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Image caption The BRC said the empty shop rate would set alarm bells ringing
More than one in 10 shops is empty, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the highest since it began collecting data on occupancy levels of High Street premises.
The BRC said the town centre vacancy rate of 11.3% was the worst figure since its nationwide survey began in July 2011.
The figures come as the failed retailer Comet prepares to close stores.
The BRC said the worst affected region was Northern Ireland.
The vacancy rate there was 20%.
The two next worst regions, Wales and the North and Yorkshire, each had about 15% of retail premises lying empty.
The BRC's director general, Stephen Robertson, said the new figures would set "alarm bells ringing".
Other big branded chains that have either gone under or cut back their number of outlets include JJB Sports, Clinton Cards, Blacks Leisure, Game and Peacocks.
The BRC survey also said that overall footfall - which attempts to measure the number of shoppers - dropped by 0.4% on a year ago in the three months to October, with a big drop-off in numbers in October itself, when numbers fell by 2.6%.
The findings echo those from the Office for National Statistics, which last week showed retail sales fell 0.8% in October.
Mr Robertson said that retailers were also being hurt by higher prices and overheads: "Many retailers are battling stagnating sales and rising costs, and next year's threatened business rates increase can only make matters worse.
"If the government wants to breathe life back into our town centres and ensure the retail industry can play its full role in job creation it needs to freeze rates in 2013." |
If anyone wants to know about the population genetics of South Asia, I recommend three papers (all are open access):
– Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India
– A genetic chronology for the Indian Subcontinent points to heavily sex-biased dispersals
– The promise of disease gene discovery in South Asia
In the near future ancient DNA will do for South Asia what has been done for Europe, and to a lesser extent the Near East. It will pull back our veil of ignorance. But until then we have genomic inference from larger data sets with a greater number of markers. What can we say now?
– The 2009 work that modern South Asians are broadly a compound of two streams of the out of Africa populations is correct. One is much like other West Eurasians. Another is distantly related to other East Eurasians, with possible affinities to Paleolithic Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers.
– The West Eurasian ancestry of South Asians, the “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI), does likely seem to be a mixture at minimum between two groups. One element is related to the eastern farmers who first adopted agriculture on the slopes of the Zagros ~10,000 year ago. Another stream is closely related to the Yamna people who flourished on the Eurasian steppe north of the Black Sea ~5,000 years ago.
– The Munda peoples seem to have a distinct Southeast Asian component that ties them with other Austro-Asiatic peoples. Their migration was almost certainly tied to the Neolithic migration of rice farmers. They are likely not the primal aboriginals of South Asia.
– The R1a1a-Z93 Y chromosomal lineage found across much of South Asia, and especially the higher castes and the north, increased in frequency within the last 4,000 years. It is almost certainly exogenous to South Asia; ancient DNA from the steppe finds the Z93 in Iranic peoples, but no Indian ancestry in these groups.
As I said, ancient DNA will clarify lots of things. I expect that to happen in the next few years. |
Watch What Happens When Egyptians Start Playing Music on an EgyptAir Flight
المزيكاتيا ف الطيارة – El Mazzikateya Plane Flashmobدايما لما تركب الطيارة تلاقي الناس جد جدا و كل واحد ف حاله و جو حزين كده.. قررنا نكسر الموضوع ده و نلعب مزيكا ف الطيارة و خلينا كل الطيارة تغني معانا Whenever you take a plane you find all passengers very formal, no one talk or even smile, we decided to break this mood with a music flashmob and everyone was singing with usتصوير: ايمن عارف – Video by Ayman Aref Saad Photographyتسجيل صوت مضيف الطيارة: سلمى ابو ضيف#اكتشف_مصر#Discover_Egyptلفيديوهات اكتر للمزيكاتيا – For more El Mazzikateya videoshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXif89NZmLjiQ-3asVFgqow Posted by El Mazzikateya – المزيكاتيا on Sunday, December 27, 2015
Tradition has it that the mere of mention of planes in the news most likely comes wrapped in devastation and tragedy. Otherwise, boarding a plane either translates to anxiety – if one is phobic of flying – or a boring trip where travelers remain confined to their seats, hoping they don’t end up next to a chatty passenger, or one with a whiny kid.
However, on Saturday night, after plenty of flight delays, a group of young Egyptian travelers decided to add a sprinkle of fun to a crowded domestic EgyptAir flight heading from Sharm el-Sheikh to Cairo. While all the passengers were seated and ready to fly, Khaled Senosi, 27-year-old events manager, pulled out his ney and started playing popular Egyptian folk songs. It wasn’t long before 28-year-old photojournalist Ahmed Hayman joined in on his daf. Soon afterwards, a fully booked airbus was singing along.
Together in 2012, Senosi and Hayman initiated El-Mazzikateya, a duo of street musicians who started playing across Egypt “in a time when the streets became too bleak and gloomy,” as Senosi describes it.
“Music should be free for people on the street, without having to buy a ticket or reserve a seat somewhere,” says Senosi. “Hayman and I started playing on the street, hoping to entertain passersby and alleviate the tension and worry they wear on their faces. Oftentimes, playing music on the streets invites conversation with strangers, or at other times, people just join in and sing with us.”
Despite both musicians being Cairo-based, they have taken their little delightful initiative to many cities across Egypt, including St. Catherine and Nuweiba in Sinai, Ras el-Barr, the Western Desert Oases, Port-Said, Mansoura and many others.
“As we tour Egypt, we are always keen to feature Egypt’s many traditional instruments that are in jeopardy of extinction,” added Senosi, accentuating the importance of preserving the country’s diverse culture and arts.
If you enjoyed El-Mazzikateya’s airplane music, be sure to check the rest of their music here.
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Former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bob Young Jr. officially announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate Wednesday, describing himself as a "black, conservative Republican" who will lay down the law in Washington.
In a statement to the media sent Wednesday morning, Young said if elected he would focus on reducing the size of government and preventing government from "getting in the way of businesses and communities solving problems and creating jobs."
"Michigan used to be a place where the limits were only on how hard we worked and how high we could aspire," he said. "And we need to make Michigan that way again - for everyone."
He plans to live stream an announcement on his campaign Facebook page at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
I'm the disruptor we need in DC! Posted by Bob Young, Jr. on Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Former state Supreme Court Justice Robert Young says he plans to run for U.S. Senate Former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Young is planning to mount a challenge to U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018, he told attendees of a Republican breakfast in Midland Monday.
Young is the second Republican to mount a campaign for the 2018 Senate race in the hopes of challenging sitting Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing. Young criticized Stabenow as a "product of the past" whose policies have failed Detroit and Michigan.
Lena Epstein, a businesswoman and a former co-chair of President Donald Trump's Michigan campaign, announced her campaign in May. She said in a statement following Young's announcement that he and Stabenow have been in elected office nearly 60 years combined, and said she provides a different vision than people who have been in office for decades.
"Voters across Michigan spoke loud and clear in 2016 that they are looking for outside leaders with business experience," she said. "I will unapologetically defend President Trump, fight to end sanctuary cities, and build the wall. I look forward to debating Bob Young and Debbie Stabenow on these important issues in the months ahead."
In a statement, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Brandon Dillon defended Stabenow, saying she fights tirelessly for Michigan every day.
"We need someone on the side of Michigan families, not special interests," he said.
Young retired from the Michigan Supreme Court in April after 18 years on the bench. After his retirement, Young returned to private practice with the firm Dickinson Wright, where he first practiced after graduating from Harvard Law School starting in 1978.
He served on the Court of Appeals before moving to the Michigan Supreme Court. He was chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 2011 to 2017 and was last elected in 2010 to serve an eight-year term that would have ended in 2019.
The former justice has been a rumored contender for the seat since his retirement, but made his intentions clear during a recent Republican party breakfast in Midland. When asked by an attendee whether he would run for Senate, Young told the crowd he would.
Young now has a campaign website -- bobyoungformichigan.com -- and has formed a candidate committee with the Federal Election Commission.
Trump's Michigan co-chair announces candidacy for U.S. Senate Lena Epstein, co-chairwoman of Donald Trump's Michigan campaign, has announced her candidacy for U.S. Senate. |
Israel denied entry on Wednesday evening to members of a UN commission appointed by the Human Rights Council to investigate possible war crimes committed during Operation Protective Edge.
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Members of the committee, often referred to by the name of the lead investigator, Prof. William Schabas, had arrived in Amman before asking permission to enter Israel. Jerusalem refused their request and the decision led to an announcement that Israel would not cooperate with the commission.
The Schabas commission was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the heated confrontation last summer.
IDF strikes on Gaza (Photo: Reuters)
After his appointment, Schabas urged Israel to cooperate with the investigation and rejected accusations that he was anti-Israel. In August, he told Ynet that he did was not anti-Israel, saying he had visited the country "many times."
The foreign ministry had cast doubts on the appointment after its announcement, saying that "the report has already been written and they just chose who would sign it." Some within the professional ranks of the ministry recommended to the political echelon to not cooperate with the panel in order to avoid endowing the inquiry with legitimacy.
Destroyed structures in Gaza after op (Photo: Reuters)
Foreign ministry officials stress that the Human Rights Council had already decided to convict Israel in its report and have decided to treat the panel as a "rigged game."
A senior official in the office said at the time that "Goldstone also disappeared, and we didn't cooperate with him either."
Schabas, a Canadian professor of international criminal and human rights law and the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, has previously stated he would've liked to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "within the dock of the International Criminal Court."
He wrote that in response to Netanyahu's statement that Israel faces "three major strategic challenges. The Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our civilians and Goldstone." |
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers are investigating whether U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff influenced the World Health Organization’s review of glyphosate and its finding that the herbicide probably causes cancer, according to a letter sent to the agency on Tuesday.
The letter from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology is part of an ongoing investigation into the agency after the EPA posted and withdrew an internal report that said glyphosate was not cancer causing.
One question that lawmakers are trying to answer, according to legislative sources, is whether EPA staff allowed personal bias to colour the agency’s scientific review of glyphosate, the chemical in Monsanto Co’s MON.N Roundup herbicide.
Some EPA staff participated in both the U.S. review and the WHO review. While the committee’s line of investigation was not clear, lawmakers cited the contradictory findings of the two reviews.
Those reviews were by the EPA’s cancer assessment review committee or CARC and the WHO’s cancer arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC.
“Given the apparent contradictions of the CARC and IARC findings for glyphosate ..., the committee has concerns about the integrity” of the WHO review, the role of EPA officials in that review and their influence on the outcome of the EPA study, the committee’s letter to the EPA seen by Reuters said.
According to the letter, lawmakers want congressional staff to interview four top EPA officials who were involved in one or both reviews of glyphosate.
An EPA spokeswoman said Tuesday the agency had received the letter, was reviewing it and would respond.
In an earlier letter EPA sent to the committee, the agency said that publishing the cancer assessment review committee’s report was an accident and that the cancer review was still ongoing.
The EPA said it was “currently reviewing our standard operating procedures for the release of documents to avoid the inadvertent release of pre-decisional information in the future.”
The congressional committee began its investigation into the EPA last month after the report by the EPA’s cancer assessment review committee became briefly public.
The report found that glyphosate was “not likely” to be carcinogenic to humans. It also appeared to dispute the IARC report and questioned its analysis.
The WHO’s IARC last year classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The House’s Agriculture Committee previously said it too was examining the agency’s review of glyphosate and atrazine, another chemical used in agricultural herbicides.
The Agriculture Committee also wanted to know what steps still needed to be taken to finalise and issue the glyphosate report, which it had expected in July 2015. |
Both face a third front-runner, the former foreign minister Amr Moussa , who argued this week that Egypt cannot afford an “experiment” in Islamic democracy.
The winner could set the course for Egypt’s future, overseeing the drafting of a new constitution, settling the status of its current military rulers, and shaping its relations with the West, Israel and its own Christian minority. But as the Islamists step toward power across the region, the most important debate may be the one occurring within their own ranks over the proper agenda and goals.
Mr. Morsi’s conservative record and early campaign statements have sharpened the contrast between competing Islamist visions. The Brotherhood, the 84-year-old religious revival group known here for its preaching and charity as well as for its moderate Islamist politics, took a much softer approach in the official platform it released last year. It dropped the “Islam is the solution” slogan, omitted controversial proposals about a religious council or a Muslim president and promised to respect the Camp David accords with Israel. Its parliamentary leaders distanced themselves from the Salafis, ultraconservative Islamists who won a quarter of the seats in Parliament.
The Brotherhood’s original nominee was its leading strategist, Khairat el-Shater, a businessman known for his pragmatism. He had close personal ties to Salafi leaders, but he did not leave much of a paper trail besides an opinion column in a Western newspaper stressing the Brotherhood’s commitment to tolerance and democracy. Mr. Shater was disqualified last week because of a past conviction at a Mubarak-era political trial. In his short-lived campaign he stressed the Brotherhood’s plans for economic development and rarely, if ever, brought up Islamic law.
By contrast, Mr. Morsi, 60, is campaigning explicitly both as a more conservative Islamist and as a loyal executor of Mr. Shater’s plans. He campaigns with Mr. Shater under a banner with both their faces, fueling critics’ charges that he would be a mere servant of Mr. Shater and the Brotherhood’s executive board.
But Mr. Morsi is also courting the ultraconservative Salafis, whose popular candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, was also disqualified. Mr. Morsi may be tacking to the right to court the Salafis as a swing vote in the contest with Mr. Aboul Fotouh, or he may merely be expressing more conservative, older impulses within the Brotherhood.
“Some want to stop our march to an Islamic future, where the grace of God’s laws will be implemented and provide an honest life to all,” he proclaimed Saturday night at his first rally, in a Nile delta town. “Our Salafi brothers, the Islamic group, we are united in our aims and Islamic vision. The Islamic front must unite so we can fulfill this vision.”
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Although he received a Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Southern California in 1982, Mr. Morsi spent the past decade as a public spokesman for the Brotherhood’s political wing, where he left a far more extensive and controversial record than Mr. Shater did. Last year, for example, Mr. Morsi led a boycott of a major Egyptian cellphone company because its founder, Naguib Sawiris, a Coptic Christian, had circulated on Twitter a cartoon of Mickey Mouse in a long beard with Minnie in a full-face veil — a joke Mr. Morsi said insulted Islam.
When the Brotherhood first considered trying to start a political party under Mr. Mubarak, in 2007, Mr. Morsi was in charge of drafting a hypothetical platform. One provision called for restricting the presidency to Muslim men. “The state which we seek can never be presided over by a non-Muslim,” he said at the time on the group’s Web site, arguing that the Brotherhood wanted both a tolerant constitutional democracy and an expressly “Islamic state.”
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In “a state whose top priorities include spreading and protecting the religion of Allah,” he said, Islam assigned the president some duties and powers that “can’t be carried out by a non-Muslim president.”
Another provision called for a council of scholars to advise Parliament on fidelity to Islamic law. But unlike Iran ’s Guardian Council , he said, it would be independent of the state, and its findings would be nonbinding.
Mr. Morsi also brings to the race a reputation as an enforcer of Brotherhood rules of obedience, even in politics. When a group of young online activists known as the Brotherhood bloggers argued that the platform Mr. Morsi oversaw contradicted the group’s stated commitment to pluralism, Mr. Morsi met with a group of them at his office.
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“He said, ‘This is the Muslim Brothers’ interpretation of Islam, and this is Islam, and it’s nobody else’s business,’ ” recalled Mohamed Ayyash, a former Brotherhood blogger who helped organize the meeting. “He said: ‘You can’t talk like that. You can’t talk to the media.’ ”
“He said, ‘This is Islam the way the Muslim Brotherhood sees it,’ ” Mr. Ayyash recalled. (The Morsi campaign declined to comment on the meeting.)
Mohamed Habib, a former deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood who years ago appointed Mr. Morsi to oversee its political arm, said, “There is no doubt that Morsi is more conservative than the conservatives” in the Brotherhood, including Mr. Shater.
The presidential race is now shaping up in some ways as a rematch of the internal debate over that hypothetical platform. Mr. Aboul Fotouh, Mr. Morsi’s current opponent in the presidential race, was one of the few Brotherhood leaders who openly opposed the scholars council and presidency restrictions. Two years later, he was removed from the executive board in a conservative purge.
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While Mr. Morsi has the Brotherhood’s organization behind him, Mr. Aboul Fotouh is considered more charismatic and carries strong Islamist credentials. While Mr. Morsi was working toward his engineering degree in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, Mr. Aboul Fotouh was founding an Islamist student movement that went on to merge with and revitalize the more established Muslim Brotherhood. He stood up to former President Anwar el-Sadat in a face-to-face confrontation at Cairo University.
Mr. Aboul Fotouh, a physician, also led the Brotherhood-dominated doctors’ syndicate, which ran the field hospitals during the protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak last year.
Addressing a crowd of thousands last week in Imbaba, a poor neighborhood of Cairo, Mr. Aboul Fotouh all but brushed off questions about Islamic law.
“Egypt has been proud of its Islamic and Arabic identity for 15 centuries,” he said. “Are we waiting for the Parliament to convert us?” Besides, he said, the correct understanding of Islamic law should not be reduced to penalties or restrictions but should mean “all mercy and justice.”
As at many stops, Mr. Aboul Fotouh was also asked to confront rumors circulated in an online video — by Brotherhood operatives, his supporters charge — that if elected president, he would order the arrest of all the group’s members.
After the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Aboul Fotouh said, the Egyptian public would never allow another president to detain Islamists, leftists or anyone else for political reasons. “If he did this, the Egyptian people would be the ones to detain him!”
As for his former colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Aboul Fotouh said he believed that they should be treated just like any other nonprofit group. “They have to be legal associations and to work with transparency and clarity,” he said repeatedly. “All associations and all parties are equal before the law.”
To the Brotherhood, though, it was also a threat. The enforcement of Western-style financial and disclosure requirements could force the Brotherhood to separate its political party from its charitable and preaching organizations, depriving the party of much of its financing and clout while simultaneously diminishing the Brotherhood board’s control of the party.
As for Mr. Aboul Fotouh, Mr. Morsi suggested that he had brought on his own expulsion by defying the Brotherhood, in part by running for president. When a member breaks away, Mr. Morsi said in the interview, “we don’t blame him; we pity him.” |
Using dry shampoo every other day (in comparison to washing hair with liquid shampoo daily), helps keep hair healthy and clean, without stripping away the scalp’s natural oils. Plus, the use of tap water from the shower, which contains many unwanted pollutants such as trace amounts of chlorine and other harmful chemicals, can be abrasive to hair if used to wash with daily.
Instead, opt for dry shampoo every second or third day… using liquid shampoo only 2-3 times a week!
In general, creating an all-natural DIY shampoo for those seeking a home-made organic option has many benefits and perks, in comparison to store-bought shampoo.
In particular, try this dry shampoo for light hair recipe for a simple, healthy alternative.
Ingredients needed to make dry shampoo for light hair…
♦ 4 tablespoons of arrowroot
♦ 5 drops of chamomile essential oil (or preferred essential oil)
How to create dry shampoo for light hair…
1. Mix the arrowroot with the drops of chamomile essential oil (or essential oil or your choice)
2. Apply this dry shampoo mixture to oily areas of hair, rubbing into the roots
3. Brush hair thoroughly and style as usual
4. Store any remaining mixture in a sealable container for continued use
Simple, strong, clean, and healthy hair does not get any easier than this!
NOTE: Add a few dried, crushed flower petals for a pleasing aroma, such as rose petals or lavender. Also, store your dried shampoo in a glass jar with an airtight lid in a cool, dark, dry place. The active ingredients in the recipe usually remain potent anywhere from 3 to 4 weeks.
For another alternative shampoo option, check out this recipe on how to make all-natural, organic shampoo bars that can be used for both hair and body. ♥
Sources:
Image: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/03/26/09/42/hair-690127_960_720.jpg
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This This article was originally published at Desmog.ca . It has been republished at IC with permission.
Justin Trudeau’s government has quietly issued its first batch of permits for the Site C dam — allowing construction to move forward on the $8.8 billion BC Hydro project despite ongoing legal challenges by two First Nations.
The federal-provincial review panel’s report on Site C found the 1,100 megawatt dam will result in significant and irreversible adverse impacts on Treaty 8 First Nations.
Caleb Behn, who is from West Moberly First Nation, one of the nations taking the federal government to court, says Trudeau has broken his promise.
“It’s 19th century technology being permitted with 19th century thinking and I expected more from the Trudeau government,” he said. “These permits were our last best hope to resolve this.”
“These permits suggest very strongly that, at least these ministries, if not Trudeau’s entire cabinet, are unwilling to engage in reconciliation with indigenous peoples. I thought this country could be more.”
Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay and NDP critic for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, echoed those sentiments.
“I think this was a real test of the Trudeau government and they failed the test,” Angus said.
“The Liberals seem to be thinking that if they say the right things, it’s somehow the same as doing the right things.”
Trudeau has emphasized building a new relationship with indigenous peoples since taking office in October. He included the following paragraph in every ministerial mandate letter:
“No relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with Indigenous Peoples. It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous Peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and partnership.”
But with the issuing of the Site C permits, doubts have been cast on that promise.
“We hear from all the key ministers about the nation-to-nation relationship and then they rubber stamp and go ahead with all the big projects,” Angus said.
For Behn, who was the subject of a documentary called Fractured Land last year, the sense of disappointment was palpable.
“What do they care about a backwater in northern B.C. that only has 40,000 voters?” he asked. “If you spent $9 billion on solar panels, geothermal … you wouldn’t have to run roughshod over indigenous rights.”
Liberals Ignore Calls to Delay Permits
The permits allow BC Hydro to block the flow of the Peace River and disrupt fisheries, activities that require federal permission. Until now, the Liberal government hadn’t issued any permits for the dam (the only federal permits issued were doled out during the last election by former prime minister Stephen Harper).
The Site C dam will flood more than 100 kilometres of river valley and impact 13,000 hectares of agricultural land — including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve, an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria.
Groups ranging from Amnesty International to the David Suzuki Foundation to the Royal Society of Canada have called on Trudeau to halt construction of the dam.
“The people of Treaty 8 have said no to Site C. Any government that is truly committed to reconciliation with indigenous peoples, to respecting human rights and to promoting truly clean energy must listen,” stated a letter sent to the federal government in February.
Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May has called Site C the “litmus test” for the federal government’s commitment to a new relationship with indigenous peoples.
“It is agonizing to witness the starting gun for a race between bulldozers and justice,” May said in a statement in which she expressed “deep disappointment” with the federal government.
The Royal Society of Canada described the Site C Joint Review Panel report as the strongest and most negative review to be ignored by government.
In its report, the panel wrote that it couldn’t conclude that the power from Site C was needed on the schedule presented, adding: “Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs.”
The panel recommended the project be reviewed by the B.C. Utilities Commission — however, the B.C. and federal governments approved the dam without further review in late 2014.
Was Consultation With First Nations Adequate?
West Moberly First Nation and Prophet River First Nation will appear in a federal court in Montreal in September to fight their case.
“Sitting down and consulting with the provincial and federal government is a waste of time,” said Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nation. “The only option we have is to challenge them in court.”
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans responded to DeSmog Canada’s request for comment on the issuing of Site C permits with the following statement:
“For the past seven months, DFO has consulted potentially affected Indigenous groups on the department’s review of BC Hydro’s application for authorization for the main civil construction works. In particular, DFO contacted the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations, along with ten other potentially affected indigenous groups. DFO officials have made significant efforts to provide opportunities for input, including a July 18 face-to-face meeting between Minister LeBlanc and West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Willson and Prophet River First Nation Chief Lynette Tsakoza. DFO will continue to engage with Indigenous groups that have raised concerns about the project to ensure that their concerns continue to be heard and taken into account.”
Willson told DeSmog Canada the July 18th meeting marked the first time in six years that his nation has met with an official federal decision-maker on the Site C file.
“We met in Vancouver for about an hour. They sat there and took their notes and shook their heads in disbelief and then hopped on a plane back to Ottawa,” Willson said.
“That whole process was to check the box. They haven’t responded to any one of our concerns. If we don’t go, they get to check the box beside the other box saying that we refuse to consult with them. There’s no box anywhere that says ‘this was meaningful.’ The only box is did we show up or didn’t we.”
Willson said the Liberals have forgotten their election promises.
“This Liberal government is no different than the previous Harper government. They’re just sneaky. At least with Harper they were upfront about it.”
Democracy group LeadNow has launched a phone action across Canada to encourage citizens to “flood the phone lines before they flood the Peace Valley.” They are asking Canadians to call their MPs and let them know it is unacceptable for Trudeau to issue permits while there’s an outstanding First Nations legal challenge about the Site C dam. RAVEN Trust is also raising funds to support the First Nations legal challenge.
Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Overturned Due to Lack of Consultation
Recently, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the federal government failed to meet even a basic standard of First Nations consultation on another controversial B.C. proposal — the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.
With that ruling, the approval of the pipeline was overturned.
“The inadequacies — more than just a handful and more than mere imperfections — left entire subjects of central interest to the affected First Nations, sometimes subjects affecting their subsistence and well-being, entirely ignored,” the judges wrote in their ruling.
“Many impacts of the project — some identified in the Report of the Joint Review Panel, some not — were left undisclosed, undiscussed and unconsidered.”
The question of whether there has been adequate consultation ultimately rests with the courts — but if the Site C dam approval is overturned, a whole lot of public money will be at risk.
Muskrat Falls Boondoggle ‘Almost Identical’ to Site C
We need look no further than the Muskrat Falls debacle in Newfoundland to learn what happens when provinces embark on mega-dam projects without a proven need for the power.
The 824-megawatt Muskrat Falls hydro project now under construction on the Lower Churchill has nearly doubled in cost since first beginning construction (from $6.2 billion to $11.4 billion).
Stan Marshall, the CEO of Nalcor, Newfoundland’s provincial power corporation, has called the project a “boondoggle.”
“It was a gamble and it’s gone against us,” he told reporters last month.
By 2022, the domestic rate for power in the province is expected to nearly double. For the average homeowner, Nalcor estimates this could mean an extra $150 per month in power costs.
“The generation and transmission project was much too large than was necessary to meet the energy requirements of the province,” he said.
“The original capital cost analysis, estimates and schedule was very aggressive and overly optimistic and just didn’t account for many of the risks that were known, or should’ve been known, at the time.”
Muskrat Falls went ahead without review by Newfoundland’s Public Utilities Board and in defiance of the advice of the joint federal-provincial review panel.
Sound familiar?
“It’s almost an identical case,” Marc Eliesen, former CEO of BC Hydro, told DeSmog Canada.
“It’s clear even more so as each day goes by that there really is no business case for Site C, especially with Hydro’s own electricity demand decreasing significantly.”
BC Hydro’s recent annual report shows that demand projections were off by nearly half a Site C dam last year.
Can The Site C Dam Be Stopped?
With the federal permits in place and B.C. Premier Christy Clark vowing to get the dam “past the point of no return” before the next election, the big question is: can Site C still be stopped?
Eliesen points to examples from other provinces where projects have been halted mid-way.
For instance, in the 1970s, Manitoba Hydro began to build a dam on the Nelson River called the Limestone generating station. After 2.5 years of construction, it became apparent that the long-term power forecasts had changed and construction was suspended.
“They stopped, not withstanding construction for 2.5 years on a generation station that was larger than Site C,” Eliesen said.
“Can you postpone, can you suspend, can you cancel Site C? Basically the experience in other jurisdictions shows that you can if the end result shows that the cost to the ratepayer will be more than if you postpone or suspend.”
The Limestone project resumed seven years later in 1985 once a major export contract was negotiated with Minnesota. Eliesen was chairman of Manitoba Hydro at the time.
“If you want to export the power, you have to make sure it’s exported on a firm power demand basis,” Eliesen said. “Any firm power deal would have to be made in advance on any decision to construct something in British Columbia. It would be folly to think otherwise.”
Selling power at the interruptable rate (often five to six times lower than the firm rate) means you don’t cover the true cost of service.
“You’re going to lose your shirt on it,” Eliesen says. “You’re going to sell power at a price that is less than it cost to create it.” |
Bhikkhu Bodhi looks at how Buddhist practice can be applied to the modern world in a way that provides aid to various problems of the age.
Each morning, I check out a number of Internet news reports and commentaries on websites ranging from the BBC to Truthout. Reading about current events strongly reinforces for me the acuity of the Buddha’s words: “The world is grounded upon suffering.” Almost daily I am awed by the enormity of the suffering that assails human beings on every continent, and even more by the hard truth that so much of this suffering springs not from the vicissitudes of impersonal nature but from the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion raging in the human heart.
Seeing the immensity of the world’s anguish has raised in my mind questions about the future prospects for Buddhism in the West. I’ve been struck by how seldom the theme of global suffering—the palpable suffering of real human beings—is thematically explored in the Buddhist journals and teachings with which I am acquainted. It seems to me that we Western Buddhists tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines the first noble truth largely against the background of our middle-class lifestyles: as the gnawing of discontent; the ennui of over-satiation; the pain of unfulfilling relationships; or, with a bow to Buddhist theory, as bondage to the round of rebirths. Too often, I feel, our focus on these aspects of dukkha has made us oblivious to the vast, catastrophic suffering that daily overwhelms three-fourths of the world’s population.
