousands of others from around the world.
In November, the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meets again in Geneva to decide whether to continue with this issue, and whether to take the next step forwards towards a ban. For the world's sake, I hope they do. |
Contrary to the claims by the World Health Organisation (and the basis of the biased coverage of the Lawson-Saatchi neck-holding incident), it is not women but men who are predominantly the victims not only of within-sex (obviously) but also of between-sex violence.*
Peer-reviewed major research shows that women perpetrate 70% of unilateral (non-reciprocal) intimate-partner (domestic) violence [IPV(DV)], twice the frequency of assaults in mutual (reciprocal) IPV (DV), and between three and six times as much IPV(DV) when it is at serious levels. Furthermore, peer-reviewed research also shows that women choose physical violence as the preferred form of aggression in intimate partnerships, whereas men avoid choosing physical violence in any scenario where a female would be the target.
That women (and girls) perpetrate at least as much IPV (DV), and likely more or much more than do men, is revealed by Prof Fiebert's annotated bibliography of ALL studies and reviews of IPV(DV) where perpetration and victimisation are examined re both sexes; and this is the prevailing view within the academic research community (as opposed to mere advocacy research).
Despite the disparities between men and women in both upper-body strength and body-frame weakness meaning that there should be a 20:1 sex-differential in injury rates through IPV(DV) if violence was symmetrical (of comparable levels) -- research by Linda Dixon of the University of Birmingham -- then given that the sex-differential is either non-existent or barely significant (not even 2:1), reveals the reality of IPV (DV) to be totally at odds with how bodies such as the UN and WHO persistently portray it.
* certainly in the Western world, and most likely also in the under-developed world because of the proximity of extended family and much closer integration of the household in the wider community leading to very common third-party violence towards men acting as proxy for females. |
× OC Teen Arrested on Suspicion of Sexually Assaulting Two Fellow Students
An 18-year-old student at Villa Park High School was arrested Friday following allegations he sexually assaulted two female students at the school.
Jared Jonah Linares, 18, was accused of assaulting both victims within the last year, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
The school resource officer received information about the alleged assaults on Thursday and immediately notified the Sheriff’s department.
Linares was arrested at school on Friday and booked into the Orange County Jail on suspicion of sexual assault, authorities stated.
Investigators believed Linares may have assaulted other victims.
Anyone with additional information or believes they were a victim was asked to call Orange County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Unit Sgt. Mike Tanabe at 714-647-7418 or 714-647-7000.
Anonymous tips may also be submitted to Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS (855-847-6227). |
Image copyright Essex Police Image caption Nahid Almanea had left her home in Woodrow Way, Colchester, and was attacked off Avon Way
A 31-year-old university student killed near an Essex nature reserve was stabbed 16 times, police say.
Saudi Arabian national Nahid Almanea, of Woodrow Way, Colchester, had been in the UK for less than a year and was studying at the University of Essex.
She was found dead on Tuesday morning on a footpath off Avon Way.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Det Chief Supt Steve Worron appealed for members of the public with any suspicions about who could be involved to come forward
Essex Police said although there was no evidence of the killing being a hate crime, it was "one of the main lines" of inquiry being pursued.
A 52-year-old man arrested earlier in connection with the murder on Tuesday has been eliminated from police inquiries, a spokesman for Essex Police said.
Speaking at a press conference, Det Ch Supt Steve Worron said: "A post-mortem was carried out on Nahid's body yesterday afternoon.
Image caption Officers said Ms Almanea lived with her brother in the town
"We can now confirm that the cause of death was knife wounds.
"She suffered at least two knife wounds which would have proved fatal on their own, but in total she was stabbed 16 times to her body, neck, head and arms."
Image copyright Essex Police Image caption Nahid Almanea was carrying this bag before she was attacked
Mr Worron said the force was also investigating threats of revenge attacks being posted on social media.
CCTV images of Ms Almanea's last movements have been issued in the hope of encouraging witnesses. A picture of the bag she was carrying and a map of the route she was likely to have walked have also been released.
The Saudi Arabian Embassy confirmed that Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, ambassador to the UK, had contacted the victim's family.
Image copyright PA Image caption Police have been searching the local area for evidence, including at Salary Brook Trail
Officers said Ms Almanea lived with her brother and would normally walk to university with him, but she was walking alone when she was attacked because she had earlier lectures.
The University of Essex said she was a "very hard-working and conscientious" student on the English Language Programme and was due to finish her studies in August. |
Game Title: Akiba’s Beat
Developer: Acquire
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Download: 3.1 GB
Availability: Retail (Europe, Japan, North America), Digital (EU, JP, NA)
PSTV Support: No
The newest game in the “Akiba” series has caused quite the buzz in the online PS Vita community. It changed the formula and is trying to make a name for itself outside of just being “The Sequel to Akiba’s Trip 2: Undead & Undressed”. There’ve been good murmurings on the grape vine and not-so-good.
However, I am here to give you an informative review and give you all of the information you need to know, since I’ve completed the game, myself. So, without further delay, here is my review of the Tales-like Action RPG, Akiba’s Beat!
Story
Akiba’s Beat takes place in Akihabara or Akiba for short. A local NEET (Non Educated, Not Employed, Not in Training) is going about his daily rounds when he discovers spatial distortions that no one else can see, a phenomenon known as a “Delusion”. When a chipper young woman recruits him into infiltrating and destroying the delusion, they realize that they are trapped in a never-ending time loop,with the same day repeating time and time again.
In order to escape from this endless time loop, the two team up to track down and destroy delusions that pop up around Akiba and end up recruiting many of the people who spawn them along the way. The story of this game I view very similarly to the Persona series. The mystery and explorative part of the story is very similar to the concept of Persona 4, but with the heart of Akiba culture thrown in. The cast is colorful and each has unique backgrounds. From a NEET and Transgender Queen Information Dealer to a Magical Girl Idol-in-Training and a Gothic Lolita with a razor-sharp tongue, each member brings a lot of diversity and humor to the table.
It should also be noted that Akiba’s Beat has one of the most high-quality English Dubs the PS Vita has ever seen. Every line of dialogue is voiced and the VAs did an outstanding job. XSEED should be proud of the work they did for the localization.
Gameplay
Akiba’s Beat is unique in the gameplay department. Imagine Persona 4, Akiba’s Trip, and Tales of the Abyss all being melded into one game, and you’ve got Akiba’s Beat. It uses Tales of the Abyss’s combat system for inspiration, Akiba’s Trip’s exploration features, and Persona 4’s style of story and dungeon progression.
Progression is story-driven, but you basically have a large map of Akiba to explore. On this map, you will always have some story objective you need to find to go to the next part of the plot. However, you will also have shops to visit for equipment upgrades and the occasional Character Events to do a side story with character backgrounds for a major character. These events pop up across the story and will often complete with rewards, like equipment or supplies.
The biggest flow is the unlocking of dungeons. Every story chapter has a new dungeon, or set of dungeons you need to find and activate an entrance for. This is remarkably similar to Persona 4’s method of finding new dungeons in the TV World. Each time a new dungeon or “delusionscape” appears, you must spawn story events until its creator has their heart shaken and that’s when the entrance will pop up. It’s really a huge amount of character development as every dungeon is based on its creator’s delusion, or life dream.
Once you get the entrance, you storm through the dungeon to destroy it. This involves navigating several floors filled with enemies, ending with a major boss fight that will not only destroy the delusion but also conclude that chapter of the story.
Dungeon progression is pretty simple. On every floor, there is a door that leads to the next floor you need to reach. Getting to this door is normally a matter of puzzle-solving. All dungeons have blocked paths you need to find and interact with objects to open up. In some dungeons, it’s electronic switches to open doors and others it’s chain strings to open curtains. And these get continually more difficult as you get closer to the game’s climax.
Combat is the main thing you should look at, though. Akiba’s Trip was a hack n slash beat em up game. When you find an enemy in Akiba’s Beat, you are taken to another stage for an Action-RPG combat sequence with your party against the enemy party. You have AP to do physical attacks and skill combos and have both physical and magic skills to use.
If you’re a Tales fan, imagine Tales of the Abyss’s combat system and that is almost exactly like this. You have a line between you and the enemy and you have to hold the L button to actually start free-roaming around the 3D arena. The other major difference is AP. If you only have 4 AP, you can only do 4 different actions until you have to run away and recharge.
This raises the strategy but it really makes the game feel stiff. Abyss isn’t exactly a new combat system and the AP limitations really drags down the intensity of the fights. It’s fun, no doubt, but a flawed kind of fun.
The main balance to the AP system is the Imagine Gauge. As you fight enemies, you build up a sort of “Overdrive” gauge. Once you activate it, you start playing a song in the background and use that song’s length to fight all-out with infinite AP.
As far as difficulty, it’s pretty tough outside of Easy Mode. Normal fights aren’t too hard, as long as you can balance your party out with healers, magic-users, and fighters, but many of the boss fights are really tough on anything Normal Difficulty or above. This isn’t a game that will hold your hand, like setting Auto Battle in a Tales game. You’ll need a lot of skill, and you’ll need to be skilled with every party member as you will have solo battles throughout.
Length is harder to tell. You can’t rely on the in-game tracker because it tracks time in and out of sleep mode. In other words, if you are at 20 hours and put it in sleep mode and go to sleep. When you start again 10 hours later, the timer will now say 30 hours. But over the course of the game, accounting for progression, story scenes, and side events, I would put it at no less than 30-40 hours.
Controls
Here’s where a downer comes into play. I spoke with PQube and XSEED Games, but no version of Akiba’s Beat is going to be made compatible with the PlayStation TV (even though enabling it is as simple as hitting a checkbox). So, if you want it on a console, you’re forced to get it for PS4.
Controls are relatively simple, overall. You move around with the Left Analog Stick and move the camera with the Right Analog Stick. The L and R triggers are mostly just used for cycling menus or the free-roam aspect of combat arenas. Now, face buttons. X is used for jumping in the field and using skills in combat. Square is used for physical attacks and Triangle for the customization menu. Circle opens the menu in dungeons and the town, while it lets you Guard
The controls aren’t too complex and they’re explained well. If you’re used to Tales, there won’t be much of a learning curve.
Presentation
The graphics of the game aren’t bad. Definitely not the best the Vita can do, but far from the worst. There’s plenty of details and not too many jagged edges. Plenty acceptable by Vita standards (though the PS4 version is a different story as it’s not much enhanced from the Vita version).
The main issue with presentation is the loading sequence. When you first load a save file, you’ll be spending a good minute or more waiting for it to load. The same thing will happen going in and out of dungeons. Not a full minute, but easily 40+ seconds. Some boss fights also have load times longer than a minute.
The saving grace of this is the frame-rate. Aside from a couple circumstances, the game stays a solid, steady flow from start to finish. It rarely ever drops under 30 fps, but maybe once in the game, so this is optimized very well. |
One of the best parts about Louis C.K. hosting "Saturday Night Live" is the nearly 10 minutes of new stand-up we get to see during his opening monologue.
This time, after riffing about "First world" hunger and explaining why going to see his child's play is basically torture, Louis got real about religion, even doing some crowd work by asking people to "Clap if you think you're going to heaven." The audience loved his bit about people who say God isn't real because they can't see Him ("I haven't seen '12 Years A Slave' yet, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist") and how it's reasonable to think that there might be a God but no Heaven:
Louis then went on to raise an interesting question about "Our Father": "What happened to our mom?" His guess is that either something suspicious happened up there ("Somewhere in heaven there's a porch with a dead lady under it") or God's a divorced, single father who's raising us on his own.
His material on why God is perceived to be a man led to some poignant jokes about women's rights, including how messed up it is that women couldn't vote until 1920. But his pièce de résistance was probably his final bit, in which he pointed out the absurdity of people calling men's undershirts "wifebeaters" without batting an eye.
"Women have had a rough time. It was so okay to beat your wife until so recently, that today we have a kind of shirt named after it. There's a piece of clothing in our culture affectionately nicknamed after beating the crap out of your wife! And for some reason this is offensive to nobody!" |
Regardless of our optimism, we all from time to time fall into negative thought loops. It may be caused by an ending relationship, the loss of a job, death of a loved one, or any other. It may feel dark, discouraging, and as if there is nothing good ahead of us. And although these thought patterns are not rare, and can even be considered to an extent as normal, we should nevertheless get rid of them as soon as possible. If this kind of emotional stress is not taken care of in a timely manner, it will make us sick and depressed. Simply put, we must learn to let go of the past and to keep moving forward.
It’s clear that constantly being in a negative state of mind is bad for us, but there is more to it than just that. When we become attached to some event, some thing or someone, we begin to see it as the only option. And when that happens, we automatically close ourselves off from new opportunities.
For example, your boyfriend or girlfriend left you, and now you are beating yourself up for it. You think you could have been much better to that person, that it is all your fault, and that there is no one better on this planet for you than that person. I get it though, I’ve been there myself and I’ve felt the exact same way. But you know what? There are about 7.5 billion people out there. I am sure there will be at least one more person for you. The trick is to allow that person to find you. When you let go of the past and become open to new people and new relationships, you will be surprised how fast you will attract that new person into your life.
The same can be applied to your lost job or a failed business. As soon as you allow yourself to let go of the past, learn from mistakes, and make new, better attempts, you will see just how much more you are capable of. Again, you must not be attached to the past. As the saying goes “life is tough, shit happens”. I totally agree, life is tough, and shit does happen. The only question is then, how will you be able to handle it?
The past does not equal future
One very important thing so many people can’t seem to grasp, even the very intelligent people, is that past does not equal future. Many people live with the idea that just because they have had a negative experience in the past, they ought to have the same negative experience again in the present and the future. Well, I guess if you choose not to learn anything from those experiences and do the exact same things as you did then, maybe then you will face the same problems. But that’s not your case!
You have learned a lot, you have become wiser, and now you are doing things differently. So why would you let your past affect your present in such a negative way? In order to be able to have the motivation, to do what it takes and to succeed, you must let go of the past. You must be open to having new experiences in life, open to new people and you must be able to accept them.
I always recommend the movie called “Yes Man”. In that movie, Jim Carrey’s character has a rather dull life. But after visiting a self-development/coaching class, he finds out about the power of saying “yes” to everything. By forcing himself to say that word, he becomes open to all new opportunities, and that completely changes his life.
Now, I do not advise to say “yes” to everything, as that may be dangerous at times, just like in the movie, but I do recommend having that open attitude. Because when you are open, you attract new experiences into life, new people, and you never stay still. Again, regardless of how bad or good your past was, the past stays in the past, and it does not equal the future. You have to let go of it to make space for the new stuff.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself
Tony Robbins, a very famous motivational speaker, has a really good way of looking at problems that we all can apply in life as well. He talks about the idea that our 2 million-year-old brain is programmed not to make us happy. Instead, it is there to help us survive. But because today there is no saber-toothed cat to worry about, instead, we worry about what other people are thinking of us, whether we have enough money, whether we can afford to go on for a vacation, etc. It’s simply the reality of our brain, and that is what we have to deal with. Tony then adds that in order to make sure he remains in a positive state of mind, he has created the 90-second rule. The 90-second rule implies that when something negative happens to you in life, you allow yourself to feel the pain and emotional distress for 90 seconds, but not any longer. When the 90 seconds are up, you let go of the past and keep moving forward.
I don’t know whether you believe in the law of attraction or not, but I suggest you look into it here. The idea behind it is that what you focus on, what you wish for and what you visualize, you will attract into your life. For example, if you wish to find a new job, just visualize yourself already working at your new job. If you want to earn more money, visualize yourself in a bigger house or in an expensive car. In your visualization, you must see that you have these things, and that you can easily afford to buy them.
The law of attraction is not a science and it cannot be measured. Nevertheless, very many successful people believe in it and apply it in all areas of life. And I’m not really saying that you have to believe in it. All I am trying to say is that the law of attraction is all about seeing a better future, being open to new opportunities and accepting them once they do come into your life. That is the attitude you should have.
The last thing worth mentioning is that often people feel sorry for themselves. They feel sorry for their unsuccessful relationships, failed business, expensive cars that they crashed, for their addictions, etc. The list can go on and on. Most of the time, though, we feel sorry for ourselves for things that only we are to blame for.
It’s hard to accept the truth sometimes, but we must. And the quicker you take full responsibility for your past, present and future actions, the faster you can change your entire life.
Everything is possible in life. Maybe it’s not possible today, but if you begin working hard towards making it your reality, it will be possible in your future. Just remember to let go of the past and to keep moving towards your dreams.
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” ― Napoleon Hill
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Let Go of the Past – There Is So Much More to See and Experience in Life! 5 (100%) 1 vote (100%)vote |
This past weekend thousands of gamers and cosplayers converged on the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta, Georgia to check out some new games from the studio that created SMITE, a popular 3rd person fantasy MOBA that is finding success as an esport. We at ESS provided coverage from start to finish, with a lot of emphasis on the esports side of things and the $3 million SMITE World Championship tournament.
One can often get caught up watching the pro gaming action and miss the sheer spectacle of an event. Looking back at photos helps to really round out the full convention experience- especially for those who were watching from home.
All photos are by Matt Ray for Esports Source.
(browse photos by clicking on the arrows on either side of the image) |
The Phoenix Suns have signed forward Mirza Teletovic (pronounced MEER-za Tel-LET-O-Vich), guard/forward Sonny Weems and guard Ronnie Price.
"We have followed Mirza Teletovic's career for a long time and we are excited to have him wear a Suns uniform," said General Manager Ryan McDonough. "Mirza is one of the best shooting big men in the world and we think his skill set will be a great fit for our style of play."
"Sonny Weems has been one of the best players outside of the NBA over the past few years," added McDonough. "We've seen him dominate high-level competition at both ends of the floor and we think his versatility and experience help solidify our wing rotation."
"The Suns are pleased to welcome Ronnie Price and his family back to Phoenix," said President of Basketball Operations Lon Babby. "As we know, Ronnie is the consummate professional and a great teammate."
The 6-9, 242-pound Teletovic is a three-year NBA veteran who owns career averages of 7.0 points and 3.4 rebounds in 165 career games. Teletovic has played all three NBA seasons with the Brooklyn Nets and had his best statistical campaign in 2014-15 when he averaged a career-high 8.5 points, a career-best 4.9 rebounds and a career-high 1.2 assists in 40 games before being diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolous (multiple blood clots in the lungs) on Jan. 23. He was cleared to resume all basketball-related activities on April 17.
The native of Bosnia is a career 40.1 percent shooter from the floor, including 36.2 percent from three-point range, whose 7.0-point career average has come on 6.3 field goal attempts per game.
Prior to joining the Nets on July 16, 2012, Teletovic played six of his 10 professional seasons overseas with Caja Laboral Baskonia (2006-12) of the Spanish ACB League. With Caja Laboral Baskonia, he won the 2007-08 and 2009-10 Spanish National Championship and averaged 12.4 points (45.1 FG%, 40.5 3FG%), 4.3 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 1.0 blocks in 120 Euroleague games.
Weems, a native of West Memphis, Ark., has been a standout the past three seasons with CSKA Moscow of the Euroleague and Russia's top national league, the VTB United League. An All-Euroleague First Team selection in 2013-14, Weems averaged 13.0 points (44.6 FG%, 36.9 3FG%, 78.7 FT%), 3.4 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 0.9 steals and 28.1 minutes in 83 Euroleague games over his three seasons with CSKA. Weems also played 83 VTB United League games with CSKA, averaging 11.2 points (45.7 FG%, 41.4 3FG%, 71.1 FT%), 2.9 assists, 2.8 rebounds and 0.8 steals in 24.8 minutes.
The athletic 6-6, 205-pound wing is a three-year NBA veteran who last played with the Toronto Raptors during the 2010-11 season when he averaged a career-high 9.2 points on 44.4 percent shooting in 59 games (28 starts). The 29-year-old also played with the Raptors in 2009-10 after spending his rookie season with the Denver Nuggets in 2008-09. For his NBA career, Weems has averaged 7.7 points on 47.4 percent shooting, 2.5 rebounds and 20.3 minutes in 140 games (47 starts).
A second-round selection (39th overall) by the Chicago Bulls in the 2008 NBA Draft, Weems earned All-SEC First Team honors as a senior at the University of Arkansas in 2007-08 after averaging a team-best 15.0 points for the Razorbacks.
The 6-2, 190-pound Price is a 10-year NBA veteran who owns career averages of 3.6 points, 1.7 assists and 1.2 rebounds in 468 games. The 32-year-old guard previously signed with the Suns on Dec. 13, 2011 and averaged 3.6 points, 1.9 assists and 1.6 rebounds in 36 games. In total, he has played for six NBA teams, the Sacramento Kings (2005-07), Utah Jazz (2007-11), Suns (2011-12), Portland Trail Blazers (2012-13), Orlando Magic (2013-14) and most recently with the Los Angeles Lakers (2014-15). Price's best statistical season came in 2014-15 with the Lakers when he averaged a career-high 5.1 points, career-best 3.8 assists and a career-high tying 1.6 rebounds in 43 games.
Undrafted out of college, Price was a four-year performer at Utah Valley State College (now Utah Valley University) and the first player to enter the NBA directly from that school, the second in the league overall (Travis Hansen, 2003-04).
The Suns have waived guard Jerel McNeal. McNeal played in six games with the Suns in 2014-15, totaling nine points in 36 minutes after initially signing with the team on April 1. |
Robert Vavra, if he hadn`t invented himself, might well have been a character Ernest Hemingway created for one of his books set in Spain--''The Sun Also Rises'' or ''Death in the Afternoon.''
Tall, spare and handsome, Vavra is elegant in the way people are when everything extraneous about them has been burned away by the fires and acids of a passionate life.
He is seated in a chair in the Ritz-Carlton, grousing good-humoredly about his profession:
''As a photographer I hear this crazy blank-blank thing about photographers not being artists. They ask about the models I used in my books, `What was that? A box boy from the Safeway?` If someone had painted these things, they would never ask that,'' Vavra says of the fantastic illusions he has created, often with mundane settings and ordinary people (except for a rare shot of a pearl-browed Bo Derek with a white Persian cat).
But never ordinary animals.
As he speaks, Tut, his Abyssinian cat, ping-pongs around the room, while Vavra, the writer and a photographer fall all over themselves trying to make him pose.
It`s something Tut already did on several of the spectacular pages of the new book ''Vavra`s Cats'' (William Morrow, $39.95.); but, short-memoried, Tut has no interest in repeating.
Patience, patience
''I busted my behind on this. If you`ve ever been around domestic cats . . . ,'' Vavra says, letting the rest fall to the imagination, adding that he often waited for the cooperation of each of his subjects ''till I turned to stone.''
Vavra`s collection of cat photographs comes along at a time when the market has been glutted, when one thinks there can be nothing new on the subject.
But thanks to his special eye, he has once again created something incomparable.
Considered one of the world`s finest photographers, Vavra already was the creator of or collaborator in at least a dozen other books, including the classics he did with Fleur Cowles, ''Tiger Flower'' and ''Lion and Blue.'' The latter two have recently been voted to an American Booksellers Association list of 10 all-time children`s favorites, including ''The Little Prince'' by St. Exupery. ''To me, a wonderful compliment,'' Vavra says.
Born in California, Vavra lived there until 1958, when he was 23. He boarded a plane that took 14 hours to go from Burbank to New York, then a boat that took 9 days to reach Spain, where he has since spent most of his time.
He began by covering the toros bravos for bullfight publications and
''awful men`s magazines.'' He then met James A. Michener, who asked him to provide the photographs for ''Iberia,'' which became a best-seller.
He then broke the mold of ''look-alike horse books'' with his spectacular ''Equus,'' for which he received international acclaim.
A `romantic eye`
''I looked at horses in a creative graphic form, in a way no one had ever interpreted the horse before,'' with what he admits is ''a romantic eye'' in an era when most photographers` eyes are brutally realistic.
Later came ''Such is the Real Nature of Horses,'' ''Stallion of a Dream,'' ''All Those Girls in Love with Horses'' and ''Unicorns I Have Known.'' He has recently collaborated with Cowles on another book, ''To Be a Unicorn,'' already in its second printing after a month out.
Vavra grew up in Glendale, Calif., near the Griffith Park Zoo, and early memories of the big cats there, of Kipling`s stories in ''The Jungle Books''
and Jim Corbett`s in ''The Man-Eaters of India'' inspired him to turn his camera`s attention from ungulates, real and mythical, to felines great and small.
''I wanted to get away from horses for a little bit,'' he says.
''I had no appreciation of domestic cats--I loved large cats as a child
--until 1959, when I was having a drink with Hemingway in Malaga,'' he says. ''And I said to him, `It seems strange, since you are a hunter, that I see you photographed with cats rather than dogs.`
''Hemingway said, `Don`t you know, Robert, the fireside tabby is just a shrunken lion without a mane.` We were in a fish place, and there was a cat stalking a moth, and he said, `It could be a lion stalking an antelope on the Serengeti.` ''
Nearly 30 years later Vavra sifts all cats big and small, one among the other, on the pages of his book: lions and black Persians, snow leopards and short-haired tabbies, wildcats and white Persians, servals and woolly barn cats--all the world`s great family of felines.
Michener, who Vavra says ''has always given me marvelous advice,'' had encouraged him to do this pictorial departure.
''I owe more to Michener than to anyone. He gave me a showcase for my work,'' says Vavra, referring to ''Iberia.'' They met through a mutual bullfighter friend, John Fulton.
''Michener then hired me as a research assistant, which was a way of saying, `You`re struggling, and I don`t want to just give you money.` He gave me $1,000 for 150 photographs. I just got a check for $700. For my lifetime I get 10 percent of what he gets,'' adds Vavra, who will be updating the book for its 20th anniversary in 1988.
He has his debts to Hemingway too, he says: ''I had the good fortune with Hemingway to see the good side of him and not the supermacho. I was completely broke,'' and at the Feria de Seville, ''he put a fair program in my pocket. Later I found a check for $100 in it. That was very encouraging, as I figured he didn`t give checks to just anyone around.''
Those years were ''completely insane,'' he says. ''What was I doing, going with $300 and a one-way ticket to someplace I`d never been?''
But he has ''no regrets'' for being ''down on the very bottom of the boat where they kept the cars, with 16 people to a cabin,'' on the crossing in `58, or for the three years when he ''ate standing up like a horse at the bar because it was cheaper than sitting down.'' Or even for not having money to buy film so that the professional experiences he should have had at 26, ''I did not experience until I was 29,'' says the man who now shoots 20 or 30 rolls at a sitting, ''like sketching.''
He counts those years ''the best, the best! Paradise! Sorry, I have to say it. There are good things in my life now, but there was so much quality in my life then.
''It was like falling onto the back lot of `Blood and Sand` on 20th Century-Fox, except it really smelled of jasmine. For a kid falling into a country like that it was incredible.''
He`s far beyond struggle now.
''I`ve got a 150-acre ranch 45 minutes outside Seville with a swimming pool, and a three-story house in Seville. I drive a Mercedes, but the quality of my life was so much better then. I have fancy friends.'' He hesitates, then corrects--''acquaintances''--with a wistful smile. |
CLEVELAND, OH – The Cleveland Cavaliers have signed guard Dahntay Jones and center Edy Tavares, Cavaliers General Manager David Griffin announced on Wednesday from Cleveland Clinic Courts.
Jones (6-6, 225) last played for the Cavaliers in 2015-16, appearing in one regular season game and 15 playoff games during the team’s title run. Over his 12-year NBA career, he holds averages of 5.4 points and 1.7 rebounds in 15.7 minutes over 623 contests (157 starts) with Memphis, Sacramento, Denver, Indiana, Dallas, Atlanta, L.A. Clippers and Cleveland.
Tavares (7-3, 265) has spent most of this season playing for Raptors 905 where he averaged 10.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and a league-best 2.7 blocks in 23.7 minutes over 48 contests and was a 2017 D-League All-Star selection. He also played in one game for Atlanta earlier this season. Tavares was originally drafted by the Hawks as the 43rd overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft and saw action in 11 games in 2015-16 with averages of 2.3 points and 1.9 rebounds in 6.6 minutes. |
Arizonans who don’t like the other choices for president this year won’t get a chance to vote instead for the Green Party nominee.
The secretary of state’s office said Tuesday the party had not met the June 1 deadline for nominating electors for the Nov. 8 election. Those are the people who will come to the Capitol following the election to cast the state’s 11 electoral votes for the Green Party candidate were that person to get the most votes here.
The party holds its national convention in August in Houston. Jill Stein, who won the Arizona primary in March, is the presumptive nominee.
But all that is irrelevant under state law. Instead, it requires whoever chairs each recognized party to choose 11 electors no later than 90 days ahead of the primary election.
That deadline passed at 5 p.m. June 1. And while the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties all managed to submit a slate, the Green Party was conspicuous by its absence.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Michele Reagan said there is no legal way to waive the deadline, with the only option now for the Green Party to seek a court order.
Maritza Broce, one of the co-chairs of the party, said late Tuesday she understood the issue was being handled by fellow co-chair Angel Torres. He did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
But the failure effectively means there is no chance for Arizona to cast its electoral votes for the Green Party nominee, even if that person outpolls Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Libertarian Gary Johnson.
The Green Party, with just 4,480 registered voters out of more than 3.35 million in the state, has had a history of problems in Arizona meeting deadlines.
In 2013 then-Secretary of State Ken Bennett noted the party had just 5,601 registrants, only a quarter of what it needed to keep its ballot status. So he declared the party ineligible.
The law does allow a party to requalify by gathering petitions with more than 23,000 valid signatures. But the party did not meet the Feb. 27, 2014, deadline and had no official candidates in that year’s election.
It finally did requalify for the 2016 election and has candidates in one congressional and several legislative races. The failure to meet the deadline for naming electors does not affect those races.
Generally speaking, the meeting of Arizona electors is a pretty staid affair, usually occurring about a month after balloting at the secretary of state’s office. But there have been exceptions.
In 2012 the 11 Republican electors formally cast their votes for Mitt Romney — but not before three of them, including the state party chairman, said questions remain about whether President Obama is a natural-born citizen.
“I’m not satisfied with what I’ve seen,’’ said Tom Morrissey, then the GOP chairman, after signing the formal paperwork to cast his Electoral College vote for Romney. “I think for somebody in the president’s position to not have produced a document that looks more legitimate, I have a problem with that.’’
Morrissey along with John Rhodes, another GOP elector, also specifically used Obama’s middle name, Hussein, in their public comments. |
Don Wright/Associated Press
The Pittsburgh Steelers' playoff hopes hang in the balance of two things: a win over the Cleveland Browns and a New York Jets loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Pittsburgh Linebacker Vince Williams is using family ties and Super Bowl tickets as bargaining chips with his younger brother, Bills rookie running back Karlos Williams.
"I was like, 'Man, look, we're trying to go to the Super Bowl, bro," Vince Williams told Chris Bradford of the Beaver County Times. "I told him I'd get him a ticket. I told him, 'You could go to the Super Bowl. It's not like y'all are going to be going.'"
Which is true—Buffalo kissed their playoff chances goodbye for the 16th consecutive time. But as Bradford pointed out, the Bills still have a stake in Sunday's game. A win would keep their heads above water at .500 for the season, while avenging head coach Rex Ryan, who was fired by the Jets last December.
"[Karlos] said they're going to do their best," Vince Williams told Bradford. "They're not packing it in. They really want to do a solid for Rex, too. Rex got fired [from New York], so I'm pretty sure they're looking forward to getting a little bit of payback for their head coach."
[The Times, h/t CBS Sports] |
Socialists put the working class at the center of their political vision. But why, exactly?
Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, answers this question here, as well as capitalism's inability "to deliver the goods" for workers, who exactly workers are, the precarity of work today, and the problems with the twenty-first century labor movement. Chibber is in discussion with Jason Jacobin's Farbman.
This is the first episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism.
Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2219-the-abcs-of-socialism
The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience. |
For the first time in the United States, a woman who was born without a uterus gave birth to a baby. The landmark birth took place at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, a part of Baylor Scott & White, TIME reports exclusively.
“We’ve been preparing for this moment for a very long time,” says Dr. Liza Johannesson, an ob-gyn and uterus transplant surgeon at Baylor. “I think everyone had tears in their eyes when the baby came out. I did for sure.” The woman and her husband asked that their identity not be revealed in order to protect their privacy
The birth took place at Baylor — the first birth in the hospital’s ongoing uterus transplant clinical trial. Women who participate in the trial have what’s called absolute uterine factor infertility (AUI), which means their uterus is nonfunctioning or nonexistent. Most of the women in the trial have a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome — and have lived their entire lives under the assumption that they would never be able to be pregnant or give birth to a baby. The procedure could also work for women with other medical issues, such as certain cancers.
“We do transplants all day long,” says Dr. Giuliano Testa, the leader of the uterus transplant clinical trial at Baylor, and surgical chief of abdominal transplant for Baylor Annette C. and Harold C. Simmons Transplant Institute. “This is not the same thing. I totally underestimated what this type of transplant does for these women. What I’ve learned emotionally, I do not have the words to describe.”
The birth was a scheduled Caesarean section, and most members of the multidisciplinary clinical trial team were present. The baby was delivered healthy and screaming. “I’ve delivered a lot of babies, but this one was special,” says Dr. Robert T. Gunby Jr., the obstetrician and gynecologist who delivered the baby. “When I started my career we didn’t even have sonograms. Now we are putting in uteruses from someone else and getting a baby.”
The moment Dr. Gunby first held up the baby was emotional for many members of the medical team. “Outside my own children, this is the most excited I’ve ever been about any baby being born,” says Dr. Gregory J. McKenna, a transplant surgeon at Baylor. “I just started to cry.”
A donor’s gift
Taylor Siler, 36, a registered nurse in the Dallas area, donated her uterus to the woman who recently gave birth. Siler wasn’t always certain she wanted to have children, but she says deciding to get pregnant was one of her best decisions. “Once they lay that baby in your arms,” Siler says. “Your life changes forever.”
Siler, who has two boys aged 6 and 4, came across a news segment about Baylor’s uterus transplant program. She and her husband had already decided they were not going to have any more children, and she wanted to offer someone else a shot at motherhood. “I have family members who struggled to have babies, and it’s not fair,” says Siler. “I just think that if we can give more people that option, that’s an awesome thing.”
Siler went through extensive screening about both her physical and mental health before getting approval for the trial. Participating required surgery and about 12 weeks of recovery. Baylor says it typically takes about five hours for the wombs to be removed from the living donors, and another five to transplant.
Though she did not know the woman who received her uterus, Siler and the recipient exchanged letters on the day of the surgery, and the recipient sent Siler another letter to let her know when she was pregnant. Baylor informed Siler this week that the woman had given birth. “I’ve just been crying and getting teary thinking about it, “ says Siler, who had not yet met the new mother when she spoke to TIME. “I think about her every day and I probably will for the rest of my life.”
How a uterus transplant works
The women in the clinical trial are transplanted with a uterus from either a living or deceased donor. The woman who gave birth received her transplant from Siler, who was a so-called “altruistic” living donor: a stranger who volunteered to donate her uterus to a woman without one. So far, Baylor says they’ve had over 70 women express interest in donating their uterus.
Baylor will complete a total of 10 uterus transplants as part of its first trial. So far the hospital has completed eight. At least three have failed. The hospital has confirmed to Time that there is another woman in the trial who is pregnant, using a living donor uterus.
The baby's father rests his hand on the child. Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.
Baylor’s uterus transplant program is one of a handful to launch in the United States in recent years, and it’s the first to use both living and deceased donors. Successful uterus transplants from live donors have taken place in Sweden — a medical team at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg pioneered the first uterus transplant trial that resulted in eight births. This first birth at Baylor is the first to replicate that success.
Dr. Johannesson was part of the original uterus transplant team and has since moved to Texas in order to work on the Baylor program. “We were very proud of the first birth in Sweden,” she says. “But this birth is what’s going to make the field grow, because this is the first time this has been replicated anywhere else. This step is equally, if not even more, important.”
The recipients in the clinical trial are between the ages of 20 to 35, and the donors must be between ages 30 to 60. “When you donate a kidney, you do it to help someone live longer and get off dialysis,” says Dr. Testa. “For these women, they are donating an experience.”
Most of the women in the trial have moved to the Dallas area in order to undergo the procedures and the many follow up visits and tests. Once the women in the trial are transplanted with the uterus, they wait to recover and achieve menstruation, usually about four weeks from transplant. Women whose transplant is successful can then attempt in vitro fertilization (IVF). (The women in the trial have functioning ovaries that are not attached to their wombs, which is why IVF is required to get pregnant.)
Uterus transplants are expensive, with some estimates putting the cost at up to $500,000. Like other infertility treatments, it’s very rare that an insurance company would cover the procedure, which is largely viewed as elective. Baylor covered the cost of the first 10 transplants in the clinical trial, but the medical team is now seeking funding—largely through donations from institutions and private donors—in order to continue. The team says many more transplants need to be done before it could be provided as a standard treatment. “The reality is that it’s going to be very difficult for many women to afford this,” says Testa.
The baby's feet in the father's hands. Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas
Renewed hope
Last year, when Baylor began the trial, Testa told TIME that the study would not be deemed a success unless the transplants resulted in a birth. Compared to other transplants that he regularly performs, like liver or kidneys, where surgeons know within minutes if the organ is working, Testa says waiting through the pregnancy after uterus transplant can feel excruciating.
“I was already nervous when my wife was pregnant, and this felt worse, like it was my pregnancy,” says Testa.
Since the procedure requires an otherwise healthy person to undergo multiple surgeries and take powerful medication, women in uterus transplant trials often say they experience comments from people asking why they don’t opt for surrogacy or adoption. “A lot of people underestimate the impact that infertility can have on a person’s wellbeing,” says Johannesson. “It can have such a profound impact.”
Baylor says they do not view uterus transplants as a replacement for other approaches like adoption or surrogacy, but as another option for women and their partners.
Baylor will continue to follow the health of the baby as part of the study. The goal is for the birth to mark the beginning of a new field of infertility treatment research, rather than be an outlier.
“For the girl who is getting the [infertility] diagnosis now, it’s not hopeless,” says Kristin Posey Wallis, a uterine transplant nurse at Baylor who works closely with women and their donors. “There’s hope.”
Contact us at [email protected]. |
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Killjoy university chiefs have banned students from getting free sombreros - claiming they're 'racist'.
Students were being given free sombreros by a local Tex-Mex restaurant in a bid to drum up business , before uni chiefs ordered them to stop - because it violates strict cultural appropriation rules.
The University of East Anglia student union officials even took the big floppy hats from students at the Freshers' Fair, because non-Mexicans wearing the traditional item of headwear could be seen as offensive, according to a new initiative.
(Image: Getty)
The Union has stated that the handing out of sombreros breached a key advertising policy which was sent to all stall holders before the event, prohibiting any use of stereotypical imagery in advertising.
Read more: Floyd Mayweather laughed off "shocking" racist tirade against Manny Pacquiao, says former manager
It read: "Discriminatory or stereotypical language or imagery aimed towards to any group or individual based on characteristics will not be permitted as part of our advertising."
The policy specifies 15 types of discrimination, some of which include colour, ethnic origin and nationality.
The sombreros were seen as racist and a form of cultural appropriation, despite the fact that the restaurant's website says it offers a "Tex-Mex experience".
When Pedros were asked to stop handing out the sombreros they were amicable in doing so, although some students were less impressed.
Read more: Student commutes 1,000 miles from POLAND to London because it SAVES him money
Speaking to student newspaper The Tab, one first-year who asked not to be named, said: "It's ridiculous - it's a comedy hat, not some sort of sacred religious dress.
"Who is going to get offended? Speedy Gonzales?"
But the Student Union defended their stance on the floppy hat.
Campaigns and Democracy officer Chris Jarvis said: "We know that when it comes to cultural appropriation the issues can sometimes be difficult to understand and many don't realise that they may be about to cause offence or break a policy.
"So we're discussing internally how we can improve our briefing to both external organisations and our own members so that people aren't caught out at the last minute."
He added: "At the Student Union we want all members feel safe and accepted, so at all events we try to ensure that there is no behaviour, language or imagery which could be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or ableist."
Pedros manager Matthew Ward was unavailable to comment today, but a worker at the restaurant said: "It's ridiculous." |
Vegans rejoice! In a big win for plant-based food advocates everywhere, my dear friend Chef Mama T won the 2015 Chili Pepper Festival chili cookoff contest hosted by the Aloha Farm Lovers Market in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Mama T didn’t tell the tasters at the market (over 600 people) that her recipe was vegan, and her awesome recipe beat out two pretty famous local chefs and their meat-based recipes at the event!
The recipe is a secret (for now!) but she has shared a few of her winning ingredients with us. She started with a mixture of chilies, tomatoes, onions, green peppers and added a selection of meat alternatives: Field Roast Mexican Chipotle Sausage, Tofurkey’s Smokey Maple Bacon Tempeh (both favorites around our house too), Sweet Earth bacon, and veggie beef crumbles. But her favorite new chili ingredient is pureed, roasted eggplant. She says, “The eggplant added a sweet, creamy consistency that was indescribable.” When the judges asked her to share the ingredients with the crowd, she told them her secret was that there was no meat in the chili!
Chef Mama T is an activist and chef on Oahu, where she keeps busy helping the community enjoy delicious plant-based foods in dozens of ways. She leads the Community Outreach program for Down to Earth Natural and Organic, sharing recipes, cooking classes and workshops with the community, and in this role she hosts a cooking segment once a month on a local news station called Healthy and Delicious with Down to Earth.
In her other time, she is a passionate reggae singer sharing the stage with her beautiful family and lots of friends. She also works as the Assistant Director for the non-profit Native Like Water, teaching food as medicine to the younger generation. Mama T also teaches a free class on Molokai once a month called ‘Ai A Ola or Eat to Live that gives the Molokai community a chance to learn about the importance of organically grown food through interaction and food sharing. She also has her own cooking show called Ital Kitchen, teaching everyone that ‘ital is vital!’
I formally worked with Mama T at Down to Earth, and have shared many of her other delicious recipes on our sister site, Vibrant Wellness Journal:
Raw Vegan Tacos
Raw Caramel Apple Cheesecake
Vegan Tuna Salad
Macadamia Nut Whipped Cream
And Mama T is not alone in her win: vegan chefs have been winning cooking contests all over the country. One of the first big ones was Chef Chloe Coscarelli, who won Food Network’s Cupcake Wars in 2010 with her selection of four vegan cupcakes. A year later two vegan chefs (and two mainstream bakers) faced off in another Cupcake Wars, with one of the vegan chefs winning. Winning baker Kim Garr of C’est La V Bakeshop told VegNews that seeing vegan chefs going mainstream is helping to expose people to the vegan lifestyle. “I hope it makes people curious and piques their interest and that it starts changing the way people look at food.”
More recently, VegNews reports that in August 2015, another vegan chef won big at the Iowa State Fair! Anna Starostinetskaya writes that the Iowa State fair hosted three vegan categories this year that collected over 10,000 entries! “Peanut Butter and Chocolate Truffle Pie won gold for the Vibrant Vegan category, a No Bake Peanut Butter Cup Bars won the number-one dessert overall in the Raw Vegan category, and dishes such as corn chowder and wild rice salad competed in the Vegan Miscellaneous division, which awarded extra points for using gluten-free and sugar-free ingredients.”
I can only hope that all those shoppers and tasters at the farmer’s market last Saturday – and at state fairs, street food festivals, and beyond – have started to look at their OWN food in a different way too. Thanks to Mama T for bring plant-based food to even more people– so excited for your win, Mama T! Congratulations!
Republished with permission from Vibrant Wellness Journal. |
TUKWILA, Washington - For the third straight year the Seattle Sounders FC will play in the semifinals of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.
Nate Jaqua, Fredy Montero and Lamar Neagle scored for the Sounders and Terry Boss made five saves to lift the Sounders to a 3-1 win over the LA Galaxy at Starfire, giving the club ten straight wins in the Open Cup.
“Our guys really respond to the fans and the intimate atmosphere here. I think it’s tremendous and it gives the fans a chance to see it up close and personal,” Sounders FC head coach Sigi Schmid said, noting the crowd of 4,322 at cozy Starfire. “Our goal is always whatever we enter, we’re going to try to win.”
Dating back to the USL era of the Seattle Sounders, Seattle has reached the Open Cup semifinals five straight years, with the USL club falling in the semifinals in 2007 to FC Dallas and 2008 to the Charleston Battery.
Wednesday night was no different for the Sounders FC, who jumped on the Galaxy early and kept the momentum of a nine-game unbeaten streak in all competitions rolling to the final whistle.
Twice in the game’s first three minutes, Seattle got the ball into the Galaxy’s box with a threat to score, only to be turned away by Galaxy goalkeeper Josh Saunders. In their second effort, Jaqua headed down a lobbed pass from Montero and got it past Saunders, only to have it hit the inside of the post and bounce out for Saunders to make the snag.
In the fourth minute, though, Jaqua made sure nothing would keep him out of the net.
Jaqua was timing his run by waiting on the shoulder of the Galaxy defense. When Pat Noonan slipped the ball past the defense, Jaqua was one-on-one with Saunders and caught him off-guard with a left-footed shot that beat him inside the right post for a 1-0 lead.
By halftime, Jaqua had four shots, but was only able to get the one goal.
“I was able to get that first one early and I had a couple of other ones I would have liked to put away, but that’s how it goes sometimes,” said Jaqua, who went on to set up Montero‘s goal in the 25th minute.
Jaqua took control of the ball at the top of the box, then rolled it across to Montero. Gathering the ball on his right foot, Montero quickly switched it back to his left and fired a left-footed shot to beat Saunders for a 2-0 lead.