An exception to this tendency may be found with the Engaged Buddhist movement. I believe this is a face of Buddhism that has great promise, but from my superficial readings in this area I am struck by two things. First, while some Engaged Buddhists seek fresh perspectives from the dharma, for many Buddhism simply provides spiritual practices to use while simultaneously espousing socio-political causes not much different from those of the mainstream Left. Second, Engaged Buddhism still remains tangential to the hard core of Western interest in Buddhism, which is the dharma as a path to inner peace and self-realization.
If Buddhism in the West becomes solely a means to pursue personal spiritual growth, I am apprehensive that it may evolve in a one-sided way and thus fulfill only half its potential. Attracting the affluent and the educated, it will provide a congenial home for the intellectual and cultural elite, but it will risk turning the quest for enlightenment into an private journey that, in the face of the immense suffering which daily hounds countless human lives, can present only a resigned quietism.
It is true that Buddhist meditation practice requires seclusion and inwardly focused depth. But wouldn’t the embodiment of dharma in the world be more complete by also reaching out and addressing the grinding miseries that are ailing humanity?
I know we engage in lofty meditations on kindness and compassion and espouse beautiful ideals of love and peace. But note that we pursue them largely as inward, subjective experiences geared toward personal transformation. Too seldom does this type of compassion roll up its sleeves and step into the field. Too rarely does it translate into pragmatic programs of effective action realistically designed to diminish the actual sufferings of those battered by natural calamities or societal deprivation.
By way of contrast, take Christian Aid and World Vision. These are not missionary movements aimed at proselytizing but relief organizations that provide relief and development aid while also tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. Similarly, the American Jewish World Service doesn’t aspire to convert people to Judaism but to express Judaism’s commitment to social justice by alleviating “poverty, hunger, and disease among the people of the developing world regardless of race, religion, or nationality.” Why doesn’t Buddhism have anything like that? Surely we can find a supporting framework for this in Buddhist doctrine, ethical ideals, archetypes, legends, and historical precedents.
I recognize that many individual Buddhists are actively engaged in social service and that a few larger Buddhist organizations work tirelessly to relieve human suffering around the globe. Their selfless dedication fully deserves our appreciation. Unfortunately, their appeal has as yet been limited.
Buddhist teachers often say that the most effective way we can help protect the world is by purifying our own minds, or that before we engage in compassionate action we must attain realization of selflessness or emptiness. There may be some truth in such statements, but I think it is a partial truth. In these critical times, we also have an obligation to aid those immersed in the world who live on the brink of destitution and despair. The Buddha’s mission, the reason for his arising in the world, was to free beings from suffering by uprooting the evil roots of greed, hatred, and delusion. These sinister roots don’t exist only in our own minds. Today they have acquired a collective dimension and have spread out over whole countries and continents. To help free beings from suffering today therefore requires that we counter the systemic embodiments of greed, hatred, and delusion.
In each historical period, the dharma finds new means to unfold its potentials in ways precisely linked to that era’s distinctive historical conditions. I believe that our own era provides the appropriate historical stage for the transcendent truth of the dharma to bend back upon the world and engage human suffering at multiple levels—even the lowest, harshest, and most degrading levels—not in mere contemplation but in effective, relief-granting action illuminated by its own world-transcending goal.
The special challenge facing Buddhism in our age is to stand up as an advocate for justice in the world, a voice of conscience for those victims of social, economic, and political injustice who cannot stand up and speak for themselves. This, in my view, is a deeply moral challenge marking a watershed in the modern expression of Buddhism. I believe it also points in a direction that Buddhism should take if it is to share in the Buddha’s ongoing mission to humanity. |
In this open season against the media, the prime minister has chosen to weigh in by describing the 'Modi wave' as a 'media creation'. It is almost as if all the opinion polls, roadshows, speeches, interviews and public reactions have been choreographed by the media to prop up the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.
The last time I heard a similar accusation was, ironically, before the Delhi assembly elections in December when Arvind Kejriwal was described as a “television studio” phenomenon. The truth is, both Modi and Kejriwal have simply used the modern media weaponry much better than their rivals.
Kejriwal’s style was almost guerrilla-like. Facing a resource crunch, he timed his high-profile interventions to match the demands of prime time 24 x 7 television. His much publicized dharna at Rajpath, for example, was designed to ensure that he monopolized the airwaves. Modi, on the other hand, has gone the carpet bombing route, using a mix of big money, high end technology and traditional political messaging to convert his entire campaign into a giant event management exercise.
The Congress which now laments Modi’s use of money power perhaps had the same cash reserves at its disposal. Its just that Team Modi has made better use of their election war chest. Did anyone, for example, stop the Congress from exploiting the available 3D technology to reach millions? If Modi could have high quality camera units accompany him for every rally, why did it take so long for the Congress to play catch up? If Modi chose to convert his nomination procession into a made for television extravaganza what stopped the Congress from doing the same with Rahul in Amethi? And if Team Modi could dominate the social media space, what prevented the Congress from striking back?
Indeed, on sites like Twitter and Facebook, it is the Aam Admi party which has offered a more resolute challenge to the Modi spin doctors than the Congress whose leader is not even on social media.
It would also be easy to blame a flawed advertising campaign for the Congress’s woes. The fact is, political advertising is only as good as the product on display. A beaming Rahul Gandhi claiming to have built a new India was never going to sit well with the reality of ten years of wasted opportunities. A Bharat Nirman campaign in a period of high inflation and low growth was only going to invite rage and cynicism. By contrast, the Modi message worked because he didn’t have to carry the baggage of being in power in Delhi. He could simply spin a dream for a rosy future. Even the media planning for the Modi campaign was a step ahead of the Congress: notice how intelligently they used sporting events like the World T 20 to target a core youth constituency.
The Congress and AAP have also argued that a large section of the media, under the influence of the corporate class has taken sides. It’s a serious accusation that deserves attention. There is enough reason to believe that corporate India doesn’t want a UPA 3 government at any cost. Shedding their inhibitions, a number of business leaders have openly batted for a Modi-led government. Media barons sharing a platform with Mr Modi at his political rallies is a troubling sight as is the growing tribe of senior journalists who have abandoned any pretence of neutrality in their desire to hop on to the Modi bandwagon.
Across television channels, every move and statement of the BJP leader has been tracked with an unbridled enthusiasm. The coverage on some networks has had a certain breathless frenzy to it, almost as if Mr Modi is a World cup winning captain riding to glory on a team bus. Skepticism has given way to cheerleading, a flaw which is a consequence of a growing lack of professionalism within the media.
But the conspiracy theorists need to accept certain news realities too: Mr Modi today, like him or not, is box office. TRP obsessed channels will gravitate towards someone who is gaining eyeballs, not because there is a sinister quid pro quo but because “Brand Modi” sells. If, when their rallies clashed, most tv channels preferred to stick to a Modi rally while keeping Mr Gandhi’s speech on mute, the editorial choice was almost entirely based on who is seen as the newsier speaker, not because there was a pre-conceived agenda against the Congress leadership.
As a charismatic public orator, Mr Modi is at ease with the television camera. By contrast, Mr Gandhi comes across as almost collegiate. For example, Mr Gandhi’s interview with Times Now in January this year was an unmitigated disaster where he was shown up as woolly headed and grossly under-prepared. In his subsequent soft focus interviews, he appears more like an edit page writer sermonising on the idea of India rather than a combative politician ready to take the battle into the opposition camp.
Mr Modi in his interviews, on the other hand, comes through as a tough, no-nonsense leader, helped in no small measure by the fact that no interviewer has chosen to aggressively cross question him on obvious holes in his arguments. The choice and timing of interviews has been strategic: done entirely on terms that are favourable to the interviewee. In the process, Mr Modi has successfully managed to control the political narrative with the media failing to seriously interrogate the Gujarat model. That doesn’t make him a “media creation”, it only makes him a very clever politician. And makes journalism at times, sadly, descend into cronyism.
Post-script: "While Dr Singh laments the media playing up the Modi 'wave', he might pause to consider why he has almost stayed away completely from the media for the last five years. If the prime minister of a country with hundreds of news channels remains in silent mode, why blame a contender for occupying the space you have chosen to leave vacant and available?"
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Programs focused on both diet and exercise may help people who have lost weight keep the pounds from creeping back on, according to a new analysis of past studies.
Clients work out on machines in Arvada, Colorado June 15, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Orlistat, an obesity drug, may also be effective when taken at higher doses, researchers found.
More than one third of U.S. adults are obese, and obesity raises the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer. Losing weight - and keeping it off - can reduce those risks.
“Long term weight loss through changes in eating and physical activity is possible, even in adults who have already acquired obesity related illness, and effective weight loss programs are now available,” researchers led by Stephan Dombrowski of Newcastle University in the UK write.
They pooled data from 45 studies that included a total of 7,788 adults who had lost at least five percent of their body weight. The studies looked at people’s ability to keep the weight off for a minimum of one year.
Forty-two of the studies included an initial phase meant to produce weight loss. The participants in those studies lost an average of about 24 pounds.
The studies all looked at medication or lifestyle changes such as diet, physical activity and meal replacements, either alone or in combination, to help with weight loss maintenance.
The researchers found that people participating in programs that combined diet and exercise gained back 3.4 fewer pounds after one year compared to people receiving no extra help with weight maintenance or standard treatment only.
They also found that combining Orlistat with behavioral changes resulted in 4 fewer pounds regained after one year compared to participants who took a drug-free placebo.
Orlistat appeared to be more effective at larger doses, according to results published in the British medical journal BMJ. But the drug also came with gastrointestinal side effects.
Lori Rosenthal said the findings echo previous research and that it was “interesting” that the authors included data from so many studies.
Rosenthal is a dietician at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York. She was not involved in the new review.
“I think it’s great that they covered so many different studies but there’s also so much variety and the long-term research isn’t there, you know - going beyond 24 months,” she told Reuters Health.
Still, “We know that interventions like diet and physical activity are really important in preventing weight regain after losing,” she said.
Rosenthal noted that participants who had dropped out of the programs were not always included in the findings, and that could affect the review’s results.
“Weight management is hard,” she said. “People have to realize that it’s not just the losing it - it’s for life, and if you don’t like what you’re doing, if it doesn’t work for you, you’re not going to stick with it.”
Support during the weight management phase is important, Rosenthal added. There are support groups and dietitians who can give people tricks and tools to help make it easier, she said.
She offered some advice for people who have lost weight and are moving into a maintenance phase.
“It’s really important to remember that weight management is a mind and a stomach game,” she said. “You have to feel good about what you’re having.”
“Really make sure you find foods you like - that you’re choosing foods not because you’re on a diet but because you like them,” Rosenthal said. “You have to like them more than the other things you were eating before.”
Rosenthal said that if people don’t like the new foods they eat or their new routine, they will be more likely to go right back to old habits.
She said being mindful and chewing slowly also allows people to enjoy their food and eat less.
SOURCE: bit.ly/REgqxK BMJ, online May 14, 2014. |
(Photo courtesty of Eric Hian-Cheong)
The halo — also known as a “moon rainbow” or “moonbow” — appeared around 11:30 p.m., to the delight of local Twitter and Facebook users, who quickly started asking questions like, “How does a #moonbow even happen?”
Well, according to the Ask an Astronomer blog from Cornell University, moonbows are caused by the light of the moon passing through a thin layer of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The crystals refract the moonlight the way water droplets refract sunlight to produce a rainbow.
On the heels of the moonbow, the Hunter’s Moon will make an appearance over D.C. tonight. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the Hunter’s Moon, also called the Blood Moon, is the smallest full moon of the year and should be at its fullest shortly after 10 p.m. Fingers crossed that the rain clouds hold off until then.
Did you see the #moonbow? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Related:
Your photos: The night sky
Super Moon over Washington |
The ping of the email broke my sleep. Bleary eyed, I reached over to my phone and read the subject line: “Northern Rock mortgages are latest gamble for US private equity firm Cerberus”. And with that I was wide-awake.
Overnight, it seemed I had become indebted to the world’s largest gun investment company.
The British government, the report read, was unloading a chunk of assets it had acquired in the financial crisis and selling £13bn of bank loans to the US private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management – the mortgages (including mine) taken on by the UK government when it nationalised Northern Rock in 2008, after the lender suffered a bank run in the credit crisis.
Press releases tried to reassure original Northern Rock customers that the terms and conditions of their mortgages would be unaffected. But this wasn’t what concerned me.
What was worrying is that Cerberus is a sort of nemesis to me. I am a director of the charity Action on Armed Violence, which looks at the impact of small arms violence around the world. It’s no small task given that there are almost a billion guns on the planet and about half a million lives lost at the end of a barrel every year. I have also recently published a book – Gun Baby Gun – which charts my journey into the bloody world of firearm ownership. As I wrote, I tried to find a company that epitomised the shadowy profits of the world’s gun trade. And Cerberus did just that. In fact, they fitted the evil archetype almost too well.
For starters, they had a diabolic name. The CEO, Stephen Feinberg, reportedly named his now $20bn firm after the three-headed hound that guarded the gates of hell. He hoped his investors would be assured that one of the dog heads would always be awake, watching their investments. For me, it just reeked of sulphur.
The stench got worse when I found out that in April 2006, Cerberus had decided to get into the gun business in a big way. Their first major purchase was the semi-automatic rifle maker Bushmaster Firearms. Cerberus took them on for around $76m. The next year, in 2007, the New York-based asset company formed the Freedom Group, snapping up Remington and a slew of other armaments firms.
Today, that group describes itself as “one of the largest manufacturers in the world of firearms and ammunition”, with 3,200 employees and exports to some 60 countries. In 2013, their revenue was around $1.26bn on sales of 3.1bn rounds of ammunition and 1.8m guns.
In this way, to me at least, Cerberus is implicated in cold-blooded murder. Freedom Group weapons have been found in the hands of ISIS fighters in Syria and mass shooters in the US. They even made the Bushmaster rifle used by Adam Lanza in his attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed 26 children and adults in December 2012.
If this isn’t enough, as well as owning gun companies, Cerberus also owns a US healthcare company. It is called Steward Health and serves over 1 million patients in New England. This means that, with almost 46,000 cases of violent crime in New England in 2011, Cerberus almost certainly runs a business that has to treat gunshot victims. A truly vicious circle.
Certainly, criticism of Cerberus in the US has been intense. So bad, indeed, that after Sandy Hook, Feinberg claimed he was going to sell off his gun investments. It was a good publicity move but not actually something he ever got around to doing (as a sop to critics he allows investors to sell their stakes and move Remington out of their funds).
Wanting answers, I called Cerberus. The statement they gave said that Remington had been spun out of any of its formal funds. However, according to Freedom Group’s own filings, Cerberus continues to be the owner. It was a linguistic sleight of hand about a company whose financial reports are littered with words such as ‘amortization’ or ‘intangible assets’, without a nod to the death or destruction its ‘products’ can bring.
As for my own mortgage – I’ve been told to wait to find out more details, but there will be no moral “opt out” clause. And when I called up the UK Treasury, they just said it was “a good deal for taxpayers”.
It’s all deeply disconcerting. It literally brought home for me the fact that we live in a hyper-connected market where asset companies can simultaneously profit from gun sales and trauma units, and where overnight your home can be tied to a US behemoth.
It also highlighted another uncomfortable reality – the reality that international financial networks have become contaminated by the financial inflows of the global arms sector. The US gun industry has revenues of more than $13bn, but it’s the money men behind the gun men who really suck up the profits.
So, yes, I will move my mortgage. I do so because the bloody corporate profits from the sale of weapons of war have tainted my own investments and assets. And that, really, is what should keep us all awake at night.
This article first appeared in the Guardian.
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“The project we’re putting forward has five points to it: the regions, the development of minors at professional clubs, the educating of instructors, personal development and national youth teams,” said Ahmed, voicing his enthusiasm. The ultimate aim is for Peru to have 48 professional clubs – a status only enjoyed by its first division sides at the moment – offering an unbroken career path to their youngsters.
A five-point project Thanks to the nationwide plan, teams from other regions around the country have created their own youth set-ups, with 15 now running U-15 and U-17 sides. Next year will see U-13 teams being added, with the objective being to have at least 32 clubs competing against each other at youth level.
Up until 2016, only six professional clubs in the country’s first and second divisions operated youth teams for players aged between 12 and 18, all of them based in Lima. In the rest of the country, meanwhile, there was no professional structure in place for training youngsters of those ages.
“It’s about giving youngsters who never had an opportunity a fair crack of the whip,” Daniel Ahmed, the head of the Minors Development Unit told FIFA.com . Under the supervision of FPF President Edwin Oviedo and Director of Football Juan Carlos Oblitas, the Argentinian coach is aiming to revolutionise Peruvian grassroots football through a project that he says has both a social and competitive aspect to it.
His potential would have gone to waste, had it not been for the Minors Plan that the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) rolled out in March 2016. An ambitious project, it has the financial backing of FIFA, through its Forward development programme .
Back in August 2016, in pursuing his dream of becoming a footballer, Piero Ferreyra Lopez took a three-day boat trip up the Amazon from his village, Caballococha, deep in the Peruvian jungle. Travelling with 13 other young boys and an official from his village, he disembarked in Iquitos, a thousand kilometres away from Lima. Nearly one year on, Piero is playing for Sporting Cristal and Peru’s U-15 national team, something unthinkable prior to the moment he took that journey.
Development centres were created in 20 regions in 2016, with further centres being set up in the country’s remaining five regions this year, each with a U-14 and U-16 coach and an administrator. Players from all corners of each region were scouted, with the best of them being selected for the development centres before eventually taking part in the inaugural U-14 and U-16 national regional team championships.
With the guidance and support of the FPF, Peru’s first division clubs scouted boys and brought them into their teams, in accordance with the FIFA Club Licensing system, which requires professional clubs to have youth development programmes in place. Piero, the boy who took the boat trip up the Amazon, is just one of the youngsters to have gone through the process.
Since March 2017, he and his fellow hopefuls have been taking part in Peru’s inaugural youth championship for the first division’s professional clubs: the U-15 and U-17 Torneos Centenario, both of which are funded by the FPF.
“We’re helping clubs because even if they want to implement a plan like this, it’s very difficult for them to do so, unless you give them a hand,” said Ahmed. “We’ve got recreational football, but we don’t have professional teams who take on the job of building a professional nationwide structure for the game.”
The Minors Plan – facts and figures:
Some 15,000 players were scouted in 2016, with 1,000 of them being selected for the development centres.
More than 700 boys at U-14 and U-16 level played in the national regional team championship in 2016.
A total of 165 coaches have been trained for the development centres.
More than 240 talent scouts now operate in all regions across Peru.
170 players from the centres play for 15 professional clubs in the 2017 Torneo Centenario.
Matches from the competition are broadcast every Saturday on the free-to-air Latina channel.
The FPF has also created an annual programme designed to provide youngsters with a broad academic education and encourage them to lead healthy lives. “We teach them everything to do with their emotional development,” added Ahmed. “It’s not just about them playing football.”
Supported by private enterprise, the programme is currently being trialled and applies only to national youth teams and to one region at the moment, though the intention is for it to be rolled out in a second region by the end of the year.
“It’ll take us between six and eight years to reach everyone,” continued Ahmed. “Football has an incredible social power, and an awful lot of lives have been saved by steering people away from dangerous lifestyles and into sport. It reflects the nation’s health.”
The overall project should provide Peru’s representative teams with talent sourced from right across the nation. Put together outside the plan, the 21-man U-17 squad that played at this year’s South American Championships in the age group featured no fewer than 20 players from Lima. In contrast, 11 of the 25 players that make up the U-15 side hail from the country’s interior, among them Piero.
A legend of Peruvian football, Oblitas is excited at what the future holds: “We’ve started building what hasn’t been built in 30 years. Short-term thinking and improvisation are now a thing of the past.” |
Stephen Harper tightened his own belt this week, voluntarily — and quietly — accepting a pension cut that will likely cost him more than a million dollars.
The prime minister doesn’t need our sympathy. He’ll still have a very comfortable pension, but he deserves credit for showing leadership and finally scraping some of the gold off of MPs’ gilded pension plan.MPs passed a bill on Friday that will see all of them start to pay more for their own retirements, ending a system where they paid just $11,000 a year and could look forward to an average pension of $54,693 a year beginning at age 55.
MPs qualify to collect after just six years of service, which means that Nepean-Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre qualified for a pension at age 31.For every dollar that MPs or senators contribute to their pension, taxpayers pony up $23.30, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which has been pushing this issue for decades.In changes that will be phased in, to spare the cohort now warming the chairs in the House of Commons, MPs will contribute $39,000 a year to their pensions, and they won’t be able to collect until they turn 65.Harper, who did not need to do this, took a look at his own entitlements and decided to put another hole in the belt.
Until the bill passed, retired prime ministers received 66 per cent of their prime ministerial salary — $104,000 a year — on top of their MP salary.
Harper, who makes $157,731 as an MP plus his $157,731 prime ministerial stipend, will now receive three per cent of his prime ministerial salary per year of service.
If he serves until after the next election, in 2015, he’ll get about $47,000 a year in pension, $57,000 less than he would have received under the old system.
Depending on when he leaves office, and how long he lives, Harper’s pension decision will cost him $1.5 million to $2 million. Harper is quietly setting a good example, and deserves a bit of credit.
He also deserves credit for agreeing to split the pension measures off from the enormous budget omnibus bill.
It had looked like the Tories were planning to keep the measure in the bill, which the opposition is pretty much duty-bound to vote against, so that the Tories could complain theatrically that Liberal and NDP MPs refused to vote to cut their own pensions.
Instead, when Liberal interim leader Bob Rae asked Harper during question period on Thursday to split the bill, Harper said he would take it under advisement.
On Friday, the government decided to slice the measure off the budget bill and pass it. The NDP hemmed and hawed, and said that it really should go to committee for study, likely because they aren’t keen to give the government a fig leaf for cuts to public servants’ pensions, but they quickly realized they couldn’t be seen to vote against this, and got in line.
It is about time.
MPs make $157,731 a year, which for most of them is the biggest salary they will make in their lives. While a handful of business people and big shot lawyers do take pay cuts to serve in Parliament, when you consider all the benefits and free stuff they get, the number who really lose out by entering politics is vanishingly small.
We would be cutting off our noses to spite our faces if we make it an unappealing job. It’s a tough life, full of rubber chicken, long airplane rides, ridiculous talking points and the risk of public indignity on a scale most of us couldn’t endure.
But it was a bit too rich, so the changes are good, and it was good to see the prime minister co-operate with opposition MPs to get this done.
Harper often mistakes his opponents for blood enemies, sending his legions out to attack them with asinine and insulting talking points, unnecessarily reducing the level of debate.
And the budget omnibus bill is too big — 450 pages! — to allow for proper debate of the many laws it changes.
It guts the Navigable Waters Act, for instance, removing federal protection from a huge number of lakes and rivers, handing responsibility to municipalities that may be too tempted to pave lakes when a big box retailer moves to town.
The Conservatives say other acts will still protect those bodies of water, and they may be right. That’s the kind of thing we would find out in a proper debate at the environment committee, after hearing from witnesses, rather than a rushed session at finance committee.
It is good to reduce the pensions of MPs, but bad to prevent them from earning their pay by giving our laws the debate they need.
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9:21am: The discussions were held during the GM Meetings and “have yet to advance beyond [the] initial stage,” Morosi adds on Twitter.
8:27am: The Giants and Tigers have discussed the possibility of a swap that would send power-hitting outfielder J.D. Martinez out west, according to Jon Morosi of MLB Network (via Twitter). Detroit has been said to be willing to consider deals involving all its veteran assets, so news of the discussions is hardly surprising. As things stand, there’s no reason to believe there’s any particular momentum toward a transaction.
Entering his final year of team control, Martinez is a clear trade candidate, particularly since the Tigers have made clear they won’t pursue an extension with him. Martinez is owed $11.75MM this year as part of the two-year contract he signed last winter to buy out his remaining arbitration years. Though Detroit is looking to trim salary in the long run, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t keep him for one more run. But the reasonable salary and short commitment also make Martinez a highly appealing trade chip, which the Tigers could use to boost their efforts to develop a younger and more cost-efficient roster.
Martinez has turned himself into one of the game’s premier power hitters since joining the Tigers as a minor league free agent just before the 2014 season. Since that time, he owns a .299/.357/.540 slash line and has hit 83 home runs in 1,654 plate appearances. Though Martinez missed time last year after suffering a freak elbow fracture, he returned as good as ever. While metrics liked his glovework in right field in 2015, they were way down on him last season, and Martinez has never rated well on the basepaths. Despite those questions, the bat does plenty to carry his value, and Martinez only just turned 29.
Martinez has batted a combined .299/.357/.540 over the past three years and averaged 34 homers per 162 games played along the way. He missed nearly two months of the 2016 season with a fracture in his elbow but was improbably even better after his time on the DL, slashing .332/.392/.553 with 10 homers over his final 232 plate appearances (albeit with the help of an unsustainable .418 BABIP).
The fit with the Giants makes a good bit of sense on paper — at least, that is, if San Francisco is willing to cough up enough of interest to get something done. Certainly, the need is there, as the club has an opening in left field and surely wouldn’t mind filling it with another big bat. With several significant long-term contracts on the books, though, and the possibility of a second Madison Bumgarner extension on the horizon, there would seem to be appeal in a one-year obligation.
Parting with young talent always hurts, but there are countervailing considerations at play here. Dealing for Martinez would deliver a team exclusive negotiating rights with him until he reaches free agency, so there’s always the possibility of striking a lengthier accord at a more appealing price than could be found on the open market. And then there’s the fact that he’d be an obvious qualifying offer candidate next winter, which would open the door to draft compensation, although ongoing collective bargaining talks inject some uncertainty into that consideration. |
Given that there has recently been a lot of discussion on this blog about this logic puzzle, I thought I would make a dedicated post for it (and move all the previous comments to this post). The text here is adapted from an earlier web page of mine from a few years back.
The puzzle has a number of formulations, but I will use this one:
There is an island upon which a tribe resides. The tribe consists of 1000 people, with various eye colours. Yet, their religion forbids them to know their own eye color, or even to discuss the topic; thus, each resident can (and does) see the eye colors of all other residents, but has no way of discovering his or her own (there are no reflective surfaces). If a tribesperson does discover his or her own eye color, then their religion compels them to commit ritual suicide at noon the following day in the village square for all to witness. All the tribespeople are highly logical and devout, and they all know that each other is also highly logical and devout (and they all know that they all know that each other is highly logical and devout, and so forth). [Added, Feb 15: for the purposes of this logic puzzle, “highly logical” means that any conclusion that can logically deduced from the information and observations available to an islander, will automatically be known to that islander.] Of the 1000 islanders, it turns out that 100 of them have blue eyes and 900 of them have brown eyes, although the islanders are not initially aware of these statistics (each of them can of course only see 999 of the 1000 tribespeople). One day, a blue-eyed foreigner visits to the island and wins the complete trust of the tribe. One evening, he addresses the entire tribe to thank them for their hospitality. However, not knowing the customs, the foreigner makes the mistake of mentioning eye color in his address, remarking “how unusual it is to see another blue-eyed person like myself in this region of the world”. What effect, if anything, does this faux pas have on the tribe?
The interesting thing about this puzzle is that there are two quite plausible arguments here, which give opposing conclusions:
[Note: if you have not seen the puzzle before, I recommend thinking about it first before clicking ahead.]
Argument 1. The foreigner has no effect, because his comments do not tell the tribe anything that they do not already know (everyone in the tribe can already see that there are several blue-eyed people in their tribe).
Argument 2. 100 days after the address, all the blue eyed people commit suicide. This is proven as a special case of
Proposition. Suppose that the tribe had n blue-eyed people for some positive integer n. Then n days after the traveller’s address, all n blue-eyed people commit suicide.
Proof: We induct on n. When n=1, the single blue-eyed person realizes that the traveler is referring to him or her, and thus commits suicide on the next day. Now suppose inductively that n is larger than 1. Each blue-eyed person will reason as follows: “If I am not blue-eyed, then there will only be n-1 blue-eyed people on this island, and so they will all commit suicide n-1 days after the traveler’s address”. But when n-1 days pass, none of the blue-eyed people do so (because at that stage they have no evidence that they themselves are blue-eyed). After nobody commits suicide on the day, each of the blue eyed people then realizes that they themselves must have blue eyes, and will then commit suicide on the day.
Which argument is valid? I won’t spoil it in this main post, but readers are welcome to discuss the solution in the comments. (Again, for those of you who haven’t seen the puzzle before, I recommend thinking about it first before reading the comments below.)
Added, Feb 12: It is undoubtedly true that the assumptions of this logic puzzle are highly unrealistic, and defy common sense. This however does not invalidate the above question, which is to resolve the fact that there are two separate and seemingly valid arguments which start with the same hypotheses but yield contradictory conclusions. This fact requires resolution even if the hypotheses are extremely unlikely to be completely satisfied in any reasonable situation; it is only when the hypotheses are logically impossible to satisfy completely that there is no need to analyse the situation further.