LA was able to pull one back in the 40th minute, though, when Chris Brichall got free up the right side and crossed the ball into the box. Adam Cristman charged into the middle and knocked it into the open side of the net to make it 2-1.
After the Sounders dominated the first 40 minutes of action, the Galaxy’s goal cued the start of a much more evenly played final 50 minutes.
However even it was though, Seattle was still able to add on to their lead in the second half.
Alvaro Fernandez led Neagle on a run up the right side and Neagle pounded a shot across the body of Saunders and into the net for a 3-1 lead.
“Flaco played a great ball, I ran across the back line to kind of keep an eye on a guy,” Neagle said. “He played a great ball and I just got a flick on it and it went in the side netting.”
The Sounders held on the rest of the way and rewarded the standing room only crowd with a thrilling victory that sends them to an Open Cup semifinal date with FC Dallas, who topped Real Salt Lake 2-0 on Tuesday night.
More information on the semifinal match, which will be played at Starfire in August, will be made available soon on SoundersFC.com.
Scoring
Sounders FC - Nate Jaqua (Pat Noonan) 4; Fredy Montero (Nate Jaqua) 25; Lamar Neagle (Alvaro Fernandez) 74;
LA Galaxy - Adam Cristman (Chris Birchall) 40;
Discipline
Sounders FC - Osvaldo Alonso (caution) 22; Fredy Montero (caution) 54; Jeff Parke (caution) 55; Mike Fucito (caution) 90.
LA Galaxy - Paolo Cardozo (caution) 59.
Lineups
Sounders FC - Terry Boss, Zach Scott, Jeff Parke, Pat Ianni, Leo Gonzalez, Pat Noonan (Erik Friberg 64), Osvaldo Alonso, Alvaro Fernandez, Lamar Neagle, Nate Jaqua (Roger Levesque 71), Fredy Montero (Mike Fucito 79).
LA Galaxy - Josh Saunders, Bryan Jordan, A.J. DeLaGarza, Gregg Berhalter, Todd Dunivant, Chris Birchall, Michael Stephens, Junín (Jovan Kirovski 78), Landon Donovan (Hector Jimenez 75), Paolo Cardozo (Miguel Lopez 64), Adam Cristman. |
This excellent blog article http://gainsfromtrade.org/2014/01/31/sloppy-economics-and-part-time-austrians/ got me thinking.
One sees on the internet critiques of AE to the effect that plenty of Austrians contradict themselves.
On the one hand, Austrians claim that historical data never proves anything. Here’s Mises in HA, for example:
The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event being equal to a case in which the element concerned did not change. Historical experience as an experience of complex phenomena does not provide us with facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this term to signify isolated events tested in experiments.
The information conveyed by historical experience cannot be used as building material for the construction of theories and the prediction of future events. Every historical experience is open to various interpretations, and is in fact interpreted in different ways.
The postulates of positivism and kindred schools of metaphysics are therefore illusory. It is impossible to reform the sciences of human action according to the pattern of physics and the other natural sciences. There is no means to establish an a posteriori theory of human conduct and social events. History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the manner in which the natural sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the ground of laboratory experiments. Neither experimental verification nor experimental falsification of a general proposition are possible in this field.
Complex phenomena in the production of which various causal chains are interlaced cannot test any theory. Such phenomena, on the contrary, become intelligible only through an interpretation in terms of theories previously developed from other sources.
In the case of natural phenomena the interpretation of an event must not be at variance with the theories satisfactorily verified by experiments. In the case of historical events there is no such restriction. Commentators would be free to resort to quite arbitrary explanations. Where there is something to explain, the human mind has never been at a loss to invent ad hoc some imaginary theories, lacking any logical justification.
A limitation similar to that which the experimentally tested theories enjoin upon the attempts to interpret and elucidate individual physical, chemical, and physiological events is provided by praxeology in the field of human history. Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. They are both logically and temporally antecedent to any comprehension of historical facts. They are a necessary requirement of any intellectual grasp of historical events. Without them we should not be able to see in the course of events anything else than kaleidoscopic change and chaotic muddle.
TL;DR: The real world of economic activity is too complex for anything to be gained by looking at the data. There are always multiple explanations for everything that happens, and no way of proving [from within the data] which one is right.
So that’s one idea you find in AE, and yet, it’s contradicted every single day by Austrians, who go ahead and explain events based on their theories. What a minute. What’s the point of doing that, when there are a million other theories that explain the events equally well?
Take, for example, America’s Great Depression, by Rothbard. He elaborates on how the principles of AE explain the Great Depression. But aren’t there, according to AE, too many variables for any one explanation to be proven the right one? So why bother writing the book at all?
The article linked to above makes the same mistake. He claims to prove from data that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. But Austrians say that it is impossible to prove anything from data!
Here are some thoughts on these deep matters.
Let’s take a look at what a great mathematician said about mathematical knowledge, which is in a similar situation in some respects to AE. As is common knowledge, a mathematician will not consider something proven unless it is proven by deductive reasoning from first principles. He considers empirical data as totally useless when it comes to proving anything. You can measure a million triangles, draw a million diagrams, and he will reject them all as proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, for example. And if you say you found a triangle that is a counterexample to the theorem, he will scoff at you.
For instance, modern math claims it has a proof that one cannot trisect an angle with straightedge and compass. There was a time when people would publish constructions for doing so, and the mathematician scoffed before even bothering to read them. Of course there will be a mistake somewhere. My theory says so!
And yet, here is the renowned George Polya talking about mathematical knowledge:
Can our knowledge in mathematics be based on formal proofs
alone? This is a philosophical question which we cannot
debate here.
It is certain that your knowledge, or my
knowledge, or your students’ knowledge in mathematics is not
based on formal proofs alone. If there is any solid
knowledge at all, it has a broad experimental basis, and this
basis is broadened by each problem whose result is
successfully tested.
Wait, what? It’s certain? Solid knowledge of math has a broad experimental basis? What is he talking about? Each problem brings us broader knowledge? That’s not what they told me. Once Pythagoras published his proof, they tell you in math class, it was game over. No need to test anything.
And yet, when a wise man writes something that sounds wild, it behooves to try and make sense of it.
Psychologists sometimes say, when to comes to knowledge, that it is of two types. There’s knowing something, and there’s knowing something in your very bones. Humans are made in such a way that mere intellectual knowledge is a totally different thing than knowledge that springs from an integration of all that goes on in you, including all of your feelings, your past experiences, your deep emotional insights, and your values. [Taken from T. I. Rubin]
When it comes to psychology, that is obvious. But Polya is telling us that the same is true with math.
Here’s Angus Taylor, author of a respected Advanced Calculus textbook. He writes in his introduction:
Learning in calculus is cumulative. It is also evolutionary. The student does not coma all at once to a one and only correct understanding of new ideas. At each new level of his maturity he can gain a fresh appreciation of things he has already been taught.
So what can take away from all this?
It remains true that data does not serve as proof of economic theories. So that an article that claims data proves that minimum wage laws create unemployment is mistaken. But although it does not prove anything in a strict sense, the data serves an educational purpose. Seeing it, we feel a little deeper in our bones what has already been proven by praxeology. Aha! just as AE predicted. Are there other possible explanations? Yes. Is that data a proof? No. But it’s nice to see that the real world seems to fit the pattern AE predicts for it. It increases our confidence, our knowledge of the bones, adds to our economic experience, everything the above wise men have talked about.
So Rothbard’s book, and any other Austrian exploration of real world data, is a valuable contribution. It does not prove, but it reinforces. It explains. It adds to our confidence that our intellectual deductions are right. To paraphrase Prof. Polya, it is certain that your knowledge, or my knowledge, in AE is not based on formal proofs alone. If there is any solid knowledge at all, it has a broad experimental basis, and this basis is broadened by each excursion into the historical data whose result is consistent with AE.
[And of course, it teaches us about the Austrian take on why there was a Great Depression.] |
“It appears they must not have double checked that all the fake devices were off the bus…”
Mikael Thalen
Prison Planet.com
July 21, 2014
A business district in Kent, Wash. was evacuated Monday morning after a suspicious bag was discovered on a Metro bus.
Police, two SWAT teams and a bomb squad arrived on scene and immediately began removing passengers after receiving a call around 7 a.m.
After closing down the surrounding streets, police spent three hours reaching the bag, at one point using two armored vehicles to surround the bus.
Keith Eldrige, a reporter with Komo 4 News, noticed the situation’s abnormality from the beginning.
SWAT vehicles now front & back of Metro bus. This is not your normal suspicious backpack episode. #liveonkomo pic.twitter.com/0gsMfsp9yf — Keith Eldridge (@KeithKOMO4) July 21, 2014
Only moments after discovering the bag, officers shut down all surrounding air space, barring news helicopters and aircraft from flying near the scene. Incredibly, after a bomb disposal robot shot through the device, police claimed the item was a fake pipe bomb used during a training exercise the prior week.
GOTTA BE EMBARRASSED: suspicious device left over from bomb training exercise. 3 hours of business lost. #liveonkomo — Keith Eldridge (@KeithKOMO4) July 21, 2014
According to Q13FOX News, DB Gates of the King County Sheriff’s Office said that “it appears they must not have double checked that all the fake devices were off the bus before putting it back in service.”
One woman from the area claimed that several federal agencies had arrived on scene as well, although media outlets made no mention.
“The FBI, homeland security and ATF all on scene,” the woman said. “More to this than they are admitting.”
Although the scene quickly returned to normal, questions still remain on how the device went unnoticed by police and bus passengers for an entire week.
“Whooops, poor inventory control for all this ‘military’ training tech!” another resident commented.
The training program was not initially revealed to the public. Infowars was unable to reach the Kent Police Department for questions.
This article was posted: Monday, July 21, 2014 at 5:19 pm
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Origin and usage Edit
Usage outside Vietnam Edit
The prevalence of Nguyễn as a family name in Vietnam extends to outside the country, due to numerous and widespread Vietnamese emigrants. Outside Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics, as “Nguyen”. Nguyen is the seventh most common family name in Australia[8] (second only to Smith in the Melbourne phone books[9]), and the 54th most common in France.[10] In the United States, it is the 57th most-common family name according to the 2000 Census, as well as the most common exclusively East Asian surname,[11] a major leap from its 229th-place ranking in 1990.[12] It is ranked 124th in the U.S. Social Security Index.[13] It is the 56th most common surname in Norway[14] and tops the foreign name list in the Czech Republic.[15]
Subfamilies Edit
In Vietnamese tradition, people are referred to by their personal names and not by their family names even in formal situations. Thus, there is not as much confusion about who is being referred to as one might expect. However, some groups distinguish themselves from other Nguyễn by passing elements of their names that are usually considered middle names to their children. This practice is more common with male than with female children. Some of the prominent subgroups within the Nguyễn family are, in no particular order: Nguyễn Phước or Nguyễn Phúc: Surname for the Nguyễn Lords family members, and all members of the Nguyễn dynasty emperors.
Nguyễn Đình
Nguyễn Hữu
Nguyễn Cảnh
Nguyễn Khắc
Nguyễn Tiến
Nguyễn Đức
Nguyễn Minh
Nguyễn Ngọc
Nguyễn Văn
Nguyễn Quang
Nguyễn Xuân
Tôn Thất (Tôn Nữ for females): Surname for members of the Nguyễn Dynasty royal family that were not direct descendants of the Emperor.
Pronunciation Edit
The Vietnamese pronunciation is [ŋwǐˀən] () in northern dialect or [ŋwĩəŋ] () in southern dialect[citation needed], in both cases, in one syllable. [ŋ] is the velar nasal found in the middle of the English word “singer”.[16] Unlike in Vietnamese, the consonant is never found in initial position in English. [w] is the semivowel found in the English word “win”. [iə] is a rising diphthong. Its sound of this diphthong is similar to the diphthong /ɪə/ found in British English Received Pronunciation in the word “ear”. Finally, [n] occurs in the English word “net”. However, Nguyễn is also pronounced with a tone in Vietnamese. In Southern Vietnam, Nguyễn is pronounced with the dipping tone: the pitch of the voice first drops from a mid level to the bottom of the speaker’s range of pitch and then rises back to mid. In Northern Vietnam, it is pronounced with the creaky rising tone: the pitch of the voice rises from mid level to the top of the speaker’s range of pitch, but with constricted vocal cords, akin to a glottal stop in the middle of the vowel. See Vietnamese tones. The pronunciation of Nguyễn is commonly approximated by English speakers as [wɪn].[17][18]
Notable people Edit
See also Edit |
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.status=*
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=*
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=*
adb shell settings put global policy_control null*
Updates: (15/5/2017):
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.full=apps,- "app location" ,- "another app location"
Notes
com.whatsapp
Credits
+ Immersive in all apps but with certain apps having Status bar not hidden
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,:immersive.status=apps,- "app location" ,- "second app location"
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,:immersive.status=apps,-com.whatsapp
Notes
Credits
+ Immersive in all apps but with certain apps having Navigation bar not hidden
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.status=apps,:immersive.navigation=apps,- "app location" ,- "second app location"
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.status=apps,:immersive.navigation=apps,-com.whatsapp
Notes
Updates: (17/5/2017):
Apps Identified to not play well with navigation and status bar hidden and how to exclude them(To be updated accordingly):
Apps List:
Code:
adb shell settings put global policy_control immersive.navigation=apps,-com.google.android.youtube,:immersive.status=apps,-com.whatsapp,-com.tencent.mm,-com.google.android.youtube,-com.google.android.talk
Hi guys, i was searching for a way to hide the navigation bar without any app that will require you buying it or it consuming battery and after finding a couple of threads on the topic i thought of sharing my findings and also as a reference to go back to in case i forget how to. This is also good for eliminating or reducing screen burn caused by the bars on Amoled screens.Credits go to @ jplempka Type the following commands in adb/fastboot environment (adb shell) on your PC after connecting the phone in file transfer mode and usb debugging is on:--------------------------------------------1. You can get the app location by going to "system/data/data" using any file browser with root, the location should start with the app folder name "com.appname"Ex:2. Remove quotation marks(" ")when adding the location of the app also add an apostrophe(,) if you are adding more than one app and when typing the code there is no space after the apostrophe.Ex: https://forum.xda-developers.com/sho...61&postcount=5 : @ wilhexm , @ rizalkhoiruddin Ex:1. You can get the app location by going to "system/data/data" using any file browser with root, the location should start with the app folder name "com.appname" ex: com.whatsapp2. Remove quotation marks(" ")when adding the location of the app also add an apostrophe(,) if you are adding more than one app and when typing the code there is no space after the apostrophe: @ beatschubser Ex:1. You can get the app location by going to "system/data/data" using any file browser with root, the location should start with the app folder name "com.appname" ex: com.whatsapp2. Remove quotation marks(" ")when adding the location of the app also add an apostrophe(,) if you are adding more than one app and when typing the code there is no space after the apostrophe.By the way this method works on all rom versions i have tested it on Nougat and all commands work. Goodluck-------------------------------------------------------------------*Whatsapp(When typing the status bar needs to be there to see what others wrote at the same time)*Wechat(When typing the status bar needs to be there to see what others wrote at the same time)*Youtube(When typing the status bar and navigation bar need to be there)*Hangouts(When typing the status bar needs to be there to see what others wrote at the same time)------------------------------: If you want to use these commands directly on your phone without a PC you need first to be rooted, next use any shell terminal to insert the code but remove the "adb shell" part.So in the terminal app for example if you wanted to hide both bars you type the following: |
Cards Against Humanity, the wildly popular party game, has had its fair share of imitators since being launched via a Kickstarter campaign back in 2011, but an unofficial Toronto version of the game (which many argue is itself based on Apples to Apples) is a new development that might interest local experts and those who've played the original one so often that it's impossible be shocked by it anymore.
The work of Scotty Graham, who also designed those Rob Ford Valentines so many of us snickered at, from what I can gather, the Toronto-fied game is decidedly more PG than Cards Against Humanity, but perhaps that's to be expected given the municipal subject matter. Or not. You can count on a few Rob Ford funnies to dial up the lewd factor and plenty of opportunities to make fun of our various neighbourhoods.
Cards About Toronto costs $25 and is available through the designer's website. If you're looking to purchase Cards Against Humanity in Toronto, head on over to Snakes and Lattes. |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for her work in 1979
There has been outrage in India over a Hindu leader's comment that Mother Teresa's charity work had one objective - to convert the poor to Christianity.
Mohan Bhagwat is the powerful head of Hindu nationalist organisation RSS, which is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government.
Opposition politicians criticised the remark and many Indians took to social media to express their outrage.
The comments come days after PM Modi vowed to protect religious freedom.
The prime minister's comments followed a string of attacks on churches in Delhi.
Mother Teresa, who worked for nearly 50 years to help the poorest of the poor in Kolkata (Calcutta), founded the Missionaries of Charity and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in 1979.
India too recognised her contribution by awarding her Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India), the country's highest civilian honour.
Motivation questioned
"Mother Teresa's service would have been good. But it used to have one objective, to convert the person, who was being served, into a Christian," Mr Bhagwat said while speaking at a function in Rajasthan on Monday
"The question is not about conversion but if it is done in the name of service, then that service gets devalued," he added.
The comment sparked a howl of protest from Christian leaders, opposition politicians and ordinary Indians.
Delhi Catholic Archdiocese Father Savarimuthu said it was "a sad statement".
"Mother Teresa had dedicated her life to the destitute," CNN-IBN quoted him as saying.
The main opposition Congress party demanded an apology from the ruling BJP and said they would raise this issue in parliament.
"Mother Teresa shouldn't be insulted like this," Congress leader Rajiv Shukla said.
MP Derek O'Brien of the Trinamul Congress party said the statement was "condemnable".
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took to Twitter to protest against the comment:
Image copyright Arvind Kejriwal
Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai "wished" there were "many more Mothers":
Image copyright Rajdeep
There was, however, some support for the RSS chief's comments on Twitter: |
Despite the Day Pass Hike, Divvy Is Already Making Money, Not Losing It
In Friday’s Chicago Tribune article about the impending price hike for Divvy day passes, transportation reporter Jon Hilkevitch implied that the extra revenue is needed because the bike-share system has been a money loser. In doing so, he ignored a statement he received from the Chicago Department of Transportation noting that, when you factor in sponsorship and ad money, Divvy is actually generating revenue for the city.
Starting this Wednesday, the price of a 24-hour pass will increase from $7 to $9.95. CDOT and Motivate, the Divvy concessionaire, expect this will generate an additional $800,000 per year. The cost of an annual membership will remain at $75, a steal when you consider that a year of monthly CTA passes costs $1,200.
The day pass price hike will largely affect visitors to Chicago, since about two-thirds of the passes are purchased by out-of-towners, according to CDOT. 86 percent of the system’s roughly 27,400 annual members live within the city limits. The $9.95 price for a 24-hour pass also puts Divvy on par with New York City’s Citi Bike, which is also run by Motivate, while an annual membership in NYC costs almost twice as much, at $149.
Hilkevitch spun the news to suggest the higher day pass rate is a fiscal austerity measure for a bike-share system that is hemorrhaging cash. “The daily fee to rent a Divvy bike will jump by more than 40 percent next week because of a deficit and escalating costs to run the expanding bicycle-sharing system,” he wrote. “Divvy has yet to steer clear of red ink.”
The reporter notes that the program’s stated goals include financial self-sufficiency, as well as generating surplus revenue that would help fund other bike infrastructure. He points out that the system, which launched in June of 2013, posted a $171,000 operating loss for the remainder of that year, and a $500,000 operating loss in 2014.
Hilkevitch’s piece is largely based on a statement provided by CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld. She said the department is raising the day pass price “in order to maintain and build on Divvy’s success and maintain the high level of service that our users are accustomed to.”
Scheinfeld acknowledged that the original projections for how much revenue would come in from usage fees, and how much it would cost to run the system, were not 100-percent accurate. “Divvy was launched at a time when big cities were just beginning to launch bike share programs and many of the financial predictions we made were based on other industries, without having a direct precedent to look to in the bike share world.”
However, she also told Hilkevitch in no uncertain terms that Divvy is in the black, thanks to its $12.5 million, five-year sponsorship deal with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, plus income from advertising placards on the docking stations. “The overall system revenue… brings in income to Divvy and the city’s bike programs. Overall Divvy is not losing money. CDOT is investing the revenue from Divvy in bike infrastructure improvements such as bike lanes, bicycle safety education and other programs that benefit the entire City of Chicago, not just Divvy users.”
Another thing Hilkevitch got wrong in his piece, according to CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey, is the way a day pass discount program for Chicago residents will work. The Trib piece initially stated that residents will be able to purchase $7 passes at ward offices and libraries. Instead, these locations will distribute a limited number of coupons that will allow residents to buy a pass at a Divvy station at the $7 rate. The coupons are good through October 15.
While we’re on the subject of misinformation about Divvy in the mainstream media, WTTW recently posted the following statement about the bike-share program’s new equity initiative, Divvy for Everyone:
Chicago residents with incomes below [$35,310] (a figure that is below 300 percent of the federal poverty level) who don’t have a credit or debit card will qualify for a $5 annual membership, which regularly costs $75.
Actually, even people who make $35K and have a credit card are eligible for the program, Claffey told me.
That begs the question, is it right for a single person with a credit card who makes anywhere near $17.50 an hour to take advantage of a program designed for low-income Chicagoans, and to be exempted from the usual credit card requirement? It’s likely that thousands of existing Divvy members fit that profile. There’s a catch though – you have to be first-time member to qualify for the deep discount.
Hopefully, not too many middle-class residents who could easily afford the full membership fee will choose to game the system. That way, Divvy for Everyone can best serve its intended purpose: providing access to a convenient and healthy transportation option for the Chicagoans who need it most. |
France and five African countries to deploy 5,000 more troops to confront the threat from armed groups.
Emmanuel Macron has been president of France for just two months - and has already made his second visit to Mali, where French troops and UN peacekeepers are fighting armed groups.
Macron said the strategy is not working. He wants an African force to help confront what he calls "Islamic terrorism".
He is calling for countries in the Sahel region of northwest Africa to contribute 5,000 soldiers.
Mali hosted leaders from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger who are promising troops to confront armed groups at home.
They will be tasked with wiping out fighters Macron describes as "terrorists, thugs and murderers".
But more money is needed to train and equip the soldiers in hostile territory.
Will the new regional force work? And is a bigger military presence the answer to the threat from al-Qaeda and others?
Presenter: Hazem Sika
Guests:
Marie-Roger Biloa - Editor of Africa International
Adama Gaye - Former director of information for ECOWAS
Tiebile Drame - Former foreign minister of Mali
Source: Al Jazeera News |
Lawsuit: Wide-Awake Surgery Led to Death
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Writer
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. —
Family members say the 73-year-old Baptist minister was driven to kill himself by the traumatic experience of being awake during surgery but unable to move or cry out in pain.