[Update, Feb 10: wording of the puzzle clarified. (My original version, which did not contain the last parenthetical of the first paragraph, can be found on my web page; it had an unexpectedly interesting subtlety in its formulation, but was not the puzzle I had actually intended to write. See also this formulation of the puzzle by xkcd.)] |
A retail mall in the city’s south end described by its owners as old and tired could be the site of a massive residential redevelopment effort.
“Any major residential development efforts for Shoppers World Brampton are not in the near term, but are part of RioCan’s longer-term vision for the property and the community,” said property manager Penny Karas, referencing a recent media interview with Ed Sonshine, chief executive officer of RioCan REIT, where he lays out plans to scale back the retail footprint by more than half its current size to 300,000 square feet, and include 1,500 residential units, mostly rental, at a projected cost of $150 million.
In that Globe and Mail interview, Shoppers World, built in the early 1970s, was described as a broken down, old mall that RioCan executives “aren’t sure what to do with.” In 2012, RioCan added 80,000 sq. ft. of retail space as part of a major revamp project.
Mall representatives downplayed the pace at which the project is moving, stating the mall is about to welcome new tenants GoodLife Fitness and JYSK by early 2018. However, the prospect of an overhaul of a prime piece of real estate in the heart of Brampton has ignited talk about development potential for the area.
Related Content OMB makes key land decision in Brampton mega mall proposal
“There is no question that Brampton needs more affordable rental units, so the proposal for 1,500 rental units on the Shopper’s World Brampton site would certainly address that to some extent,” said Coun. Jeff Bowman, who also talked about the city’s Hurontario-Steeles Mobility Hub Master Plan Study, and how any redevelopment of the property “should include a large, modern mobility hub.”
At the height of the contentious light rail transit (LRT) debate, Mayor Linda Jeffrey and senior planners warned opponents that stopping the line at Steeles and Hurontario would shift growth away from the downtown and sink the city’s revitalization plans for the Four Corners area.
More than a year after council denied Jeffrey the transformative vote, opting instead to stop the HMLRT line short of the downtown, and rejecting hundreds of millions of provincial dollars in the process, the mayor's predictions of “a new city centre” are beginning to take shape as talk of an overhaul of Shoppers World picks up steam.
Council turned down the province’s preferred route through the downtown along Main Street, at a huge political cost to the mayor who went hard on the offensive to try and overturn a previous council decision to prevent the LRT line moving through the city’s heritage district.
While that battle unfolded, RioCan filed a pre-application with the city in April 2015 and set forth redevelopment plans that could, as Jeffrey predicted, “shift growth away from the Four Corners to Steeles and Hurontario or wherever else the line stops.”
“In the context of planning for Light Rail Transit to Steeles Avenue, city staff have recently been involved in discussions with RioCan regarding the development opportunities for the Shoppers World site,” a city spokesperson responded in an email, adding that work is currently being done on a tertiary plan for the Shoppers World Brampton site, “undertaken concurrently with the City’s Hurontario-Steeles Mobility Hub Master Plan Study.” |
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Heartbreak. Chaos. Regret. Political instability. Would you expect anything less from The 100?
As with the previous three seasons, The 100 Season 4 starts a new chapter in the post-apocalyptic story of the Arkers and the Grounders with a greater threat than the discord between the clans. The world is facing another nuclear annihilation. Will humanity find a way to survive again?
The new season begins in Polis shortly after the destruction of the City of Light and the deaths of Skaikru Chancellor Pike and Commander Ontari. The resulting atmosphere in Polis is in sharp contrast to the calm and happiness experienced in the City of Light. The show immediately returns to its dark, gritty and politically challenging ways – and the Season 4 story begins with chaos and looming nuclear annihilation.
While that threat looms, there are more immediate concerns. What happens now that the Coalition of the 13 Clans is dead and there’s no Commander? (The political and emotional turmoil during the premiere, “Echoes,” will have your heart racing). Everyone is also struggling with coming out of the City of Light, what they did while in the City of Light, and the deaths of their loved ones. The reactions range from anger and regret to a desire for retribution. Without a leader to calm the masses, it’s chaos until a pivotal person declares control of Polis.
The real treat of The 100 this season is acknowledging the path that has come before. We know these characters, we understand where they’ve been and who they are, yet they can still surprise us with their decisions. This is especially true of the original delinquents, who are still figuring out who they are as people and continue to grow through their triumphs and mistakes.
In that way, the past is not forgotten. Clarke (Eliza Taylor) lives with the choices she’s made and the people she’s lost. They drive her as she handles the coming nuclear threat, as well as, the political turmoil between the clans. She’s an impressive leader who adapts to the situation and continues to make the impossible decision when necessary.
Unlike early last season, Clarke isn’t a lone wolf. She has Bellamy (Bob Morley) by her side to help her lead and they work better together than alone. Just like her, he has regrets and continues to struggle with his actions over the past seasons. He’s learned from his past and uses it to drive him to be better. It’s not an easy ride for either of them; they have the weight of humanity on their shoulders.
The biggest change this season is for Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos). After Lincoln’s (Ricky Whittle) death and killing Pike (Michael Beach), she’s found a new place in this world for herself. She’s now known as “Skairipa,” death from above. She’s fierce, smart and ends up being a key player in trying to bring about political stability in Polis.
In another example, throughout the years Murphy (Richard Harmon) has gone from one of the most hated characters to one of the most beloved. He’s proven to be resilient and willing to do whatever is necessary to survive. That doesn’t change after his time in Polis — he’s a survivor.
But the greatest addition this season is Roan (Zach McGowan). His history with Clarke throws an intriguing turn to the political dealings between the two leaders, while his previous exile from Ice Nation creates a challenge to his relationship with his people. Will he be friend or foe?
One of my favorite aspects of this show is the continual theme of “how far will they go to save their people?” That doesn’t go away and is heightened as the season begins and in new ways. It becomes more complicated than pulling a lever and killing hundreds of people. It’s personal. And, choices of the past become choices of the present. The greater nuclear threat changes the emotional journey of watching the show. While there’s anxiety about whether characters will live or die, that’s not the major emotional pull over these first few episodes. Instead, it’s about the difficult decisions the characters have to make, which sometimes to run counter to their moral code.
For longtime fans of The 100, the new season finds viewers rewarded with a deeper look at the characters, including what drives them and what it takes to have them make unexpected and sometimes questionable decisions. Their pasts determine their future for good or bad. Yet even with all the unrest happening, there are several lighthearted and personal moments that showcase human connections. Despite the troubles, deaths, and discord, humanity is at its best during personal moments of love and friendship. From romance to heart-to-heart talks to friendly support, The 100 includes these seamlessly into the overall story and will bring joy into your heart and tears to your eyes.
Rating: ★★★★ Very good — Damn fine television
The 100 Season 4 premieres Wednesday, February 1st on The CW. |
Sunlight + water = hydrogen gas, in a new technique that can convert 60 per cent of sunlight energy absorbed by an electrode into the inflammable fuel.
To generate the gas Thomas Nann and colleagues at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, dip a gold electrode with a special coating into water and expose it to light. clusters of indium phosphide 5 nanometres wide on its surface absorb incoming photons and pass electrons bearing their energy on to clusters of a sulphurous iron compound.
This material combines those electrons with protons from the water to form gaseous hydrogen. A second electrode – plain platinum this time – is needed to complete the circuit electrochemically.
New benchmark
Organic molecules have been used before to perform the same feat. But they are quickly bleached by the sunlight they are collecting, rendering them inefficient after a few weeks.
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The inorganic materials used in the University of East Anglia’s system are more resilient. Their first generation proof of concept is “a major breakthrough” in the field, they say, thanks to its efficiency of over 60 per cent and ability to survive sunlight for two weeks without any degradation of performance.
“In fact the 60 per cent figure is probably a worst-case scenario,” says Nann. “This is still a preliminary study.”
Bigger net
That high efficiency is largely thanks to the indium phosphide clusters being better at grabbing photons than organic molecules. “Think of them as a butterfly net for catching photons,” says Nann.
By the standard measure of the probability that a material will absorb a photon that hits it, each cluster is 400 times better at netting photons than organic molecules used in previous systems. “That’s why it works so well,” says Nann.
He and colleagues now plan to refine the system, including lowering the cost by making it with less expensive materials. “There is no major reason for using gold or platinum,” he says: those materials were used simply because they are common in the laboratory.
Welcome result
The Nann team’s experiment has been welcomed by others in the field. “It’s a significant result,” says Vincent Artero at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. There is still room to improve efficiency and reduce materials costs, but “my overall appreciation of this work is highly positive, both regarding the scientific level and the promises that are held by the new result”, he says
Licheng Sun at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, agrees. “It will certainly [provide] future research topics for water splitting,” he says.
Journal reference: Angewandte Chemie International, DOI: 10.1002/anie.200906262 |
Posted Sat Jun 6, 2015 11:00 AM
Yep, that's right. Hover Bovver is being worked on and is scheduled for release in early 2016.
I have taken on the role of Executive Producer for its release and that includes the first 100 serial numbers.
This is an open ended, Serial Numbered, Shrink-wrapped release.
At this time I am only taking reservations and payment will be required when it gets closer to physical release. You can make your reservation in this thread, by PM or by emailing me at [email protected]. In the case of two reserving the same number the earlier time stamp wins.
Cost breakdown by serial number:
1. $200 - Free Shipping & fees
2. $150 - Free Shipping & fees
3. $150 - Free Shipping & fees
4 - 5 $125 ea. - Free Shipping & fees
6 - 10 $100 ea. plus shipping and fees
11 and beyond $70 ea. plus shipping and fees
Shipping and fees for 1 in the US is $8.
Shipping and fees for 1 to Canada is $13.
Shipping and fees for 1 to the remainder of the world is $18.
Add $3 for each additional copy.
1. cmart
2. Steve G [E]
3. RetroAl
4. gunoz
5. ianoid
6. AtariBuff
7. mjarnold
8. MTLGUY [E]
9. atariron82
10. Hyperboy
------------------------
11. intellivotion
12. intvsteve
13. Lathe26
14. WaveRider1970
15. Soulbuster
16. Eric7100
17. Eric7100
18. Terry [E]
19. Special Teams
20. BriceZ
21. Rick Reynolds
22. nurmix
23. TrekMD
24. Special Teams
25. Mark [E]
26. Spadafermo51
27. Spadafermo51
28. MIKEY LIKES InTv
29. 20ohm20
30. Soulbuster
31. Zamp1968
32. Ambrosine
33. wolfy62
34. wolfy62
35. Marco Miccoli
36. cvga
37. fsuinnc
38. rhcocker
39. Intymike
40. m-crew
41. Nibunnoichi
42. mdoerty
43. AJChandler
44. mr_intv
45. AtariBrian
46. AIntellivet
47. intellivotion
48. toymailman
49. toymailman
50. Darrin9999
51. stupus
52. RayXambeR [E]
53. Larry [E]
54. TED-SCS [E]
55. JohnPCAE
56. TPR
57. ataridan
58. Fushek
59. Intellfan
60. gershbec
61. Brian [E]
62. Brian [E]
63. mammothservices
64. jeffgamer
65. TrickyMoon
66. Steve J
67. KevinMos3
68. Intellivisioner
69. AtariBuff
70. TestaOn
71. infraMan
72. Oscar G.
73. spaceman
74. spaceman
75. ArcadeJunkie
76. cmart
77. cmart
78. bradd1978
79. RetroAl
80. Binth
81. JoeM_Intellivision
82. JoeM_Intellivision
83. stebsy
84. Herkamur
85. scobb
86. WispFollower
87. Crazy Climber
88. JasonlikesINTV
89. CMUalum
90. gavvv
91. Zamp1968
92. Cownschool
93. segasaturn
94. harveyjcat
95. Troy_Whelan
96. revolutionika
97. revolutionika
98. revolutionika
99. revolutionika
100. mthompson
101. First Spear
102. Certifiable
103. reims_de
104. mylok
105. fandenivoldsk
106. BBWW
107. BBWW
108. FABombjoy
109. rpgcollector
110. killersqirel
111. Ashley Bottoms
112. alevin16
113. furor
114. Glenn C. [E]
115. Decologix
116. Mufla
117. Alex.Pace
118. Jonas C [E]
119. Jonas C [E]
120. Jonas C [E]
121. GenetixJ
122. imstarryeyed
123. bunion1971
124. Charon
125. DMonroe
126. DMonroe
127. Todd [E]
128. y-bot
129. Gaztee
130. Mike S [E]
131. Clownschool
132. Rick Reynolds
133. Fabio G [E]
134. Stuart M [E]
135. killersquirel
136. zodiacprime
137. Dane S
138. Edward K [E]
139. Brian R. [E]
140. Brian R. [E]
141. BenG76
142. bikeguychicago
143. Colorado Rockie
144. Steve Jones
145. Michael F [E]
146. veritas
147. Phil P [E]
148. jfng
149. Humblejack
150. tw1sted1981
151. lorenzogino69
152. lorenzogino69
153. lorenzogino69
154. fdr4prez
155. SiLic0ne t0aD85
156. river9999uk
157. Imstarryeyed
158. travistouchdown
159. Zachary W.
160. Daniel F. [E]
161.
162.
163.
Attached Thumbnails
Edited by SoulBuster, Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:55 AM. |
The District’s attorney general took issue Thursday with a bill that would redefine the way the police department seizes cars related to certain crimes, holds them and sells them for profit.
Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan told a D.C. Council committee considering a change to the District’s civil asset forfeiture laws that proposed legislation could endanger millions of dollars in profits the police department receives through the federal forfeiture revenue-sharing program.
But the idea that police could be motivated to seize and sell vehicles disturbed the council member overseeing the hearing.
“Financial incentive is the one thing that gives people a little bit of heartburn,” said D.C. Council member Tommy Wells, Ward 6 Democrat and chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.
Over the past five years, Mr. Nathan said the Metropolitan Police Department has received more than $3.3 million through federal asset forfeiture — money paid by the federal government to local law-enforcement agencies for assistance in federal forfeiture cases. A separate analysis by the Institute for Justice indicates that from 2000 through 2012, the proceeds reaped from that federal sharing program totaled $8.2 million.
That money would be in jeopardy if the council passes a bill proposed by council member Mary M. Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat, that would dictate forfeiture proceeds be deposited in the city’s general fund. Federal law requires forfeiture funds be used solely by law enforcement.
“This threatens to conflict with federal law and policy as applied to the many cases when the U.S. attorney’s office brings forfeiture claims in D.C. courts and would be costly to the District,” Mr. Nathan said.
Referencing laws passed in Oregon and Utah, where federal forfeiture proceeds were directed to be spent on non-law enforcement expenses, Mr. Nathan said the federal government stopped sharing proceeds as a result. He feared the same could happen in the District.
Funds the District has collected through its own forfeiture proceedings would not be at risk. The Institute of Justice estimates the District collected nearly $4.8 million from 2010 to 2012. About $2.5 million of that came from the value of vehicles and $2.2 million from currency that was forfeited.
The civil asset forfeiture process as a whole has come under scrutiny after a series of lawsuits filed by the Public Defender Service on behalf of hundreds of vehicle owners who have had their property seized and say they have no fair way to challenge the seizures.
Mr. Nathan conceded that, under the current system, vehicle owners are not always being afforded due process, but he criticized the proposed council bill, saying it was overbroad.
“That is the goal, as I read it, of the draftees is to eliminate forfeitures — and that is a mistake,” he said.
Instead, he submitted his own draft legislation to the committee, which for the first time would establish firm timelines to address the delay vehicle owners now face when they try to reclaim seized property.
Under the current system, vehicle owners must pay a bond — often 10 percent of the value of the vehicle — just to request a hearing to challenge the police department’s seizure of the car. But there is no time frame for a hearing to be held, and vehicle owners often wait months without results.
Mr. Nathan’s proposal would grant vehicle owners a preliminary hearing before an administrative law judge. The hearing would not require a bond. Hearings would be held within 7 to 12 business days of a request being made, and judges would have five days to issue a decision.
Police also revealed at the hearing that the department recently took one step to shorten the potential wait time for owners hoping to reunite with their seized vehicles.
Beginning Tuesday, a policy took effect that requires property clerks to review cases in which cars were seized after 10 days rather than 60 days to determine if they are still going to pursue forfeiture in those cases.
Police are also re-evaluating the types of cases in which vehicles are being seized.
“Beyond tightening the number of vehicles we are taking in, we have greater scrutiny by officials — particularly the asset forfeiture unit,” Assistant Chief Patrick Burke said.
Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that a bond would be required for an administrative hearing. The error has been corrected.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
I had the chance to do a brief hands-on with the Kindle 2 after its introduction today; in contrast to last time around, review copies were not available to the press. I've gone on record with a list of complaints about the first generation version, and suggested that there may have been little Amazon could do, given its reliance on E-Ink for that hardware. It appears that E-Ink has come through for them in a big way, and the Kindle 2 is a far better device as a result.
The new version displays more shades of grey than were previously possible, and Amazon has paired that with a set of updated fonts to make the text significantly crisper and easier to read. But it's the speed of the display that makes everything different. Amazon claims a 20 percent improvement in page flips, but it's clear that the operating system is very capable of redrawing only subsets of the screen—perhaps the software is smarter about that than it was previously, it's impossible to tell. In any case, the result is that anything done on the screen is very much faster—moving the cursor, selecting text, typing, menus, you name it. It's really hard to convey just how much more responsive the device feels.
The new layout of controls on Kindle 2
Because Amazon can do more on the screen, it was able to revamp a lot of the rest of the interface. The LCD strip on the right side of Kindle 1, which was used for selecting text and menu items, and sporadically for indicating progress, is gone, and good riddance. In killing it, Amazon has gotten rid of some of the worst of its interface inconsistencies, and more closely linked controlling the device to its primary screen. The faster display has allowed a cursor to be moved around the screen, and highlighting of selected text, items, and menus to be performed there, as well, all of which makes for a better interface.
Since the controls can now operate on the two dimensions of the screen, the click wheel that controlled the first generation device is gone, replaced by a five-way nub controller that acts much like the nipple in the keyboard of the old Thinkpads. It's a bit small for my thumbs, but I expect that longer periods of use would get me comfortable with it.
Physically, the most striking aspect of the device is its thickness—it really is remarkably thin, and the sleek metal back (reminiscent of the first-generation iPhone) is very appealing. It still feels quite robust, however. Amazon clearly listened to its customers' feedback when it comes to the large buttons that graced the sides of the original Kindle, which made it far too easy to accidentally advance a page. They're gone, and the smaller buttons that replace them pivot inwards, meaning that grabbing the edge of the device can't advance a page, even if you hit the smaller buttons.
The downside of this is that the screen, largely unchanged in size, really appears to be swimming in a sea of white plastic now, since there are wide margins between it and the edge on the upper third of the device. The bottom quarter still contains the keyboard. When asked about an on-screen keyboard, an Amazon staffer said that the company thinks on-screen keyboards cause more problems than they solve, especially given it's the primary reading surface, so that's unlikely to go away.
That said, it did get a facelift for Kindle 2. Because of the faster screen, characters like punctuation and symbols are selected on-screen using the pointer after hitting an Alt button, meaning each key only handles one character now, which gives it a cleaner look. The layout of keys, however—a QWERTY arrangement but with the keys in vertical columns, instead of offset between rows—left me completely lost. Having gone from typing on an iPhone to this keyboard, which requires a fair bit of pressure before a physical click is felt, was also disorienting. The backspace and return keys were also on top of each other, which caused me other problems. Unlike the pointer, I'm not sure I could get used to this with time; in my short hands on, I really hated it.
Stylish brushed metal appears on the side you don't look at.
As we mentioned before, a lot more action happens on screen, and the software has been updated in many ways to reflect that. Some of the content, like newspaper articles, has also seen an update to make it easier to navigate and get a quick feel for a story. Music and Web browsing still reside in the "Experimental" section, and are joined by the new text-to-speech feature. The biggest feature, software-wise, seems to be the new, "Whispersync" feature, which can be triggered with a menu command. This will get both a user's content and location within it—book and page—coordinated between different Kindles. We've confirmed that it has been added to Kindle 1 devices through a firmware update today.
Jeff Bezos hinted in his product intro that it will eventually work with content "on other mobile devices," but my attempts to get anyone from Amazon to talk about that went nowhere, or rather led into a thicket of answers about how the company wasn't ready to make forward-looking statements.
Overall, I have to say that the Kindle 2 is a far superior device to the first iteration, and really shows an attention to detail that, based on the earlier device, it wasn't clear that Amazon had in it. More significantly, perhaps, is the fact that the company has clearly made sensible fixes to many of the problems, which demonstrates a clear commitment to listening to its customers. The changes give me hope that, when the hardware's ready, the remaining issues (primarily the keyboard and the small screen) will be fixed. It makes me anxious to see what's in store for Kindle 3. |
“First, when I got to work as Secretary of State, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”
— Hillary Clinton, news conference addressing her private email server, March 10, 2015
The Fact Checker has received numerous reader requests to revisit claims Clinton made during her March 2015 news conference, in light of information that has surfaced in recent weeks. In particular, several readers have raised the question as to how Clinton’s claim that she used her clintonemail.com address and a private server out of “convenience” and that using her private email was “allowed by the State Department.”
When Clinton held her initial news conference, we focused our fact-check on the four points in her opening statement and key answers to reporters. We did not issue a ruling, as it was a fluid situation. (All of our fact-checks related to Clinton emails are available at wapo.st/ClintonEmailFacts.) In the March 2015 fact-check, we wrote the following about the quote above:
Perhaps this was the actual reason, but it’s worth noting that secretaries of state are always accompanied by staff who carry purses, briefcases and so forth. It would have been up to the staff to keep track of the devices, not Clinton. Clinton has not disclosed who at the State Department approved the use of a personal e-mail account, with its own server, instead of a government account. One would expect there is a paper trail that would explain how and why approval was granted. (The technology for one phone to handle two email accounts was fairly nascent back in 2009.)
Let’s see how the quote holds up now.
The facts
‘Convenience’
A batch of emails released last month chronicles technical issues that Clinton and her top aides were facing with her private clintonemail.com account in late 2010. This led to communications issues between Clinton and her staff, and Clinton’s emails were being blocked by the State Department’s server. In a November 2010 email, Clinton wrote to her longtime aide, Huma Abedin: “This is not a good system.”
Abedin responded: “We should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam. It’s not the phone message system, it’s the device delay.”
“Let’s get separate address or device, but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” Clinton wrote.
This email became a recurring line of questioning in Abedin’s deposition, the transcript of which was released last week by Judicial Watch. When asked about that last response line by Clinton, Abedin explained:
“I read that line exactly the way she wrote it, which is, let’s get a separate address. There was no resistance to getting a separate email address, as I’m reading it in this document. And not wanting her personal emails to be accessible to the public. … Just like you wouldn’t — I would imagine anybody who has personal email doesn’t want that personal email to be read by anybody else.”
Abedin’s answer shows that Clinton was open to having a second device or email address — which calls into question whether the “convenience” concern was relevant or applicable after she became secretary of state. Yet Clinton did not mention these issues when she explained she chose the system out of convenience.
“Secretary Clinton wanted to ensure the timeliness of her officials’ calls and if that could be facilitated by state.gov account, she was open to having one if she could maintain the privacy of her non-work related correspondence,” Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said.
Clinton later requested to switch to a State Department-issued device to replace her personal one, as shown in this detailed account of her email saga by our colleague Robert O’Harrow. In an August 2011 email, Stephen Mull, then-executive secretary at the State Department, wrote to Clinton’s aides:
“We are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued Blackberry to replace personal unit, which is malfunctioning (possibly because of her personal email server is down.) We will prepare two version for her to use — one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests).”
Abedin responded: “Steve — let’s discuss the State BlackBerry. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” (Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told O’Harrow the email showed that the secretary’s staff “opposed the idea of her identity being masked.”)
O’Harrow wrote that U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, presiding over a Judicial Watch lawsuit over the emails, cited this email “as part of the reason he ordered the State Department produce records related to its initial failures in the FOIA searches for Clinton’s records.” Sullivan said there were legitimate questions raised “about whether Clinton’s staff was trying to help her to sidestep FOIA,” O’Harrow wrote.
[Update: In his announcement that he would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton, FBI Director James Comey said Clinton used “numerous mobile devices to view and send email" during her time as Secretary of State.]
‘Allowed by the State Department’
Clinton said her private email was “allowed by the State Department.” We have written about a similar claim before, and awarded Three Pinocchios to Clinton when she said “everything I did [on emails] was permitted.” She has said repeatedly since then, “What I did was allowed by the State Department.”
The State Department Office of the Inspector General’s report released in May found “no evidence” that Clinton requested or obtained guidance or approval from the State Department to solely use her private email on her private server for official business. She had an “obligation” to do so, and discuss such use with the chief information officer and assistant secretary of diplomatic security.
The two offices would have “attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs.” But they “did not — and would not — approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the FAM [Foreign Affairs Manual] and the security risks in doing so,” the inspector general wrote.
Schwerin noted the difference between “allowed” and “approved” by the State Department. “She had reason to believe the use of personal email accounts was allowed given that there was precedent of top officials, including Secretary [Colin L.] Powell and other senior level aides, using their personal email for work in years prior. This precedent was confirmed by the IG report,” he said.
Indeed, the report found that more than 90 other employees from 2001 to 2008 periodically used personal email accounts to conduct official business. (John Kerry is the first secretary of state to use a state.gov email account, and he also used his personal email when he was transitioning from the Senate to the Office of the Secretary, according to the inspector general.)
But as we’ve written before, the rules were not as clear prior to 2009, when the U.S. Code of federal regulations on handling electronic records was updated: “Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.” The responsibility for making and preserving the records is assigned to “the head of each federal agency.”
On top of that, when Clinton was secretary, a cable went out under her signature warning employees to “avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts.”
Fallon told PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that Clinton “thought” it was allowed, and that even though the inspector general’s findings contradict Clinton’s past statements, it “doesn’t make her statements untruthful,” according to FactCheck.org.
“It did not occur to her that having it on a personal server could be so distinct that it would be unapproved,” Fallon told FactCheck.org. “We’re not intending to say post the IG report that her server was allowed. We don’t contest that. We’re saying … the use of personal email was widespread.”
[Update: In a July 7, 2016 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, FBI Director James Comey was asked several times whether Clinton used her private email server out of convenience.
When asked whether Clinton “knowingly, clearly set up her own private server … to shield communications from Congress and the public,” Comey replied: “I can’t say that. Our best information is that she set it up as a matter of convenience. It was an existing system her husband had and she decided to have a domain on that system.”
FBI agents asked her why she set up the email system, and her answer was that it was out of convenience, “it was already there. It was a system her husband had and so she just jumped on to it,” Comey said.
Comey said he did not know whether FBI agents investigating Clinton specifically asked her whether she stands by her convenience claim. But he said “they established, in talking to her, she used many devices during her four years. So I don’t know whether they asked her specifically about that statement.” Comey said he didn’t “want to get in the business of trying to parse and judge her public statements.”]
The Pinocchio Test
When Clinton addressed reporters on March 10, 2015, she had a prepared statement with four points she wanted to make. The first point she made regarding her emails was that she “opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department.” She said she thought “it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”
Convenience certainly may have been a factor. But what is clear now is that on at least two separate occasions in her tenure, Clinton was open to carrying two devices or having two separate email accounts — especially when her use of personal email led to communications breakdowns with her staff. These details show there was more happening than Clinton explained in this statement, and it makes her convenience excuse less credible.
Clinton also said using her personal email account “was allowed by the State Department.” The inspector general report makes it clear that Clinton never cleared her use of her private email on a private server even though she had an obligation to do so. The report also says the department would not have approved it had she asked. So her statement was quite misleading.
Dozens of employees and Secretary Colin L. Powell did use their personal emails, but that was before the rules were made clearer in 2009. Plus, they did not set up a private server like Clinton did. Since these new details emerged, Clinton’s campaign has said she “thought” it was allowed, and that she didn’t think a personal server was “so distinct that it would be unapproved.” Those are semantic differences that are meaningless to the average voter.
Clinton has continued to use some version of this talking point from her March 2015 news conference. But when you add up the details that have emerged, they are just not that credible and worthy of Three Pinocchios. It’s time to update the talking points.
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Watch David Tennant's Fright Night Comic Con Footage By Josh Tyler Random Article Blend Fright Night, and now that clip is online complete with a fully awesome little introduction by Tennant. For fans of Doctor Who (and if you aren’t one, shame on you) it’s kind of like watching the Doctor introduce his new movie. Sorry David, you’ll always be the man in the Tardis.
Tennant plays a magician named Peter Vincent in Fright Night and he becomes involved in vampire killing when Anton Yelchin approaches him looking for information on how to kill blood-sucking immortals. Check out the full, Comic Con clip from Fright Night embedded below.
As long as you’re here and clicking play on things, here’s another clip from the movie which in addition to Tennant and Yelchin stars McLovin (sorry Chris, you’re as McLovin as Tennant is the Doctor), and Colin Farrell as the vampire who recently moved in next door.
For more on the movie visit our Here’s more evidence that David Tennant is completely awesome. Yesterday at Comic Con audiences were shown an extended clip from his new movie, and now that clip is online complete with a fully awesome little introduction by Tennant. For fans of(and if you aren’t one, shame on you) it’s kind of like watching the Doctor introduce his new movie. Sorry David, you’ll always be the man in the Tardis.Tennant plays a magician named Peter Vincent inand he becomes involved in vampire killing when Anton Yelchin approaches him looking for information on how to kill blood-sucking immortals. Check out the full, Comic Con clip fromembedded below.As long as you’re here and clicking play on things, here’s another clip from the movie which in addition to Tennant and Yelchin stars McLovin (sorry Chris, you’re as McLovin as Tennant is the Doctor), and Colin Farrell as the vampire who recently moved in next door.For more on the movie visit our Fright Night page in the Blend Film Database. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
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New portrait of Earth shows land cover as never before
A new global portrait taken from space details Earth’s land cover with a resolution never before obtained.
ESA, in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, presented a preliminary version of the map at the 2nd GlobCover User Consultation workshop held in Rome, Italy.
Earth’s land cover has been charted from space before, but this map, which will be made available to the public upon its completion in July, has a resolution 10 times sharper than any of its predecessors.
Scientists, who will use the data to plot worldwide land-cover trends, study natural and managed ecosystems and to model climate change extent and impacts, are hailing the product – generated under the ESA-initiated GlobCover project – as 'a milestone.' |
A few weeks ago I shared our lonely random skinny closet near our kitchen that was used for storing pots, dishes, dog food and whatever random kitchen items happened to land there. Today I am finally sharing our new organized kitchen pantry closet. We are tight on space in our kitchen so I decided to move the food cabinet to the closet. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out but I knew it would be organized! It’s gotten a thumbs up from everyone in the house including my dad who thought my idea was a waste of time.
Much better than the before right?
The food was always kept in this kitchen cabinet and it was always a mess.
I started by removing everything from the closet and adding a fresh coat of white paint to the existing shelves and walls.
I did make an investment in plastic food storage containers which honestly, has made a world of difference in keeping this pantry closet organized. The lazy susan above works out perfectly for our baking sprinkles and toppings. They were always buried under piles of food or tipped over in the back of the cabinet.
I added a simple closet maid door rack to hold smaller plastic containers which worked out perfectly for granola, breakfast bars and other smaller food items.
The plastic bins on the door rack are all from the Container Store as well as the cereal/cracker/cookie containers.
One of these days I hope to create cute labels for the storage containers, similar to how Jen at I Heart Organizing did in her kitchen pantry reveal. That is for another day though :).
Here is another before shot.
Our new kitchen pantry now stores our snacks, baking items, cereal and dog food. I may end up moving the tall dog food container on wheels to another spot but for now, this is the only place it fits. The dog bin, large floor basket and smaller baking containers are from HomeGoods.
I ended up adding two additional shelves using the same method we used when we installed our floating shelves in our laundry room.
A fun before and after for sure!
If you are loving this idea of turning a closet into a food pantry, check out the latest project at my neighbors house! We created a DIY Kitchen Closet Pantry in a small closet off their kitchen. What a major transformation for under $100.
I cannot even begin to tell you how happy this little organized kitchen pantry closet makes me. It is wonderful to open the door and see everything in it’s place even after it’s been raided by 5 people. I had a budget of under $200 so I scoured the house for storage containers and bought a few at the Container Store. Food storage bins and baskets are an easy way to organize a cabinet or closet and these guys are working hard at doing just that :). Love these containers? See the full resource list for from The Container Store. Be sure to checkout our bath cabinet and utility closet organizational projects for more inspiration. |
This article is about the physician to the President of the United States. For the book by the former White House physician Connie Mariano , see The White House Doctor
The Physician to the President (also known colloquially as the White House doctor) is the formal and official title of the physician who is director of the White House Medical Unit, a unit of the White House Military Office responsible for the medical needs of the President of the United States, Vice President, White House staff, and visitors.[1] The Physician to the President is also the Chief White House Physician.[2]
History [ edit ]
Doctors who have treated the President of the United States have had a variety of titles.[3] Dr. Presley Marion Rixey, a Medical Inspector in the United States Navy, was the first individual to serve in a full-time capacity as physician to the President beginning in 1901, although the title "White House Physician" was not used until created by an act of Congress in 1928.[4]
Organization and role [ edit ]
The White House physician has an office inside the White House. The location of his or her medical unit plays an important role in keeping the President of the United States healthy. He or she also oversees a staff which is typically composed of five military physicians, five nurses, five physician assistants, three medics, three administrators and one IT Manager. The White House Physician is metaphorically the "shadow of the President"[5] because he or she is always close at hand whether the President is at the White House, overseas, on the campaign trail, or aboard presidential plane Air Force One.[5] The Physician to the President protects the president's health and may also perform emergency surgery.
The White House doctor is also responsible for providing comprehensive medical care to the members of the president's immediate family, the Vice President, and the Vice President's family. He or she may also provide medical care and attention to the more than 1.5 million visitors who tour the White House each year, as well as to international dignitaries and other guests of the President.
The medical office of the White House doctor is a "mini urgent-care center" containing a physician's office, private examination rooms, basic medications and medical supplies, and a crash cart for emergency resuscitation. Air Force One is equipped with emergency medical equipment, an operating table, and operating room lights installed at the center of the presidential plane for emergency use by the White House doctor,[5] but does not have an X-ray machine or medical laboratory equipment.[6]
Daniel Ruge, Ronald Reagan's first physician in the White House, resigned after the president's first term and called his job "vastly overrated, boring and not medically challenging." Ruge could not attend most state dinners due to lack of space. He nonetheless had to be ready for emergencies, and usually waited alone in his office wearing a tuxedo. Ruge stated that an advantage, however, was that because of the position's prestige "[a] president's physician can ask for anything, and he will get it. No doctor will refuse a request to consult."[7]
Selection of the physician [ edit ]
The White House Physician is often selected personally by the President, and most White House doctors are active-duty military officers,[5] in part because most civilians would find closing and then later reopening their private practices difficult.[7]
As of March 2018 , Commander Sean Conley, DO, USN, is the incumbent White House physician.[8]
White House physicians [ edit ]
Some of the individuals who have acted as White House physicians:
Notes [ edit ]
^ [37] Dr. Jackson was appointed Physician to the President on July 25, 2013. ^ [1][38][38] but was promoted to rear admiral. The Senate confirmed his appointment on July 13, 2016.[39] Dr. Jackson was a captain at the time of his appointment,but was promoted to rear admiral. The Senate confirmed his appointment on July 13, 2016.
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ] |
Simon Gagne shot blocked by Brian Campbell
Mike Richards credited with hit on Patrick Kane in offensive zone
Mike Richards credited with hit on Kris Versteeg in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Claude Giroux saved by Antti Niemi (Backhand 16 ft)
Matt Carle shot blocked by Niklas Hjalmarsson
James van Riemsdyk credited with hit on Niklas Hjalmarsson in offensive zone
James van Riemsdyk shot blocked by Nick Boynton
Blair Betts shot blocked by Nick Boynton
Mike Richards credited with hit on Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Shot missed by Kimmo Timonen, Wide of Net (Wristshot 56 ft)
Jeff Carter credited with hit on Brent Sopel in offensive zone
Jeff Carter credited with hit on Nick Boynton in offensive zone
Takeaway by Matt Carle in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Simon Gagne saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 29 ft)
Danny Briere credited with hit on Dustin Byfuglien in offensive zone
Takeaway by Ville Leino in defensive zone
Oskars Bartulis credited with hit on Ben Eager in defensive zone
Giveaway by Lukas Krajicek in defensive zone
Penalty to Chris Pronger 2 minutes for Holding Marian Hossa
Kimmo Timonen credited with hit on Patrick Kane in defensive zone
Giveaway by Matt Carle in defensive zone
Jeff Carter won faceoff against John Madden in defensive zone
Takeaway by Simon Gagne in defensive zone
Scott Hartnell credited with hit on Duncan Keith in offensive zone
Scott Hartnell credited with hit on Jonathan Toews in offensive zone
Scott Hartnell shot blocked by Brent Seabrook
Shot on goal by Claude Giroux saved by Antti Niemi (Wraparound 7 ft)
Claude Giroux credited with hit on Nick Boynton in offensive zone
Shot missed by Mike Richards, Wide of Net (Snapshot 43 ft)
Shot missed by Kimmo Timonen, Wide of Net (Wristshot 42 ft)
Mike Richards shot blocked by John Madden
Penalty to Chris Pronger 2 minutes for High-sticking Kris Versteeg
Claude Giroux won faceoff against Dave Bolland in offensive zone
Giveaway by Claude Giroux in offensive zone
Mike Richards shot blocked by Niklas Hjalmarsson
Jeff Carter won faceoff against John Madden in offensive zone
Giveaway by Mike Richards in offensive zone
Shot missed by Ville Leino, Wide of Net (Wristshot 30 ft)
Braydon Coburn shot blocked by Brent Sopel
Jeff Carter shot blocked by Jonathan Toews
Braydon Coburn shot blocked by Jonathan Toews
Shot on goal by Chris Pronger saved by Antti Niemi (Slapshot 53 ft)
Shot on goal by Danny Briere saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 56 ft)
Power Play Goal Scored by Scott Hartnell (Backhand 7 ft) assisted by Danny Briere and Chris Pronger
Blair Betts won faceoff against Patrick Sharp in neutral zone
Takeaway by Chris Pronger in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Chris Pronger saved by Antti Niemi (Slapshot 136 ft)
Shot on goal by Simon Gagne saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 16 ft)
Shot missed by Danny Briere, Wide of Net (Snapshot 36 ft)
Shot missed by Braydon Coburn, Over Net (Slapshot 33 ft)
Shot missed by Ville Leino, Wide of Net (Backhand 20 ft)
Penalty to Scott Hartnell 2 minutes for High-sticking Niklas Hjalmarsson
Giveaway by Chris Pronger in defensive zone
Giveaway by Chris Pronger in defensive zone
Takeaway by Claude Giroux in offensive zone
Ville Leino credited with hit on Andrew Ladd in defensive zone
Takeaway by Scott Hartnell in offensive zone
Shot missed by Kimmo Timonen, Wide of Net (Slapshot 52 ft)
Takeaway by Arron Asham in neutral zone
Takeaway by Claude Giroux in offensive zone
Arron Asham won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in neutral zone
Mike Richards credited with hit on Tomas Kopecky in offensive zone
Chris Pronger credited with hit on Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Simon Gagne shot blocked by Marian Hossa
Goal scored by Danny Briere (Snapshot 15 ft) assisted by Ville Leino and Lukas Krajicek
Penalty to Braydon Coburn 2 minutes for Cross checking Andrew Ladd
Mike Richards won faceoff against Kris Versteeg in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Kris Versteeg in neutral zone
Danny Briere shot blocked by Kris Versteeg
Jeff Carter won faceoff against Dave Bolland in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Simon Gagne saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 33 ft)
Giveaway by Arron Asham in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Arron Asham credited with hit on Niklas Hjalmarsson in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Mike Richards saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 45 ft)
Scott Hartnell credited with hit on Dave Bolland in offensive zone
James van Riemsdyk credited with hit on Nick Boynton in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Claude Giroux saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 34 ft)
Jeff Carter shot blocked by Jonathan Toews
Shot on goal by Jeff Carter saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 20 ft)
Shot missed by Ville Leino, Wide of Net (Snapshot 21 ft)
Shot missed by Simon Gagne, Goalpost (Wristshot 5 ft)
Braydon Coburn credited with hit on Patrick Kane in defensive zone
Blair Betts won faceoff against John Madden in neutral zone
Danny Briere won faceoff against Dave Bolland in offensive zone
Giveaway by Matt Carle in offensive zone
Giveaway by Matt Carle in defensive zone
Jeff Carter won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in neutral zone
Giveaway by Michael Leighton in defensive zone
Penalty to Danny Briere 2 minutes for Cross checking Marian Hossa
Blair Betts won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Giveaway by Kimmo Timonen in defensive zone
Mike Richards credited with hit on Kris Versteeg in defensive zone
Kimmo Timonen credited with hit on Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Patrick Sharp in defensive zone
Giveaway by Simon Gagne in defensive zone
Takeaway by Danny Briere in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Patrick Sharp in defensive zone
Danny Briere won faceoff against John Madden in neutral zone
Jeff Carter credited with hit on Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Patrick Sharp in neutral zone
Danny Briere won faceoff against Dave Bolland in neutral zone
Darroll Powe won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Jeff Carter saved by Antti Niemi (Snapshot 48 ft)
Chris Pronger shot blocked by Dustin Byfuglien
Shot missed by Darroll Powe, Wide of Net (Backhand 35 ft)
Ville Leino shot blocked by Niklas Hjalmarsson
Mike Richards won faceoff against Dave Bolland in defensive zone
Shot missed by Jeff Carter, Wide of Net (Snapshot 20 ft)
Matt Carle shot blocked by Kris Versteeg
Shot on goal by Jeff Carter saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 38 ft)
Shot on goal by Danny Briere saved by Antti Niemi (Slapshot 51 ft)
Scott Hartnell credited with hit on Duncan Keith in offensive zone
Shot missed by Danny Briere, Wide of Net (Backhand 9 ft)
Shot missed by Darroll Powe, Wide of Net (Snapshot 25 ft)
Chris Pronger shot blocked by Andrew Ladd
Jeff Carter won faceoff against Dave Bolland in neutral zone
Jeff Carter won faceoff against Dave Bolland in neutral zone
Jeff Carter shot blocked by Dave Bolland
Shot on goal by Mike Richards saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 38 ft)
Danny Briere won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in offensive zone
Chris Pronger shot blocked by Brent Seabrook
Giveaway by Matt Carle in offensive zone
Chris Pronger shot blocked by Brent Seabrook
Shot on goal by Mike Richards saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 12 ft)
Jeff Carter won faceoff against John Madden in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Claude Giroux saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 7 ft)
Goal scored by Scott Hartnell (Tip-In 7 ft) assisted by Ville Leino and Danny Briere
Jeff Carter shot blocked by Niklas Hjalmarsson
Danny Briere won faceoff against John Madden in offensive zone
Scott Hartnell credited with hit on Brent Seabrook in defensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Jonathan Toews in defensive zone
Simon Gagne shot blocked by Brian Campbell
Mike Richards credited with hit on Brian Campbell in offensive zone
Mike Richards won faceoff against Dave Bolland in offensive zone
Shot missed by Braydon Coburn, Wide of Net (Snapshot 62 ft)
Shot on goal by Mike Richards saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 20 ft)
Shot on goal by Jeff Carter saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 17 ft)
Mike Richards won faceoff against Patrick Sharp in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Claude Giroux saved by Antti Niemi (Wristshot 12 ft)
Darroll Powe won faceoff against John Madden in offensive zone
Shot missed by Simon Gagne, Wide of Net (Wristshot 40 ft)
Giveaway by Kimmo Timonen in defensive zone
Shot missed by Danny Briere, Wide of Net (Deflection 11 ft)
Shot on goal by Kimmo Timonen saved by Antti Niemi (Slapshot 59 ft)
Chris Pronger credited with hit on Marian Hossa in defensive zone
Braydon Coburn credited with hit on Patrick Sharp in defensive zone
Giveaway by Darroll Powe in defensive zone
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Danny Briere in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Tomas Kopecky saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 31 ft)
Jonathan Toews shot blocked by Matt Carle
Stoppage - Puck in Netting
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Mike Richards in offensive zone
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Simon Gagne in defensive zone
Giveaway by Niklas Hjalmarsson in neutral zone
Stoppage - Icing
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Danny Briere in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Duncan Keith saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 55 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Mike Richards in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Brent Seabrook saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 63 ft)
Shot on goal by Brent Seabrook saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 24 ft)
Shot on goal by Duncan Keith saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 45 ft)
Tomas Kopecky shot blocked by Danny Briere
Brent Seabrook credited with hit on Claude Giroux in defensive zone
Brent Seabrook credited with hit on James van Riemsdyk in defensive zone
Takeaway by Brent Sopel in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Niklas Hjalmarsson saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 55 ft)
Ben Eager credited with hit on Claude Giroux in offensive zone
Stoppage - Offside; TV timeout
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Claude Giroux in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Marian Hossa saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 48 ft)
Marian Hossa credited with hit on Chris Pronger in offensive zone
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Shot missed by Duncan Keith, Goalpost (Slapshot 49 ft)
Marian Hossa credited with hit on Matt Carle in offensive zone
Brent Seabrook credited with hit on Claude Giroux in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Jonathan Toews saved by Michael Leighton (Backhand 13 ft)
Giveaway by Niklas Hjalmarsson in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Duncan Keith saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 54 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped; TV timeout
Shot on goal by Ben Eager saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 26 ft)
Shot on goal by Dave Bolland saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 44 ft)
Takeaway by Dave Bolland in defensive zone
Brent Seabrook credited with hit on Ville Leino in defensive zone
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Claude Giroux in defensive zone
Giveaway by Nick Boynton in defensive zone
Penalty to Brent Sopel 2 minutes for Interference Claude Giroux
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Mike Richards in defensive zone
Giveaway by Duncan Keith in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Marian Hossa saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 43 ft)
Shot on goal by Nick Boynton saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 56 ft)
Takeaway by Marian Hossa in neutral zone
Shot on goal by Patrick Kane saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 41 ft)
Stoppage - ; TV timeout
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Jonathan Toews saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 12 ft)
Power Play Goal Scored by Dustin Byfuglien (Wristshot 10 ft) assisted by Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Chris Pronger in offensive zone
Penalty to Brent Seabrook 2 minutes for Elbowing Scott Hartnell
Giveaway by Dave Bolland in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Niklas Hjalmarsson saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 170 ft)
Stoppage - Puck Frozen
Penalty to Brent Sopel 2 minutes for Interference Ville Leino
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Claude Giroux in defensive zone
Patrick Kane credited with hit on Matt Carle in neutral zone
Giveaway by Marian Hossa in neutral zone
Takeaway by Dave Bolland in defensive zone
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Kimmo Timonen in offensive zone
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Patrick Sharp saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 59 ft)
Shot on goal by Dustin Byfuglien saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 8 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Duncan Keith shot blocked by Blair Betts
Shot missed by Andrew Ladd, Wide of Net (Backhand 8 ft)
Shot missed by Dave Bolland, Over Net (Slapshot 71 ft)
Shot on goal by Patrick Kane saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 32 ft)
Nick Boynton shot blocked by Oskars Bartulis
Duncan Keith shot blocked by Claude Giroux
Shot on goal by Patrick Sharp saved by Michael Leighton (Wraparound 5 ft)
Stoppage - Puck in Netting; TV timeout
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Jeff Carter in defensive zone
Stoppage - Offside
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Jonathan Toews saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 7 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Troy Brouwer credited with hit on Chris Pronger in offensive zone
Stoppage - Offside
Takeaway by Marian Hossa in offensive zone
Penalty to Marian Hossa 2 minutes for Goalkeeper Interference Michael Leighton
Goal scored by Patrick Sharp (Wristshot 21 ft) assisted by Dave Bolland and Duncan Keith
John Madden shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Shot on goal by Duncan Keith saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 55 ft)
Shot missed by Duncan Keith, Wide of Net (Wristshot 41 ft)
Shot missed by Brent Seabrook, Wide of Net (Snapshot 28 ft)
Duncan Keith shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Takeaway by Brent Sopel in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Patrick Sharp saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 50 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped; TV timeout
Giveaway by Marian Hossa in neutral zone
Brent Seabrook shot blocked by Scott Hartnell
Brent Sopel shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Andrew Ladd shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped; TV timeout
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Jeff Carter in defensive zone
Giveaway by Duncan Keith in defensive zone
Marian Hossa credited with hit on Claude Giroux in defensive zone
Kris Versteeg credited with hit on Chris Pronger in neutral zone
Stoppage - Puck in Crowd
Stoppage - High Stick
Stoppage - Puck in Crowd
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Mike Richards in neutral zone
Stoppage - Offside
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against James van Riemsdyk in neutral zone
Goal scored by Andrew Ladd (Tip-In 6 ft) assisted by Niklas Hjalmarsson and Patrick Kane
Duncan Keith shot blocked by Chris Pronger
Marian Hossa shot blocked by Chris Pronger
Duncan Keith shot blocked by Claude Giroux
Stoppage - Puck in Netting
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Blair Betts in neutral zone
Brent Seabrook shot blocked by Blair Betts
Shot on goal by Marian Hossa saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 30 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Blair Betts in offensive zone
Shot missed by Patrick Sharp, Wide of Net (Slapshot 55 ft)
Marian Hossa credited with hit on Chris Pronger in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Tomas Kopecky saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 41 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Shot on goal by Brent Seabrook saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 66 ft)
Shot missed by Patrick Sharp, Wide of Net (Slapshot 27 ft)
Shot missed by Dustin Byfuglien, Wide of Net (Slapshot 31 ft)
Takeaway by Patrick Kane in defensive zone
Stoppage - Puck in Benches
John Madden won faceoff against Jeff Carter in defensive zone
Takeaway by Dave Bolland in neutral zone
Giveaway by Brent Seabrook in defensive zone
Stoppage - Puck in Benches
Stoppage - Offside
Shot on goal by John Madden saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 44 ft)
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Jeff Carter in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Jonathan Toews saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 33 ft)
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Braydon Coburn in offensive zone
Stoppage - Offside
Stoppage - Offside
Kris Versteeg shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Stoppage - Offside
Marian Hossa shot blocked by Matt Carle
Giveaway by Niklas Hjalmarsson in defensive zone
Patrick Kane shot blocked by Kimmo Timonen
Stoppage - Puck Frozen; TV timeout
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Darroll Powe in defensive zone
Takeaway by Brian Campbell in defensive zone
Brent Seabrook shot blocked by Ville Leino
Stoppage - Puck in Crowd
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Braydon Coburn in offensive zone
Dustin Byfuglien credited with hit on Braydon Coburn in offensive zone
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Ville Leino in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Marian Hossa saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 42 ft)
Shot on goal by Andrew Ladd saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 36 ft)
Shot on goal by Kris Versteeg saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 47 ft)
Takeaway by Marian Hossa in neutral zone
Nick Boynton shot blocked by Lukas Krajicek
Giveaway by Patrick Sharp in defensive zone
Stoppage - Offside; TV timeout
Stoppage - Puck in Crowd
Takeaway by Dustin Byfuglien in offensive zone
Shot on goal by Dustin Byfuglien saved by Michael Leighton (Backhand 64 ft)
Takeaway by Dave Bolland in defensive zone
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Shot on goal by Jonathan Toews saved by Michael Leighton (Backhand 11 ft)
Stoppage - Icing
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Mike Richards in defensive zone
Stoppage - ; TV timeout
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Danny Briere in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Dave Bolland saved by Michael Leighton (Slapshot 51 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Jeff Carter in offensive zone
Giveaway by Andrew Ladd in offensive zone
Stoppage - Puck in Netting
Shot on goal by Brent Seabrook saved by Michael Leighton (Wristshot 49 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Stoppage - Icing
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Mike Richards in defensive zone
Stoppage - Icing
Stoppage - Icing; Visitor Timeout
Dave Bolland won faceoff against Danny Briere in defensive zone
Stoppage - Puck Frozen
Shot on goal by Marian Hossa saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 38 ft)
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Patrick Sharp won faceoff against Mike Richards in offensive zone
Shot missed by Patrick Kane, Wide of Net (Wristshot 29 ft)
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Jeff Carter in neutral zone
Stoppage - Goalie Stopped
Giveaway by Dustin Byfuglien in defensive zone
Shot on goal by Brent Seabrook saved by Michael Leighton (Snapshot 31 ft)
Stoppage - Puck Frozen
Jonathan Toews won faceoff against Jeff Carter in defensive zone
Tomas Kopecky credited with hit on Mike Richards in neutral zone
Shot missed by Patrick Kane, Wide of Net (Wristshot 52 ft) |
To further speculate that LEGO will be releasing a new LEGO Star Wars Hoth Echo Base set in a few months, there’s a listing in Brickset’s database that may have just confirmed the set. There’s a direct-2-consumer set listed with set number 75098 which has a recommended retail price of $249.99. The dimensions of the box are also listed at 22.9 x 18.9 x 3.6 inches which is the same size as the Ewok Village (10236) . That set had 1990 pieces so I’m thinking that the Hoth Echo Base will have around the same number of pieces.
If you haven’t watched the LEGO Star Wars mini movie that could be a teaser for the set, you can check it out over on the minisite. Thanks to Joseph for the heads up. |
I have played pool for around 25 years now, not that my game has improved!. Playing in many clubs it was always a hunt to find racks(triangle/diamond) for either the 8 ball or 9 ball. Sitting one night with the 2 racks in my hands I contemplated merging them together, that was the start of my idea. I spent the next few years on design, prototypes to patent.
Here's the very first prototype I made from cardboard.
Here is a link to the full patent document.
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?FT=D&date=20111228&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP&CC=GB&NR=2452931B&KC=B&ND=4
So what is it:
This rack is designed for both 8 & 9 ball. The struts on the top are designed to allow the rack to be used for 9 ball, but angled and curved so not to cause any obstruction to moving the balls about while racking up. With the 9 ball rack contained in the triangle it actually makes it easier using the rack when placing the rack over the spots as your hands are better spaced apart. This rack would mean that tables would only require one rack instead of the current 2 creating less clutter around the table.
Environment:
With all new products today we should be mindful of the environmental impact they have. The classic 2 Racks require 2 moulds, 2 packaging/distribution costs and approx 200 grams of plastic.
Diamond Back will only require one mould, one package/distribution costs and approx 120 grams of blended recycled & virgin plastic depending on tensile testing of the struts during preproduction .
Feedback:
Once I had the first prototype I sent the rack to one of the big billiards distributors in the UK who I was hoping would take the patent. However, they were very interested in the product to the level of exclusive distribution in the UK, Europe & Russia. But this would require a very large investment on my part which I wasn't able to commit to, so my idea sat quietly on the shelf.
It was only a few weeks ago I heard about KickStarter from my son, and here I am with a renewed hope with your support of getting this product, something new and innovative to the billiards industry.
3rd Prototype:
I made some further refinements to the design. If you look at the second prototype and this one you will see I have reduced the height of the sides, this make access to the balls easier.
My Project Plan:
Manufacture Location
I plan on producing these in the UK, as I would prefer to be hands on and to ensure the quality of raw material to final product.
UK patents benefit from a Government scheme allowing UK companies to reduce the amount of Corporation Tax paid in respect of profits relating to inventions protected by a UK patent or other qualifying European patent. The aim of the scheme is to encourage companies to develop and manufacture new products and processes protected by patents in the UK (and some other countries within the European Economic Area). A 10% rate of Corporation Tax will be payable on profits related to income from patented inventions.
Small Unit:
I have found a perfect location to start production with very flexible conditions on space and rent.So I can start off small and if need be grow into the area around me. Starting this way will help me qualify 100% rates relief.
Prototype Tweaks:
The final change is to adjust the distance between the struts as shown, this will be done on the 3D model then one final prototype.
Mould & Tooling:
This is an example of the mould/tool. These are expensive precision tools.
Machine Installation:
These machines are very expensive brand new. However, in our current economical climate a second hand fully serviced & working machine can be purchased for around the same price as the moulding / tool.
Raw Materials:
I will be sourcing Raw materials from he UK / EU as the standards are regulated and the quality is better, Plastics sourced from China for example can contain some materials not permitted in the EU or USA.
Web Site:
The website will spring to life if I am successful in raising pledges.
Marketing:
Websites & magazines like the links attached would be the perfect way to get my new product message across to wholesale / retail & consumers markets.
www.snookerscene.co.uk
www.insidepoolmag.com
www.billiardsdigest.com
Individual Postage & Packaging:
Each rack will need boxed for shipping. I have sourced a company that can make the triangular shaped box's for the rack.
Boxes Cost £0.78 each @ 1000 qty's
Royal Mail Domestic & Air Mail Charges
UK Domestic - £3.00
UK to Europe - £3.50
UK to USA / Canada - £4.50 |
Two Crown Prosecution Service staff members face charges of conspiracy to commit fraud over false taxi claims totalling at least £1m, the CPS said.
Lisa Joanne Burrows and the other member of staff, who has not been named, work for CPS West Midlands.
The allegations concern false claims for witness care taxi services when no such services had been supplied, the CPS said in a statement.
A spokesman said Ms Burrows, 41, had been charged by West Midlands Police.
She will appear at Birmingham Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
The other staff member has not yet been charged.
'False claims'
West Midlands CPS covers the counties of Warwickshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, and the metropolitan area of the West Midlands including the cities of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Coventry.