Sizemore's death has drawn attention to a little-discussed phenomenon called anesthesia awareness that some experts say may happen to 20,000 to 40,000 patients a year in this country. Typically they feel pain, pressure or other discomfort during surgery because they are not adequately anesthetized.
The causes can include doctor errors, faulty equipment or medical conditions so severe that the patient cannot be safely put under deep anesthesia.
"It's the first time I know of anyone succeeding in taking their own lives because of this, but suicidal thoughts are not all that uncommon" among such patients, said Carol Weihrer, president of the Virginia-based Anesthesia Awareness Campaign, which she founded after her own experience with anesthesia awareness.
Sizemore, a clergyman and former coal miner from the town of Beckley, was admitted to Raleigh General Hospital on Jan. 19, 2006, for exploratory surgery to diagnose the cause of abdominal pain, according to a lawsuit filed March 13.
An anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist who worked for Raleigh Anesthesia Associates gave Sizemore paralyzing drugs to prevent his muscles from jerking and twitching during the surgery, the complaint alleges. But it says they failed to give him general anesthesia to render him unconscious until 16 minutes after the first cut into his abdomen. The family says he suffered excruciating pain.
Moreover, the lawsuit says, Sizemore was never told that he hadn't been properly anesthetized, and was tormented by doubts about whether his memories were real.
The lawsuit, filed against Raleigh Anesthesia Associates by two of his daughters, goes on to say that in the two weeks after his surgery, Sizemore couldn't sleep, refused to be left alone, suffered nightmares and complained people were trying to bury him alive.
On Feb. 2, 2006, Sizemore shot himself to death. His family says he had no history of psychological distress before his surgery. The abdominal pains were apparently related to gall bladder problems, according to the family.
"Being helpless and being in that situation can obviously be tough on people's psychological well-being," said Tony O'Dell, a lawyer for the family.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Calls to Raleigh Anesthesia Associates were referred to a lawyer who had no comment Monday.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which accredits hospitals, says studies show that anesthesia awareness may happen in 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of operations involving general anesthesia in this country.
Half of all such patients also report mental distress after the surgery, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
In 2005, the American Society of Anesthesiologists adopted guidelines calling for doctors to follow a checklist to make sure anesthesia is delivered properly. The ASA stopped short of endorsing brain-monitoring machines as standard equipment, saying doctors should decide on a case-by-case basis whether such devices are necessary.
"It could be that someday everybody who gets anesthesia will have a brain-wave monitor," said Dr. Robert Johnstone, a professor of anesthesiology at the West Virginia University School of Medicine.
Johnstone said such monitors are used at WVU, but in conjunction with other equipment anesthesiologists use to measure such things as blood pressure and body temperature. When such monitors and tests are used properly, he said, the chances of someone being awake are slim.
It was not clear whether Raleigh General uses such monitors. Calls to the hospital were not immediately returned.
Weihrer said that recognition of the experience and psychological counseling are often the only thing patients want.
"The reason people sue is because they want to be acknowledged," said Weihrer, who received a settlement after her anesthesia failed during a five-hour eye operation in 1998. "They don't want to be told, `You weren't awake; it was a dream.'"
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
Rhino Entertainment has reissued four of Joy Division’s iconic albums on heavyweight 180 gram vinyl, complete with sleeves replicating the original album artwork in painstaking detail. Paste is now teaming with Rhino to give you an opportunity to win a complete set of these groundbreaking albums, Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Still and Substance.
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the band’s classic “Love Will Tear Us Apart” single, a landmark in the history of a four-piece band that “changed the landscape of alternative rock and helped shape the sound and mood of the music that followed in the band’s wake,” in the words of Rhino. Unknown Pleasures and Closer, with classic tracks such as “She’s Lost Control” and “Isolation,” come from before the tragic death of singer Ian Curtis, while Still comes with a deluxe gatefold sleeve and includes a mixture of studio and live recordings. Substance, meanwhile, features all of the landmark non-album singles such as “Atmosphere,” “Transmission” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” This new edition of Substance also features the expanded tracklist from the original CD release, plus two additional songs: “As You Said” and the Pennine version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” both of which are making their vinyl debuts.
Contest winner will receive: (1) Unknown Pleasures 180g LP, (1) Closer 180g LP, (1) Still 180g 2xLP in gatefold sleeve (1) Substance 2015 180g 2xLP, (1) exclusive Joy Division poster
Enter to win here. Entries must be received by Aug. 31. |
State Rep. Bill Kramer (R-Waukesha) was accused three years ago of sexually assaulting an aide to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, but neither Johnson, his top aide or a Waukesha County GOP official took the matter to police. Credit: Associated Press
SHARE Sen. Ron Johnson
By of the
Madison — U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, his chief of staff and a Waukesha County GOP official were all told three years ago of allegations that a then-aide to the senator had been sexually assaulted by state Rep. Bill Kramer, but none of them took the matter to the police or Assembly leaders.
The woman told her supervisor in Johnson's office and a number of other people, but decided at the time to have her attorney send a letter to Kramer rather than go to the police, records show. Last month — nearly three years after the alleged assault outside a Muskego bar — the woman learned of Kramer's alleged mistreatment of other women and filed a complaint with Muskego police that has resulted in two felony charges of second-degree sexual assault.
In the meantime, Kramer's Assembly colleagues elected him last fall to the job of majority leader, the No. 2 position in that house. Before that vote, some Republicans in the Assembly who opposed Kramer's bid raised concerns about his behavior.
But neither Johnson nor anyone from his office contacted Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), who has led that body since January 2013, or Jeff Fitzgerald, who served as speaker at the time of the alleged 2011 assault.
"I've got to be honest with you, no," Fitzgerald said, adding he only learned of the allegations when charges were filed last week. "I was never informed of the incident."
Vos said he, too, was not informed. Vos opposed Kramer's election as majority leader in September because he disagreed with Kramer's management style and was concerned by Kramer's practice of making off-color remarks.
Vos said he was uncertain whether it would have made a difference at the time in blocking Kramer's election if Johnson or aides had shared details of the incident on their own without direct corroboration from the woman.
Vos said no one told him about the 2011 alleged assault involving the Johnson aide until after Kramer was accused of groping a legislative staffer and harassing a lobbyist in a separate incident this February after a Washington, D.C., fundraiser. After those incidents came to light, Vos said, the woman who formerly worked for Johnson reached out to him to inform him of the April 2011 incident in Muskego.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is not identifying the woman because of the newspaper's policy to shield victims of alleged assaults unless they choose to be named. She has not responded to interview requests and her attorney, John Cabaniss, also declined to comment.
Johnson declined an interview request, and a spokeswoman for the senator repeatedly declined to comment from Thursday night through Friday evening.
"We won't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation. This is a matter for the police and the courts," Melinda Whitemarsh Schnell said.
Whitemarsh Schnell also declined to provide the employee handbook used by Johnson's office to guide staff in situations such as employee mistreatment.
"Our Office Policy Manual is an internal office document that is only available to office employees," she said in an email.
However, about five hours after the Journal Sentinel published the information online, Johnson's office issued a statement saying that when the woman spoke with Johnson and his chief of staff, Tony Blando, she already had an attorney. "Senator Johnson and Mr. Blando conveyed their commitment to be 100% supportive of any actions she chose to pursue on the advice of her legal counsel — up to and including the filing of criminal charges," the statement said. "She requested that Senator Johnson and Mr. Blando keep the matter confidential and take no further action. Senator Johnson and Mr. Blando fully honored her request."
Senators' policies vary
U.S. Senate policies do not appear to directly address cases in which employees are assaulted by individuals from outside the Senate but do require internal reporting of sexual harassment. Each senator establishes his or her own employee policies.
A source who was close to the woman and spoke to her about the alleged assault at the time said that to the source's knowledge Johnson and his staff had acted appropriately. The Journal Sentinel is not identifying the source because doing so might indirectly identify the victim.
"I think both (the woman) and the senator are people of high integrity," the source said.
In the Muskego incident, Kramer is accused of shoving the woman against a car, kissing her forcibly and putting his hands up her shirt while she told him no and tried to stop him. Later, inside a car, Kramer is accused of locking the doors, kissing the woman again, grabbing her groin and trying to look down her shirt.
His attorney has indicated Kramer will enter a not guilty plea at an April 14 court appearance.
According to the criminal complaint, the woman decided not to go to police at the time of the incident because she didn't want to embarrass her family, the Republican Party, Kramer and Johnson as her employer. Instead, she had her lawyer send Kramer a letter saying she had been assaulted, that Kramer needed to seek treatment for drinking and that she would reconsider her decision not to report the incident to law enforcement if she learned of him acting inappropriately toward others in the future.
After hearing about the allegations involving other women in Washington, she went to police last month.
The investigation by the Muskego Police Department reveals the woman told a number of people of the alleged 2011 assault around the time it happened. Among those she told was her supervisor in Johnson's office, Blando. He went on to tell Johnson, according to the recent police report.
Police blacked out the names of the woman, Blando, Johnson and others in their report, but the names can still easily be read.
Blando did not return calls. Blando told police in a March 5 interview that the woman told him Kramer had "fondled" her and grabbed her breasts after the Republican event and provided him with some specific information about what happened. He said she was distraught and seeking advice on what to do and he had no reason to doubt her character.
Blando listened and the woman eventually decided she wanted to keep the matter private, according to the police report. The report does not say whether Blando gave advice to the woman.
Blando told Johnson about the matter but did not talk to Kramer, the police report said.
Two employment lawyers told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, in general, employers should follow up on any reports of employees who say they have been sexually assaulted, even if it did not happen at the workplace.
"There is a duty to follow up and address the situation," said Fred Gants, a Quarles & Brady attorney who represents employers.
When employers learn of such claims, they must evaluate whether to go to police so a proper investigation can occur, he said. Gants spoke generally about what employers need to do in such situations, saying he did not know enough details to say whether Johnson should have gone to authorities.
"Often in that situation (of alleged sexual assault), it is appropriate for that matter to be reported to law enforcement authorities," he said. "It depends what has been described to you."
Reporting not required
In deciding whether to go to police in such cases, employers should take into account what the employee wants, he said. "However, when an allegation has been made to one (who is) thinking criminal conduct occurred, there are situations in which the employer may very well elect to report this to authorities," he said.
Jon Anderson, an employment lawyer with Godfrey & Kahn, said in such a situation an employer should first make sure the employee is physically safe and getting appropriate medical care, including therapy. The employer also should advise the employee of any assistance programs or health care policies that can help the employee.
Anderson said employers should encourage employees who say they have been assaulted to go to police. Employers do not have a duty to go authorities themselves and should leave the ultimate decision up to employees, he said.
Last September, Kramer, of Waukesha, ran for majority leader against Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson).
In a nomination speech before the vote for majority leader, a Knudson supporter, Rep. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), accused Kramer of acting inappropriately at a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Chicago — a reference to off-color remarks Kramer supposedly had made to a table of delegates from another state.
Vos, another Kramer opponent, said he sought without success to track down someone who had heard Kramer's remarks firsthand. Kramer's supporters believed that Kapenga's comments actually helped Kramer by appearing to be mudslinging, Vos said.
Vos said when Kapenga made his remarks last year, other Republicans heard Kramer say, "I just won. I just won."
Last month, after the allegations from the Washington event came to light, Kramer's colleagues voted unanimously to strip him of his title as majority leader.
At the time of the alleged assault, the woman also told Waukesha County GOP vice chairman Keith Best, who had witnessed Kramer and the woman at the bar. Best didn't witness the assault but did confirm later to Muskego police that the woman and Kramer had been present at the bar that night and that the woman had later been distraught.
Best told a police officer that the incident "had been difficult for him" because Best was friends with both the woman and Kramer. He said he had seen Kramer drink too much and make inappropriate comments in the past but not be physically inappropriate.
Best told the officer that he never spoke with Kramer about the incident and that despite the alleged sexual assault, Best hoped Kramer's promotion to Assembly majority leader would "give Kramer the motivation to 'clean up his act,'" according to the police report.
Best did not respond to requests for comment. |
CLOSE Illustrator Richard Lui and reporter Barrett Newkirk explain what's happening in California and the valley with medical marijuana. Video edited by Daniel Simon. (Mar. 28, 2015) Daniel Simon/The Desert Sun
Buy Photo Sun Grow employee Diego Cambron shows some of the product that is available at the dispensary. (Photo: J. Omar Ornelas/ The Desert Sun)Buy Photo
On a recent Thursday morning, a crowd gathered in the parking lot of a Desert Hot Springs gas station to welcome the latest new business to the struggling city.
Mayor Adam Sanchez stood in front of the shop's refurbished storefront and cut the ribbon with giant scissors — just as he would for a restaurant, tire store or hair salon — before talking about how perfectly Sun Grow would fit into Desert Hot Springs' healthy "spa city" image.
Sun Grow is the first permitted medical marijuana dispensary to open in Riverside County, outside of Palm Springs.
It's also the first shop to launch as part of a new wave of businesses coming to the western Coachella Valley, contributing to the fast-paced growth of legal marijuana businesses seen across the country.
At least a half dozen more local medical pot stores are expected to follow.
Known as the "Green Rush," a play on the Gold Rush that built California in the 19th century, legal marijuana has grown nationally into a $2.7 billion industry, with half of it in California, according to one industry report.
National cannabis sales for 2015 are expected to climb another 30 percent to $3.5 billion.
"The main draw of this industry is you can make a lot of money if you operate your business well," said Chris Walsh, managing editor of Marijuana Business Media, a company that conducts market research on the marijuana industry and publishes the online Marijuana Business Daily.
"It's not a guaranteed path to being a millionaire by any means," he cautioned.
Buy Photo Sun Grow employee, Diego Cambron, demonstrates the variety of products at the dispensary in Desert Hot Springs. The business is on track to have more than $1 million in sales in its first year. (Photo: J. Omar Ornelas/ The Desert Sun)
But the dollars going in and out of a single dispensary can easily reach into the millions. Annual revenues for a store can range from $100,000 for a small operation in a rural area to tens of millions of dollars in a major city, Walsh said.
Sun Grow representatives declined to discuss revenue projections. But they but did say the dispensary was on pace to generate $9,000 in tax revenue for Desert Hot Springs in the first month.
That amount would translate to $90,000 in sales, based on the city's 10 percent medical marijuana sales tax rate.
If Sun Grow's sales continue at that rate, the shop will see more than $1 million in revenue for its first year.
CLOSE A look inside Sun Grow, the valley's newest medical marijuana dispensary. Barrett Newkirk/The Desert Sun
"We're not losing money, which is great," Sun Grow partner George Nassar said, adding that the shop essentially broke even in the first month.
The financial potential of medical marijuana dispensaries is now driving the industry as much as the initial mission of providing patients access to a drug that's used to treat chronic pain and a variety of other ailments.
The limited number of business opportunities only increases the competition.
Palm Springs has three operating dispensaries and has approved a fourth that has not yet opened.
Buy Photo Sun Grow employee Diego Cambron pours out one of the products. (Photo: J. Omar Ornelas/ The Desert Sun)
Officials haven't ruled out allowing others in the future, although city staff is still researching the idea and whether more locations should be made available for shops and growing operations.
Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City — two desert communities with long histories of budget woes — have each capped the number of shops at three for now.
Desert Hot Springs council members earlier this month discussed changing city ordinances to allow for more than three dispensaries — possibly opening the door for all 19 that applied for permits last year.
But council members have delayed any decision until at least next month.
Opening a dispensary can be an investment in itself, and owners also point to high operating expenses, including staff pay, security and government payments.
The application process alone costs at least $13,725 in Desert Hot Springs.
Another factor is how a store obtains its pot.
"If you grow your own marijuana, the potential profit margins are higher because you're growing everything from the time the marijuana seed is planted to when you're selling it to the customers," Walsh said.
Business that gives back
Sun Grow is still completing work on a space in its store at Palm Drive and Dillon Road that will be used to cultivate marijuana.
The software that Sun Grow uses allows city officials to monitor transactions. But the city won't reveal tax revenues from a specific business since it is considered proprietary information.
Nassar, like many dispensary operators, prefers talking about the health benefits of marijuana instead of the money that can be made.
The 30-year-old Hemet native said he and business partner Anthony Lee looked into starting their shop after seeing potential for the plant to help people their parents' ages. Now they see it bettering the lives of customers, which have numbered around 1,000 in the first month.
Buy Photo From left, Sun Grow employee, Diego Cambron and owner George Nassar help a customer. Sun Grow is Desert Hot Springs’ first dispensary. (Photo: J. Omar Ornelas/ The Desert Sun)
"Medical marijuana is developing into new ways to help people and, as it's growing, we want to be there to take advantage of those medical benefits," Nassar said.
"We want to be able — with the money we make — to give back to the community. This is a business that can do that, and a lot of people overlook that side of it."
A second dispensary opening in Desert Hot Springs soon will mean more direct competition for Sun Grow. The city requires them to be operated as non-profits.
Opposition from a nearby church has not stopped plans for Brown Dog Health and Wellness to open on Pierson Boulevard in central Desert Hot Springs. The shop is moving toward an April 15 opening.
Brown Dog's president, Andrew Milks, said the dispensary will succeed by having top-quality products and knowledgeable staff.
Nassar made an identical argument when touting the advantages of Sun Grow.
A third dispensary is tentatively set for Paul Road in Desert Hot Springs, although the city has not yet approved the permit. With no building on the land yet, the shop's opening day is likely a long way off.
Milks said Desert Hot Springs could likely support more than those three shops. He supports the city increasing the number of permits, even though it would mean more competition for Brown Dog.
"I just don't know where that number would be," he said.
"With Palm Springs, Cathedral City and who knows what else, it's a weird market. I'm certainly not against more though."
Milks agreed with some Desert Hot Springs council members who have suggested the city remove its three-dispensary cap and let customers decide how many shops the city can support.
Legal fights
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A major motivator in Desert Hot Springs is the extra tax revenue that more dispensaries generate for the city, which has been slow to recover from the economic recession and has been forced to make steep spending cuts to avoid municipal bankruptcy.
Cathedral City voters in November also approved marijuana taxes. Although with no dispensaries yet open in that city, there's been no financial benefit yet.
But along with the new revenue stream, cities have been forced to dedicate resources to lawsuits stemming from their dispensary permitting process.
In Desert Hot Springs, dispensary applicant DHS Alternative Healing filed two lawsuits against the city after coming in 16th of the 19 applicants.
The business is hoping a judge will force the city to process its application and issue a license for a medical marijuana dispensary.
Cathedral City also is defending itself against at least two lawsuits from dispensary applicants who did not win city approval.
This includes a lawsuit brought by Cathedral City Councilman Mark Carnevale, whose application did not include the required floor plan details and was deemed incomplete.
A judged ruled March 19 that the city was correct to reject Carnevale's application, although an appeal is possible.
Buy Photo Sandra Avila, a supervisor at Sun Grow in Desert Hot Springs, prepares one gram of medical marijuana to be sold at the dispensary. (Photo: J. Omar Ornelas/ The Desert Sun)
Carnevale has said he became a supporter of medical marijuana after seeing how a lotion made with the plant helped his cancer-stricken wife.
Nick Hughes, the applicant behind another lawsuit against Cathedral City, believes the city is operating under a flawed ordinance that led to his application being rejected.
Officials rejected his proposed shop because it would have been too close to another dispensary, which came in first during the city's random lottery of applications.
Hughes' application was second.
His case also questions the credentials of a manager for an approved dispensary with an expunged criminal record. Hughes is planning to fight the city with the help of an attorney and a Sacramento public relations firm that's previously represented high-profile health care groups such as the California Pharmacists Association.
Hughes said he got into the business because he saw how marijuana helped his father eat and feel better in the last six months of his life, before he died of cancer.
"As Colorado and Washington began to legalize (recreational use) and I saw the rest of the country not moving forward but lagging behind, I saw this opportunity in Cathedral City to take action," said Hughes, who has a background in running real estate and sales businesses.
Walsh said legal fights are common wherever strict permit limits create competition among hopeful dispensary owners.
"A couple of years ago, you rarely heard of lawsuits tied to the licensing process," he said. "That's changed as the industry matures. And in some cases you have more savvy businesspeople involved that know when you don't win there's a legal option."
Along with creating a new niche of the legal profession, Walsh said he's seeing other professionals, such as accountants and advertising firms, specializing in the finer details of the marijuana trade.
"Basically any kind of service that's provided to other industries has a place in this one too," he said.
Expanding legality
An effort underway to legalize recreational marijuana use in California could have voters deciding the issues as early as November 2016.
If that happens, it could mean a huge shakeup for dispensaries throughout the state.
But the outcome will depend on what kind of law the state adopts. And recreational use doesn't have to spell doom for the medical dispensaries.
In Colorado, Walsh said operating dispensaries were the only businesses in a position to sell recreational pot when that state's ban was lifted on Jan. 1, 2014. And in Washington state, high taxes on recreational marijuana have helped keep customers going to medical marijuana dispensaries.
"It could be detrimental to existing medical marijuana businesses or it could be a huge boon for them," Walsh said of legalizing recreational marijuana in California.
Nassar and Milks both named Indio — the Coachella Valley's most populous city — as a promising place for second stores, if the city ever allows dispensaries. They predicted their fledgling businesses would be able to adapt to legal recreational use.
"We're not worried it's going to shut us down at all," Nassar said.
"If anything, it's going to put better product out on the market. It won't have to be hidden."
But Nassar also wondered if legalization could mean his company will someday be competing against brands like Camel and Marlboro.
"We don't always have a lot of choice in where we go with our business, and that's kind of the weird thing," Milks said.
"This whole thing is so new, it's hard to tell how long it will last or if it will develop into something where Whole Foods will carry it."
Reach Barrett Newkirk at (760)778-4767, [email protected] or on Twitter @barrettnewkirk.
A push to legalize
Supporters of recreational pot are looking at 2016 as an opportunity to ask voters to legalize it in California, which already accounts for half of the nation's $2.7 billion marijuana industry.
In 1996, California was the first state to approve marijuana for medicinal uses. Since then 22 more states and Washington have followed suit.
Four states — Alaska, Oregon, Colorado and Washington — have legalized it for recreational use.
Californians in 2010 voted down a ballot measure to legalize recreational use, which 54 percent of voters opposed. Backers believe attitudes have changed enough to make success a better possibility in 2016.
Did you know?
Palm Springs collected $1,034,346 from its marijuana dispensary tax in 2014.
Similar tax measures won voter approval in Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City last November. However, with shops in those cities just opening or still preparing to launch, the financial gain those two cities will see from medical marijuana is not yet known.
West valley dispensaries
Seven medical marijuana shops have received permits from west valley cities, but some have not yet opened.
Open medical pot shops
C.A.P.S.