Malcolm McHaffie, deputy head of special crime for the CPS, said: "Following a complaint by the Crown Prosecution Service and a subsequent investigation by West Midlands Police into two members of CPS staff, I have carefully considered available evidence in relation to Lisa Joanne Burrows, a finance manager, and another member of staff, an administrative officer.
"I have now concluded that it is appropriate to charge both [Ms] Burrows and the other individual with conspiracy to commit fraud.
"The charges relate to an allegation that [Ms] Burrows and the other member of staff, on or before 27 February, conspired together to commit fraud by false representation by submitting to the Crown Prosecution Service false claims for witness care taxi services to the value of at least £1,000,000 when no such services had been supplied." |
A former Ball State student has been deemed "a danger to the community" after choking and threatening to kill a store clerk and injuring a police officer at a Muncie Goodwill, according to federal police.
Investigators said 24-year-old Khalid Sulaiman Bilal, a Saudi Arabian national, threatened to kill those who did not convert to Islam and was taken into custody at the northside Goodwill on March 25. A special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, who wrote the affidavit of probable cause, determined that Bilal’s "actions and behavior showed signs of radicalization.”
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security executed a search warrant on the afternoon of March 29 at an apartment complex maintained by Ball State. The warrant stated that it is possible that there will be evidence suggesting that Bilal's actions were "premeditated."
The apartment was occupied by Bilal, who was a Ball State student at the time of his arrest. On March 31, however, a university spokesperson said Bilal's status as a student had been "revoked."
According to documents obtained by The Star Press, a MacBook, Dell laptop, camera and travel documents were seized during the search.
On March 27, Bilal was charged with five counts of battery resulting in bodily injury to a police officer, three counts each of resisting law enforcement and battery resulting in bodily injury and single counts of attempted strangulation, intimidation, criminal trespass and battery.
According to court documents, Bilal confronted the store clerk at the Goodwill and attempted to "forcefully convert her to Islam." He continued to tell the clerk he would kill her if she did not convert. He then became angry and began choking her.
When a Muncie police officer arrived on the scene, Bilal “assumed a fighting stance.” The officer then attempted to restrain Bilal and tased him, according to a police report.
A second officer then arrived on the scene and attempted to restrain Bilal. Bilal then attempted to fight with the officers and broke one officer's hand, according to the affidavit.
The officer then tased Bilal again and was able to handcuff his ankles and wrists, according to the report. During the struggle, Bilal told the officers they were going to go to hell and repeatedly yelled "Allahu Akbar," meaning "God is greater."
Bilal also claimed he was Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
The phrase “Allahu Akbar” has been yelled prior to and during recent terror attacks.
Omar Mateen, the Orlando Nightclub shooter, yelled “Allahu Akbar” before engaging in gunfire with police June 2016. More recently in February, a subject yelled “Allahu Akbar” and attacked French police with a machete.
Bilal was then taken to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital. While at the hospital, he escaped his restraints before attacking hospital staff and punching an officer in the face three times.
The officer then attempted to strike a pressure point but ended up punching Bilal in his mouth, according to the affidavit. Bilal was eventually subdued and restrained.
Bilal’s bail is set at $100,000. |
Firefox 15 is released on August 28th. Among many new features implemented in this release is background updates. This feature allows Firefox to download the update in the background, apply it alongside with the existing installation, and keep the updated version around so that it can quickly switch to it the next time that the browser starts up. This effectively eliminates the update progress dialog that appears when you start Firefox after it has downloaded an update:
I previously wrote about this project. You can see that post for more technical details. This feature landed a while ago on the Nightly channel, and we soon discovered a few issues which we addressed in time for this to get uplifted and enabled on the Aurora channel. Luckily no new issues were discovered with this feature as it rode the train to get on the Beta channel, and will get in the hands of all of Firefox users on Windows, Mac and Linux as part of the Firefox 15 release.
This was one of the scariest projects that I’ve ever worked on, since messing something up in the updater component could have catastrophic consequences in case it prevents users from being able to update to newer Firefox revisions. I’m happy that the results of this project will soon get in the hands of millions of Firefox users, and I would like to thank Robert Strong, Brian Bondy, and the wonderful members of our Release Engineering (in particular, Ben Hearsum and Chris AtLee) and QA teams (in particular, Vlad Ghetiu) who helped me a lot along the way. You guys rock, for being extremely helpful, and for making this large project possible! |
Vice President Joseph R. Biden slammed Donald Trump Monday for not paying federal income taxes, seizing on a report that the Republican nominee may have taken advantage of a loophole to avoid tax payments for 18 years.
“He says, ‘I didn’t pay any federal taxes’ — possibly for more than 18 years. He said, ‘That makes me smart,’ ” Mr. Biden told supporters at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Orlando, Florida. “What does that make the rest of Americans, including very wealthy businessmen who pay their fair share?”
Mr. Biden was conflating two separate events — the Republican’s comment in a debate that limiting his tax liability “makes me smart,” and a subsequent New York Times report that business losses may have allowed Mr. Trump to avoid income tax payments for as long as 18 years. The Republican has not acknowledged the accuracy of the report or released his tax returns.
The vice president emphasized the theme that Mrs. Clinton’s tax proposals would be fair to the middle class, and asserted that Mr. Trump’s policies would create more tax breaks for wealthy people like himself.
“We need a tax code that’s fair,” Mr. Biden said. “Hillary has laid out the details for a fairer tax code where everyone pays their fair share. No one gets gouged. You can still be very wealthy in this country.”
He said Mr. Trump’s tax plans would either increase deficits by $9 trillion over a decade, or force Washington to cut Social Security, education and job training by 40 percent.
Mr. Biden also told the audience that his own net worth is paltry by Washington’s standards.
“Bernie Sanders’ net worth is more than mine,” he said of the Vermont senator. “I have less money than a Socialist. I don’t know what the hell happened to me. And I’ve been doing this for 44 years.”
The White House sidestepped the issue of Mr. Trump’s taxes. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said it’s “difficult for anybody to draw a firm conclusion” without examining all of Mr. Trump’s tax documents.
“What I will say is Mr. Trump’s tax strategies aside, the president believes that we can do some very helpful things for the economy by closing loopholes that only benefit the wealthy and well-connected and using the revenue from those closed loopholes to invest in things like infrastructure and invest[ing] in community college for every hardworking American student,” Mr. Earnest said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Rep. Diane Black who has led a one-woman whip operation on the budget this summer. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Black presses Ryan for vote on budget resisted by conservatives
The House GOP’s budget chief Tuesday urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to bring the budget to the floor this month, even though her hard-fought fiscal outline lacks the 218 votes needed for passage.
House Budget Chairman Diane Black, frustrated by her party’s divisions, is daring die-hard conservatives to vote no, forcing them to take the fall for choking off the party’s chances at tax reform.
Story Continued Below
“Sometimes when you get this close, perhaps you just need to put it on the floor,” Black (R-Tenn.) told POLITICO in a 30 minute interview. “I have made the case to the leadership, that I think it’s time.”
“I am restless. I want to have it done,” she said.
The rest of the Budget Committee Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Tuesday also saying that the committee-approved budget, H. Con. Res. 71 (115), needs to go to the floor.
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Black, who has led a one-woman whip operation on the budget this summer, said Ryan and other members of leadership must link the budget to the GOP’s dream of tax reform.
“I encourage him to do more to make sure that there is an understanding, that in order to do tax reform, you need to do a budget,” Black said. The budget includes instructions for a reconciliation bill that would pave the way for passage of tax reform with just 51 votes in the Senate.
Black is pushing for a vote the final week in September, though she said it's not the "last chance."
She would not say how many votes short she is, but acknowledged she’s still encountering resistance from conservatives demanding more details on tax reform. Members of the House Freedom Caucus have refused to back Black’s budget until GOP leaders reveal a comprehensive tax plan.
Asked on Tuesday afternoon whether the Freedom Caucus would support the GOP’s budget on the floor, Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the group, quickly replied, “No,” and said he’s still waiting for tax details.
“I don't think anything’s changed at this point, other than they’re whipping a lot harder than they were before,” Meadows (R-N.C.) told POLITICO.
Black has argued that Freedom Caucus is handling things backwards. She said members must first agree on budget reconciliation — the tool that would fast-track tax reform in the Senate — before they can flesh out details.
“It is a budget. It gives us the vehicle to do tax reform. If you don’t like the tax reform, your vote can be no then. But at least follow the process,” Black said.
Black has spent months peddling her sweeping budget document, buttonholing dozens of members on the floor and logging hours on the phone to clear its first hurdle in July.
Republican leadership decided last week to formally take the temperature of the full GOP conference. That first official vote count came up short, with some undecided members.
Still, Black said she believes enough members would feel pressure to change their votes if they saw the bill on the floor.
“Sometimes people will tell you, ‘I don't know, I’m uncertain,’ and then when they see the votes go up on the board, they’ll see with their own eyes that there’s good support,” Black said.
The grim prospects for the House GOP budget have prompted some members close to leadership to float the use of a “shell” budget instead. That would strip out all pieces of the budget — including the $200 billion in mandatory cuts — except tax reform.
If so, it would be the second straight year that House Republicans were forced to abandon their comprehensive budget blueprint in favor of a simpler way to get to reconciliation.
And it’s a largely unpopular idea for the House GOP. Black said she’s talked to many members who feel they were promised a chance to vote on a budget that has "some meat” in it after passage of January’s shell budget to repeal Obamacare.
“I would caution, from my experience only, that a shell budget is going to be difficult to pass in this House,” Black said. “You ask them to do it again, I’m not sure sure that they fall for that.”
The path to a GOP budget has been chaotic and uneven — one that Black, a former nurse, compared to the inside of the ER.
She has settled dozens of internal feuds and dealt with 11 House chairmen to reach a deal on massive entitlement cuts. It would be the only GOP budget in recent memory to tack on mandatory spending cuts to a budget vehicle intended for a big policy overhaul like tax reform.
The Tennessee Republican coordinated the effort as she laid the groundwork for a gubernatorial campaign in her home state, which she formally announced in August.
Black had planned to give up her gavel in early September, assuming the House would finally approve the budget by then.
She said she hasn’t decided when to formally step down, though several members have been jockeying to replace her. Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) is widely seen as the front-runner in the race, sources told POLITICO.
Black, who has served alongside Womack on the Budget Committee for seven years, said he would do a “great, great job.”
“He’s one of my best friends and one of the smartest people that I know,” she said. |
The U.S. Navy’s largest destroyer ever built, the USS Zumwalt, carried out trial operations last year — and now the high-tech warship has officially entered the fleet. The ship is the most advanced in its class, and the name of its captain, James A. Kirk, makes the futuristic cruiser sound like something out of “Star Trek.”
“Today’s ceremony marked the culmination of over three years of dedication and hard work by some of the finest sailors I have had the pleasure to lead,” said Kirk, according to the U.S. Navy.
It took almost five years and over $3.5 billion to build the USS Zumwalt. The destroyer sports an all-electric propulsion system, a stealthy “tumblehome” design, a vertical missile launcher, and an advanced computerized system.
And it packs 78 MW of power — nearly as much electricity as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — thanks to two 45.4-MW Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines driving Curtiss-Wright electric generators and two 3.8-MW Rolls-Royce RR4500 turbine generators. |
REUTERS/Yves Herman Hugh Grosvenor, the 25-year-old who inherited a £9 billion fortune last week on the death of the Duke of Westminster, will likely not pay any inheritance tax, according to The Guardian. Normally, large inheritances are subject to a 40% tax. But the vast Grosvenor property portfolio — including 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia in central London — will pass in the form of a trust, which is subject to a 6% tax payment every 10 years instead.
To give you an idea of just how much tax the new Duke of Westminster isn't paying, consider that the entire take of the inheritance tax last year was £4.7 billion. Had Grosvenor been taxed at the 40% rate, it would have put £3.6 billion in the public coffers.
Those of us who pay between 20% and 40% income tax every month have another reason to believe that there is something fundamentally unfair about this. The Grosvenor fortune wasn't built by the late Duke of Westminster. It has been in the Grosvenor family since 1677, passed down from one lucky generation to the next.
BI Graphics This, pretty much, is how inequality works, according to the economist Thomas Piketty. The Grosvenors are an extreme example, but they illustrate a general principle: The rich get to keep it, the rest of us do not.
A more "normal" example also hit the headlines last week: The average FTSE 100 CEO earns £5.5 million, about 147 times the salary (£37,400) of the average worker, according to the High Pay Centre.
None of this would be a problem if Britain was a more dynamic society, one which allowed more upward mobility. But it isn't. Back in 1979 — with the election of Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher — the UK suddenly became a permanently less equal place. Here is a chart from the Office for National Statistics showing the changing level of inequality over time:
ONS / IFS
The Gini coeffficient is an index measuring how income is distributed in society. If the Gini number is close to zero, then everyone is equal. If it is closer to 100, then society is extremely unequal.
In 1979, the UK ranked at about 27. It is now about 33. What is interesting about the chart is that Thatcher changed Britain into a society where wealth was shared much less equally. That wasn't surprising — she was a Conservative. But successive Labour administrations, starting with prime minister Tony Blair in 1997, largely kept that inequality in place.
Some people think this is a good thing. Telegraph columnist Charles Moore published a column last week, titled "A duke's wealth is the natural result of a free society - and should be celebrated." It says:
Continuity in a nation is generally a benefit. It is encouraging that a man whose family first got rich because his ancestor was the fat huntsman (gros veneur) of William the Conqueror has £9 billion today, 950 years later. It shows that our culture respects private property over government interference. It gives hope to us all.
This "natural result" would indeed give us "hope" if it were the case that we all had a shot at accumulating £9 billion in our lifetimes, or if the Grosvenors paid the same rates of tax as those poorer than them. But as the Gini coefficient shows, there is nothing "natural" about it. It was a political choice.
The poorest 20% of British people lost up to 25% of their net wealth between 2010 and 2012 because of this arrangement, according to the Bank of England. The wealth of dukes and CEOs is kept in place by tax laws that overlook their inherited assets but punish people for earning wages.
There are consequences to this. Britain's political elite was aghast at the Brexit referendum result, which will take country out of the EU. Polling data show that the Leave vote came from the oldest and poorest sections of society. Viewed through that lens, the referendum looks more like a protest at how unfair society has become. |
Switzerland is far from flawless, but still a unique country.
Our friend Claudio Grass has discussed Switzerland in these pages before, and on one of these occasions we added some background information on country’s truly unique political system (see “The People Against the Establishment” for the details). People are generally aware that direct democracy in the form of frequent referendums is a major characteristic of the Swiss system, but how many people know that the country’s executive is essentially modeled after the system established in the city states of ancient Greece?
Claudio was recently interviewed by Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute on what we can learn from Switzerland, which despite its undeniable flaws, continues to stand out among European nations states as a beacon of liberty. As the introduction at the Mises Institute notes, political life in Switzerland differentiates itself by its strongly pronounced degree of subsidiarity and the major limitations it places on central political power structures at the federal level:
Switzerland is no libertarian paradise. It has bureaucrats and a wayward central bank. But it remains an astonishing modern example of the principles of federalism and subsidiarity in action. In fact, it exemplifies Lew Rockwell’s daydream: nobody much knows or cares who is president. Its federal administrative state demonstrates humility instead of hubris. And virtually all political decisions, from taxes to welfare to immigration, are decided locally.
Historically, Swiss subsidiarity may also have to do with its geography, but be that as it may, who wouldn’t like to live in a country in which “nobody knows or cares much who the president is”? Indeed, the Swiss president is a true primus inter pares, as his power doesn’t exceed that of his six colleagues in the Federal Council.
The concordance principle that regulates power-sharing between political parties on the Council guarantees a certain deliberative inertia, so to speak. There is little danger that it will take radical decisions out of the blue. The best politicians are generally those who do nothing, or very little. It is the well-meaning busybodies one has to fear most; as a rule they tend to be both dangerous and expensive.
If one has to suffer the ignominy of government, it should ideally be nothing more than a footnote in most people’s lives. In other words, the opposite of what governments are seemingly trying to become all over the world. It seems to us though that a counter-trend is already well underway. Assorted central planners and social engineers are getting desperate, because they can sense that power is slipping from their grasp.
Alas, the journey from where we are to where we ideally ought to be – which is a world in which ordering other people around is seen as a laughable anachronism – is going to involve a long and winding road. Realistically, small steps will have to be taken and a place like Switzerland certainly holds a few valuable lessons worth thinking about. |
The following letter is not about what "old hands" know and newcomers do not. Instead, it is about lessons that we all need to learn more than once, and remind ourselves of. It is about tendencies that are common, and understandable, and come with the flush of excitement of learning any new thing that we understand is important, and about the difficulty, always, in trying to decide how best to convey that excitement and sense of importance to others, in a way that they will listen. It is written more specifically, but only because I have found that if we don't talk specifics as well as generalities, the generalities make no sense. This holds for algebraic structures, and it holds for other, vaguer concepts no less. It is a letter full of things I want to remember, as well as of advice I want to share. I expect I will want to remind myself of it when I encounter somebody who is wrong on the internet, which, I understand, may occur on rare occasion.
You’ve recently entered the world of strongly typed functional programming, and you’ve decided it is great. You’ve written a program or two or a library or two, and you’re getting the hang of it. You hop on IRC and hear new words and ideas every day. There are always new concepts to learn, new libraries to explore, new ways to refactor your code, new typeclasses to make instances of.
Now, you’re a social person, and you want to go forth and share all the great things you’ve learned. And you have learned enough to distinguish some true statements from some false statements, and you want to go and slay all the false statements in the world.
Is this really what you want to do? Do you want to help people, do you want to teach people new wonderful things? Do you want to share the things that excite you? Or do you want to feel better about yourself, confirm that you are programming better, confirm that you are smarter and know more, reassure yourself that your adherence to a niche language is ok by striking out against the mainstream? Of course, you want to do the former. But a part of you probably secretly wants to do the latter, because in my experience that part is in all of us. It is our ego, and it drives us to great things, but it also can hold us back, make us act like jerks, and, worst of all, stand in the way of communicating with others about what we truly care about.
Haskell wasn’t built on great ideas, although it has those. It was built on a culture of how ideas are treated. It was not built on slaying others’ dragons, but on finding our own way; not tearing down rotten ideas (no matter how rotten) but showing by example how we didn’t need those ideas after all.
In functional programming, our proofs are not by contradiction, but by construction. If you want to teach functional programming, or preach functional programming, or just to even have productive discussions as we all build libraries and projects together, it will serve you well to learn that ethic.
You know better than the next developer, or so you think. This is because of something you have learned. So how do you help them want to learn it too? You do not tell them this is a language for smart people. You do not tell them you are smart because you use this language. You tell them that types are for fallible people, like we all are. They help us reason and catch our mistakes, because while software has grown more complex, we’re still stuck with the same old brains. If they tell you they don’t need types to catch errors, tell them that they must be much smarter than you, because you sure do. But even more, tell them that all the brainpower they use to not need types could turn into even greater, bigger, and more creative ideas if they let the compiler help them.
This is not a language for clever people, although there are clever things that can be done in this language. It is a language for simple things and clever things alike, and sometimes we want to be simple, and sometimes we want to be clever. But we don’t give bonus points for being clever. Sometimes, it’s just fun, like solving a crossword puzzle or playing a tricky Bach prelude, or learning a tango. We want to keep simple things simple so that tricky things are possible.
It is not a language that is “more mathematical” or “for math” or “about math”. Yes, in a deep formal sense, programming is math. But when someone objects to this, this is not because they are a dumb person, a bad person, or a malicious person. They object because they have had a bad notion of math foisted on them. “Math” is the thing that people wield over them to tell them they are not good enough, that they cannot learn things, that they don’t have the mindset for it. That’s a dirty lie. Math is not calculation — that’s what computers are for. Nor is math just abstract symbols. Nor is math a prerequisite for Haskell. If anything, Haskell might be what makes somebody find math interesting at all. Our equation should not be that math is hard, and so programming is hard. Rather, it should be that programming can be fun, and this means that math can be fun too. Some may object that programming is not only math, because it is engineering as well, and creativity, and practical tradeoffs. But, surprisingly, these are also elements of the practice of math, if not the textbooks we are given.
I have known great Haskell programmers, and even great computer scientists who know only a little linear algebra maybe, or never bothered to pick up category theory. You don’t need that stuff to be a great Haskell programmer. It might be one way. The only thing you need category theory for is to take great categorical and mathematical concepts from the world and import them back to programming, and translate them along the way so that others don’t need to make the same journey you did. And you don’t even need to do that, if you have patience, because somebody else will come along and do it for you, eventually.
The most important thing, though not hardest, about teaching and spreading knowledge is to emphasize that this is for everyone. Nobody is too young, too inexperienced, too old, too set in their ways, too excitable, insufficiently mathematical, etc. Believe in everyone, attack nobody, even the trolliest.* Attacking somebody builds a culture of sniping and argumentativeness. It spreads to the second trolliest, and soforth, and then eventually to an innocent bystander who just says the wrong thing to spark bad memories of the last big argument.
The hardest thing, and the second most important, is to put aside your pride. If you want to teach people, you have to empathize with how they think, and also with how they feel. If your primary goal is to spread knowledge, then you must be relentlessly self-critical of anything you do or say that gets in the way of that. And you don’t get to judge that — others do. And you must just believe them. I told you this was hard. So if somebody finds you offputting, that’s your fault. If you say something and somebody is hurt or takes offense, it is not their fault for being upset, or feeling bad. This is not about what is abstractly hurtful in a cosmic sense; it is about the fact that you have failed, concretely, to communicate as you desired. So accept the criticism, apologize for giving offense (not just for having upset someone but also for what you did to hurt them), and attempt to learn why they feel how they feel, for next time.
Note that if you have made somebody feel crummy, they may not be in a mood to explain why or how, because their opinion of you has already plummeted. So don’t declare that they must or should explain themselves to you, although you may politely ask. Remember that knowledge does not stand above human behavior. Often, you don't need to know exactly why a person feels the way they do, only that they do, so you can respect that. If you find yourself demanding explanations, ask yourself, if you knew this thing, would that change your behavior? How? If not, then learn to let it go.
Remember also that they were put off by your actions, not by your existence. It is easy to miss this distinction and react defensively. "Fight-or-flight" stands in the way of clear thinking and your ability to empathize; try taking a breath and maybe a walk until the adrenaline isn't derailing your true intentions.
Will this leave you satisfied? That depends. If your goal is to understand everything and have everybody agree with regards to everything that is in some sense objectively true, it will not. If your goal is to have the widest, nicest, most diverse, and most fun Haskell community possible, and to interact in an atmosphere of mutual respect and consideration, then it is the only thing that will leave you satisfied.
If you make even the most modest (to your mind) mistake, be it in social interaction or technical detail, be quick to apologize and retract, and do so freely. What is there to lose? Only your pride. Who keeps track? Only you. What is there to gain? Integrity, and ultimately that integrity will feel far more fulfilling than the cheap passing thrills of cutting somebody else down or deflecting their concerns.
Sometimes it may be, for whatever reason, that somebody doesn’t want to talk to you, because at some point your conversation turned into an argument. Maybe they did it, maybe you did it, maybe you did it together. It doesn’t matter, learn to walk away. Learn from the experience how to communicate better, how to avoid that pattern, how to always be the more positive, more friendly, more forward-looking. Take satisfaction in the effort in that. Don’t talk about them behind their back, because that will only fuel your own bad impulses. Instead, think about how you can change.
Your self-esteem doesn’t need your help. You may feel you need to prove yourself, but you don't. Other people, in general, have better things to do with their time than judge you, even when you may sometimes feel otherwise. You know you’re talented, that you have learned things, and built things, and that this will be recognized in time. Nobody else wants to hear it from you, and the more they hear it, the less they will believe it, and the more it will distract from what you really want, which is not to feed your ego, not to be great, but to accomplish something great, or even just to find others to share something great with. In fact, if anyone's self-esteem should be cared for, it is that of the people you are talking to. The more confident they are in their capacity and their worth, the more willing they will be to learn new things, and to acknowledge that their knowledge, like all of ours, is limited and partial. You must believe in yourself to be willing to learn new things, and if you want to cultivate more learners, you must cultivate that self-belief in others.
Knowledge is not imposing. Knowledge is fun. Anyone, given time and inclination, can acquire it. Don’t only lecture, but continue to learn, because there is always much more than you know. (And if there wasn’t, wow, that would be depressing, because what would there be to learn next?) Learn to value all opinions, because they all come from experiences, and all those experiences have something to teach us. Dynamic typing advocates have brought us great leaps in JIT techniques. If you’re interested in certain numerical optimizations, you need to turn to work pioneered in C++ or Fortran. Like you, I would rather write in Haskell. But it is not just the tools that matter but the ideas, and you will find they come from everywhere.
In fact, we have so much to learn that we direct our learning by setting up barriers — declaring certain tools, fields, languages, or communities not worth our time. This isn’t because they have nothing to offer, but it is a crutch for us to shortcut evaluating too many options all at once. It is fine, and in fact necessary, to narrow the scope of your knowledge to increase its depth. But be glad that others are charting other paths! Who knows what they will bring back from those explorations.
If somebody is chatting about programming on the internet, they’re already ahead of the pack, already interested in craft and knowledge. You may not share their opinions, but you have things to learn from one another, always. Maybe the time and place aren’t right to share ideas and go over disputes. That’s ok. There will be another time and place, or maybe there won’t be. There is a big internet full of people, and you don’t need to be everybody’s friend or everybody’s mentor. You should just avoid being anybody’s enemy, because your time and theirs is too precious to waste it on hard feelings instead of learning new cool stuff.
This advice is not a one-time proposition. Every time we learn something new and want to share it, we face these issues all over again -- the desire to proclaim, to overturn received wisdom all at once -- and the worse the received wisdom, the more vehemently we want to strike out. But if we are generous listeners and attentive teachers, we not only teach better and spread more knowledge, but also learn more, and enjoy ourselves more in the process. To paraphrase Rilke’s “Letter to a Young Poet”: Knowledge is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgement of it: there is no other.
Thanks to the various folks in and around the Haskell world who have helped me refine this article. I don't name you only because I don't want to imply your endorsement, or give what is still, at base, a very personal take, any particular sort of imprimatur of a broader group of people, all of whom I suspect will disagree among themselves and with me about various specifics. |
ONE of the surviving members of the Miami Showband has described comments by U2 lead singer Bono about the Paris concert hall attack as "scandalous".
Des Lee said he was appalled to hear Bono say the Paris attackers had made a "direct hit on music" when they targeted a packed venue full of young people enjoying a rock concert.
The musician said Bono had failed to remember the attack on the Miami Showband in 1975, which killed three members of the popular group.
Fran O'Toole, Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy were shot dead after their band minibus was flagged down by a UVF gang at what appeared to be a military checkpoint after a gig in Banbridge.
Mr Lee and guitarist Stephen Travers survived the tragedy, despite being shot.
Following the attacks in Paris on Friday, U2's two planned concerts in the city were called off.
The band visited the scene of the Bataclan concert hall shooting on Saturday and left flowers in memory to those who died.
Bono later told RTÉ's 2fm: "If you think about it, the majority of victims were music fans".
"This is the first direct hit on music that we've had on this so-called war on terror, or whatever it's called," he said.
"This, and the cold-blooded aspect of the attacks, are what are really upsetting, it could have been any of us."
But Mr Lee questioned whether Bono had forgotten the Miami victims.
"I think what he said was scandalous, has he forgotten about the Miami Showband, has he forgotten about Fran O'Toole, Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy," he said.
"He even knew Fran, they were all in beat bands at the same time, so for him to forget him, I'm appalled.
"He needs to apologise to us, he needs to apologise to the families, he should be doing that at least."
U2 are due to perform at the SSE Arena in Belfast tonight and tomorrow with fans urged to wear white to show solidarity with the 129 victims of the Paris attacks. |
Home Improvement 3rd Edition with DVD is rated 4.7 out of 5 by 48 .
Rated 3 out of 5 by Greg from When I came into HD I was looking for a... When I came into HD I was looking for a book on framing. I seem to remember having purchased a book on electrical a while ago and at that time there were several specialized books on electrical, plumbing, carpentry and such. This book seems to cover a multitude of all subjects, but lack the detail
Rated 4 out of 5 by Gil from It is a very good book for beguines, the electrical and the plumbing needs little be more informa... It is a very good book for beguines, the electrical and the plumbing needs little be more information, but overall it is a good book.
Rated 5 out of 5 by 7Veteran from If you own a home or want to know how to do something, this is the book to have. If you own a home or want to know how to do something, this is the book to have.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Gil from It was a gift to a friend. I’m sure it’s... It was a gift to a friend. I’m sure it’s done it’s job!!
Rated 5 out of 5 by Sat78238 from Great for idea and to make you ate doing it... Great for idea and to make you ate doing it right.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Goodbyemoles from Great gift to new home owner. Very informative. ... Great gift to new home owner. Very informative.
Rated 5 out of 5 by HomeDepotCustomer from 5 Star Review Rating provided by a verified purchaser |
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The city of West Hollywood plans to require gender-neutral restrooms to accommodate individuals’ whose gender identity conflicts with their ascribed biological sex.
A new law that takes effect Thursday requires that all single-stall restrooms in businesses and public places must be gender-neutral.
The ordinance that takes effect on Thursday requires that restrooms with only one stall in restaurants, businesses and public places cannot restrict it to a specific sex either by signage or fixtures.
Existing businesses have 60 days to make changes, but new ones must heed the requirements immediately.
The Los Angeles suburb, which has a sizeable gay and transgender population, passed the ordinance in June. It doesn’t apply to multiple-stall restrooms.
“Gender-specific restrooms can be unwelcoming and potentially unsafe for many people whose gender identity falls outside of traditional gender norms,” said a city statement released this week.
The city said the law also will prove beneficial to “people with disabilities or with personal attendants, people with children of a different gender, and to the many people who have waited in line for a gender-specific restroom” when stalls for the opposite sex are empty.
A similar law was passed in 2006 in Washington, D.C. Philadelphia passed a measure in 2013 that requires new or renovated city-owned buildings to include gender-neutral bathrooms.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
This Story Filed Under |
Hearing the news that a coal plant, a facility that once belched CO2, mercury, sulphur, nitrogen oxides, and other hazardous chemicals into the air, is shutting down is certainly a cause to celebrate. Seeing it explode in glorious high definition and set to lively classical music is another thing altogether.
Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the U.S., released a video this week showing the death of four of its old coal power plants, giving environmentalists an awesome soundtrack to the death of the coal industry.
The video shows the demolition of Weatherspoon, H.F. Lee, Cape Fear, and Cliffside, all facilities in North Carolina. The demolitions, set to a rousing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, are nothing short of transfixing.
A spokesperson for Duke Energy told Grist that the plants were mainly operated from the 1930s to the ’60s, and were destroyed as a way to celebrate “modernizing the way we generate power for the past decade.” But as the company transitioned away from coal, it looked to natural gas as its main money-maker and maintained its spot atop the country’s worst carbon emitters in 2015.
Thanks in large part to cheap natural gas, many of America’s coal plants have been reduced to rubble — or are about to be. As of last November, over 200 coal-fired stations had been retired or were scheduled for retirement. According to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance last year, about 17 percent of U.S. coal-fired power generation is expected to disappear over the next few years. It’s been said that the coal industry is “in terminal decline,” and there’s no better way to visualize that than the crumbling of an enormous, dirty power plant. |
A brand new update for Google Maps just started rolling out last night and it's definitely a big one. Perhaps the most important detail is that this is the first installable on the Android N Developer Previews. The Timeline screen has also gone through a partial redesign and gained a couple of new tricks. However, the really interesting things are coming in the teardown. In fact, there's so much stuff that the teardown portion is going to be split into a second part. Let's get to the good stuff.
Note: according to a post on the issue tracker, this could be a beta release. However, it seems to be rolling out to users on the stable channel. It probably doesn't matter, but it may be possible some users won't receive this update through regular rollouts. I've included "beta" in the title so readers are aware of this.
What's New
Official Changelog: (posted July 6) Add multiple destinations to your route, get directions and navigate
Search for places along your route when getting directions
Add notes to your days in Your Timeline to keep track of the memories you make on the go Unofficial Changelog: (stuff we found) Installable on Android N Developer Preview – fixes Android Auto on DP4 and includes Android Wear app
Visual changes to Timeline screen with editable title and notes section
Installable on Android N Developer Preview
If you've been living on the bleeding edge with developer previews, you may have felt a bit left out as updates to various core apps have come and gone for everybody else while you're stuck on versions that seem inexplicably outdated despite a higher version number. In fact, you actually have been running older versions. Google repackaged older stable versions of some apps and gave them high version codes to ensure that they weren't replaced by updates from the Play Store. This release brings a higher version code and allows for it to be installed on DP4 and below. We'll have to wait for DP5 to come out before we know if Google is going to lock in the version again. There are a couple of important implications from this update, which leads us to...
The Maps app is back on Android Wear
This actually resolves a point of confusion for many users: the missing Android Wear app. One of the little-known details about the repackaged apps on developer previews is that they lack the microAPKs that should be installed on Wear devices. I'm not sure if there's an official reason for leaving them out, but they aren't there and that means your watch will be missing quite a few standard features. This release restores the Wear micro app to its rightful place.
Fixes Android Auto On Developer Preview 4
As it turns out, the Maps app included with Developer Preview 4 did not get along with Android Auto. Users quickly discovered that Maps automatically crashed anytime it was launched in Auto. This version has been confirmed to fix that issue and restore Maps/Navigation on Auto to full working order. I've got a feeling this is the reason we're getting a version that can install on N right now, so even if you don't have (or use) Android Auto, you've probably got it to thank for an N-friendly update. – Thanks, Christian Simpson
Timeline Gets a Facelift
Left: previous version. Right: latest version.
The most notable changes for this release can be seen in the Timeline view. In fact, the changes are almost entirely limited to the title bar, which has grown much taller and includes a couple new parts. The month/year dropdown has been removed entirely, but the calendar next to its left has been moved to the right side. It still functions the same way, so this is mostly a cosmetic adjustment. The date and day of the week have also been removed from the first row below the mini map. It also looks like the mini map might show more business icons than it used to.
There's a new edit button (the pen icon) that opens a screen where a title and note can be added. Tapping on the big date text above the mini map will also open this screen. If something is filled in here, it causes the date to shrink in the Timeline screen while the title and note are filled in. This allows you to put some context to your trips, perhaps to document a delivery route or remind you of a particular day during vacation.
We're still looking around for some other changes, so let us know in the comments if anything else turns up. The big news for this update is in the teardown, so let's get straight to part 1.
Teardown
Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk.
SD Cards + Offline Maps
It has been one of the hottest requests since Offline Navigation and Search were added to Maps–if not before–and it's finally happening. Google is going to add support for storing offline maps on SD cards. This will give users the ability to free up some internal storage by moving those large data files where they won't be in the way.
The strings related to storing offline maps on an SD card are mostly uninteresting, so there's not much to read into here. In fact, most of them are just copies of existing strings, but with "SD card" in place of other words. However, one warning message does point out a potentially annoying issue for some: switching your storage location requires a total re-download of your offline maps. For some reason they can't be moved from one local storage to another. This probably won't be a huge issue since most people will only have to make the switch to an SD card once, but even that one switch could be a problem for people with no access to Wi-Fi and very restricted cellular data.
strings <string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_DOWNLOAD_STORAGE_SETTINGS_TITLE">Where do you want to store your offline areas?</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_MISSING_SDCARD_ALERT_BODY">Your offline areas are unavailable. Insert the SD card you used to store them.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_MISSING_SDCARD_ALERT_TITLE">"Can't find SD card"</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SDCARD_NOT_AVAILABLE">"Can't find SD card. Insert the SD card you used to store offline areas."</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_DESCRIPTION">Changing this setting will delete any existing offline areas and redownload them to the new storage location.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_PHONE_DESCRIPTION">Device (%,d MB available)</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_PHONE_TITLE">Device</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_SD_DESCRIPTION">SD card (%,d MB available)</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_SD_TITLE">SD card</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_MAPS_SETTINGS_STORAGE_SETTINGS_TITLE">Storage preferences</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_ONBOARDING_AVAILABLE_SIZE_SD">You have over %,d MB available on your SD card.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_ONBOARDING_INDIA_AVAILABLE_SIZE_SD">You have over %,d MB free space on your SD card.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_ONBOARDING_SIZE_AND_MODALITY_SD">Maps can store information so searches and directions are faster, with good connections or bad. This will use up to %1$d MB of your %2$d MB available free space on your SD card.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_SELECT_AREA_SIZE_STRING_LANDSCAPE_SD" formatted="false">Download may take up to %,d MB. (You have over %,d MB available on your SD card.)</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_SELECT_INDIA_AREA_SIZE_STRING_LANDSCAPE_SD" formatted="false">Downloading areas of India may take up to %,d MB of your %,d MB free space on your SD card, and it happens over Wi-Fi.</string>
<string name="OFFLINE_SELECT_INDONESIA_AREA_SIZE_STRING_LANDSCAPE_SD" formatted="false">Downloading areas of Indonesia may take up to %,d MB of your %,d MB free space on your SD card, and it happens over Wi-Fi.</string>
There's no doubt that this will be a welcome feature, especially for people with Android One phones or any device that lacks Marshmallow's adoptable storage feature.
My only real question is whether or not this will be strictly limited to SD cards or if it can also be used with USB drives. Since many phones (*cough* Nexus *cough*) lack an SD slot, the reach for offline maps is a little limited. But it could be the perfect use case for very small external drives. After all, when you're driving down city streets with your phone locked into a dash mount, you're not going to care about having a little key-sized drive poking out to the side.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
Version: 9.31.0 |
The conference commissioners and college administrators who oversee college football's new championship format, which will begin in 2014, expect to unveil its name and logo at their meeting in Pasadena, Calif., next month, executive director Bill Hancock said.
That title, Hancock said, will not include a sponsor.
"It won't be 'The Vizio Championship Tournament,'" Hancock said, using the Rose Bowl title sponsor as an example. "The Final Four doesn't have one. The Masters doesn't. The Super Bowl. That's the kind of event we have."
The group has narrowed the candidates for the name to a "small number," Hancock said. It will be simple, straightforward and, as he described it, "not cutesy."
Simple and straightforward is easy to describe. However, it is difficult to convey the significance and tradition of the sport into a couple of words.
"It's like writing short," said Hancock, a former newspaperman who has enjoyed a long career in collegiate sports administration. "I can write a good long column in 10 minutes. A good short column takes three hours."
The decision not to add a sponsor's name will not affect the bowls that host the semifinal games, Hancock added.
"The semifinals will have something to the effect of 'The Football Tournament Semifinal at the Discover Orange Bowl,'" he said. |
There are people in the Republic of the Congo who proudly strut down dirty hutted streets in alligator boots and designer suits, otherwise living in poverty. RT meets fashion-conscious members of the ‘La Sape’ movement, who argue that “price matters.”
“When you dress up you really are the best,” Maxime Pivot from Brazzaville, the capital city of the central African country, told RT’s documentary channel RTD. Always dressed in bright suits, the man calls himself “the king of color.” Where ever he goes, people shout “The god of clothes!” and “The pride of our area!” while falling to their knees. He’s “unbeatable,” they say.
Being a proud member of the appearance-obsessed group known as “The Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People” – or “La Sape” – comes at a price. The men have been dressing like “dandies,” as they say, since the Congolese soldiers who fought in France during World War II returned home to Africa, bringing Parisian fashions with them.
Splurging money they don’t really have on designer clothes, the dress of these men stands out in stark contrast to their surroundings. They never give a second thought to walking dirty streets in shoes that cost them – and their families – more than a fortune.
“I saved up to buy [these shoes],” Pivot told RTD. “It took me almost two years. If I hadn’t bought this pair, I’d have bought a plot of land,” he said proudly, adding that it’s the designer logo that adds to his “dignity” and “self-esteem.” “I had to buy them,” he said.
The Sapeurs, as these men call themselves, don’t wear fakes (“Because if you put on a fake thing, everybody will know”) and “must own different outfits,” so it’s not only one piece of land that has been sacrificed to style and affectation in the streets of Brazzaville, which is the center of the “La Sape” movement.
“To stand out, you must have lots of clothes and shoes – that makes a dandy,” another Sapeur told RTD, showing racks of Kenzo, Armani and Yves Saint Laurent suits in his modest home. “There are rivalries, so the price matters,” Severin Muengo said.
The thrill of competition and investing in their image is more important to these men than improving their living conditions. There’s no price the Congolese fashionistas won’t pay to be part of their “gentlemen’s society.” “I go to the bank, get credit, and I buy, buy, buy,” Muengo said.
Stories of significant financial troubles are often hidden beneath the fine fabrics of the French and Italian suits they wear. To afford the price tag, the “dandies” have to save, borrow, or even steal money, they admit. But dressing smartly is truly an addiction, they say. “These are weapons, they kill,” the man told RTD, pointing at piles of designer accessories. |
Total Number of Bars
Rank State Bars per 10,000 Population
1 North Dakota 6.54
2 Montana 6.34
3 Wisconsin 5.88
4 South Dakota 4.73
5 Iowa 3.73
6 Nebraska 3.68
7 Wyoming 3.4
Specialization in Bars
At FloatingSheep, we're willing to search for and analyze almost anything that falls within the realm of human experience. Sometimes this is mundane (pizza) and sometimes it is contentious (abortion) but most of the time it falls somewhere in between. Such as, where can I get a drink?We were quite surprised, however, when we did a simple comparison between grocery stores and bars to discover a remarkable geographically phenomenon. We had expected that grocery stores would outnumber bars and for most parts of North America that is the case. But we could also clearly see the "beer belly of America" peeking out through the "t-shirt of data".Starting in Illinois, the beer belly expands up into Wisconsin and first spreads westward through Iowa/Minnesota and then engulfs Nebraska, and the Dakotas before petering out (like a pair of love handles) in Wyoming and Montana.The clustering was so apparent that we wanted to check how it compared to the "official" data on this activity. So we gathered 2007 Census Country Business Pattern on the number of establishments listed in NACIS code 722410 (Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)) and divided by Census estimates for state population totals for 2009 and found remarkable correspondence with our data.On average there are 1.52 bars for every 10,000 people in the U.S. but the states that make up the beer belly of America are highly skewed from this average.Another slice of the Google data which shows the relative number of bars in a location further confirms this concentration. So looks like Wisconsin is your best bet. |
Share This Essay This essay was originally published in the LRC’s February 1994 issue.
I.
Five years ago, a New York law journal sponsored a symposium on Hegel and law. Charles Taylor, the Montreal philosopher, gave the keynote address. Taylor argued that liberal theory needs to be supplemented with a communitarian view, inspired by Hegel’s political philosophy. Reviewing an edited version of the symposium, Hegel and Legal Theory, a British academic complained that nearly every contributor doffed a cap toward Taylor’s position. “One begins to get the impression,” the reviewer wrote bitterly, “that the German was somehow the author of a book on the Canadian philosopher, rather than the other way around.”
G.W.F. Hegel, who died in 1831, was last in the great line of German idealists which included Fichte, Kant, and Schelling. For reasons I want to explore in this essay, Hegel also looms large in Canada. Certain broad Hegelian principles are perennial in the northern landscape. Some are actually founded in the commonsense tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment—that “Hotbed of Genius” that followed that Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707, and reached its peak from 1730 to 1790. Scottish thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Sir James Steuart had a defining impact on Hegel. They and their descendents also left “a mysterious element of Scottishness in the Canadian psyche.” The strength of that tradition is affirmed by a well-known Caledonian immigrant, who, incidentally, has made her own contribution to it. Arriving in Renfrew, Ontario in 1949, former Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson “felt that the country to which I had come was more Scottish than the one I left behind!”
Thanks to the Scottish influence, belief in community and in the identity of language and action are key features of Hegel’s thought—and of Canadian intellectual life. Perhaps Hegel’s influence is to be expected in a nation where communication comes just below cleanliness as a unique mode of access to the heavenly kingdom. We would sooner talk on a cellular phone than fight.
For Hegel, freedom and equality are primary achievements of states rather than markets—Adam Smith notwithstanding, another Scottish borrowing. This view suits a nation that favours “peace, order, and good government” over the U.S. credo, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Here, motorcycle riders are required to wear helmets, and motorists must fasten their seatbelts. If injured, they can expect state-provided medical care. In many U.S. states, motorcyclists can let their hair blow in the wind, and car occupants need not buckle up. But the government will not be there for them if they get squashed in an accident.
So far as I am aware, no observer of Canadian politics has remarked on the close resemblance between John Diefenbaker’s scowling visage and the beaked head of Hegel’s famed Owl of Minerva, which flies only at dusk. But if George Grant was right in his 1960s classic, Lament for a Nation, Diefenbaker’s owl signalled oncoming gloom for Canadian nationalism, at least in its Tory version.
Canuck thinkers with a special interest in Hegel have reached a world audience many times.
By contrast, ex-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s unconscious fealty to Hegelian precepts is well-known. In Pledge of Allegiance: the Americanization of Canada in the Mulroney Years, for example, Lawrence Martin quotes David Crombie along these lines. The tiny perfect Toronto waterfront czar remarked that Brian Mulroney “wears the clothes of the day, and that’s not necessarily such a bad thing for a politician. There’s a line from Hegel about the wind of God in the trees. You catch it and hang on. So what he saw was Thatcher and Reagan as heroes of the day. And I have a feeling that if fishermen got to the head of the line tomorrow, Mulroney would have rubber boots on. And I don’t mean that in a phoney way.”
Thankfully, Hegel’s wind of God has blown Mulroney out of Sussex Drive, but the German philosopher remains in place; and tempting as it is to dismiss Charles Taylor’s international reputation as a singular anomaly, Canuck thinkers with a special interest in Hegel have reached a world audience many times in the last century. This forms a key argument in Leslie Armour’s and Elizabeth Trott’s powerful history of Canadian thought,The Faces of Reason. Interestingly, Taylor’s reputation in the cloudy empyrean of Hegel studies is easily eclipsed by Toronto’s (and Victoria’s) Henry S. Harris, Hegel’s biographer, and matched by Emile Fackenheim, a Toronto philosopher now retired in Israel.
Proportionately, Canada may produce more original work on Hegel than any other nation. And this is not only due to the Big Three: Harris, Taylor and Fackenheim. Pioneering feminist renderings of Hegel such as The Politics of Reproduction by Mary O’Brien and the article “Hegel and ‘The Woman Question’: Recognition and Intersubjectivity” by Patricia Mills are legendary. University of Washington scholar John Toews, who wrote the key study of Hegelianism and won a MacArthur Prize in the bargain, seems to be an exception to the Canuck rule; but it turns out he hails from Mennonite country in Manitoba. Still, perhaps country and western great, “Stompin'” Tom Connors, would be skeptical of the latter two entrants. As he said of Hank Snow, “What’s the use of being a Canadian if you don’t live here?”
Hegel’s thought is primarily about self-consciousness and the politics of recognition. A people so sensitive about these issues could do no better than embrace his lesson that the dialectic of master and slave leads to freedom for the underdog. In Canada, Hegel’s master-slave contest becomes a series of spiritual wrestling matches with colonial masters, from France to Britain to the United States. It speaks to French-Canada’s striving for language and culture, and illuminates the contemporary struggle of native peoples and Canadian workers against an arrogant and distracted ruling class in love with Wall Street.
The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s best-known work, is about the ascent of consciousness to self-discovery, a journey fueled by conflict and contradiction. Many have noted the startling reversals and incomprehensible plot twists in Hegel’s masterpiece. Not the least of these, as Carleton political scientist Tom Darby has shown in his book The Feast, is that consciousness is a combination of female and male, an androgyne. Canada’s thirty-year battle to create a constitution may be the closest national parallel to the complicated voyage of the Phenomenology. Undoubtedly, as a romance of national consciousness, complete with midnight faxes, gorgeous scenery, and nefarious characters, nothing could equal Deborah Coyne’s rivetting Roll of the Dice: Working with Clyde Wells during the Meech Lake Negotiations. Absent from Coyne’s text, Hegel’s spirit is never far away.
P.E. Trudeau never conquered the world, but he did bring down the Charlottetown Agreement.
Writing before Meech Lake, American philosopher Hugh McCumber speculated that the “unparallelled … flowering of Hegelian thought” in Canada might be due to an opening of the two solitudes that have defined the Canadian psyche. Certainly, Hegelians may be found on either side of the English-Canadian reaction to the Meech fiasco. One such is Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper, who pronounced The End of History almost a decade before the U.S. celebrity-scholar Francis Fukuyama. A right-Hegelian influenced by the Russian-French philosopher Kojève, Cooper has bidden “good-bye and good luck” to Quebec (shorn of its northern territories and the south bank of the St. Lawrence) in Deconfederation: Canada without Quebec. He and co-author David Bercuson would unload Crombie’s Toronto Harbourfront domain to private investors for $100 million. Their vision of Canada is the ultimate deficit-cutting device: auction a province.
Charles Taylor, by contrast, plugs away at the left-Hegelian position, in which recognition of the collective rights of Québécois nationalists would help “to build a new country … a more decentralized Canada.” In Taylor’s vision—outlined in Reconciling the Two Solitudes, which anticipated the Charlottetown Agreement—Quebec would have “powers over labour, communications, agriculture and fisheries” among others. Naturally, Canada would sheepishly continue to lard the Quebec pork barrel, or, as the Montreal philosopher delicately puts it, maintain “a system of equalization between the regions.” With the Bloc Québécois now the Official Opposition this Hegelian vision is beginning to look like reality.
Taylor’s NDP challenge to Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s 1965 run in Mount Royal may not have been a world-historical event, but in Canadian terms it must rank with Hegel’s sighting of Napoleon on horseback after the French defeated Prussia at the 1806 battle of Jena. “I saw the Emperor,” Hegel wrote to a friend at the time. “I saw the Emperor—this world-soul—riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, reaches out over the world and masters it.” P.E. Trudeau never conquered the world, but he did bring down the “master black-mailers'” Charlottetown Agreement with a brief talk after a Chinese dinner in Montreal. At least, so argues John F. Conway in his splendid left-Hegelian account of Canadian constitutional history, Debts to Pay: English Canada and Quebec from the Conquest to the Referendum.
Incidentally, the Meech-Charlottetown imbroglio led to some strange reversals. In a 1970s piece (republished in Reconciling the Two Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism), for example, Charles Taylor dismissed “Trudeaumania” as an American copycat operation, more form than substance. Trudeau would never “rattle the teacups” of the establishment, the philosopher claimed. Twenty years later Taylor would accept the invitation of the Business Council for National Issues to trash “Meech rejectors” and other wayward souls while Trudeau’s principled opposition to the Meech-Charlottetown garroting of Canada would upset the teacups of bankers and corporate leaders across the country. A disciple of British idealist T. H. Green, Trudeau may actually be Canada’s best Hegelian, as we shall see below.
In any event, Hegelianism and the national question go together. Germany in Hegel’s time was awash with constitutional issues, and, like our own constitutional sages, he submitted a few solutions of his own. Germany was not a united country but a collection of many independent states. Hegel’s move to Berlin in 1818 reflected the magnetic force of Prussia, which was soon to pull together the German nation; despite the popular myth, however, he was never a fan of the Prussian monarchy. His last work, a powerful analysis of electoral changes in the 1831 English Reform Bill, was banned in part by the Kaiser.
II.
Hegel is often misrepresented as a lover of big government, a philosopher with “a tendency to fetishize the state,” as Philip Resnick suggests in his otherwise valuable The Masks of Proteus: Canadian Reflections on the State. But recent research has established Hegel’s deep commitment to individual rights. This scholarship has revived the concepts of British idealism, and especially those of the Canadian, John Watson, who loomed large in Anglo-American thought at the turn of the century. Watson was the first to claim that Canada was Hegel’s true home, since the Germans had long since abandoned his philosophy.
Hegel’s conception of the individual provides plenty of room for collective goals.
In Hegel’s perspective, the locus of individual right is found in the right to property; a conjunction also insisted upon by C.B. Macpherson, who noted inThe Rise and Fall of Economic Justice, that the original meaning of property referred to “a property in one’s person, one’s life and liberty, as well as one’s worldly goods.”
Hegel’s individual, unlike John Locke’s, is profoundly social. Her destiny lies not just in the competitive marketplace, but also in the overarching reality of the state, on one hand, and the personal fulfilment of family life, on the other. As Leslie Armour declares in The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community, the foremost Canadian philosophers have similarly emphasized the notion of community whenever they spoke of individuals; and the concept of community itself is usually seen by them in pluralistic terms.
Hegel’s conception of the individual provides plenty of room for collective goals, and thus validates Charles Taylor’s model of a decentralized Canada (as well as Trudeau’s bilingualism project). Yet, Taylor’s understanding of recognition, the centrepoint of Hegelian individualism, is peculiarly lacking in the social element Hegel insisted upon. For Taylor—who seems unaware of a similar argument by Canadian expatriate sociologist, Erving Goffman—recognition boils down to the simple human need each of us has to be acknowledged by another. Thus, you feel affronted if someone fails to return a greeting you offer on the street. On a larger scale, says Taylor, this explains Quebec’s anger when the rest of Canada rejected the “distinct society” clause in the Meech Lake accord, and, as a result, refused recognition to the Quebec nation.
Taylor submits that the need for recognition is misunderstood by feminists, black activists, and others, as the illegitimate exercise of power—as exploitation and coercion—on the part of those who withhold recognition. A simple need for tolerance of diversity is transformed, he says, into a struggle for justice. As I understand it, however, Hegel’s point is that withdrawal of recognition amounts to precisely an act of violence, of exploitation. The master’s failure to recognize the slave is not simply a denial of diversity, any more than our eating of an apple is grounded in some cosmic lack of shared values between human and fruit. The person who is unrecognized does not exist for the other as human, and this facilitates an entire social mechanism of exploitation and violence. For Hegel, the capitalist marketplace—in which the worker’s right to a job, property, good health, and a decent future for her family are constantly in jeopardy—is primarily a mechanism of non-recognition, of exploitation.
Something like this was Trudeau’s message in the famous Maison Egg Roll speech in Montreal, “A Mess that Deserves a Big NO.” The Charlottetown Consensus meant more than open acceptance of the French fact, Trudeau warned. It also proposed withdrawal of recognition, of democratic rights, from particular groups of individuals, and a hierarchy of rights for others. Dismantling federal power meant exposing each citizen to corporate tyranny. “When each citizen is not equal to all other citizens in a state, we are faced with a dictatorship, which arranges citizens in a hierarchy according to their beliefs. And when a person lives under the reign of unbridled capitalism, it is not sharing and justice that prevail, but rather the law of supply and demand. The implacable market decides how wealth is distributed.”
A vital part of the connection between Hegel and Canada may be our underdog status relative to the United States. In many ways, this was also the relation of Germany to England in the mid-nineteenth century—not to mention that between Scotland and England as well. “Why,” ask Armour and Trott, “should we find our Kants and Hegels on the fringe of European civilization and not in Paris, Rome, or London?” Canada’s marginality, says Charles Taylor, brings with it a tendency to look for universal truth outside our borders. “We then think of ourselves as provincials chasing after magic recipes concocted in major centres.” The situation was similar in Hegel’s Germany.
Like Hegel 150 years ago, most Canadians see America as “the land of the future.”
The Germans envied and admired their English cousins. The stability of the British crown under monarchs of German descent, and the unrivalled prominence of the English aristocracy were objects of German wonder. Hegel’s contemporaries were enthralled by the English free market system, and the lively democracy that accompanied it. Thus, it was impossible for Hegel to develop a theory of modern society that did not take into account the English experience. As a result, his political theory was elaborated at second hand; more than anything else, Hegel was a discerning observer of the English scene. Marx’s own fascination with the English experience, as documented in Capital , was precisely a product of Hegel’s influence.
The significance for the Canadian connection is that Hegel was constructing a model for an ideal government against the backdrop of England’s rampant civil society. In the same way, I think Canadian scholars are creating a vision of the ideal society that takes into account the experience of Canada’s noisy southern neighbour. Since Hegel’s time, world economic and cultural leadership has swung across the Atlantic from England to the United States. This has given Canada an excellent vantage point from which to view the activities of the latest world-historical nation. Granted, however, that the distancing effect of language and the English Channel for Hegel’s Germany is not available to Anglo-Canadians, who have only a porous border—the longest in the world—and the highly dubious comfort of the North American Free Trade Agreement, to protect us from our American cousins.
Like Hegel 150 years ago, most Canadians see America still as “the land of the future.” Yet we are more skeptical than Europeans about the American dream, a skepticism shared by the German philosopher. Protection of private property, relative immunity from public service, commercial profit and gain are the main themes of life in the U.S.A., Hegel wrote. On one hand, the Protestant religion provided the American people with general confidence and trust in others, and focused their efforts on the world of work. On the other, respect for law in this violent society was merely formal; and since Protestantism exalted mere feeling as the most important element of faith, the result was a multitude of sects. These factors, Hegel observed, have produced “unseemly varieties of caprice” in the national character.
Trudeau said that living next to the United States was like sleeping with an elephant. He might have added, with Hegel, that this was an elephant with a personality problem. “The … principle [of] America,” Hegel mused, is “incompleteness or constant non-fulfilment.” Sharing a bed with an unfulfilled elephant has its own terrors, as a series of Canadian prime ministers, from Diefenbaker to Mulroney, have learned to their cost.
III.
Linda Hutcheon, in Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies, observes that irony underlies the English-Canadian pysche, and is a unique feature of Canadian art and literature. She expressly excludes romantic irony from her discussion, which—with its emphasis on anarchic self-consciousness—is more characteristic of American culture. Interestingly, Hegel in the Aesthetics found romantic irony with its focus on indecision and alienation, inadequate to the creation of genuine art. Yet I think Hegel was the most ironic of philosophers, and this explains his peculiar attraction for Canadians. After all, as Irving Layton suggests, “A Canadian is a born sucker for anything that will tie [her] up in knots.”
Hegel was writing for many audiences, a primary one being the Prussian secret police.