4050 Airport Center Drive, Palm Springs
Desert Organic Solutions
19486 Newhall St., Suite 102, Palm Springs
Organic Solutions of the Desert
4765 E. Ramon Road., Palm Springs
Sun Grow
17003 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs
Permitted but not open as of March 27
Brown Dog Health and Wellness
66595 Person Blvd., Desert Hot Springs
Green Cross Pharma
68730 Summit Drive, Cathedral City
Palm Springs Safe Access
1247 S. Gene Autry Trail, Suite A, Palm Springs
Read or Share this story: http://desert.sn/1bEKvrk |
As it has done annually for the past few years, Time magazine recently ran a poll asking readers what words they’d like to see stricken from the cultural lexicon. In years past, successful contenders were “YOLO”, “OMG” and “twerk”.
This year’s winner by a billion miles, earning 3 times as many votes as its runner-up, was the word “feminist”.
In contextualizing the inclusion of this particular word, Time wrote:
“You have nothing against feminism itself, but when did it become a thing that every celebrity had to state their position on whether this word applies to them, like some politician declaring a party? Let’s stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade.”
Reaction from feminists was swift and predictable. Outrage. Umbrage. Boycotts. Militancy.
Why, it’s almost like feminists are unable to read or something, since they seem to have failed to absorb the first sentence of the disclaimer, which flat-out states, “you have nothing against feminism itself, but…”
For myself, I voted to “ban feminist” when I stumbled across the poll, and I too am guilty of disregarding that initial clause in the description. In fact, I was forced to disregard the entirety of it, because I disagree with the entirety of it. I do have something against feminism–many many somethings, in fact, which I will itemize further on. And, as I happen to have something(s) against feminism, I am fully in favor of celebrities openly stating their political position in favor of or against it, the same way I’d prefer to know if that thing slithering amongst the pole beans in my garden is a harmless garter snake or something more sinister.
But the disclaimer itself, clearly stating agreement with feminism’s principles (such as they are purported to be) and its goals (however dubious), but rather an objection to its irresponsible use in media, ought to have served to defuse any feminist wrath over the inclusion of the word in the poll. That it did not speaks volumes about feminism and feminists. As did the poll results, and the desperate attempts by feminists to blame the entire debacle on that cesspit of white straight male privilege known as 4chan.
In fact, the feminist response to the poll only serves to reinforce all the reasons I myself voted to “ban” it (as if words can or should actually be banned, and as if I would desire that). To make it clear, given the way the poll was set up to allow multiple votes, and even given my decidedly anti-feminist views, I only cast one vote myself.
So, some of my objections to feminism include:
1) it cannot handle challenge or criticism of itself, or its premises, goals and assumptions.
I think the reaction by many feminists to the poll proves this point better than any anti-feminist ever could. After all, the justification provided by Time explicitly excluded disagreement with feminism, and specifically stipulated disagreement with the irresponsible use of it in a celebrity context.
2) it is populated by bullies who react with coercive tactics to any challenge (or even skepticism) of its precepts, or criticism of its followers’ behavior.
Forcing an apology and retraction from Time for daring to include the word “feminist” demonstrates this tendency quite neatly. Step out of line, and you’d better issue a tearful apology or next week you could find yourself at a soup kitchen or applying for jobs at McD’s.
3) it is based on emotional reasoning, delusions of persecution and projection of ill intent. Never attribute a charitable or individuated intention to anything a man (or the system) does when a malicious and collective one can be applied.
“…rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” Susan Brownmiller.
“…intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men’s contempt for women.” Andrea Dworkin
Despite the explicitly stated justification of “feminist”‘s inclusion in the poll, the reaction was that the intention was profoundly different from what was stated. Just as heterosexual intercourse, the means by which all sexually reproducing species procreate, is not a simple biological reality but a conspiracy to subjugate women, and just as the reprehensible criminal act of a single rapist is not the act of a (typically damaged and dysfunctional) individual but a conscious collective effort on the part of all men to terrorize all women, this poll (and its result) was much more than a mere expression of cultural exhaustion to the constant demands that celebrities “pick a side” or justify their ambivalence or opposition to the feminist position. It is nothing more or less than a conscious effort to undermine feminism and reverse the gains women/feminists have made.
While I would assume that many who voted for “feminist” did so not because of the justification provided, but because they view feminism as an unhealthy, divisive and damaging ideology, none of this points to any popular view that women are or should be considered inferior, or that anyone wants to “turn back the clock”.
4) if there’s a man around, blame him and his misogyny, or the misogyny of the “male-dominated patriarchy”. Whatever you do, don’t engage in self-examination.
4chan is, as far as I know, predominantly male. Regardless of the actual demographic breakdown, it is perceived as a male space, and one that is hostile to women.
Despite numerous opportunities over the last few years for feminists to critically examine the behavior of their sisters, to reconsider their claims and their rhetoric, to adjust their beliefs and consider evidence that challenges them, whenever someone (or a bunch of someones) expresses dissatisfaction with or criticism of feminism, the go-to response is to shift the blame onto men and their misogyny.
#notyourshield is allegedly nothing but white, straight men creating sock puppet accounts to spew hatred of women, or marginalized “Uncle Tom’s” who’ve internalized the misogyny and racism of the white, straight male-dominated culture. It couldn’t possibly be that many women and minorities are sick to death of feminism’s divisive and polarizing rhetoric and tactics.
Paul Elam’s article, a clearly stated satirical work written to highlight Jezebel’s genuine and febrile celebration of female-on-male intimate partner violence, is proof that he’s not only a misogynist, but a misogynist who promotes male violence against women. (There are simply too many feminist references to this particular article, with the intention of vilifying Elam, AVoiceforMen.com, and all MRAs, to link to.)
5) authoritarianism.
Need I say more? In the last week, a genius who landed a space probe on a goddamn comet was bullied into a tearful apology over him wearing a shirt that was no more offensive than this one:
A month or so ago, a major news site, Forbes, was bullied into firing William Frezza over an article in which he expressed concern over the liability university men face when drunk women knock on the frat house door. The number of men who’ve been forced to step down from prominent positions because they offended feminist sensibilities (even, or perhaps especially, when their claims were backed up by evidence) are too copious to mention.
And here we see Time backing down from its moderate stance, due to the authoritarian leanings of feminist activists who will brook no questioning.
Without even going into my objections to the problems inherent to feminist doctrine, which I contend are unfalsifiable, biased, evidence-resistant and wrong-headed, and only concentrating on their tactics, feminists themselves have managed to reinforce every one of my opinions with their response to the Time poll. They have only served to bolster my anti-feminism, and demonstrate the very reasons why so many people voted to ban the word “feminist”.
Here’s hoping they keep up the good work.
by |
Image caption China hailed the Kunming trial as a model of cross-border law-enforcement
A notorious ethnic Shan warlord, Naw Kham, has gone on trial in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, charged with the murder of 13 Chinese citizens on board two boats on the Mekong River last October.
Naw Kham, who was widely believed to run much of the smuggling and narcotics business in the Golden Triangle region where the borders of Laos, Burma and Thailand meet, was detained in Laos in April after a joint operation by the security forces from the three countries and China.
Five of Naw Kham's associates are also on trial.
The prosecution's case is simple: that the two boats were suspected of trafficking narcotics, bypassing Naw Kham, so he killed the crew to set an example to the hundreds of other ships that ply the Mekong, carrying the expanding river trade, both legal and illegal, between the four countries.
Naw Kham is accused by the Chinese authorities of terrorizing Chinese ships along the Mekong for many years. Convicting him for a crime which outraged public opinion in China would be a popular move.
After reportedly confessing and apologizing to the Chinese police, he has now denied the charge in court and blamed the killings on the Thai security forces.
'Solid evidence'
Image caption Reports from China say Naw Kham "overturned" his earlier confessions
But there is a great deal about this case that is not clear or simple.
The two boats, the Hua Ping and the Yu Xing 8, were found on the Thai side of the Mekong, not far from the river port of Chiang Saen, some time in early October.
The Chinese authorities say the boats were attacked on 5th October. It took several days to discover the bodies of all 13 victims, most of whom had their hands tied and had been shot.
At the end of October the Thai police announced that after speaking to more than 100 witnesses, they were naming nine soldiers from a Thai army unit responsible for security along the Mekong, as suspects in the killings.
Some of the witnesses described seeing the soldiers open fire on the boats. The Thai military responded by saying its troops had found the two boats, already riddled with bullets, on the river bank, with the captain of one slumped dead over his gun.
They reported finding 920,000 methamphetamine pills on board.
The nine Thai soldiers are still viewed by the police as suspects, although they have not been charged.
They have denied killing the victims, and the commander of the Thai Army, General Prayuth Chanocha has called for them to be allowed to clear their names.
But the Interior Minister, Chalerm Yubumrang, has insisted that there is ''solid evidence'' that Thai soldiers fired on the boats. He has repeatedly stated that the case is close to being complete on the Thai side, but there is little sign of this.
Thai forces involved?
Image caption Drug-related crime is active in the stretch of Mekong River bordering Thailand, Laos and Burma
So what really happened? We will probably never know.
Violent crimes are routinely never solved in Thailand, especially in the lawless border regions, where the security forces are widely believed to collaborate with underworld figures like Naw Kham as often as they try to combat them.
Add to that the rivalry and mistrust between the Thai police and military, fuelled by the political polarization of the country in recent years.
"The evidence suggests the Thai security forces were involved", says Sunai Chulapongsathorn, chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, which conducted its own inquiry into the killings.
"But the investigation on our side not resulted in any charges. Perhaps the result of the Chinese trial will influence what happens here."
In fact we would probably have learned very little about this case, had it not been for the involvement of China.
Chinese 'arm-twisting'
Senior Chinese officials arrived in Thailand soon after the boats were found, and demanded action be taken.
Within a month, the four countries had agreed to beef up river patrols, although an initial proposal to allow Chinese gunboats to operate along Thai stretches of the Mekong was firmly rejected by General Prayuth Chanocha.
The speed with which Naw Kham - previously an untouchable warlord who moved with impunity for many years along the Mekong - was captured, demonstrates the impact of Chinese pressure.
The fact that he is being tried in China, even though the crime took place far from Chinese territory, is another indication of how powerful China's voice now is in the region.
Thailand has sent ten police officers to testify at the trial. The Chinese authorities have described this case as a model of cross-border law-enforcement.
In truth, it has been an example of arm-twisting by the regional superpower.
Whether Chinese power can impose order on the infamously lawless Mekong is another matter. Attacks on river boats have continued this year, though on a smaller scale. |
The Canadian Press
TORONTO -- A man who went on a stabbing rampage at a Toronto office while being fired told officers arresting him that his victims deserved the attack, his trial heard this week.
But Chuang Li's lawyer plans to argue the 49-year-old was not criminally responsible for his actions.
Li is charged with three counts of attempted murder, four counts of aggravated assault and four counts of assault with a weapon.
Four people were taken to hospital, two of them with life-threatening injuries, after Li started stabbing people while he was in the process of being fired from the human resources company Ceridian Dayforce Corporation last April.
Li's lawyer, John Rosen, said he plans to argue his client should be found not criminally responsible.
An agreed statement of facts submitted at Li's trial revealed details of the attack, including what Li said as he was being led away.
"As he was being escorted to the police car, Mr. Li stated, 'They deserve it. They deserve it. You know, I don't care. They deserve it,"' it said.
Li, who was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 2001, became a Canadian citizen in 2005 and does not have a previous criminal record.
He had difficulties maintaining stable employment after arriving in Canada and was employed by 12 different companies between 2006 and 2012, the statement of facts said, noting that Li was hired by Ceridian as a software developer in June 2012.
Under questioning from a Crown-retained forensic psychiatrist, Li said he has, since a young age, "lost his temper on occasion and then later felt bad about it," the document said.
"Mr. Li told Dr. McMaster that sometimes he gets so angry that he does not think about the results," it said.
Li's wife first noticed her husband beginning to act strangely in 2009, saying "very funny things" about the people he worked with and sometime in 2011, began talking about an "organization" that was trying to "set him up," the document said.
Li's family doctor diagnosed him with depression in October 2011 and prescribed anti-depressants which Li did not take, court heard.
Li told the forensic psychiatrist he began carrying a saw with him in November 2012 because he felt unsafe in his neighbourhood, the statement of facts said.
In February 2013, Li also began carrying a large knife to work in his shoulder bag, saying he didn't feel safe at the office, and in June that year, he bought a pocket knife, which he also took to work, the statement of facts said.
Li then bought another knife in March 2014, which he kept in the trunk of his car and told his wife he though their house was bugged, court heard.
Ceridian decided to end Li's employment on April 9, 2014, and he was called into the office of human resources manager Rajsri De, where vice president of development, James Konandreas, began reviewing Li's performance issues.
Li began to yell "shut up" and hurl expletives, tried to grab a stapler and a nameplate from De's desk and then pulled out his pocket knife, court heard.
"Mr. Li began to stab at both Mr. Konandreas and Ms. De with the knife," the statement of facts said. "He stabbed and slashed Mr. Konandreas several times before Mr. Konandreas and Ms. De managed to escape from the office."
Li chased De, who was cornered in a hallway, slashing her face and hands, and stabbing her in the stomach, the document said. He then went after Konandreas, at which point another manager, Scott Berenthal tried to intervene, receiving a stab wound on the left side of his head.
Bryan Humphries, whose office was beside De's, saw the commotion and kicked Li, who then charged at him, stabbing him in the arm, before chasing Konandreas once more.
"After Mr. Konandreas collapsed, Mr. Li stood over top of him and continued to stab him. Mr. Konandreas attempted to use his arms and legs to protect himself. Mr. Konandreas pleaded for Mr. Li to stop ... Mr. Li continued to slash and stab at Mr. Konandreas," the statement of facts said.
Employees in a board room then tried to intervene, with one of them eventually convincing Li, in Mandarin, to surrender the knife, court heard. |
Sydney FC will give their south coast Members an early taste of what to expect this season with the Hyundai A-League and Westfield W-League squads to take part in the South Coast Football Challenge, at WIN Stadium Wollongong in Friday 18 September.
The Challenge will see Sydney FC’s Westfield W-League team play a curtain raiser against the Illawarra Stingrays (kick off 5:15pm) before Head Coach Graham Arnold’s men take on the Wellington Phoenix (kick off 7:45pm), with the Hyundai A-League season, at that point, only one month away.
The South Coast Football Challenge will also be the first opportunity for Members and fans to see international marquee Filip Holosko and Milos Ninkovic in action on home soil, while for Westfield W-League Head Coach Daniel Barrett it will be his first chance to cast his eyes over his squad in a match situation.
Sydney FC Head Coach Graham Arnold said he was looking forward to further testing his squad against fellow Hyundai A-League opposition during preseason.
“We are looking forward to giving our South Coast fans a chance to see us in Wollongong,” he said.
“Wellington proved last season what a strong team they are having reached the Finals stages, and they will provide an excellent test for us at the right time in pre-season.
“We always get a fabulous support in Wollongong and I’m hoping as many football fans can get out and support both our Hyundai A-League and Westfield W-League teams on the 18th.”
Stuart Barnes, General Manager for WIN Sports & Entertainment Centres said the South Coast Football Challenge is a prime opportunity for the people of the South Coast to experience the quality of men’s and women’s professional football.
“It is exciting for Venues NSW to be hosting the inaugural ‘South Coast Football Challenge’ at WIN Stadium,” he said.
“This year, we welcome back A League teams Sydney FC and Wellington Phoenix in the men’s challenge and Sydney FC’s W League team and the Illawarra Stingrays in the women’s challenge.
“Once again this game offers the chance for the people of the Illawarra and southern Sydney to enjoy, first-hand, the skills of the ‘best in Football’ and for WIN Stadium to again prove its worth as a home of elite Football.”
Football South Coast CEO Ann-Marie Balliana said is looking forward to the two games.
“It's fantastic to see Wollongong is a regular host of some top class football. It's particularly exciting to see the inaugural South Coast Football Challenge with a fixture showcasing women's football and our Illawarra Stingrays,” she said.
“This is another great opportunity for local football fans to enjoy a great night of football.”
Sydney FC Members will be given an exclusive pre-sale period for tickets and a 10% discount for pre-purchasing from Tuesday 25 August. Tickets will be available for the general public on Friday 28 August, 10am via ticketmaster.com.au or 136 100.
Sydney FC Memberships are now on sale for the Hyundai A-League season 2015/16. Click HERE to become part of the Sky Blues family |
MONDAY DEC 24, 2007 (Foodconsumer.org) -- Canned cut green beans made by New Era Canning Company, New Era, Mich. may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that causes botulism, the Food and Drug Administration warned Dec. 21.
The FDA found the contamination on Dec 20 after a sample tested positive for C. botulinum. New Era is voluntarily recalling 171 cases of the green beans (6 cans per case), according to the FDA.
The affected canned cut green beans were labeled as "GFS Fancy Blue Lake Cut Green Beans" and distributed to retailers, restaurants and foodservice institutions in many states by Gordon Food Service, Grand Rapids , Mich. , with lot code 19H7FL and UPC code 93901 11873, in large institutional-sized, 6 pound 5 ounce (#10) cans.
The food service establishments that use the affect green beans include food service customers in Alabama , Arkansas , Georgia , Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Mississippi , Missouri , North Carolina , Tennessee , and Virginia . The green beans were also sold through GFS Marketplace stores in Indiana , Kentucky , and Tennessee .
So far, no cases of illness have been reportedly associated with use of the canned cut green beans.
The FDA advised that customers who have the affected cans of cut green beans or have used the green beans in recipes should throw cans and food away immediately to avoid the potential poisoning.
C. botulinum toxin when ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the eye or a break in the skin even at a tiny dose could lead to serious illness. Skin contact should be avoided and hands needs to be washed immediately after handling the affected food, the FDA said.
The affected cans should be put in plastic bags and disposed in a way that no one could touch the disposed food.
Symptoms of botulism poisoning may show up in humans after a short period of 6 hours to 2 weeks after ingesting food that contains the toxin. |
Tuition increases are constantly in the news these days. Private colleges have become incredibly expensive (as I know personally, with a daughter currently attending one). Public colleges also have been raising tuition sharply in many cases, mostly to offset cuts in the funds they receive from state budgets. Yet, by the standards of the economic marketplace most colleges are still underpriced.
Harvard University accepted only 5.8 percent of over 35,000 applicants this year. Stanford only admitted 5.7 percent of their nearly 39,000 applicants. The University of Southern California only accepted 19.7 percent of their over 47,000 applicants, while Georgetown University let in 16.6 percent of their 20,000.
In most businesses, when you have such overwhelming demand for your product, you raise the price (and increase production). Many colleges, especially private ones, do not want to increase the size of their student bodies, but why would they not increase prices when they have so many prospective students desperate to attend?
Further, the prices that people focus on are not the prices that most students and their families actually pay. Most of the reporting, aiming for the sensational, reports the tuition or even the full cost of attendance, which is tuition, room, board, books, and miscellaneous living expenses. Yet, most students receive financial aid in some form, so the price they pay is not the full price.
For example, Harvard’s full price is $59,800 but the average price paid by students and their families who qualify for financial aid is only $15,550. That much lower number probably does not exactly strike fear in people’s hearts or make one think that we have a college cost crisis. At University of Southern California, full price is $60,000 but the average student only pays $27,500, a figure that includes the students who are paying full price. The situation looks much better when the actual cost is examined instead of the number in the news.
When President Obama and other critics of college costs complain about sky-high tuition, they are either misleading people or do not understand the difference between the full list price and the average net price. After all, the only people paying the high prices for colleges are the “rich” people who the very same critics believe in taxing so highly.
Colleges are simply doing the exact same thing as government—charging rich people more than those with less ability to pay. Certainly the government should appreciate the fact that colleges are following a progressive pricing model modeled after progressive income taxes.
Importantly, studies of the economic returns to college education continue to show that college as an investment is well worth it. The earnings increment that comes to college graduates plus the much lower unemployment rate for college graduates combine to make college worth it even at today’s high prices. In other words, colleges are still charging much less than the value of their product.
All of the above does not mean that everything is perfect or that students and families should not make informed choices about what college to attend and how to pay for it.
Students who expect to pursue careers that are not high paying would likely be better served by attending lower-priced public colleges. Students who would need to incur large student loans to attend a private college should carefully consider public education options.
Students also should consider working to help pay for college as a much preferred option to student loans. Research has found little to no negative impact on student academic accomplishment from working while going to school when the students work twenty hours per week or fewer.
Critics, just like students, need to remember that the public option is out there. Community colleges and technical schools are still incredibly affordable. Most states have a broad selection of community colleges, technical schools, and then other increasingly expensive state colleges and universities that tend to increase in quality as the price of tuition increases. Yet, for in-state residents, even the most expensive public university is generally quite affordable with a total cost often around $20,000 per year even at full price.
An increasingly popular option is for a student to attend a lower-priced state or community college for the first year or two to save money then transfer to a more prestigious public or private university for the remainder of her studies.
Now that we see that not all colleges are expensive and expensive colleges are not expensive for all students, let’s look at the government’s impact on college costs. Over the past forty to forty-five years federal aid for college education has been steadily ramping up, with larger grants and more access to student loans. Yet, colleges offer financial aid by computing the student and family’s ability to pay, then offering as much financial aid as the college can afford to fill the gap between their full cost and what the family can afford.
If the federal government offers more financial aid, colleges can offer less while keeping the total financial aid package the same size. That is, federal aid simply reduces the amount of aid a family qualifies for from their college. There is no savings to students and their families. It is a classic case of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Particularly at public colleges, where many students get little financial aid directly from the college, more generous federal aid (in the form of Pell Grants and student loans, for example) gives the colleges a chance to raise tuition while keeping the net price to students the same. Either way, more federal aid ends up bringing colleges more money rather than yielding savings for students and their families.
Unless the federal government changes the formula used for computing college financial aid packages, more federal aid will continue to do nothing to help students. Either tuition will go up or the colleges’ financial aid offers will go down in order to offset the increase in federal aid. All the federal government will accomplish is to make the students and families believe the government cares. Perhaps that is what the federal government is trying to do.
As long as affordable options are out there, why should we be concerned if there are also expensive choices? Nobody thinks that cars are unaffordable because Mercedes has a model that costs $100,000. College is not unaffordable because Harvard, Stanford, and other top schools are expensive. Students have plenty of other college options. Just as not everybody can buy a Mercedes, students should choose a college that they both love and can afford. |
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A little girl and her song captivated millions of viewers during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. But what they saw was not what they heard.
Lin Miaoke was the darling of the Olympic opening ceremony, but it turns out she was lip-syncing.
Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke, who performed "Ode to the Motherland" as China's flag was paraded Friday into Beijing's National Stadium, was not singing at all.
Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not cute enough.
"The reason was for the national interest," said Chen Qigang, the ceremony's musical director, in a state radio interview. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression. ... Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects."
The decision was made at the highest levels, Chen said.