Concerning weather, politics, geography, or whatever, Canada is a country of doubleness. We have the French-English question, the federal-provincial issue, the hot-cold dilemma, and the urban-wilderness dichotomy. And doubleness—as Linda Hutcheon avers—is a chief characteristic of irony. “Irony depends on some significant difference: a disparity, contrast, opposition, contradiction or incompatibility.”
For Hutcheon, the ironic stance is an aspect of marginality, a condition we have seen was as relevant to Hegel as to Canadian thinkers today. She contends that irony is simultaneously subversive and authorizing, undercutting and excluding. It “disrupts any notions of meaning as single, stable, decidable, complete, closed, innocent, or transparent.” All this relates to Hegel, whose writings are notoriously open to interpretation, fluid, self-referring, circular, and so forth. The Philosophy of Right, for example, can be seen as a text authorizing the Prussian regime—as Karl Popper saw it. Alternatively, it can be interpreted as a revolutionary critique of the existing system, as Jay Drydyk, a Carleton University philosopher, has suggested in a series of articles. Hegel was writing for many audiences, a primary one being the Prussian secret police—and this official audience in particular had a defining effect on Hegel’s prose style, imbuing it with many levels of irony.
Irony involves secrets, and hidden meanings suddenly revealed. Much commentary on Hegel—and not only that by Canadians—reflects on his cryptic, mysterious style. The first serious study of Hegel in English, for example, a work by the Scottish philosopher J.H. Stirling, published 130 years ago, was called The Secret of Hegel. The noted French Hegel scholar Jacques D’Hondt claimed recently in Hegel in His Time that Hegel is still in hiding. According to Trent University philosopher, John Burbidge in his Hegel on Logic and Religion, Hegel’s enigmatic prose allows interpreters an especially satisfying form of wish-fulfillment: “Each writer sees in Hegel a version of his own image.”
Hutcheon quotes Gaile McGregor’s definition of irony in The Wacousta Syndrome. “Nothing is ironic,” writes McGregor, “unless it is juxtaposed with a countering ideal or at least set against a relatively preferable state of affairs” which does not have to be explicit but “does have to be accessible in terms of the work itself.” Canadian commentary on Hegel emphasizes the ideal aspect of his politics, not as a reactionary identification of the ideal with the real, but rather as the posing of a better form of life, which contrasts with, and grows from, the existing system.
This interpretation of Hegel bears an interesting similarity with Canada’s development. As Hutcheon observes, “the country’s very evolution into nationhood, unlike that of the United States, occurred within British institutions. Is this how,” she asks, “Canadians came to learn the subversive double-voicing that speaks the language of tradition but implies a second level of meaning that can alter tradition from within?”
IV.
The centrality of public servants in the Canadian fabric is another aspect of this country’s Hegel craze. For if Marx was the prophet of the proletariat, Hegel is the prophet of what Alvin Gouldner called the New Class. This is the class of education and government employment; the class in which language and thought, as opposed to the market principle, dominate.
Canadian intellectuals enjoy an intense association with the state unmatched in the United States, and—at least since Thatcher—in Britain as well. Pierre Trudeau, after all, was a professor of constitutional law, and Ex-Prime Minister Kim Campbell griped about not getting tenure at UBC. Because of the close relationship of the Canadian state with culture, even some of our greatest artists have doubled as bureaucrats. As Bertha Wilson points out, this is an old Scottish tradition also: Robbie Burns worked as an Excise Officer, and considered the job a great inspiration for his art. Every other major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment trained and worked as a lawyer or judge. It may not be entirely irrelevant that Canadian expatriate John Kenneth Galbraith is practically the only major voice in the United States pitched against the dominant trend to denigrate government bureaucrats, especially those who—as he writes in The Culture of Contentment—work “in the departments of government concerned with regulatory activity, tax collection and especially with welfare services.”
George Grant marked it as one of Diefenbaker’s major failings that he misunderstood and quarelled with the Canadian public service, and even went so far as to place a corporate head in charge of remodelling the Ottawa bureaucracy. “In such an uncertain country as Canada,” Grant opined, “the civil service is perhaps the essential instrument by which nationhood is preserved.” Lawrence Martin makes clear that one of the most poisonous legacies of the Mulroney years was the deliberate weakening of the Ottawa bureaucracy, a policy closely related to North American Free Trade. The attack on Ottawa accelerated during the Kim Campbell interregnum, with the abrupt termination of almost 20 percent of the top rung of the public service, under the direction of convicted drunk driver, super minister Bernard Valcourt. With loud applause from editorialists and press pundits, the firings have been carried out in the cruellest manner possible, and without the due process promised under the Public Service Act. The hysterical Tory scorched earth policy in Ottawa was the best indicator that the neoconservative era had reached its end.
Hegel was a New Class figure himself—as was Marx, of course. Yet unlike Marx, who fled Germany for the freedom of England’s civil society, Hegel remained an academic, making the inevitable compromises that are part of the life of a tenured professor. These compromises bought him time to create the most profound theoretical system we have; and also help explain his favourable reception in this nation of compromises, our own Canada. |
About Inside the community of morbidly obese people who are determined to be as fat as possible. Society views very fat people as figures of fun, and sneers at their size. But a tiny minority of obese people really want to be as fat as possible. They have super-sized ambitions to weigh 60 stone plus. They call themselves "gainers", or SSBBW's (super sized big beautiful women). Our controversial and provocative observational documentary looks inside this unique world and follows three larger than life women as they go about their extraordinary lives. Far from pitying themselves, "gainers" celebrate their size. Some even earn money from it, and feel their huge size is a major part of their identity. Are they liberating themselves, or just fooling themselves? Because of the level of derision and discrimination towards the obese, theirs is an underground subculture. However, a few gainers break cover and court publicity, seeking fame and notoriety. In this hour we will meet our three contributors in their home environments and going about their everyday yet extraordinary lives - such as weighing themselves (hoping to be heavier), and their super sized supermarket shop. Their lives are full of conflict, and we'll see how they deal with pressure. From members of the public hurling insults to family telling them off, our cameras will witness how tough life can be as a morbidly obese woman. But these women are determined to embrace their amazing size, and we will see how they build huge fan bases on line, attend special SSBBW conferences and enjoy attention from the world's media. We'll be alongside for a SSBBW wedding, we'll see the launch of a big modeling career and discover the stresses of running a club just for big women. But all that eating and lack of mobility does lead to severe health issues. We'll see our SSBBW's attending medical appointments and will be alongside as doctors reveal the worrying impact of a larger than life diet on these women. Will they change tack and diet to save their health? Or will they carry on in their goal to hit 60 stone on the scales? |
Researchers at McMaster University have uncovered significant new evidence in the quest for the elusive goal of gaining muscle and losing fat, an oft-debated problem for those trying to manage their weight, control their calories and balance their protein consumption.
Scientists have found that it is possible to achieve both, and quickly, but it isn't easy.
For the study, 40 young men underwent a month of hard exercise while cutting dietary energy they would normally require by 40 per cent of what they would normally require.
"It was a gruelling affair," says Stuart Phillips, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster and senior investigator on the study. "These guys were in rough shape, but that was part of the plan. We wanted to see how quickly we could get them into shape: lose some fat, but still retain their muscle and improve their strength and fitness," he says.
The researchers divided their subjects into two groups. Both groups went on a low calorie diet, one with higher levels of protein than the other. The higher-protein group experienced muscle gains -- about 2.5 pounds -- despite consuming insufficient energy, while the lower protein group did not add muscle.
The lower-protein group at least had the consolation of not losing muscle, which is a predictable outcome of cutting calories and not working out, say researchers.
"Exercise, particularly lifting weights, provides a signal for muscle to be retained even when you're in a big calorie deficit," says Phillips.
Researchers were intrigued because the high-protein group also lost more body fat.
"We expected the muscle retention" said Phillips, "but were a little surprised by the amount of additional fat loss in the higher protein consuming group."
The results showed that the high-protein group lost about 10.5 pounds and the low protein group only eight pounds. All of the participants, by virtue of the demanding six-days-a-week exercise routines, got stronger, fitter, and generally were in much better shape.
However, researchers caution this regimen is not for everyone.
"We designed this program for overweight young men, although I'm sure it would work for young women too, to get fitter, stronger, and to lose weight fast. It's a tough program and not something that's sustainable or for those looking for quick and easy fix," says Phillips. "We controlled their diets, we supervised the exercise, and we really kept these guys under our 'scientific' thumb for the four weeks the participants were in the study."
Phillips and his team hope to conduct a follow-up study on women and also explore a different approach that he says will be "a little easier and much more sustainable."
The study was published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. |
U.S. News & World Report‘s 2017 ‘100 Best Places to Live in the USA’ rankings are out, and Detroit ranks 89th. Not bad, right? Wrong. This doesn’t mean Detroit is the 89th best place to live in the whole United States, it means Detroit is one spot off the top 10 WORST places to live among the 100 most populous metro areas in the country… And here are the top 5 reasons US News is wrong about Detroit.
1. Detroit scored a 6.5 out of 10 in the US News Job Market category, but the Detroit region has gained more than 225,000 private sector jobs since 2010, and even the US News report acknowledges that salaries in Detroit are higher than the national average.
2. Detroit scored a 5.0 on Desirability and a 5.6 on Quality of Life, but it’s 25% cheaper to live in Detroit than elsewhere in the country, and you can get more for your dollar in Detroit than in any other U.S. city.
3. Detroit scored a 5.0 in the Crime category, but the US News statistics date back to 2014 — before the City became “America’s great comeback story.”
4. Using U.S. Census data, SmartAsset ranks Detroit the number-one city for U.S. home buyers, and Realtor.com lists Detroit as one of the 10 BEST cities for real estate investing.
5. In its brief writeup on ‘what there is to do’ in Detroit, US News included little about the culture of our country’s first UNESCO City of Design, reverting instead to the old cliché about the City’s reliance on sports; meanwhile, the likes of The New York Times, National Geographic and the London Free Press have each recently heralded Detroit for its “new energy” — and not because the Pistons are moving downtown.
Indeed, “small businesses are once again setting up shop in the area, and new restaurants are luring suburbanites back to Motown,” writes Nicole Jankowsi for US News. “Detroit currently sits on the edge of a renaissance.”
According to Travel+Leisure, we’ve already crossed over.
Still not convinced? |
Guest post by Jesse Thaler, an Associate Professor of Physics at MIT.
In November 2014, the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) released the first batch of research-grade data from the 2010 proton-proton collision run. This was an unprecedented move in the field of particle physics, since up until this point, access to data from hadron colliders was restricted to members of the experimental collaborations.
When I heard about the CMS Open Data project, I immediately downloaded the CERN Virtual Machine to see what kind of data had been made available. As a theoretical particle physicist, I can slam together particles and study their debris… on my chalkboard, or through pen-and-paper calculations, or using software simulations. For the first time, I had access to real collision data from a cutting-edge experiment, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate the scientific value of public data access.
It was not easy. In fact, it was one of the most challenging research projects in my career. But roughly three years later, my research group proudly published two journal articles using CMS open data in 2017, one in Physical Review Letters and one in Physical Review D. And from our experience, I can say confidently that the future of particle physics is open.
Putting Theory into Practice
In particle physics, there has long been a division between theorists like myself and experimentalists who work directly with collision data. There are good reasons for this divide, since the expertise needed to perform theoretical calculations is rather different from the expertise needed to build and operate particle detectors. That said, there is substantial overlap between theory and experiment in the area of data analysis, which requires an understanding of statistics, and data interpretation, which requires an understanding of the underlying physical principles at play.
One of the main reasons for restricting data access is that collider data are extremely complicated to interpret properly. As an example, the centre-of-mass collision energy of the LHC in 2010 was 7 TeV, and by conservation of energy, one should never find more than 7 TeV of total energy in the debris of a single collision event. In the CMS Open Data, however, we found an event with over 10 TeV of total energy. Was this dramatic evidence for a subtle violation of the laws of nature? Or just a detector glitch? Not surprisingly, this event did not pass the recommended data quality cuts from CMS, which demonstrates the importance of having a detailed knowledge of particle detectors before claiming evidence for new physics.
Because of these complications, progress in particle physics typically proceeds via a vigorous dialogue between the theoretical and experimental communities. An experimental advance can inspire a new theoretical method, which launches a new experimental measurement, which motivates a new theoretical calculation, and so on. While there are some theoretical physicists who have officially joined an experimental team, either in a short-term advisory role or as a long-term collaboration member, that is relatively rare. Thus, the best way for me to influence how LHC data are analysed is to write and publish a paper, and I’m proud that a number of my theoretical ideas have found applications at the LHC.
With the release of the CMS Open Data, though, I was presented with the opportunity to perform exploratory physics studies directly on data. My friend (and CMS Open Data consultant) Sal Rappoccio always reminds us of the apocryphal saying: “data makes you smarter”. This aphorism applies both to detector effects, where “smarter” means processing the data with improved precision and robustness, and to physics effects, where “smarter” means extracting new kinds of information from the collision debris. So while I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with the CMS Open Data when I first downloaded the CERN Virtual Machine, I knew that, no matter what, I was going to learn something.
Gathering a Team
The first thing I learned was somewhat demoralising, since, within the first few weeks, I realised that I did not have the coding proficiency nor the stamina to wrestle with the CMS Open Data by myself. While I regularly use particle physics simulation tools like Pythia and Delphes, the CMS software framework required a much higher level of sophistication and care than I was used to.
Luckily, an MIT postdoctoral fellow Wei Xue (now at CERN) had extensive experience using public data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope, and he started processing the 2 Terabytes of data in the Jet Primary Dataset (more about that later). Around the same time, an ambitious MIT second-year student Aashish Tripathee (now a graduate student at University of Michigan) joined the project with no prior experience in particle physics but ample enthusiasm and a solid background in programming.
So what were we actually going to do with the data? My first idea was to try out a somewhat obscure LHC analysis technique my collaborators and I had developed in 2013, since it had never been tested directly on LHC data. (It may eventually be incorporated into a hardware upgrade of the ALTAS detector, or it may remain in obscurity.) Wei was even able to make a plot (slide 29) for me to show in March 2015 as part of a long-range planning study for the next collider after the LHC. There is a big difference, though, between making a plot and really understanding the physics at play, and despite performing a precision calculation of this technique, it was not clear whether we could do a robust analysis.
In early 2015, though, I had the pleasure of collaborating with two MIT postdoctoral fellows, Andrew Larkoski (now at Reed College) and Simone Marzani (now at University of Genova), to develop a novel method to analyse jets at the LHC. While new, this method had a timeless quality to it, exhibiting remarkable theoretical robustness that we hoped would carry over into the experimental regime.
The Substructure of Jets
Jets are collimated sprays of particles that arise whenever quarks and gluon are produced in high-energy collisions of hadrons. Almost every collision at the LHC involves jets in some way, either as part of the signal of interest or as an important component of the background noise. In the 2010 CMS Open Data, the Jet Primary Dataset contains collision events exhibiting a wide range of different jet configurations, from the most ubiquitous case with back-to-back jet pairs, to the more exotic case with just a single jet (which might be a signal of dark matter), to the explosive case with a high multiplicity of energetic jets (which might arise from black-hole production).
While the formation of jets in high-energy collisions has been known since 1975 (and arguably even earlier than that), there has been remarkable progress in the past decade in understanding the substructure of jets. A typical jet is composed of around 10-30 individual particles, and the pattern of those particles encodes subtle information about whether the jet comes from a quark, or from a gluon, or from a more exotic object. Jet substructure continues to be an active area of development in collider physics, with many new advances made every year.
A fascinating feature of jets is that they exhibit fractal-like behaviour: as one zooms in on a jet and examines its substructure, one finds that the substructure itself has sub-substructure, which has sub-sub-substructure, and so on. This recursive self-similar behaviour is captured by the “QCD splitting functions”, which describes how a quark or gluon fragments into more quarks and gluons. (QCD refers to quantum chromodynamics, which is the theory that describes the interactions of quarks and gluons.) While the QCD splitting functions are well known and have been indirectly tested through a multitude of collider measurements, they had never before been tested directly.
In my 2015 research with Andrew and Simone, we found a way to unravel the recursive structure of a jet to expose the QCD splitting function. This method built upon a range of jet innovations over the years, including a jet (de)clustering method from the late 1990s, a jet grooming technique from 2008 that arguably launched the field of substructure, a refinement and recapitulation from 2013, and a powerful generalisation from 2014. The final method, while sophisticated in its implementation, is simple in its interpretation, since after decomposing a jet into it core substructure components, one can “see” the QCD splitting function… at least in theory.
Confronting the CMS Open Data
Could we expose the QCD splitting function using experimental data from the LHC? Wei and Aashish set out to parse the CMS Open Data while Andrew and Simone performed the corresponding theoretical calculations. Remarkably, just a few months later in August 2015, I was able to present very preliminary results from our analysis at the BOOST 2015 workshop in Chicago. Little did we know that it would take us another two years to actually get our analysis into a publishable form.
The CMS Open Data are released in the same format used by the majority of official CMS analyses. So, not surprisingly, we had to perform many of the same analysis steps used internally by CMS. Some of these steps were familiar to me from my theoretical investigations into jets, such as identifying jets using clustering algorithms, applying selection criteria to isolate the jets of interest, digging into an individual jet using a growing toolbox of substructure techniques, and making histograms of the results.
Most of our time, though, was spent trying to understand the myriad challenges faced in any experimental investigation into jets. While I had heard of most of these challenges by name, I had no first-hand experience dealing with them in practice. For example, since detector data can be noisy, we had to impose “jet quality criteria” to make sure we weren’t looking at phantom jets. Since detector data can be imperfect, we had to apply “jet energy correction factors” to account for missing information within the jets. We had to learn how to manage 2 TB of data, which is small enough to fit on a typical hard drive, but large enough that processing the complete dataset took two weeks on a single computer. (In retrospect, we probably should have leveraged MIT’s high-performance computing resources, but we decided to test the claim that “anyone with a laptop” should be able to analyse the CMS Open Data.)
By far the biggest challenge for us (and for most CMS jet analyses) was “triggering”. I mentioned above that the Jet Primary Dataset contains many different kinds of jet configurations, but I didn’t explain how exactly those configurations were chosen. The collision rate at the LHC is so high that there aren’t enough computing resources available to process all of the data that is collected, never mind the challenges of transmitting such large data from the detector to storage. Instead, CMS has a complex system of triggers that reject “uninteresting” events and select “interesting” events. The reason for the scare quotes is that triggers are indeed scary. There is a rather large menu of different possible event configurations that involve jets and other collider objects. If CMS made a mistake in deciding which events were “interesting”, then potentially valuable data could be lost forever. On the flip side, if CMS decided that too many events were “interesting”, then that could flood their computing systems with a deluge of useless information.
For our final analysis, we had to carefully sew together five different trigger selections, all of which changed over the course of the 2010 run. As an example, one of the triggers was named “HLT_Jet70U”. “HLT” stands for “High-Level Trigger”, which is the most sophisticated level of trigger selection. “Jet” means that there was just a single jet object used to define the trigger (even though most of the selected events contain two jets). One might think that “70” would mean that this trigger would select jets with an energy (strictly speaking, “transverse momentum”) above 70 GeV, but the “U” means “uncalibrated”, such that only when the jet energy was above 150 GeV was “HLT_Jet70U” guaranteed to work as expected. Through a long process of trial and error, we eventually figured out how to properly use the jet trigger information from CMS, which was essential for us to gain confidence in our results.
Ultimately, once we dealt with these experimental complications, we succeeded at exposing the QCD splitting function using the 2010 CMS Open Data. The results were perfectly in line with our theoretical expectations, providing a direct confirmation of the fractal structure of jets. Armed with this rich open dataset, we also performed a variety of additional substructure tests that were only possible because of the fantastic performance of the CMS detector. Coming full circle, Aashish presented our nearly-final analysis at the BOOST 2017 workshop in Buffalo: two years of effort summarised into a 20-minute talk.
Learning from the Community
While our two publications only list five authors (Aashish, Wei, Andrew, Simone and myself), our acknowledgements recognise around 40 experimentalists who generously offered their time, advice, and, in some cases, code. Without help from Sal Rappoccio, we would have struggled to figure out how to extract and apply the proper jet correction factors. Without help from the CMS Open Data team, including Kati Lassila-Perini and Achim Geiser, we would have never figured out how to determine the “integrated luminosity”, which tells you how much total data CMS had collected. Whenever I gave talks about our CMS Open Data effort, experimentalists in the audience would kindly point out some of our “rookie mistakes” (often made by starting experimental PhD students). We also benefitted from having a 2015 summer student Alexis Romero (now a graduate student at University of California, Irvine) test whether the CMS Open Data results agreed with those obtained from simulated LHC samples.
Most of the feedback we got from the experimental particle physics community was very positive. Though there was considerable initial scepticism that a team of five theoretical physicists could perform a publishable analysis based on open collider data, much of that scepticism dissipated once it became clear that our analysis was based largely on the same workflow used by CMS. Our analysis is by no means perfect, since there are places where we simply didn’t have the information (or the expertise) to address a known shortcoming. But I am proud that we applied a high degree of scrutiny to our own work, even though the final plots in our September 2017 publication are essentially the same as the ones I showed back in August 2015.
There were, however, a number of concerns raised by our work. Unlike analyses performed within CMS, our work did not have to go through the rigorous CMS internal review process. (Our papers were subject to peer review prior to publication, but that standard is not nearly as stringent as the one applied within CMS.) Unlike CMS members, we did not have to perform service work on the experiment to gain authorship status. (Some of my software tools have been incorporated into the CMS software framework, but that is a relatively small contribution to the overall CMS effort.) These issues are not specific to the CMS Open Data, though, and arise any time data are released into the public domain. Indeed, there is no guarantee that public data will be used correctly, and there is a risk that making the data public will make it less attractive for an experimentalist to join a collaboration.
In my view, though, the scientific benefits of making data public outweigh the scientific costs. With the CMS Open Data, there is a time lag of 4–5 years between when the data are collected and when it is made public. That time lag helps ensure that open data complements, rather than competes, with the needs of the CMS Collaboration. Moreover, open data are a stepping stone towards full archival access, such that even when the LHC is eventually decommissioned, the data will be preserved for future use. By making the data public, there is a chance to perform a back-to-the-future analysis like ours, where 2010 data, released in 2014, is analysed using a 2015 technique, for publication in 2017.
Interestingly, as we were pursuing our open data analysis, there was an official CMS analysis on a similar topic. Our analysis was based on proton-proton collisions from 2010, while the CMS analysis was based mostly on lead-lead collisions from 2015. Our analysis was an exploratory study of jet substructure, while the CMS analysis was far more ambitious, using jet substructure to probe the properties of a hot, dense state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma. One could cynically say that our analysis was stealing thunder from CMS, but I see these two studies as being synergistic, since we made different analysis choices that led to complementary physics insights. In this way, open data can enrich the dialogue between the theoretical and experimental particle physics communities.
Broadening the Open Data Effort
In addition to performing our own analyses, we are trying to make it easier for others to work with the CMS Open Data. For our jet substructure work, we found it beneficial to take the original CMS Open Data released in AOD format (“Analysis Object Data”) and distill it into a simpler MOD format (short for “modified”, backronymed to “MIT Open Data”). Because MOD files contain a strict subset of the AOD information, it helped us expedite the analysis workflow as well as avoid common pitfalls. Aashish developed two GitHub repositories to produce and analyse MOD files, and this code could be the basis for subsequent CMS Open Data studies. (That said, I do not recommend trying to use these tools in their present forms, since we are actively working to simplify them and make them more portable.)
In April 2016, the CMS Experiment released the second batch of open data from 2011 proton-proton collisions. This 2011 data set is far richer than the 2010 release, since it contains many more event categories as well as more information about detector performance. I have gathered a new team of theorists to work with the 2011 data, and I hope to report on that work sometime next year. Compared to our study with the 2010 open data, our upcoming analysis is simultaneously simpler (since it doesn’t directly involve jets) and more complex (since we are digging into more rarified collision properties). I don’t want to reveal the specific topic of our study, though, since short-term secrecy is sometimes needed to enable long-term openness (cf. the 4-5 year time lag for the CMS open data release).
Soon, the CMS Experiment will release the third batch of open data, this time from 2012, with hopefully enough information to reproduce the monumental discovery of the Higgs boson.
Beyond CMS Open Data, I am also looking for ways to use archival data from the ALEPH experiment. ALEPH was one of the four main experiments at the former Large Electron-Position (LEP) collider at CERN. LEP closed in 2000 such that the tunnel could be reused for the LHC. With the help of ALEPH collaboration member Marcello Maggi, we are taking ALEPH data from the 1990s and applying jet substructure techniques that weren’t even conceived of until 2008. While LEP data is very different from LHC data, I expect some of the lessons from our archival LEP studies to inform ongoing analyses at the LHC.
An Open Invitation
When I first started working with the CMS Open Data, people would often ask me why I didn’t just join CMS. After all, instead of trying to lead a small group of theorists with no experimental experience, I could have leveraged the power and insights of a few-thousand-person collaboration. This is true… if my only goal was to perform one specific jet substructure analysis.
But what about more exploratory studies where the theory hasn’t yet been invented? What about engaging undergraduate students who haven’t decided if they want to pursue theoretical or experimental work? What about examining old data for signs of new physics? What about citizen-scientists who might not have world experts on proton-proton and lead-lead collisions in the building next door? And what happens if I have a great new theoretical idea after the LHC has already shut down? These were the questions that motivated me to dig into the CMS Open Data, and I hope that they might motivate some of you to take a look as well. Our two publications are a proof of principle that open collider analyses are feasible and potentially impactful.
Ultimately, physics is an experimental science, and the aphorism that “data makes you smarter” holds at the most foundational level. It is true that theoretical insights have played a crucial role in solidifying the principles of fundamental physics. But almost everything we know for certain about the universe has originated from centuries of keen observations and detailed measurements. Without experimental data, physical principles would be mere speculations. With experimental data, we have an opportunity to expose the deepest structures of the universe… not just by scribbling on a chalkboard but by smashing together particles at ever-increasing energies.
When you decide to jump into the CMS Open Data yourself (and I hope you do), you will be confronted with this question: “I have installed the CERN Virtual Machine: now what?” However you answer this question, I am sure that you are going to learn something. And hopefully, you will teach the rest of us something, too. |
Winamp will be soon retired, unless Microsoft buys it, so users who are still running it right now will clearly have no other option than to switch to another media player.
There are countless options out there, but it could actually be really hard to choose an application that has what it takes to replace Winamp.
Truth is, Winamp has a pretty rich feature lineup, so whatever app you choose, it obviously needs to come with themes, plugins, support for the most audio and video formats on the market and plenty of customization options.
And still, this pretty much depends on the user, as some prefer to stick to a rather simple interface, while others go for a modern look that provides quick access to the main features of the media player.
As said, there are plenty of apps out there that could replace Winamp, but we’ve picked five of them to lend you a hand when the moment to abandon the famous media player finally comes. Of course, if you feel like another app should be added to this list, just drop us a line in the comment box after the jump and we’re going to update this article.
1. VLC Media Player
There is absolutely no doubt that VLC Media Player has what it takes to successfully replace Winamp. Mostly focused on video playing, but boasting superior performance for audio playback too, VLC has all the things a Windows user would hope to get from a freeware app.
VLC comes with themes, plugins, a plethora of customization options, and, what’s really important, reduced footprint on system performance.
VLC is available not only on Windows, but also on Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android, and will soon arrive on Windows 8.1 too. Of course, VLC is offered free of charge, so make sure you give it a try when you’re ready to abandon Winamp.
2. Apple iTunes
Apple’s very own iTunes is more than just a regular media player. iTunes has been designed to help users subscribe to podcasts, play music files, manage the local library, create playlists, and listen to radio stations with minimum effort.
At the same time, it also helps iPhone, iPad, and iPod users synchronize their local libraries with their gadgets, but such a feature doesn’t really count when looking for a Winamp replacement.
If there’s something that you might hate about iTunes, it’s the visual interface. iTunes is far from being an eye-candy app and Apple hasn’t implemented skin support, so you’re stuck with the standard look.
What’s more, iTunes could also slow down your computer a little bit, but it’s still worth a look.
3. foobar2000
foobar is a very lightweight and simple application that’s currently being used by millions of consumers across the world. Freeware and compatible with all Windows versions on the market, be they 32- or 64-bit, Foobar2000 supports the majority of audio formats, including MP3 and AAC.
At the same time, its functionality can be further extended with plugins. It also has customizable looks, keyboard shortcuts support, options to rip audio CDs and Gapless playback.
If there’s one thing that really needs to be praised about foobar is the way it handles system resources. This app is extremely system friendly and it doesn’t affect performance at all.
4. Clementine
Clementine is a cross-platform audio player that already has a gigantic user base and could successfully replace Winamp.
The application has quite an impressive feature lineup that includes a media library manager and options to create playlists, play audio CDs, and listen to Internet radio stations.
At the same time, it supports the majority of audio formats out there and includes a tag editor, an album cover art downloader, remote control support, tabbed playlists, and a powerful search tool to quickly find the song you’re looking for.