"We had to do it," he said. "We'd been through several inspections. They're all very strict. When we rehearsed at the spot, there were several spectators from various divisions, especially leaders from the Politburo, who gave the opinion it must change." Watch a Chinese official defend the move »
Few who watched the Olympic ceremony realized the deception. "Tiny singer wins heart of nation," read the headline in Tuesday's China Daily newspaper.
"Lin Miaoke might be only 9 years old but she is well on her way to becoming a star, thanks to her heartwarming performance," the article gushed -- without mentioning she never sang a note.
But as word has gotten out on the Internet, some Chinese bloggers are outraged.
"If you're not good-looking, no matter how well you sing, you'll not be onstage. Do you know you're twisting a whole generation?" read one comment.
Another said, "If foreigners found out, they'd think we can't even find a girl who is good at both." iReport.com: Share your Olympic spirit
As for Yang Peiyi, she's been quoted as saying she was honored to have had a role in the opening ceremony, even though few realized just how big her part really was.
All About Olympic Games • China |
Watch angry New Yorker confront cop-hating Bill de Blasio
New York City’s anti-cop Mayor Bill de Blasio got an earful from an angry Queens woman who blasted him for taking a trip to Germany to join leftist protesters at the G-20 summit.
Last week, during a photo op in Whitestone to announce a $16 million plan to repair sidewalks damaged by tree roots, Mayor de Blasio was confronted by 63-year-old Vickie Paladino, who demanded to know why de Blasio made a surprise trip to Germany the same week that Officer Miosotis Familia was assassinated in her patrol car.
“Why did you protest against our country in Germany?” Paladino demanded of the mayor. Video of her confrontation with the mayor was posted to Facebook.
New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio walks away from angry Lady over joining protesters in Germany instead of taking care of local officers after shooting… Posted by Lee Johnson on Saturday, July 22, 2017
“I wanna know why you let your police officers down and our country down by going to Germany and protesting against our country! I wanna know why you’re doing that!” Paladino yelled at an unresponsive de Blasio.
“I don’t care about the trees, we’ll work it out. Find eighteen million dollars to put in your cops’ pockets! OK, and pay your police officers! And stop spending it on money to go protest against our country!”
de Blasio, refusing to answer her, simply walked away.
Paladino’s protest was spontaneous, she told reporters on the scene.
“My message to the mayor is simply this: I was driving by, I saw the mayor, I said to my husband ‘pull the car over’, because I’ve had it with de Blasio. I’ve had it with the way he’s running this city,” Paladino said. “Everybody’s had it with de Blasio, I don’t think he has a friend in the city,” she said.
“But as far as I go, and our Queens constituents go, which are basically Republican – but that doesn’t matter because it’s got nothing to do with party lines. This has got all about to do with a liberal, socialist mayor who is running our city and has no regard for our country.”
“So my simple question to the mayor was this: ‘Why are you here talking about eighteen million dollars to correct sidewalks and to prune trees … our tax dollars paid for this mayor to go to Germany to protest against our country, OK? That eighteen million dollars that he wants to spend on trimming trees? Let him put it in our police officers’ pockets. Let him take care of that police officer that was assassinated that he chose, that particular day, without telling a soul that he was leaving to go to Germany?”
“He ran away!” |
Docker shakes up the way we use to put into production. In this article I’ll present
the main obstacles I encountered to set up the production workflow of a simple Node.js API called cinelocal.
Erratum: I am now using docker-machine instead of ansible. You can read in the comments why
Step 1: set up a development environment
Docker-compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. Cinelocal-api requires 3 services running in 3 containers:
node
postgres
data (docker recommends to use a separated container for persisted data)
Here is the corresponding docker-compose.yml defining the 3 services and their relations (read more about compose files):
# docker-compose.yml data: image: busybox volumes: - /data db: image: postgres:9.4 volumes_from: - data ports: - "5432:5432" api: image: node:wheezy working_dir: /app volumes: - .:/app links: - db ports: - "8000:8000" command: npm run watch
Notice the .:/app line in the API container that mounts the current folder as a container’s volume so when you edit a source file it will be detected inside the container.
The npm command of the API container is defined in the package.json file. It runs database migrations (if any) and starts nodemon which is a utility that monitors for any change in your source and automatically restarts your server.
package.json:
{ "scripts": { "watch": "db-migrate up --config migrations/database.json && node ./node_modules/nodemon/bin/nodemon.js src/server.coffee" } }
Now the API can be started using the command docker-compose up api (it might crash the first time because the node container does not wait for the postgres container to be ready. It will work the second time. This is a known compose issue).
Unfortunately using Docker adds a layer of complexity to the usual commands such as installing a new Node.js package or creating a new migration because it must be run in the container. So:
All your commands should be prefixed by docker-compose run --rm api
The edited files ( package.json with npm install or migration files with db-migrate) will be owned by the docker user.
To bypass this complexity, you can use a Makefile that provides a set of commands.
# Makefile whoami := $(shell whoami) migration-create: docker-compose run --rm api \ ./node_modules/db-migrate/bin/db-migrate create --config migrations/database.json $(name)\ && sudo chown -R ${whoami}:${whoami} migrations migration-up: docker-compose run --rm api ./node_modules/db-migrate/bin/db-migrate up --config migrations/database.json migration-down: docker-compose run --rm api ./node_modules/db-migrate/bin/db-migrate down --config migrations/database.json install: docker-compose run --rm api npm install npm-install: docker-compose run --rm api \ npm install --save $(package)\ && sudo chown ${whoami}:${whoami} package.json
Now to install a package you can run: make npm-install package=lodash or to create a new migration: make migration-create name=add-movie-table .
Step 2: Provisioning a server
With Docker, whatever your stack is, the provisioning will be the same. You’ll have to install docker and optionally docker-compose, that’s it.
Ansible is a great tool to provision a server. You can compose a playbook with roles found on ansible galaxy.
To install docker and docker-compose on a server:
# devops/provisioning.yml - name: cinelocal-api provisioning hosts: all sudo: true pre_tasks: - locale_gen: name=en_US.UTF-8 state=present roles: - angstwad.docker_ubuntu - franklinkim.docker-compose vars: docker_group_members: - ubuntu update_docker_package: true
Before running the playbook you need to install the roles:
ansible-galaxy install -r devops/requirements.yml -p devops/roles
with:
# devops/requirements.yml - src: angstwad.docker_ubuntu - src: franklinkim.docker-compose
I tested this provisioning with Ansible 2.0.2 on Ubuntu Server 14.04.
# Makefile install: ansible-galaxy install -r devops/requirements.yml -p devops/roles provisioning: ansible-playbook devops/provisioning.yml -i devops/hosts/production
Step 3: Package your app and deploy
Each time I deploy the API, I build a new Docker image that I push on Docker Hub (the GitHub of Docker images).
The construction of the API image is described in a Dockerfile :
FROM node:wheezy # Create app directory RUN mkdir -p /app WORKDIR /app # Install app dependencies COPY package.json /app/ RUN npm install # Bundle app source COPY . /app EXPOSE 8000 CMD [ "npm", "start" ]
To build and push the image on Docker Hub, I added these two tasks in the Makefile:
# Makefile build: docker build -t nicgirault/cinelocal-api . push: build docker push nicgirault/cinelocal-api
Now make push builds the image and pushes it on Docker Hub (after authentication).
In development environment I want to mount my code as a volume whereas it should not be the case in production. Using multiple Compose files enables you to customize a Compose application for different environments. In our case, we want to split the description of the api service in a common configuration and a environment specific configuration.
# docker-compose.yml (common configuration) api: working_dir: /app links: - db ports: - "8000:8000" environment: DB_DATABASE: postgres DB_USERNAME: postgres
# docker-compose.dev.yml (development specific configuration) api: image: node:wheezy volumes: - .:/app command: npm run watch
# docker-compose.prod.yml (production specific configuration) api: image: nicgirault/cinelocal-api
To merge the specific configuration into the common configuration:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml up api
By default, Compose checks the presence of docker-compose.override.yml so I renamed docker-compose.dev.yml to docker-compose.override.yml.
Now I can deploy the API using 3 commands described in a simple Ansible playbook:
# devops/deploy.yml - name: Cinelocal-api deployment hosts: all sudo: true vars: repository: https://github.com/nicgirault/cinelocal-api.git path: /home/ubuntu/www image: nicgirault/cinelocal-api tasks: - name: Pull github code git: repo={{ repository }} dest={{ path }} - name: Pull API container shell: docker pull {{ image }} - name: Start API container shell: docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d api args: chdir: {{ path }}
In the Makefile:
deploy: push ansible-playbook -i devops/hosts/production devops/deploy.yml
make deploy builds the image, pushes it and runs the playbook.
Read more about docker-compose in production.
Note: Ansible embeds docker commands that avoid installing docker-compose on the server but force to duplicate the docker architecture description. Although I didn’t use it for this project you might consider using it.
Bonus: continuous integration
This section explains how to automatically deploy on production when merging on the master branch if the build passes.
This is quite simple with circleCI and Docker Hub:
Here is a circle.yml file that runs the tests and deploys if the build passes provided the destination branch is master:
machine: services: - docker python: version: 2.7.8 post: # circle instance already run postgresql - sudo service postgresql stop dependencies: pre: - pip install ansible - pip install --upgrade setuptools override: - docker info - docker build -t nicgirault/cinelocal-api . test: override: - docker-compose run api npm test deployment: prod: branch: master commands: - docker login -e $DOCKER_EMAIL -u $DOCKER_USER -p $DOCKER_PASS - docker push nicgirault/cinelocal-api - echo "openstack ansible_host=$PROD_HOST ansible_ssh_user=$PROD_USER" > devops/hosts/production - ansible-playbook -i devops/hosts/production devops/deploy.yml
In addition you’ll have to:
define the environment variables used in this file in the circleCI project settings page
authorize circleCI to deploy on your server: generate a ssh key pair (use the command ssh-keygen) add the private key on the project settings on circleCI interface add the public key on the ~/.ssh/autorized_keys on the server
From now deploying on production will be as simple as merging a branch to master.
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Describing the US’ relationship with Pakistan as extraordinarily complicated, the outgoing Obama Administration has hoped that President-elect Donald Trump would deepen counter-terrorism cooperation with the country to make America a safer place. “Obviously, the United States has an extraordinarily complicated relationship, particularly when it comes to national security with Pakistan,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday.
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“There are some areas where the United States and Pakistan have been able to effectively cooperate to counter terrorism and to fight extremism, and that’s served the interest of both countries, and obviously, tragically, Pakistan is a country where many victims of terrorism have been claimed,” he said. He said that Obama is certainly interested and hopeful that the next administration will be able to deepen that cooperation with Pakistan as it would enhance security in Pakistan and make America safer too.
Responding to a question on Afghanistan, Earnest said it will be the kind of issue that historians spend a lot of time looking at when evaluating President Obama’s presidency. “What President Obama promised to do when taking office was to refocus our attention on the threat from Al-Qaeda that emanates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and President Obama put in place a strategy, working closely with his national security team at the state department and the intelligence community, and of course the Department of Defense,” he said.
“Over the course of several years, in part relying on some new capabilities, succeeded in decimating core Al-Qaeda that previously menaced the United States from hideouts in the Afghanistan- Pakistan region,” he added. But the threat in that region of the world has not been eliminated and there continue to be a smaller number of US service members keeping us safe, engaging in counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, Earnest said.
“They’re also working closely with thousands of troops from our NATO partners who are also there doing the same thing,” he said. “And I know there has been a question raised about how important a role NATO has played when it comes to counter-terrorism. You have to look no further than Afghanistan to assess just how valuable a contribution that they have made to that effort,” he added.
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Asserting that the situation in Afghanistan continues to be a concern, Earnest said the President would acknowledge that it is an area where the US has made important progress that has made the American people safer. “…but there’s still important work to be done in this region of the world and this is a responsibility that the incoming President will assume,” he said. |
A new study of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election found that approximately 17,000-23,000 eligible voters in those counties were prevented or deterred from voting by Wisconsin’s voter ID law. Due to financial constraints, the social scientists were only able to do a study of two of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, but the authors say that extrapolating statewide as many as 45,000 people stayed home because of the law.
Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin by only 22,000 votes, the first GOP presidential victory in the state since Ronald Regan in 1984. The shocking upset garnered national attention and helped deliver the electoral college to Trump as the popular vote went to Clinton.
The study, conducted by Ken Mayer and Michael G. DeCrescenzo, at the University of Wisconsin Department of Political Science, provides definitive evidence that the controversial voter ID bill, passed in 2011 and held up in the courts until 2016, worked precisely as Wisconsin Republicans intended — to make it more difficult for targeted voters to cast their ballots.
Although voter preferences were not included in the study, the survey documents that the burdens of voter ID fell disproportionately on low-income and minority populations considered likely to support Democrats. Among low-income registrants (household income under $25,000), 21.1% were deterred, compared to 7.2% for those whose household income was over $25,000. 8.3% of white registrants were deterred, compared to 27.5% of African Americans.
Roughly 80% of registrants who were deterred from voting by the law, and 77% of those actually prevented from voting, cast ballots in the 2012 election. The number of voters negatively impacted is far greater than the number of “fraud” cases the law was designed to stop. When the law was challenged in federal court and initially ruled a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the state failed to present a single case of voter impersonation that the law would have prevented.
The results prompted the county clerks from Milwaukee and Madison to issue strongly worded statements and a call for a suspension of the voter ID law. “I was shocked by the numbers and am furious to see that Jim Crow laws are alive and well,” said Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson.
“The photo ID law must be suspended until changes can be made to restore every voter’s access to the ballot box,” said Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell whose office commissioned the study.
“What I am concerned about here is winning”
While most Republican stuck to the official talking points that the photo ID law was all about preventing nonexistent “voter fraud,” some forgot the script.
On the night of Wisconsin’s 2016 presidential primary, Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman (R-WI) flatly stated in an interview with WTMJ’s Charles Benson that Wisconsin’s photo ID law would help the GOP win Wisconsin in the November 2016 election.
When asked about the fact that Wisconsin has consistently voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections, Grothman assured Bensen that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was a “weak candidate,” then added “and now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well.”
Rep. Grothman was a State Senator in 2011 when Wisconsin debated and passed its voter ID law, so he was privy to the back room conversations and dealings on the issue.
Those back room conversation came to light five years later when the bill was implemented and people immediately started having problems. Former GOP staffer turned coffee shop owner, Todd Albaugh, was frustrated when one of his employees could not vote in the 2016 spring elections and decided to blow the whistle.
Albaugh, who once worked for Wisconsin Senator Dale Shultz (R-Richland Center), stated in a social media post:
“I was in a closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for minute. Elected officials panning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.”
“A vigorous debate on the ideas wasn’t good enough,” said Albaugh “they had to take the coward’s way out and come up with a plan to suppress the vote under the guise of ‘voter fraud.'”
Later on the witness stand in a lawsuit brought by One Wisconsin Now challenging the voter ID law, Albaugh described the tension in closed door caucus as provisions in the bill were being debated.
As described by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Albaugh testified that Committee Chair Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) made the case for passing the bill, which made it much harder for students, the elderly and the poor to vote:
“She got up out of her chair and hit her fist or her finger on the table and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to think about what this would mean for the neighborhoods around Milwaukee and the college campuses,” Albaugh said. “Grothman said, ‘What I’m concerned about here is winning, and that’s what really matters here. … We better get this done quickly while we have the opportunity,'” Albaugh said. Albaugh named two other senators — Leah Vukmir and Randy Hopper — as being gleeful over passing the bill. “They were politically frothing at the mouth,” he said of Vukmir and Hopper, who lost a recall election a few months after the voter ID law passed.
ALEC Members Toe the Koch Party Line
All four of the legislators named by Albaugh were at the time members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Leah Vukmir, described as “frothing at the mouth” over the bill, served for years as an officer of ALEC, was ALEC’s national chairman in 2016, and was given ALEC’s “Iron Woman” Award in 2017.
The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) drafted and approved a “model” “Voter ID Act” in August of 2009. The wave of bills that followed were constructed differently by different GOP legislatures, but have a common purpose to disenfranchise constituencies that are more likely to vote Democratic.
ALEC has attempted to distance itself from this ugly history of voter suppression (it did away with its “Public Safety and Elections Task Force” and no longer touts voter ID as a “model bill”) after sustained campaigning by the online civil rights group Color of Change and others, but ALEC has done nothing to get voter ID policies repealed in the states where its members pushed for and passed the bill.
The partisan motivation behind the Voter ID Act comports with vision of ALEC’s founder, the late Paul Weyrich of Wisconsin, who in 1980 told a group of religious fundamentalists: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” |
The pattern of illegal immigration appears to be shifting yet again as families traveling together — usually mothers and their children — surge across the southwestern border at a record pace, posing more challenges for an Obama administration still struggling to figure out how to handle them.
They are increasingly coming into remote areas of Texas and Arizona where Border Patrol officials thought they had licked the problem. Analysts say it signals that new cartels are involved in trafficking.
Pushed from their homes by poor economies and violent communities, encouraged to come to the U.S. by friends and relatives who have made the crossing, and enticed by lax enforcement, more than 32,000 family members were apprehended at the border through the first six months of the fiscal year. That was more than double the rate of 2015.
This year’s total has well surpassed the number of children traveling without parents, whom the Border Patrol calls unaccompanied alien children, caught at the border during the same period last year.
While the majority are still coming through the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, the Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector, which covers remote western Arizona and eastern California, has reported a 1,000 percent increase compared with 2014. Laredo and the Big Bend areas of Texas have also seen massive spikes.
Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the cartels that control the approach on the Mexican side of the border in those regions appear to have taken up human smuggling.
She said the fact that families have surged ahead of unaccompanied children suggests Central Americans, who make up most of the new crossers, have learned to game the U.S. immigration system.
“They’re not dissuaded from coming by the fear of being detained and sent back — they know that they’re still going to be released,” she said. “The fact that it’s families coming now tells me that this may be people seeking to establish a foothold in the United States and taking advantage of this opportunity. When this surge was mostly kids, it was clear it was a family reunification phenomenon. Now it’s starting to look more like an opportunistic flow of people.”
State officials in Texas and Arizona referred questions to the Border Patrol, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The flow of Central American children and families — chiefly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — began rising in 2013 and seemed to peak in early summer 2014. That was when Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced get-tough policies, including opening family detention centers to hold illegal immigrants, quickly put them through hearings and send them back home.
But a federal judge last year ruled that sort of treatment in many cases violated a legal agreement that the government reached with immigrant rights advocates. Homeland Security officials told the court that relaxing their policies would spur another surge, but they agreed to abide by the judge’s order even as they appealed the case.
The 32,116 family members apprehended from Oct. 1 through March 31 set a record for the start of a fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the 27,793 unaccompanied children is just beneath the record pace set in 2014. Still, that is an improvement — through the first few months, the Border Patrol was on a record-breaking pace.
Homeland Security officials say the number of people apprehended is a good proxy for the total flow: If fewer people are caught, then fewer people are trying, and succeeding, to sneak into the U.S.
The numbers for children and families were running well above record pace in November and December, dropped over the cold months of January and February, and are climbing again. In March alone, some 4,240 children traveling alone, and 4,452 people traveling together as families, were caught at the border.
James Phelps, a professor who studies border security at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, said the November and December spike was likely in response to the Republican presidential race and the promise by leading candidate Donald Trump to build a border wall. More could be on the way, he predicted.
“Who gets elected in November will determine if the numbers will decline to a ‘normal’ influx or a massive surge in illegal border crossings. Basically, if a Republican with an anti-illegal-immigration platform wins, then everybody that can will cross the border so they will hopefully be grandfathered under the current administration’s policies,” he said in an email. “Should that happen, it’s important to note there is no infrastructure to process or hold the numbers of people that will arrive.”
For now, the number of unaccompanied children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala is down significantly from its peak in 2014, Mr. Phelps said.
“This is expected,” he said. “The countries are running out of a whole generation of youth to send north.”
But there has been an uptick in the flow from Nicaragua, he said, noting that the Nicaraguan numbers climbed when the price of oil dropped, causing a chain reaction that cut off aid from oil-rich ally Venezuela, harming Nicaragua’s economy.
Still, he said, the numbers generally appear to track the usual seasonal patterns.
“You can expect to see a decline in overall numbers and those of [unaccompanied alien children] in July and August, then an increase in September. This is typical of migrant movement over the longer periods of study. There are permutations, but they tend to be driven by other factors we haven’t yet ‘officially’ narrowed down,” he said.
Under the Obama administration’s interpretation of the law, unaccompanied children are required to be processed and released as quickly as possible — usually to family or friends.
Congressional investigations found that some have become prime targets for recruitment by gangs, while others are used for forced labor or by sexual predators.
The Associated Press last week reported that 80 percent of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. are placed with parents or relatives who themselves are in the country illegally. The Obama administration has said its goal is to find the children safe spaces, no matter the legal status of those who accept them.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
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While workers were still celebrating the historic signing of laws in New Jersey and New York to raise the state wage floor to $15 per hour, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey beat down the ceiling, poised for the dubious distinction of making his state the first to veto a $15 minimum wage. Ad Policy
Christie has assailed the proposal, while promising more tax breaks for corporations and property owners—measures that would further exacerbate the state’s extraordinary income gap and eviscerate school funding. His quashing of the most progressive labor legislation of his tenure would be a fine parting shot as he barrels toward the White House on the Trumpwagon—especially as debate on a $15 national wage floor intensifies in Washington.
A veto would rebuff about 975,000 New Jersey workers who would benefit from the bill. It would also curtail the expansion of the portion of workers supported by a $15 base wage. If it were enacted, National Employment Law Project estimates, the $15 wage floor would widen from 18 percent to 21 percent of the nationwide workforce, following raises in New York and California.
Reflecting national trends, about half of New Jerseyans who would benefit from the raise have some college education, more than half are women, about half are people of color, and the vast majority are over 20 years old. Most are full-time employed breadwinners and are found in retail, service and hospitality, and education and health-care jobs, according to New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP). Nationwide, more than 40 percent of workers earn sub-$15 hourly wages.
The opposition lobs standard arguments about potential job loss and interference with “free markets.” In fact, the state’s wealth gap reflects government intervention in favor of the rich.
The calculation is apparently that taxpayer dollars are better spent when hoarded by wealthy property owners or corporations (though corporate subsidies actually bring a dismal return on investment, despite promises of “job creation”).
Meanwhile, decades of studies show that not only have minimum-wage increases not undermined workers’ overall economic security but also that New Jersey has suffered some of the country’s worst wage stagnation. The state’s richest 1 percent of households have captured over 80 percent of the rise in earnings since 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Between 2007 and 2013, moreover, according to census data, the working-poor population has risen steadily statewide from 20.9 percent to 25.3 percent.
Brian Powers of the 15 Now NJ campaign testified at a legislative hearing on behalf of a category of New Jerseyans that the campaign hopes to abolish:
We should be working as quickly as possible to eliminate the condition known as “working poor.” For 40 years, worker productivity has increased significantly while wages have barely budged in a wide range of professions…. The demand for $15 now is not a handout, it is one step towards economic justice.
In the event of a veto, the campaign is looking toward the next planned standoff, at the polls in November 2017, when workers will pick a new governor and hopefully approve a veto-proof referendum for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. In the interim, the campaigners are pushing other labor reforms, including boosting the sub-minimum wage level currently earned by tipped workers, along with anti–wage theft measures, to further safeguard working poor families struggling with precarious service work. Until then, Powers says in a follow-up e-mail:
Localities can raise wages for workers as they did in Jersey City, County governments can take action as well. We expect our elected leaders to work for the working class year round. This organization intends to continue organizing to hold them accountable for that.
One case study for Christie’s economic vision (and Trump’s) is ground zero for casino capitalism, Atlantic City. The impoverished tourist town harbors 82 of the state’s wealthiest residents, whom Christie has coddled in his repeated attacks on the estate tax for the ultra-rich and rejection of proposals to tax millionaires. Meanwhile, the NJPP notes, the city’s finances teeter on bankruptcy, and more than 24,100 workers there are poor enough to qualify for the earned income tax credit.
Even $15 an hour will fail to alleviate hardship for many households bucking under the state’s heavy cost of living. A three-person family with two children would need an estimated $68,770 annually to live decently (roughly quadruple the full-time annual minimum-wage income of $17,430). LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
While the state has made some strides on family-friendly benefits—like municipal policies for paid sick days and statewide family leave insurance—the social safety net remains tattered. Women, for example, are both disproportionately employed in low-wage jobs and disproportionately hurt by the state’s so-called benefits “cliff,” according to Rutgers University researchers: Around the $22-per-hour wage level, working women lose eligibility for crucial supports like subsidized childcare and health insurance. They then face an absurd choice, “forced to turn down a pay-raise or a promotion in order to keep their work supports.” Yet just below this tier, “[m]ore than half of all single mothers raising children alone…lack adequate income.”
Even a union job brings no guarantee of security. Shortly after the wage bill passed, Atlantic City casino workers voted to authorize a strike at several gambling establishments, citing wages averaging less than $12 an hour, with minimal health benefits. (The lone casino holding out on contract negotiations as of July 1 was Trump’s Taj Mahal.)
Speaking with fellow union activists ahead of the strike date, Bally’s cocktail server Elaine Malloy talked about struggling to support a child in college on tipped wages. She hadn’t gotten a significant raise in years: “Yes, I do get tips, but I have to be able to survive on the generosity of my customers,” she said, while noting that her employer is even less generous. “I market for them, I serve beverages for them, I clean up for them, all on $8.99 an hour. You tell me who’s gonna do that for $8.99 an hour.”
Sadly, many workers would be willing to scrape that low. Soon, however, it may be against the law. Yet to really outlaw working poverty, New Jersey workers need comprehensive social policies like free childcare and expanded affordable housing opportunities. For now, they can start to make do with a wage at least worth working for, and maybe start working towards other priorities, like winning not just a fair day’s pay, but economic justice. |
The Indian website of popular pizza retailer Domino’s (www. co.in) was hacked by a Turkish Hacker group that calls itself Details of about 37,000 accounts, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, passwords and city details, were leaked, and the passwords have been released in plain text.
International operates in India through its master franchise
Domino’s India website was hacked using the method and remote file inclusion, one of the most common methods for stealing private data from web databases. Through this, the hacker typically tricks the site’s database into revealing data that should be hidden by ‘injecting’ certain commands.
Govind Rammurthy, managing director and chief executive of eScan, says, “Once hacked, all the website can do is fortify its webserver and make some configuration changes that are not too costly. But it’s very hard to absolutely secure a website from the numerous attack tools available.”
Earlier this year, Microsoft Store India was hacked by a team of Chinese hackers who left a ‘black page’ tagged with the words “Unsafe system will be baptized”.
Besides the defacement, the customer database was also breached and usernames and passwords stolen, as there was no protection and no encryption on the site that stored passwords as plain text.
Independent security professional Ankit Fadia says, “Most websites, especially government sites, have little or no security protection. Second, these don’t even have dedicated security professionals to manage the website and keep protect these from targeted attacks.” Hacking a website has increasingly become a handy disruption tool for hackers. Recently, a Pakistani hacking group defaced more than 450 Indian sites. Fadia says most of the recent attacks on government websites were through the distributed denial of service (DDoS) method, which overwhelms a website’s servers and forces these to shut down. “This kind of an attack is also hard to trace, since DDoS attacks are carried out by a group of hackers and it is difficult to trace their location,” Fadia adds.
In a report, security solutions company Trend Micro estimated systematic attacks were carried out on at least 233 personal computers, and the victims included Indian military research organisations and shipping companies, and aerospace, energy and engineering companies in Japan. Baburaj Varma, head (technical services), India & Southeast Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Trend Micro, says, “At least 30 computer systems of Tibetan advocacy groups have been attacked so far. The espionage has been going on for at least 10 months. This was not the only attack that was started and stopped; it is a continuous effort by cyber criminals to attack government websites in India.” |
As you know, the summer months came and this is one of the best times to change your hairstyle. In the summer, short men hairstyles and medium length hairstyles are popular, but long hairstyles also can be preferred. And today, In this post we will talk about the popular haircuts for men you can choose in the summer months.
In general, We see trends more natural looking male hairstyles that are lighter and shaped with matte finish pomades. Again skin fade haircuts and surgical part have become popular haircuts for men this summer.
If you want to take a look at popular mens hairstyles of summer, don’t stop and scroll the page down. You will also find the best haircuts for curly hair, wavy hair and thick hair. Come on let’s start.
42 Popular Haircuts For Men 2019
1. Wavy Hairstyles For Men
2. Side Part Hairstyles For Men 3. Wavy Hair + Slick Back + Fiber Pomade 4. Textured Hairstyles For Summer 5. Messy Hair 6. Fade Hairstyles + Mohawk 7. Mens Short Hairstyles + Crop Cut 8. Textured Crop + Skin Fade 9. Hard Side Part + Low Fade 10. High Bald Fade + Textured Slick Back 11. Cool Hairstyles For Black Men 12. Man Bun Hairstyle 13. Mid Fade Haircut + Slick Hairstyles For Men 14. Messy Hair + Short Sides 15. Textured Hair + High Razor Fade + Design 16. Popular Haircuts For Men + Long Hair 17. Side Part Cut + New Hairstyles For Men 18. Cool Fade Haircut 19. Slick Back Hairstyles For Men 20. Popular Men’s Hairstyles 2019 21. Textured + Fade Haircut 22. Short Haircuts For Men 2019 23. Comb Over Haircut + High Fade + Side Part 24. Mens Short Hairstyles + Taper Beck Line 25. Quiff Hairstyle + High Fade + Beard
26. Crew Cut + Fringe + Temp Fade 27. Slicked Back Hairstyle + Fade Haircuts
28. High Fade + Long Side Swept Hairstyle 29. Popular Haircuts For Men + Undercut 30. Low Fade + Long Hairstyles For Men + Beard
31. Short Slicked Back Hairstyles 32. Curly Hairstyles For Men + Skin Fade 33. Skin Fade + Short Hair 34. Side Swept Hairstyle + Mid Fade Haircut 35. The Hard Part + Fade Haircut 36. Buzz Cut
37. Short Hair + Undercut + Beard
38. Cool Curly Hairstyle For Men 39. Tousled Texture + Hair Design 40. Medium Length Hair + High Fade 41. Quiff Haircut For Men + High Fade 42. Cool Haircut For Thick Hair
Finally, you can look at our other popular men hairstyles articles;
And you can follow our facebook and instagram pages. |
The barbershop is the hood's social club. It's a place where different generations of men can share experiences, stories, and opinions. As a youngster, you feel timid and overwhelmed by some of the adult conversations that go down while you wait for your appointment. So when you come of age and have been going to the same shop for a while, it's a right of passage to be able to hold court for the first time. You almost feel as if you've arrived as a man.
Debates are what drives those conversations and they could get heated more time than not. Whether it be who are the greatest ball players to who are the greatest rappers, varying opinions will either make you shake your head when you agree or jump out your seat when you don't.
New York's Jadakiss is a rapper that's mentioned when those greatest rapper convos pop up. For years, he's referred to himself as "Top 5 Dead or Alive" and you won't find many folks disagreeing with him. He's been putting it down for two decades, and he and the Lox have held their own alongside legends since they came in the game.
Kiss visits the barbershop, This Is It, in the Bronx during a debate about the top five greatest rappers of all time. Internet personality Taxstone plays as moderator as the entire shop joins in an interesting and heated debate. Names like Jada, DMX, Styles P, Scarface, Jay Z, Nas, Biggie, and Nicki Minaj are mentioned, proving that everyone has different opinions based on experiences and tastes. Check the video above to get a taste of what happens in hood barbershops everyday. Jadakiss' fourth album, “Top 5 Dead or Alive” drops Nov. 20—you can pre-order it here. |
I'm not looking for doom-mongering or speculative philosophizing/moralizing about the dangers of technological dependence or the bigger-picture economic and social fallout, etc., what I'm looking for are realistic, technical assessments of the likely immediate, practical effects in the context of modern technological infrastructure. Would powerlines burst into flames, or probably not because they're too well-insulated? Would magnetic media be left unreadable? Etc.
A few highlights from what happened in 1859, to give a sense for the scale and magnitude of the event:
"...telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze.
"...a telegraph manager in Pittsburgh, reported that the resulting currents flowing through the wires were so powerful that platinum contacts were in danger of melting and “streams of fire” were pouring forth from the circuits."
"...telegraph operator Frederick W. Royce was severely shocked as his forehead grazed a ground wire. According to a witness, an arc of fire jumped from Royce’s head to the telegraphic equipment."
"When American Telegraph Company employees arrived at their Boston office at 8 a.m., they discovered it was impossible to transmit or receive dispatches. The atmosphere was so charged, however, that operators made an incredible discovery: They could unplug their batteries and still transmit messages to Portland, Maine, at 30- to 90-second intervals using only the auroral current." I'm not looking for doom-mongering or speculative philosophizing/moralizing about the dangers of technological dependence or the bigger-picture economic and social fallout, etc., what I'm looking for are realistic, technical assessments of the likely immediate, practical effects in the context of modern technological infrastructure. Would powerlines burst into flames, or probably not because they're too well-insulated? Would magnetic media be left unreadable? Etc.A few highlights from what happened in 1859, to give a sense for the scale and magnitude of the event:
The 1859 Carrington Event triggered the largest Geomagnetic Storm in recorded history, crippling the relatively small-scale telecommunications systems of the day and causing widespread electro-magnetic disruptions around the globe. If another EM event on that scale occurred today, what would be the likeliest impacts to our telecommunications systems, electrical grids, and magnetic storage media? |
(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file) In this May 28, 2009 file photo, a foreclosed home is shown in Mountain View, Calif. More than 13 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the recession throws more people out of work, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009.
By Jennifer Taub
416 pp. Yale University Press $30
In the early 2000s, the media regularly turned to David Lereah, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. He provided consistently optimistic predictions about rising housing prices and labeled those who disagreed a “Chicken Little.” In 2006, at the peak of the housing bubble, he published a book entitled Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust—And How You Can Profit from It.
Within a year, the housing bubble popped. Between 2006 and 2012, housing prices nationwide fell by a third. Americans lost about $7 trillion in household wealth as a result of the real estate crash. Six million families lost their homes to foreclosure and short sales. As late as mid-2014, almost 10 million American households (about one in five of all mortgaged homes) were still “underwater”—their homes worth less than their mortgages. Millions of middle-class families watched their major source of wealth stripped away, their neighborhoods decimated, and their future economic security destroyed. Foreclosed homes in a neighborhood bring down the value of other houses in the area, magnifying the impact. The slowness of this recovery has much to do with the housing collapse.
In Other People’s Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business, Jennifer Taub explains how they got away with it and how this house of cards came crashing down. She names names—of greedy bankers, sleazy mortgage lenders, compliant politicians, indifferent government regulators, and occasional heroes who fought for stronger government oversight of banks and tougher consumer protections.
Taub reminds us that the nation’s economic troubles were entirely preventable. She pinpoints the key decisions—primarily by presidents, cabinet secretaries, key members of Congress, and government bank regulators—that allowed banks to engage in an orgy of speculation that caused the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent economic crisis. They weren’t following some predetermined script. They were making conscious choices about which interests to serve. They knew what they were doing and what the consequences might be. But, blinded by greed, they simply didn’t care.
Taub traces the 2008 financial crisis to the deregulation that began in the Carter years in the 1970s, accelerated during the Reagan-Bush period in the 1980s, and continued during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras. The 2008 disaster, she writes, was a replay of the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s, when hundreds of S&Ls and banks went under and the federal government was left to bail out the depositors whose money the speculators had looted to the tune of about $125 billion. At the end of each catastrophe, the industry consolidated, with fewer banks owning more assets. The nation’s ten largest banks increased their control of the industry’s assets from 21 percent in 1960 to 60 percent by 2005.
The financial and real-estate lobbies used their political muscle to promote deregulation, which opened the floodgates to risky and predatory practices. Banks and private mortgage lenders began pushing subprime mortgages, many with “adjustable” rates that jumped sharply after a few years. These loans comprised 8.6 percent of all mortgages in 2001, soaring to 20.1 percent by 2006. That year, ten lenders accounted for 56 percent of all subprime loans, totaling $362 billion.
Instead of cautiously making loans to people who could repay them, banks and brokers made money by lending to people who were unable to repay. They bent the rules, lowered normal banking standards, and engaged in a variety of fraudulent practices—hidden fees, confusing loan documents, failure to verify borrowers’ income—that increased the odds that consumers would eventually lose their homes to foreclosure, after which lenders and brokers would make money by “servicing” the loan and reselling the home to the next unsuspecting buyer.
Predatory lenders touted low interest rates in ads targeting the elderly and residents of low-income, working-class, and minority neighborhoods, without explaining the actual interest rates or that adjustable-rate mortgages would soon have higher rates. Mortgage brokers, the street hustlers of the lending world, made a commission for every borrower they handed to a lender. They used mail solicitations and ads that shouted, “Bad Credit? No Problem!” and “Zero Percent Down Payment!” to find people who were closed out of homeownership, or homeowners who could be talked into refinancing.
Taub, a professor at Vermont Law School (and former associate general counsel at Fidelity Investments), is a great storyteller. She peppers her history of the financial crisis with profiles of people who played key roles and bit parts in the unfolding disaster.
The bit players include Harriet and Leonard Nobelman. In 1984, the couple borrowed $68,250 from a mortgage broker to purchase a modest condo in Dallas. The broker then sold the loan to American Savings and Loan Association in Stockton, California, the nation’s largest S&L. Its executives’ greed and mismanagement led to several reorganizations, but whenever it fell on hard times, the federal government bailed it out. Eventually, it was purchased by Washington Mutual, which later collapsed under a mountain of bad mortgages brought on by its own predatory practices, including the creation of a devious idea called the Option ARM (adjustable rate mortgage), which allowed the borrower to defer a portion of the interest due. These mortgages were a trap almost guaranteed to result in massive foreclosures.
While American Savings’ various incarnations kept feeding at the federal trough, the Nobelmans had no such luck. By 1990, they had lost their jobs and faced health problems. They filed for bankruptcy to avoid losing their home. They wanted a bankruptcy judge to modify their mortgage, based on their condo’s depressed value ($23,500—a result of Dallas’s worsening real estate market). But the bankruptcy judge rejected their plan. When they appealed the case, the federal court for the Northern District of Texas turned them down, too. They took their case to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, but they had no better luck there. So they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1993, in Nobelman v. American Savings Bank, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited judges from requiring banks to modify mortgages by reducing principal to help homeowners facing bankruptcy and foreclosure. With the Nobelman ruling, lenders quickly recognized that consumers who fell behind on mortgage payments couldn’t rely on the same bankruptcy protections routinely used by businesses. This, Taub explains, gave lenders “added incentive to place people in homes they could not afford,” often using deceptive mortgage products. As Taub observes, our government determined that while the Nobelmans were “too small to save,” American Savings, “with $30 billion in assets, was too big to fail.”
One fascinating figure in Taub’s story is Kerry Killinger, who became CEO of Washington Mutual in 1990 at age 40. Throughout its history, WaMu had engaged in what Taub calls “simple, safe banking” that was cautious and consumer-friendly. Killinger changed WaMu’s corporate culture. Between 1990 and 1998, WaMu grew from $7 billion to $150 billion in assets and from 50 to 2,000 branches, in part by buying other banks. In 2001, American Banker named Killinger its Banker of the Year. As WaMu got bigger, so did Killinger’s appetite. He stopped flying coach and began traveling on corporate jets. As a young CEO, he earned a modest salary. By 2007, he was earning $14.3 million in compensation; the next year, $25.1 million.
WaMu pumped up its profits by pushing riskier loans that were more profitable than fixed-rate mortgages. By 2006, 75 percent of WaMu’s home loans were subprime, adjustable mortgages. WaMu intentionally failed to verify, and sometimes falsified, the income or credit history of borrowers, and even forged borrowers’ signatures on loan documents. It hired appraisers who inflated the value of homes to increase loans and put borrowers in precarious over-leveraged positions. It relied on 34,000 independent brokers to bring in business but had only 14 of its own employees to oversee their work. Not surprisingly, fraud was rampant and unchecked. Salespeople who delivered the most borrowers received invitations to WaMu’s annual President Club event, an opulent party held in various vacation spots like Cancun, the Bahamas, Maui, and Kauai. Salespeople who refused to sell the Option ARMs as a matter of conscience were fired.
“If you were alive, they would give you a loan,” said one appraiser who worked closely with WaMu. “Actually, I think if you were dead, they would still give you a loan.”
In September 2008, WaMu’s board fired Killinger. A few weeks later, after WaMu reported that it faced $19 billion in losses from troubled mortgages, the Office of Thrift Supervision seized WaMu’s banking divisions and put the FDIC in place as the receiver. It was, at the time, the largest bank failure in the nation’s history. The FDIC arranged for JPMorgan Chase to purchase WaMu’s assets. Nevertheless, Killinger received $15.3 million in severance payments.
The conclusion Taub draws from the malpractices of WaMu and kindred lenders, rating agencies, investment banks, and others is stark: “Any hope for a large business to self-regulate at the expense of profit is likely not tenable on a playing field with competitors waiting to take one’s place. And especially not when a CEO and other top executives are compensated for driving up short-term profits and thus the stock price, even when losses are certain to follow.” She concludes that Killinger “led this company off the cliff, but he did so because lawmakers and regulators took down the guardrails and eliminated the speed limits.”
Although Taub uses Killinger and WaMu as exemplars, she reminds us that this was a systemic disease that infected the entire financial industry. Many bankers, brokers, and rating agencies broke the law, but much of what they did was perfectly legal, the consequence of decades of deregulation.
Taub reveals that, with a few exceptions, the heads of the crazy quilt of state and federal bank regulatory agencies viewed the lenders as clients. They did little to ensure banks’ safety and soundness or to protect investors, depositors, borrowers—and the wider economy.
The worst culprit was Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, a disciple of Ayn Rand, whose libertarian views colored his tenure as the nation’s top bank regulator. Greenspan believed that the banks could and should police themselves, with investors and rating agencies serving as back-up cops. He didn’t think that any bank would jeopardize its long-term solvency to make short-term profits. Only after the bubble burst and the economy crashed did Greenspan admit he was wrong, telling Congress in 2008 that he was in a state of “shocked disbelief.”
But Greenspan and other regulators had plenty of information warning them that many huge banks were engaging in fraudulent, reckless, and risky activities that would eventually explode. They choose not to act, blinded by ideology, self-interest (including potential jobs in the banking industry), and timidity. “Had Greenspan acted,” Taub writes, “the entire mortgage crisis could have been averted.”
Taub does not spare the Obama administration for its unwillingness to hold the worst culprits accountable for their misdeeds or to address the suffering of homeowners victimized by reckless lenders. Obama’s key economic advisers, particularly Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, did not believe that directly addressing the foreclosure problem by providing financial relief to distressed homeowners was necessary or politically feasible.
Obama eventually supported the effort that led to the Dodd–Frank legislation. The new law focused primarily on protecting consumers from abusive practices, but it did little to challenge the concentration of ownership or key aspects of the industry’s business practices, including the “originate to distribute” loan model and regulation of derivatives.
Particularly frustrating was Attorney General Eric Holder’s reluctance to prosecute the banks and their top executives. Eventually, the Justice Department put enough pressure on several major banks to agree to negotiate multibillion-dollar settlements. The funds were targeted to some of the victims of the banks’ fraudulent practices, and to help homeowners. But the top executives admitted no wrongdoing. The settlement fees came out of the banks’ revenues, not the pockets of the bigwigs. And the real culprits avoided spending time behind prison bars, which in the end is the only way to really stop them from misbehaving and crashing the economy again.
In 2011, for example, the FDIC sued Killinger and two other WaMu executives for mismanagement. They reached a settlement agreement for $64.7 million, most of it covered by the bank’s insurance policy. That year, too, the Justice Department investigated WaMu but failed to file any charges.
Indeed, many Wall Street honchos survived the financial crisis not only with their jobs intact but with substantial raises. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon received a hefty bonus after negotiating a settlement with the feds over his bank’s involvement in the mortgage crisis. On January 24, 2014, it was announced that Dimon would receive a 74 percent raise—to $20 million—despite what was reported as the bank’s worst year under Dimon’s reign.
The Institute for Policy Studies, in a March 2014 report, found that the $26.7 billion in bonuses handed to 165,200 executives by Wall Street banks in 2013 was enough to more than double the pay for all 1,085,000 Americans who work full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
No bank CEO has faced prosecution or gone to jail for the widespread mortgage fraud that fueled the bubble and the collapse that followed. “The message to every Wall Street banker is loud and clear,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year. “If you break the law, you are not going to jail, but you might end up with a bigger paycheck.”
Taub’s tale of malfeasance, corruption, and indifference is occasionally interrupted with stories of dissenters who challenged the bankers and regulators. Her heroes include Warren and Senator Richard Durbin, who pushed for legislation to give bankruptcy court judges the power to modify mortgages through “principal reduction”—to reduce the balance owed on the mortgage to the home’s current market value—which would save “underwater” homeowners from spiraling debt and foreclosure, but who ran into a buzz saw of industry lobbyists who killed the bill in the Senate. Another dissenter was Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996 to 1999, who wanted her agency to regulate derivatives and other exotic financial investments (including credit default swaps) that she accurately predicted were too risky and would lead to disaster. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan stopped her from exercising the kind of regulatory authority that would have prevented the calamity. Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve Board member, repeatedly warned about subprime mortgages and predatory lending. He tried to get Greenspan to crack down on irrational subprime lending, but his warnings fell on deaf ears, including those in Congress. Taub also praises Sheila Bair, the FDIC chair who resisted banks’ reckless practices, but was usually outmaneuvered by White House officials and regulators closer to centers of power. Taub credits two economists, Dean Baker and Susan Wachter, who warned that the upsurge of subprime loans and the upward spiraling of housing prices was unsustainable, but who were marginalized by their more mainstream colleagues and the industry’s hired experts.
Missing from Taub’s account are the many community organizing and advocacy groups, like National People’s Action and ACORN, who, since the 1970s, were on the front lines of the battle against bank redlining and who issued early warnings about predatory lending. She also ignores the role of Americans for Financial Reform, the Washington, D.C.–based liberal coalition that played a key part in pushing for tough reform measures that resulted in the Dodd–Frank legislation. Nor does she discuss Occupy Wall Street, which helped inject outrage about the banking industry’s abuse of power into the national conversation. For the story of those grassroots activists, readers will have to rely on Larry Kirsch and Robert Mayer’s Financial Justice: The People’s Campaign to Stop Lender Abuse and Chester Hartman and Gregory Squires’s From Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Advocacy, Organizing, Occupy, and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit.
Taub’s book is a jeremiad, a warning that we need to understand what led to the 1980s S&L crisis and the more recent financial meltdown, or else it could happen again. She would certainly be upset, but not surprised, by a story that appeared on the front page of The New York Times on January 14, soon after the Republicans took control of both the House and Senate. The article began, “In the span of a month, the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms have twice won passage of measures to weaken regulations [adopted as part of the Dodd-Frank law] intended to help lessen the risk of another financial crisis, setting their sights on narrow, arcane provisions and greasing their efforts with a surge of lobbying and campaign contributions.” She may have to add a chapter to the book before it appears in paperback, recounting the sorry tale of lessons unlearned. |
Topgolf won approvals Wednesday morning to clear the way for its first ever urban location, and right here in the Magic City.
Topgolf is a driving range, but it's high-tech: each golf ball has a RFID chip in it - the kind in cell phones - that collects data about your swing, like distance. But it's not just for the serious golfer - there are different targets folks can attempt to aim, and it's far more than just golf.
Each bay - which customers rent by the hour - has couches and flat screen TVs. The bays are rented by the hour with rates ranging from $25 to $45 depending on peak times and are the same rate regardless of how many people are using the bays. There's also a $5 membership fee, but customers only have to pay that once.
Topgolf is taking up full two city blocks bordered by 12th Avenue North, 11th Avenue North, 26th Street North and 24th Street North. The Birmingham Design Review Committee granted Topgolf approval Wednesday morning as well as approval for the BJCC to demolish two buildings on the property.
About 80 percent of Topgolf's customers are not regular golfers, Topgolf Senior Real Estate Development Associate Mark Foster said. Topgolf will be open from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. It'll also have a 50-table restaurant and bar.
The building will be 65,000 square feet and have a four and a half-acre outfield.
Topgolf has 26 locations in the U.S. and three in the United Kingdom.
"We've reinvented the game of golf, we've made it popular to the masses," Foster said.
The location should open before the end of next year, Foster said. |
Warren Buffett is back as the nation’s financial conscience, publishing an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT lamenting the dangers of too much monetary and fiscal stimulus. As regular readers of this blog are aware, that’s a message with which I wholeheartedly agree. My problem with Buffett’s piece is that he makes a good argument and then totally undercuts it in his conclusion:
Our immediate problem is to get our country back on its feet and flourishing — “whatever it takes” still makes sense. Once recovery is gained, however, Congress must end the rise in the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources.
This have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach is typically what we get from Paul Krugman: Yeah, debt is a problem and has to be dealt with long-term, but in the meantime we should jack up deficit spending in order to boost growth. To paraphrase St. Augustine, make us fiscally and monetarily prudent, just not yet. Ben Bernanke said something of that sort in a speech. He was trying to be funny.
The problem, it seems to me, is that rising GDP and employment—i.e. “recovery”—is not compatible with de-leveraging, which is what Buffett is talking about.
When consumers try to cut debt and boost savings, the economy goes into a deflationary spiral that Keynesians argue must be counteracted with fiscal and monetary stimulus.*
Consumers de-lever, government re-levers.
Private consumption and government spending now drive something like 80% of GDP. It can’t keep rising unless consumers, the government or both continue borrowing huge sums.
The goldilocks economy Buffett describes, in which we can have “recovery” without increasing debt, is a fantasy.
My point is that in order to reduce debt we have to endure some sort of deflationary recession. The alternative is to spend and print perpetually, which Buffett points out is the worse option.
What Buffett should have said? Suck it up folks, we’ve no choice but to learn to live with less.
——
P.s.: I think Buffett actually knows this, but being asset-rich, he’s boxed in. Deflation hammers the value of all non-cash assets, so he has to support monetary/fiscal stimulus in order to preserve his own and his shareholders’ wealth. Hence the opening of the piece, which lauds the “wisdom, courage and decisiveness” of the Bush and Obama administrations in the face of collapse, and the end of the piece, which says their emergency measures continue to be necessary. He maligns the effects of stimulus, but he’s stuck supporting it.
*The “Paradox of Thrift” this is called, a particularly problematic economic theory used to justify heavy government borrowing. |
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sylvana Simons was a well-known broadcaster on Dutch TV and radio before she entered politics
The images of a black Dutch TV presenter's face super-imposed on the hanged bodies of victims of a lynching are too nauseating to look at. And yet a video featuring the mocked-up pictures has been widely circulated online here.
Sylvana Simons has for years been a familiar presence on Dutch TV and radio, and the attack on her has highlighted a debate bubbling inside the Netherlands far removed from its reputation as a liberal tolerant nation.
A former presenter on talent show Dancing with the Stars, she recently joined the political party "Denk" (Think) and is running in the next election. Ms Simons has been outspoken on racism, and has raised hackles by calling for the "decolonisation" of education and language use in the Netherlands.
But it was her criticism of the traditional festive character known as Black Pete that unleashed a backlash of death-threats and misogynistic, racist abuse, which quickly escalated from unpleasant to outright shocking.
The video that circulated online also featured a song entitled "Oh Sylvana" including the lines "why don't you pack your bags... why don't you go and emigrate". But the song-writers insist it was a party anthem about a Russian woman and nothing to do with Sylvana Simons.
The self-proclaimed creator of the video has now handed himself in to police, but the sentiment among a small but significant section of society appears to be - if you question our traditions then you are fair game.
When a football show host suggested that Sylvana was "running around proud as a monkey", a colleague suggested he had meant to use the phrase "proud as a peacock". But he was adamant: "No, she doesn't look like a peacock." Then a famous radio presenter played gorilla grunts on air and said "be quiet, Sylvana".
Sensitive issue
For many Dutch people Black Pete is an innocent children's character, a sidekick to St Nicholas, steeped in nostalgia and annual festivities that culminate on 5 December. For others he is an offensive caricature that perpetuates racist stereotypes that hark back to slavery.
Image copyright Anna Holligan Image caption Black Pete parades are still held in The Hague (above) but they have been replaced in Amsterdam by "Chimney Petes"
The debate about Black Pete encapsulates a much broader anxiety felt by those afraid of the changing nature of their nation.
Read more about Black Pete in the Netherlands
For Sandra Violin, whose son dressed up as Black Pete at a parade in The Hague, it is a tradition purely for children.
"He's so proud to dress up like this. Every kid wants to be Black Pete. He's just funny and gives out candy. People shouldn't turn it into something negative."
But Humberto Tan, an eminent Dutch-Surinamese presenter of one of this country's most popular late-night talk shows, disagrees. "It's created a chasm and I despise chasms."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Humberto Tan believes politicians have failed to provide moral leadership
"I'm for the changing of Black Pete. But when you say that, people feel as though you're attacking them, their country, their childhood."
Humberto Tan says he has been subjected to racist comments and even death threats.
"It's the politicians' fault too. Our prime minister said 'Black Pete is Black Pete'. They should be giving us moral leadership but they're afraid it will cost them votes."
Geert Wilders has become one of the Netherlands' most popular politicians, and he has positioned himself as protector of Dutch culture.
Wilders brands hate-speech trial 'charade'
An anti-immigration, anti-Islam populist, he is currently on trial accused of hate speech. In court on Wednesday, he gave an impassioned speech and argued it was unacceptable for the Dutch to be considered racist for wanting Black Pete "to remain black".
If we, Dutch, are suddenly racists because we want Black Pete to remain black... if we sell out our hard-won freedom of expression, then this beautiful country will be doomed.” Geert Wilders AP
The best thing for Ms Simons, he tweeted, would be protection from herself and for her political party to be disbanded.
Quinsy Gario was arrested in 2011 for staging a silent protest at a Black Pete parade and believes the hate directed towards Sylvana Simons is nothing new. Only the tools of intimidation are evolving.
"There is a history of black politicians being harassed and told to shut up," he says.
"Everything that deviates from 'white behaviour' is seen as threatening and something that needs to be expunged in the most vicious wording possible.
"The difference with the US or Britain is that these hate groups have until now been clandestine, in the Netherlands white supremacist hate has always been open and collective."
Sylvana Simons was 18 months old when her family moved from the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America to the Netherlands.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Appearing on Dutch talk show Pauw this week, Sylvana Simons said one of the reasons she was going into politics was to "tackle the system - racism is a system"
While she has no memory of her country of birth and considers herself Dutch, she told Trouw newspaper: "I notice there is a limit to my Dutch citizenship if I express an opinion that deviates from the norm."
Appearing on a talk show this week, she told of how her children had seen the sickening video images of her head in a noose on social media. Her family had received threats, she said, and one person on Instagram had threatened to burn her alive.
She has vowed to fight back by tackling racism through her political party.
But Humberto Tan is worried about where the debate is heading.
"Lynching from a tree, slavery in the US? I fear the pinnacle hasn't been reached yet. I'm afraid of the tone of the discussions.
"People are enraged on both sides. We need to stay cool in our heads and warm in our hearts."
The alternative, he says, does not bear thinking about. |
Former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre is leaving no stone unturned in preparation for his UFC 217 title fight with Michael Bisping, and that includes bringing in former opponents to his training camp at Tristar Gym in Montreal.
After a more than four-year layoff from competition, St-Pierre (25-2 MMA, 19-2 UFC) returns to the octagon to challenge Bisping (30-7 MMA, 20-7 UFC) for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 217, which takes place Nov. 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York City and airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FS1 and UFC Fight Pass.
It’s a crucial fight for St-Pierre’s legacy. With a win he, can become just the fourth fighter in UFC history to hold belts in two weight classes. In order to help him get ready, “Rush” has enlisted the help of Jake Shields (32-9-1), a former Strikeforce champion and former opponent of the French-Canadian (via Instagram):
St-Pierre clashed with Shields inside the octagon at UFC 129 in April 2011. He won a unanimous decision for what, at the time, was his sixth consecutive title defense. He would defend it three more times after before vacating the gold in December 2013.
With Bisping primarily being a striker, it’s safe to assume St-Pierre is working with Shields, who last found in July under the PFL banner, to sharpen his wrestling and grappling for UFC 217.
For more on UFC 217, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
The Blue Corner is MMAjunkie‘s official blog and is edited by Mike Bohn. |
NSQ is a realtime message processing system designed to operate at bitly’s scale, handling billions of messages per day.
It promotes distributed and decentralized topologies without single points of failure, enabling fault tolerance and high availability coupled with a reliable message delivery guarantee.
Operationally, NSQ is easy to configure and deploy (all parameters are specified on the command line and compiled binaries have no runtime dependencies). For maximum flexibility, it is agnostic to data format (messages can be JSON, MsgPack, Protocol Buffers, or anything else). Go and Python libraries are available out of the box.
This post aims to provide a detailed overview of NSQ, from the problems that inspired us to build a better solution to how it works inside and out. There’s a lot to cover so let’s start off with a little history…
Background
Before NSQ, there was simplequeue, a simple (shocking, right?) in-memory message queue with an HTTP interface, developed as part of our open source simplehttp suite of tools. Like its successor, simplequeue is agnostic to the type and format of the data it handles.
We used simplequeue as the foundation for a distributed message queue by siloing an instance on each host that produced messages. This effectively reduced the potential for data loss in a system which otherwise did not persist messages by guaranteeing that the loss of any single host would not prevent the rest of the message producers or consumers from functioning.
We also used pubsub, an HTTP server to aggregate streams and provide an endpoint for multiple clients to subscribe. We used it to transmit streams across hosts (or datacenters) and be queued again for writing to various downstream services.
As a glue utility, we used ps_to_http to subscribe to a pubsub stream and write the data to simplequeue .
There are a couple of important properties of these tools with respect to message duplication and delivery. Each of the N clients of a pubsub receive all of the messages published (each message is delivered to all clients), whereas each of the N clients of a simplequeue receive 1 / N of the messages queued (each message is delivered to 1 client). Consequently, when multiple applications need to consume data from a single producer, we set up the following workflow:
The producer publishes to pubsub and for each downstream service we set up a dedicated simplequeue with a ps_to_http process to route all messages from the pubsub into the queue. Each service has its own set of “queuereaders” which we scale independently according to the service’s needs.
We used this foundation to process 100s of millions of messages a day. It was the core upon which bitly was built.
This setup had several nice properties:
producers are de-coupled from downstream consumers
no producer-side single point of failures
easy to interact with (all HTTP)
But, it also had its issues…
One is simply the operational overhead/complexity of having to setup and configure the various tools in the chain. Of particular note are the pubsub > ps_to_http links. Given this setup, consuming a stream in a way that avoids SPOFs is a challenge. There are two options, neither of which is ideal:
just put the ps_to_http process on a single box and pray shard by consuming the full stream but processing only a percentage of it on each host (though this does not resolve the issue of seamless failover)
To make things even more complicated, we needed to repeat this for each stream of data we were interested in.
Also, messages traveling through the system had no delivery guarantee and the responsibility of re-queueing was placed on the client (for instance, if processing fails). This churn increased the potential for situations that result in message loss.
Enter NSQ
NSQ is designed to (in no particular order):
provide easy topology solutions that enable high-availability and eliminate SPOFs
address the need for stronger message delivery guarantees
bound the memory footprint of a single process (by persisting some messages to disk)
greatly simplify configuration requirements for producers and consumers
provide a straightforward upgrade path
improve efficiency
To introduce some NSQ concepts, let’s start off by discussing configuration.
Simplifying Configuration and Administration
A single nsqd instance is designed to handle multiple streams of data at once. Streams are called “topics” and a topic has 1 or more “channels”. Each channel receives a copy of all the messages for a topic. In practice, a channel maps to a downstream service consuming a topic.
Topics and channels all buffer data independently of each other, preventing a slow consumer from causing a backlog for other channels (the same applies at the topic level).
A channel can, and generally does, have multiple clients connected. Assuming all connected clients are in a state where they are ready to receive messages, each message will be delivered to a random client. For example:
NSQ also includes a helper application, nsqlookupd , which provides a directory service where consumers can lookup the addresses of nsqd instances that provide the topics they are interested in subscribing to. In terms of configuration, this decouples the consumers from the producers (they both individually only need to know where to contact common instances of nsqlookupd , never each other), reducing complexity and maintenance.
At a lower level each nsqd has a long-lived TCP connection to nsqlookupd over which it periodically pushes its state. This data is used to inform which nsqd addresses nsqlookupd will give to consumers. For consumers, an HTTP /lookup endpoint is exposed for polling.
To introduce a new distinct consumer of a topic, simply start up an NSQ client configured with the addresses of your nsqlookupd instances. There are no configuration changes needed to add either new consumers or new publishers, greatly reducing overhead and complexity.
NOTE: in future versions, the heuristic nsqlookupd uses to return addresses could be based on depth, number of connected clients, or other “intelligent” strategies. The current implementation is simply all. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that all producers are being read from such that depth stays near zero.
It is important to note that the nsqd and nsqlookupd daemons are designed to operate independently, without communication or coordination between siblings.
We also think that it’s really important to have a way to view, introspect, and manage the cluster in aggregate. We built nsqadmin to do this. It provides a web UI to browse the hierarchy of topics/channels/consumers and inspect depth and other key statistics for each layer. Additionally it supports a few administrative commands such as removing and emptying a channel (which is a useful tool when messages in a channel can be safely thrown away in order to bring depth back to 0).
Straightforward Upgrade Path
This was one of our highest priorities. Our production systems handle a large volume of traffic, all built upon our existing messaging tools, so we needed a way to slowly and methodically upgrade specific parts of our infrastructure with little to no impact.
First, on the message producer side we built nsqd to match simplequeue . Specifically, nsqd exposes an HTTP /put endpoint, just like simplequeue, to POST binary data (with the one caveat that the endpoint takes an additional query parameter specifying the “topic”). Services that wanted to switch to start publishing to nsqd only have to make minor code changes.
Second, we built libraries in both Python and Go that matched the functionality and idioms we had been accustomed to in our existing libraries. This eased the transition on the message consumer side by limiting the code changes to bootstrapping. All business logic remained the same.
Finally, we built utilities to glue old and new components together. These are all available in the examples directory in the repository:
nsq_pubsub - expose a pubsub like HTTP interface to topics in an NSQ cluster
- expose a like HTTP interface to topics in an cluster nsq_to_file - durably write all messages for a given topic to a file
- durably write all messages for a given topic to a file nsq_to_http - perform HTTP requests for all messages in a topic to (multiple) endpoints
Eliminating SPOFs
NSQ is designed to be used in a distributed fashion. nsqd clients are connected (over TCP) to all instances providing the specified topic. There are no middle-men, no message brokers, and no SPOFs:
This topology eliminates the need to chain single, aggregated, feeds. Instead you consume directly from all producers. Technically, it doesn’t matter which client connects to which NSQ, as long as there are enough clients connected to all producers to satisfy the volume of messages, you’re guaranteed that all will eventually be processed.
For nsqlookupd , high availability is achieved by running multiple instances. They don’t communicate directly to each other and data is considered eventually consistent. Consumers poll all of their configured nsqlookupd instances and union the responses. Stale, inaccessible, or otherwise faulty nodes don’t grind the system to a halt.
Message Delivery Guarantees
NSQ guarantees that a message will be delivered at least once, though duplicate messages are possible. Consumers should expect this and de-dupe or perform idempotent operations.
This guarantee is enforced as part of the protocol and works as follows (assume the client has successfully connected and subscribed to a topic):
client indicates they are ready to receive messages NSQ sends a message and temporarily stores the data locally (in the event of re-queue or timeout) client replies FIN (finish) or REQ (re-queue) indicating success or failure respectively. If client does not reply NSQ will timeout after a configurable duration and automatically re-queue the message)
This ensures that the only edge case that would result in message loss is an unclean shutdown of an nsqd process. In that case, any messages that were in memory (or any buffered writes not flushed to disk) would be lost.
If preventing message loss is of the utmost importance, even this edge case can be mitigated. One solution is to stand up redundant nsqd pairs (on separate hosts) that receive copies of the same portion of messages. Because you’ve written your consumers to be idempotent, doing double-time on these messages has no downstream impact and allows the system to endure any single node failure without losing messages.
The takeaway is that NSQ provides the building blocks to support a variety of production use cases and configurable degrees of durability.
Bounded Memory Footprint
nsqd provides a configuration option --mem-queue-size that will determine the number of messages that are kept in memory for a given queue. If the depth of a queue exceeds this threshold messages are transparently written to disk. This bounds the memory footprint of a given nsqd process to mem-queue-size * #_of_channels_and_topics :
Also, an astute observer might have identified that this is a convenient way to gain an even higher guarantee of delivery by setting this value to something low (like 1 or even 0). The disk-backed queue is designed to survive unclean restarts (although messages might be delivered twice).
Also, related to message delivery guarantees, clean shutdowns (by sending a nsqd process the TERM signal) safely persist the messages currently in memory, in-flight, deferred, and in various internal buffers.
Note, a channel whose name ends in the string #ephemeral will not be buffered to disk and will instead drop messages after passing the mem-queue-size . This enables consumers which do not need message guarantees to subscribe to a channel. These ephemeral channels will also not persist after its last client disconnects.
Efficiency
NSQ was designed to communicate over a “memcached-like” command protocol with simple size-prefixed responses. All message data is kept in the core including metadata like number of attempts, timestamps, etc. This eliminates the copying of data back and forth from server to client, an inherent property of the previous toolchain when re-queueing a message. This also simplifies clients as they no longer need to be responsible for maintaining message state.
Also, by reducing configuration complexity, setup and development time is greatly reduced (especially in cases where there are >1 consumers of a topic).
For the data protocol, we made a key design decision that maximizes performance and throughput by pushing data to the client instead of waiting for it to pull. This concept, which we call RDY state, is essentially a form of client-side flow control.
When a client connects to nsqd and subscribes to a channel it is placed in a RDY state of 0. This means that no messages will be sent to the client. When a client is ready to receive messages it sends a command that updates its RDY state to some # it is prepared to handle, say 100. Without any additional commands, 100 messages will be pushed to the client as they are available (each time decrementing the server-side RDY count for that client).
Client libraries are designed to send a command to update RDY count when it reaches ~25% of the configurable max-in-flight setting (and properly account for connections to multiple nsqd instances, dividing appropriately).
This is a significant performance knob as some downstream systems are able to more-easily batch process messages and benefit greatly from a higher max-in-flight .
Notably, because it is both buffered and push based with the ability to satisfy the need for independent copies of streams (channels), we’ve produced a daemon that behaves like simplequeue and pubsub combined . This is powerful in terms of simplifying the topology of our systems where we would have traditionally maintained the older toolchain discussed above.
Go
We made a strategic decision early on to build the NSQ core in Go. We recently blogged about our use of Go at bitly and alluded to this very project - it might be helpful to browse through that post to get an understanding of our thinking with respect to the language.
Regarding NSQ, Go channels (not to be confused with NSQ channels) and the language’s built in concurrency features are a perfect fit for the internal workings of nsqd . We leverage buffered channels to manage our in memory message queues and seamlessly write overflow to disk.
The standard library makes it easy to write the networking layer and client code. The built in memory and cpu profiling hooks highlight opportunities for optimization and require very little effort to integrate. We also found it really easy to test components in isolation, mock types using interfaces, and iteratively build functionality.
Overall, it’s been a fantastic project to use as an opportunity to really dig into the language and see what it’s capable of on a larger scale. We’ve been extremely happy with our choice to use golang, its performance, and how productive we are using it.
EOL
We’ve been using NSQ in production for several months and we’re excited to share this with the open source community.
Across the 13 services we’ve upgraded, we’re processing ~35,000 messages/second at peak through the cluster. It has proved both performant and stable and made our lives easier operating our production systems.
There is more work to be done though — so far we’ve converted ~40% of our infrastructure. Fortunately, the upgrade process has been straightforward and well worth the short-term time tradeoff.
We’re really curious to hear what you think, so grab the source from github and try it out.
Finally, this labor of love began as scratching an itch — bitly provided an environment to experiment, build, and open source it… we’re always hiring. |
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