Of course, it’s offered free of charge and has everything you’ll ever need from a multimedia player, including (hold your breath) support for indexing and playing music from cloud storage services such as Dropbox and SkyDrive.
5. AIMP
AIMP is basically a Winamp clone that comes with almost the same features and offers a great audio quality on Windows computers.
Just like AOL’s soon-to-be-retired player, AIMP supports most audio formats out there, works with multiple playlists, packs an audio converter and a powerful tag editor, and boasts support for Internet radio stations.
AIMP is extremely light on system resources and works with basically every single version of Windows on the market, including the newly-released Windows 8.1.
Overall, if you want an app that looks and works just like Winamp, AIMP is the right choice. |
While not a true artificial intelligence, the Hannex/ASECOR 'Herakles' represented a substantial breakthrough in both spacecraft and autonomous control systems design. Introduced into the private security market late in the decade, the Herakles I gave independent and short-haul transport concerns an affordable security solution in the form of a fully palletized short range fighter.
Barely 8 meters in length, the Herakles could be operated from a hangar the size of a standard XSE shipping container and could be carried in external cargo stowage in a number of configurations. By using a control core of picoformed nickel/palladium, the maintenance and survivability problem of organic material was avoided, and shielding mass could be reduced correspondingly. External command input could be minimal for most applications, but lack of sapiency certification prevented legal use within Treaty Sphere space. This was of minimal concern for most operators, as the primary market was operators in the outer system needing cheap and effective escort for cargo ships.
Operating a range of modular beam and missile weapons, the Herakles could be configured to deal with threats from zombie swarms to borgsats. While not a match for the more organized pirate concerns, the system proved effective enough to discourage even these attacks. Later marks introduced switch-on-the-fly weapon pods in addition to the refueling facilities fitted in the hangar module.
Here we see a late Mark I upgraded to Mark II standard. The auxiliary radiators fitted to the heat exchangers are a distinct element of the subtype. It's been deployed to sweep for mines in the Jupiter Trojans preceding survey work. |
« Is Whale Oil a journalist (2)? | Main | Some questions for the PM »
By Steven | September 14, 2014
Yes. Yes, he is. The High Court says so, as Whale Oil points out triumphantly. Like the good journalist he is, he even shows us the evidence: para 145 of Justice Asher’s judgment.
Mr Slater then goes on to demonstrate his journalistic chops by entirely failing to report the rest of the judgment. That includes the part where the judge says the material in his posts was “extreme and vindictive” and bore “the hallmarks of a private feud”, was not of any public interest , and was probably unlawfully obtained.
He also omits the judge’s conclusion that he therefore has to turn over his sources, which was in fact the whole point of the application.
Topics: Confidential sources | No Comments »
Comments are closed. |
Mayor of the 8th borough of Paris warned that France's proposed marriage equality bill would lead to taboos like incest and paedophilia being legalised. His words were sharply criticized
The mayor of Paris’s 8th borough (arrondissement), François Lebel, stated, in his official municipal publication, that France’s upcoming legalization of same-sex marriage could open the door to polygamy, incest and paedophilia.
Quoted in the French daily Libération, Lebel wrote: ‘If the immemorial taboo of heterosexual marriage will be blown away, who and what will now oppose that other taboos, much less ancient, much less universal, will fall in turn?’, asked Lebel, who states that he is ‘personally opposed to a marriage of this nature’.
‘For example: how could we oppose polygamy in France tomorrow, which is taboo in Western civilization? Why should a legal age for marriage be maintained? Why continue to prohibit consanguineous marriage, paedophilia, incest that are practices still commonplace worldwide?
‘The door is now open to a lethal spectacle of the age of legal marriage with everyone doing anything with anyone and anything!’, he concluded.
François Lebel, a member of the opposition right wing party UMP, who was not available for comments, was clear that he had written his critique of marriage equality before a similar condemnation from France’s Catholic Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.
Former prime Minister of France, François Fillon, of the UMP, refused to condemn Lebel’s statements: ‘I think that the president of the republic and the prime minister would do well to think twice before opening this debate [on gay marriage] now.
‘Because I think that in our current political, social and economic climate that is o, we will attend the proliferation of these kinds of arguments (…) on both sides.
We will see deeply divided and offended French [people].
We will see the return of homophobia’, warned François Fillon who is also a candidate to the presidency of the UMP party.
Others politicians strongly condemned Lebel’s statements.
The leader of the Left Front in the council of Paris, Ian Brossat, slammed Mr. Lebel words as ‘monstrous’ saying that: ‘they are clearly homophobic. It is distressing that a borough mayor transforms a municipal newsletter in tabloid of the far right at the expense of the taxpayer’.
Christophe Girard mayor of the 9th borough of Paris, of the ruling socialist party, tweeted that Lebel’s statement was ‘pathetic and insulting to millions of men and women who love like everyone else’.
Mayor of the 1st district Jean-François Legaret and leader of the UMP in the council of Paris council also disapproved of Lebel’s statements: ‘these are words that I obviously do not share and do not seem likely to advance thinking on the law’.
French Association of LGBT families (ADFH) denounced Lebel’s statement: ‘It is by constant undermining of the identity and family life that some people like François Lebel help fuel homophobia’. |
A former Secret Service agent who guarded the door of the Oval Office during the presidency of Bill Clinton is to publish a book in which he will claim Hillary Clinton "lacks the integrity and temperament" to serve as president.
Gary Byrne described Mrs Clinton as "volcanic, impulsive, and enabled by sycophants".
In extracts from his book, Crisis of Character, he claimed to have "personally observed President Bill Clinton's infidelities".
On one occasion in 1995 he heard Mrs Clinton's "booming voice" from the White House living quarters as the first couple argued, he claimed.
Later, a glass vase was found smashed on the floor and President Clinton had a "put a steak on it" black eye the next day, he wrote.
Mr Byrne said when he asked about the "shiner" he was told by President Clinton's press secretary that it was the result of an allergy to coffee. |
Following the 8% royal pay-rise announced last month, BBC Reality Check claimed to have checked the facts on the cost of the monarchy in their video Reality Check: What does the Queen cost us?
Surprisingly, their fact checking simply repeated the Palace spin and gets a lot of the facts wrong.
Here's the BBC's original video:
What the BBC said:
The monarchy costs each of us 65p
The Sovereign Grant is funded by the Crown Estate
The Crown Estate is owned by the Queen
Republic wrote to the BBC to point out the mistakes and provide the facts.
Here's Republic's reality check on the BBC's 'reality check':
65p takes the 'official' cost of the monarchy and divides it by the entire population. It ignores the true £345 million cost of the monarchy and pretends that all 64 million of us (i.e. every student, child, pensioner) is paying tax, which simply isn't true.
The Sovereign grant is funded by the government (i.e. the taxpayer) and is paid directly by the Treasury. This money is arbitrarily set at 25% of Crown Estate profits, but even if Crown Estate profits were £0.00, the government would continue to cough up £82.2 million each year.
The Crown Estate is owned by the Crown, and is entirely the property of the state / nation. As the Crown Estate itself puts it, “The property we manage is owned by the Crown but is not the private property of the monarch.” It is no more the Queen's property than Number 10 belongs to the PM.
Republic win! The BBC updates their video:
After talking with the BBC News Reality Check production team, and highlighting the true nature of public funding of the monarchy, the BBC updated its video to reflect the facts.
"Update 14 July 2017: More detail has been added about the sources of the Queen's income."
Who owns the Crown Estate? The Crown does (that means us!):
Does the Queen hand over Crown Estate profits to government, and 'get some back'?
No, Crown Estate profits go directly to the treasury, and government chooses to hand over a percentage to the monarchy.
More of the facts published:
The BBC also updated the video to include some more of the facts about royal funding.
In addition to the Sovereign Grant, taxpayers also pay for other costs like security and royal visits.
Republic estimates the true cost of the monarchy to taxpayers is around £345 million per year.
The updated video also noted that the royals' official funding has risen 145% since 2012:
There's work to do. The 65p spin is still being spun.
The BBC's new video corrects the facts about the Crown Estate and Sovereign Grant, but keeps spinning the 65p per person Palace spin.
Republic's Royal Expenses campaign has already had a huge impact by making the BBC report the true facts.
You can help take this work one step further. Use the links below to write to the BBC to voice your concern about the nature of their reporting on royal funding.
This is a great example of the Royal Expenses campaign in action - setting the facts straight - and challenging the Palace spin. Donate to the campaign to keep up this work.
Here's what you can do to put an end to the 65p myth: |
Emily Lakdawalla • September 18, 2015
Since I last checked in with Curiosity, the rover has been steadily driving southward, heading fairly directly toward the Bagnold dune field. When Curiosity left Marias Pass on sol 1072, they had one piece of unfinished business: drilling into the aeolian sandstone of the Stimson unit that tops the lake-laid mudstone of the Murray formation. Since Stimson sandstone forms exposed bedrock everywhere that Curiosity planned to drive over the next several hundred meters, they figured it wouldn't be very hard to find a good spot to drill. But as they have driven along, they've driven into puzzles, making it harder than anticipated to select the right spot where drilling can answer their questions.
So the story this month has mostly been one of driving. Now on top of the Stimson unit, Curiosity's path is taking her across a rhythmic set of ridges, each roughly a meter high and spaced 20-30 meters apart, that earned this terrain the nickname "washboard unit" when seen from orbit. Here is a 3D look at the recent traverse map, which makes that topography very clear.
A wide view of Curiosity's traverse on a 3D base map. Not every drive sol is shown -- just enough to pick out the route. At full resolution it is 1 meter per pixel. North is about 6.5 degrees to the left of up. The red line on the map is the "safe transit route" announced by JPL around sol 668, designed to preserve rover wheels by crossing benign terrain. More formats: Left stereo | Right stereo | Flicker gif
This unit makes for challenging driving for a number of reasons. Have a look at the view forward on sol 1083:
I have personally been apprehensive about this stage of Curiosity's mission ever since writing my long explainer on Curiosity's wheel damage more than a year ago. The terrain that Curiosity is driving on now was identified from orbital missions as being of the potentially wheel-shredding variety. So I have been examining wheel images very closely and I'm pleased to report that, at least to my eye, there is no acceleration in wheel damage now that Curiosity is driving on a rock-capped plateau.
Curiosity performed a complete five-position survey of all wheels on sol 1046 with the MAHLI camera on the end of the arm. The damage to the wheels has changed only slightly since sol 708.
Comparing wheel images taken on sols 708, 962, and 1046, there are only slight changes, and I see no grousers (treads) in trouble. This composite looks at Curiosity's most-damaged wheel, the left-middle one.
That being said, there has been no full-wheel imaging set in the last 450 meters, which includes most of the Stimson driving, so I'll still be examining the next full set of wheel images closely. (They usually perform a full set of wheel images once every 500 meters.)
Another reason the driving is difficult is because the rhythmic ridges that make up the "washboard" limit the rover planners' forward view of the terrain to a few tens of meters. Even if it weren't for the limited viewsheds, in this potentially wheel-shredding terrain, they want to be able to see and steer around every rock. So each drive day has been taking them only 10 to 40 meters or so southward. Still, progress is progress, and they're making it, drive sol by drive sol.
As they work southward, they're looking for a good drill site. But, project scientist Ashwin Vasavada told me, they've been distracted by a new feature type that they haven't seen before. Whereas the Murray formation mudstone had very thin, very distinct fractures filled with bright calcium sulfate veins, the Stimson unit has something different. Here's a reminder of what the Murray formation veins look like:
Curiosity took the photos for this panorama on sol 950 (April 9, 2015). Curiosity had recently departed the vein-rich area called Garden City and took several panoramic views of veiny outcrops lining "Artists' Drive," the path to the west of Garden City and Pahrump Hills.
The Stimson unit also has fractures, but they are spaced much wider apart. They also don't seem to have those distinct calcium sulfate fills. The weirdest thing about them is that they are surrounded by bright haloes that spread into the Stimson rock itself, and they mark zones where the Stimson unit erodes more easily than elsewhere. Here are a few snapshots of these haloes along Curiosity's recent trek:
As Curiosity drove across the Stimson unit, the rover repeatedly encountered fractures in the rock that were surrounded by bright haloes of unknown cause. The photos were taken on sol 1083 (top left), 1087 (top right), 1093 (lower left), and 1094) lower right) by the Navcam.
What are these haloes? Is it a deposit of mineral material in the pores of the Stimson unit? Is it a place where the Stimson has been bleached? Has something been leached away? Or is it just a zone where one mineral has been altered into another? So far, Ashwin says, there are a lot more questions than there are answers.
So they are looking for a good place to drill, but one of their challenges is that they want to find a location where the stratigraphic relationship between the underlying Murray formation and the overlying Stimson unit is clear. That way, they'll know where in the Stimson unit they're drilling. It's not been easy to find such a location that is also good for drilling. As of sol 1106 they had a decent view of the contact, and were trying to identify a good place to drill along the path south. So my next report in a few weeks will hopefully concern drilling into the Stimson. Perhaps they'll even find a location where they can drill into one of those haloes.
I thought this would be a good time to zoom out and take stock of Curiosity's traverse to date. I made a new overview map, showing the entire route. I've called out the drill locations in white dots and bold text. You can see how the amount of drilling activity has dramatically increased since their announced arrival at the base of Mount Sharp around sol 740.
Once they have drilled the Stimson, the next stop is the dunefield, Ashwin told me. This is rather exciting because the very first dune that Curiosity will encounter is one that has actually been observed to move over time. Here is a comparison of two images taken by HiRISE in 2008 and 2014. The ripples on top of the dune are moving from north to south, and the dune itself is also moving southward, more slowly. This will be the first time that a Mars rover has visited a dune that is known to be active. (I'll let Lori Fenton explain the difference between dunes and ripples to you.)
This animation consists of two HiRISE images of a single barchan dune within the dune field that lies north of Mount Sharp within Gale crater. One was taken on August 22, 2008, the other on April 16, 2014. In the time separating the two images, ripples have moved southward up the sloping back of the dune, and the entire dune has shifted southward very slightly. Some of the apparent changes in the image are due to the slightly different angles from which HiRISE looked at the scene.
After encountering this dune, Curiosity will skirt the dune field on a westward path, driving up and over another segment of washboard-like Stimson unit. Then the rover will drop down again, finally beginning to cross the dune field from north to south across a relatively sand-free area between the Murray buttes and the dunes. The dunes and the buttes are going to make for some dramatic views ahead.
To whet your appetite, here is another 3D HiRISE image that covers the area of the dune field that Curiosity has to cross. It's an area where the sand is thin, exposing bedrock; hopefully the traverse will not be too hard.
A wide view of Curiosity's future traverse. At full resolution it is 1 meter per pixel. North is about 7 degrees to the left of up. Murray Buttes are at the left of the image, and the dark swath is the Bagnold dune field. Curiosity's route is based on mapping by Phil Stooke. More formats: Left stereo | Right stereo | Flicker gif
And finally, here's a Mastcam view of the path ahead. It's quite a lovely place to be.
Curiosity took the images for this panoramic view of Mount Sharp on sol 1100 (September 10, 2015). Ahead to the right are the ripple-topped basaltic sand dunes of the Bagnold dune field. Curiosity's path will take it to the right side of those dunes, then across a gap in the dune field below the Murray buttes (not visible here) before it begins to rise higher onto the mountain.
As usual, here are the detailed updates from the USGS Astrogeology Blog covering this period.
Sols 1075-1077 update by Ryan Anderson: Time for SAM! (14 August 2015)
We had another successful drive on sol 1074, putting us in a good position for the weekend! The main activity for the weekend is using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to analyze some of the recent drill sample that we collected. SAM activities will take up all of sol 1075. On sol 1076, we will use MAHLI to check on the health of our wheels, and SAM will do its Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) measurement on the sample.
On sol 1077 we have lots of ChemCam and Mastcam activities. Mastcam has a 20x2 mosaic of an area called “Fournier”, followed by ChemCam observations of the targets “Butler”, “Evaro”, “Coldwater”, and “Alberton” and associated Mastcam documentation images. Navcam also has an atmosphere monitoring observation of the horizon to the north.
Later in the afternoon on sol 1077, ChemCam has a calibration observation and Mastcam has another observation of “Alberton” to try to see textures highlighted by the lower sun angle. Navcam also has a couple more observations, watching for clouds and dust devils.
Sols 1078-1079 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Back to restricted planning (17 August 2015)
I had an easy planning day as MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, because another drive is planned for Sol 1078 with only the usual post-drive MAHLI (stowed) and MARDI (twilight) imaging. Planning is restricted again (Mars and Earth time are out of sync), so we are planning two sols. Before driving away from the current location, ChemCam and Mastcam will observe rock targets dubbed "Huson" and "Ignatius" and Mastcam will image another rock called "Hodown." After the drive, an overnight CheMin integration on the drill sample is planned, followed by atmospheric observations early on the morning of Sol 1079. More Navcam atmospheric observations are planned later that sol, along with some ChemCam calibration activities. I'm glad that we are making good progress toward Mt. Sharp!
Sols 1080-1081 update from Ryan Anderson: Official New Selfie! (19 August 2015)
We had another successful drive on 1079, going about 29 meters this time. The plan for sols 1080-1081 is pretty similar to the previous plan: remote sensing and a drive on the first day, and untargeted science on the second day. On sol 1080, ChemCam has observations of the targets “Red Lodge”, “Mowry”, and “Rosebud”, with accompanying Mastcam images. Mastcam will also take a 19-frame stereo mosaic of a cliff dubbed “Judith River”. After the drive, we have our standard post-drive imaging, plus an active measurement with DAN.
On sol 1081, since we won’t have the data down yet to do targeted observations, we have a bunch of atmospheric monitoring with REMS, Navcam, Mastcam, and ChemCam. We’re also planning a 360 degree Mastcam mosaic to take in our new surroundings and MARDI will take a picture of the ground under the rover.
Meanwhile, here on Earth, NASA has released the "official" versions of the low-angle selfies taken by MAHLI while we were drilling at "Buckskin". I don't know about you, but I have a new wallpaper image!
Sols 1082-1084 Update from Ken Herkenhoff: Nice view (21 August 2015)
I'm having another very busy day as SOWG Chair, as we are planning lots of activities to keep the rover busy this weekend. The vehicle is on a local high spot that gives us a spectacular view of the terrain ahead. But there aren't many targets in front of the rover that are suitable for contact science, so we selected only one (called "Ravalli") to investigate using MAHLI and APXS. We had time for another contact science target, but decided that it would not be worthwhile to study the smaller rocks that are within arm's reach.
On Sol 1082, ChemCam and Mastcam will observe Ravalli and a brighter rock dubbed "Sawtooth" before Mastcam acquires a 23x6 mosaic of the nice outcrops ahead. Mastcam and Navcam will look up at the sky at about the same time that the Mars Odyssey orbiter will be passing over, to compare results of observations from above and the surface. Then the arm will be deployed for contact science and the APXS placed on Ravalli for overnight integration.
ChemCam and Mastcam will observe a couple more bright blocks on Sol 1083, named "Stonewall" and "Wolsey," before the rover drives toward the south. We'll then acquire the usual post-drive images and DAN active data. On the last sol (1084), ChemCam will take some calibration data and SAM will clean its scrubber in preparation for future measurement.
Sols 1085-1086 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Rough road ahead (24 August 2015)
MSL had a good weekend, and returned lots of data including nice MAHLI images of Ravalli. The nearly 22-meter Sol 1083 drive completed as planned, and placed the rover near some nice rock outcrops. I helped the planning team select targets for ChemCam observations; we settled on two that were named "Tinder Box" and "Gordon." Mastcam will acquire mosaics of these targets as well as "Centennial Range" and "Willow Ridge." There isn't time/power for much more science, as another drive is planned for Sol 1085 and an overnight SAM atmospheric observation. ChemCam, Mastcam and Navcam will make more atmospheric observations late in the morning of Sol 1086, along with the usual REMS background measurements. The path ahead is rough but looks very interesting!
Sols 1087-1088 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Bright features (26 August 2015)
The complex, nearly 39-meter Sol 1085 drive completed successfully, leaving the rover in another target-rich area. Again, I helped pick targets for ChemCam observations--our favorites were on the brighter parts of the outcrop just south of the rover. The targets for ChemCam and Mastcam observations were named "Fitzpatrick," "Keith," and "Fred and George Creek." Mastcam will also acquire 2 mosaics before the rover drives away on Sol 1087. Planning is still restricted, so we also planned Sol 1088, which starts with early-morning Mastcam and Navcam images of the sun and sky. Similar observations are planned around noon that sol, to measure daily variations in atmospheric dust and clouds. Finally, CheMin's inlet funnel will be vibrated in an attempt to remove a particle from the screen over the funnel.
Sols 1089-1090 update by Lauren Edgar: Stimson is Stunning (28 August 2015)
Curiosity is currently making her way through some beautiful exposures of the Stimson unit. The 6 m drive on Sol 1087 went well, and Curiosity is in a good position for possible contact science early next week.
Today we’re planning 2-sols for the weekend (Sunday is a “soliday” to allow Earth and Mars schedules to sync back up). One of the main activities on Sol 1089 is dropping off part of the Buckskin drill sample to SAM. Then we’ll dump the Buckskin post-sieve sample, and analyze it with APXS. The plan also includes Mastcam and MAHLI imaging to document the dump pile. Sol 1090 consists of several ChemCam observations of the targets “Fox Hills,” “OBriens Creek,” and “Bearpaw” to investigate the bedrock and local alteration features. We’ll also acquire a large Mastcam mosaic to document the stratigraphy, and a Navcam deck pan for dust monitoring. This region has some particularly stunning views, so I’m looking forward to seeing the new mosaics!
Sol 1091 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Lots of MAHLI targets (31 August 2015)
Planning is no longer restricted, but we had to start at 6:00 PDT this morning to give the operations team enough time to uplink commands by the time the rover expects them. Driving to work before sunrise reminded me of the sometimes odd times we had to wake up during the first 90 sols of the mission, when the entire operations team was on "Mars time."
The team is very interested in the outcrop in front of the rover, so I had a very busy day as MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, even though we are planning just one sol. We planned in advance for MAHLI nighttime imaging of CheMin's inlet and MAHLI's calibration target (using white and UV LEDs), so those activities were ready to go this morning. But we had to prioritize and plan the details of observations of other contact science targets. Because the Sol 1089 MAHLI images and APXS placement were not perfectly centered on the Buckskin dump pile, our top priority is to repeat those observations with updated positioning. We planned MAHLI images of a target dubbed "Devon," which will also be measured by APXS. Many of the targets of interest are difficult to reach with the arm, so the rover planners requested relatively low-resolution MAHLI images of them to support planning of more contact science on Sol 1092. These targets were named "Pentagon," "Lebo," "Ivanhoe," and "Ledger," with Ledger being imaged in stereo by Mastcam because it is a candidate for brushing with the DRT. Finally, the APXS will be placed on the dump pile for overnight integration.
We had to put more thought than usual into prioritizing various data for downlink, as we expect only 38 Mbits of data before Sol 1092 planning begins tomorrow morning. This situation forced us to compress some of the MAHLI images more than usual, and to create new command sequences. But if all goes well, we will receive enough data tomorrow morning to plan contact science on multiple targets.
Sol 1092 update by Lauren Edgar: Stimson Contact Science (1 September 2015)
Curiosity is currently investigating an outcrop of the Stimson unit. On Sol 1091, Curiosity acquired some low-resolution MAHLI images of the targets “Pentagon,” “Lebo,” “Ivanhoe,” and “Ledger” in order to plan more detailed imaging of those targets today.
The Sol 1092 plan includes targeted remote sensing followed by more contact science. In the midday science block, we’ll acquire ChemCam and Mastcam on the targets “Rabbit Hills” and “Horseshoe Hills” to investigate some of the alteration features seen here. We’ll also acquire some large Mastcam mosaics of the “Williams” area to investigate the sedimentary structures. The plan also includes a ChemCam RMI autofocus test, and a Navcam movie to monitor the atmosphere. In the afternoon, we’ll acquire closer MAHLI imaging on “Lebo,” “Ivanhoe,” and “Ledger,” using the information we gained from the Sol 1091 MAHLI finder frames. Since "Ledger” is a nice flat ledge, it’s also a good target for the DRT, so we can brush away the dust to expose a fresh surface. Then we’ll place the APXS on “Ledger” for an overnight integration. We’re in really early slide sols this week (meaning planning starts at 6am), but that hasn’t stopped the team from putting together some very full plans!
Sol 1093 update by Lauren Edgar: Leaving the Williams area (2 September 2015)
After successful contact science on the Stimson unit in the Williams area, it’s time to get back on the road. In today’s plan we’ll finish up a few activities at the Williams area, and then continue on our drive towards Bridger Basin and eventually the Bagnold Dunes.
Today’s plan consists of ChemCam and Mastcam observations on the targets “Interlake,” “Ledger,” and “Mackay Dome.” Then we’ll image the “Ledger” target using all of the Mastcam camera filters, and take another Mastcam clast survey image to look for any changes in the time that we’ve been here. We’ll also use Mastcam to look at the sun to measure the atmospheric opacity. Then we’ll take a short drive and acquire post-drive imaging to help with targeting in tomorrow’s plan. It’s exciting to be driving again, and I’m sure we’ll encounter some beautiful views as we continue to drive through this interesting terrain.
Sol 1094 update by Lauren Edgar: Turning in to Bridger Basin (3 September 2015)
The drive on Sol 1093 went well, and Curiosity drove ~15 m towards Bridger Basin. In the Sol 1094 plan, we’ll drive for ~30 m to round the turn into the basin, as we continue making our way through the Stimson unit. These rocks exhibit a lot of beautiful cross-bedding, as seen in the Sol 1093 Navcams.
Today’s plan consists of ChemCam and Mastcam observations on the targets “Whitewater” and “Whitefish,” two targets that are within a bright, bleached area near a fracture. After a short drive, we’ll take standard post-drive imaging to help with targeting in tomorrow’s plan. The plan also includes a ChemCam RMI autofocus test to assess temperature effects. Looking ahead, tomorrow will be a busy 4-sol plan to prepare for the long weekend!
Sols 1095-1098 update by Lauren Edgar: Laboring away in the Stimson… (4 September 2015)
As many of us in the U.S. take a break over Labor Day weekend, Curiosity will be keeping busy by using every instrument in her science payload! Curiosity is currently making her way towards Bridger Basin and studying the Stimson unit along the way.
The weekend 4-sol plan is packed with exciting science. On Sol 1095, we’ll acquire ChemCam and Mastcam on the targets “Bullwacker,” “Damnation,” and "Bootlegger,” to assess the chemistry of some of the bright bands along fractures and unaltered bedrock. We’ll also take some Mastcam mosaics to investigate the local geology. In the evening, SAM will run a diagnostic test, and CheMin will dump the Buckskin sample and analyze an empty cell to prepare for analysis of a future drill sample. On Sol 1096, Curiosity will take it easy, and the science activities mostly just involve standard RAD and REMS observations. Things pick up again on Sol 1097, with another science block full of ChemCam and Mastcam on “Hell_Creek,” and “Sober_Up_Creek” (yes, these are real names of features near Arlee, Montana!) and additional Mastcam mosaics to investigate the stratigraphy and sedimentary structures. Then we’ll use MAHLI to check out the REMS UV sensor, followed by MAHLI on the target “Conniption,” as well as several DAN Passive observations. Overnight, Curiosity will acquire APXS on “Conniption.” On Sol 1098, Curiosity will drive for ~35 m, followed by post-drive imaging to prepare for targeting next week, and an evening MARDI image to assess the ground beneath the rover. Finally, on the morning of Sol 1099, Curiosity will take several Mastcam and Navcam observations to monitor the atmosphere. Phew!
Sol 1099 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Driving again (8 September 2015)
MSL did well over the long weekend, except that the Sol 1098 drive was halted after 13 meters of the planned 25 meters because the rover could not confirm that the path ahead was safe. So the plan for the Sol 1099 drive is essentially to complete the rest of the previously planned drive. The only significant problem I've had to grapple with today as SOWG Chair is that the last 5 relays of data through MRO have returned significantly less data than expected; if this problem continues, we will barely receive enough data to plan another drive on Sol 1100. Fortunately, the MRO team understands the problem and knows how to correct it, and there is a good chance that we will receive all the data we need in time for planning tomorrow morning. This situation reminds me of how much we depend on the Mars orbiters and the teams that operate them, and to thank them for their continued support of the MSL mission.
Before the Sol 1099 drive, we have time to acquire ChemCam and Mastcam observations of "Mission Creek" and "Chamberlain," plus MastCam mosaics of "Bridger Basin," "Hackley Point," and "Police Creek." The rover will wake up early on the morning of Sol 1100 to acquire a big stereo mosaic of the far wall of Bridger Basin, because the illumination will be better early in the morning. Mastcam will also take a 360-degree panorama with the left camera.
Sol 1100 update from Ken Herkenhoff: Swan, Sunburst, Studhorse, Sweetgrass Arch, and Silver Hill (9 September 2015)
The rover drove 34.5 meters on Sol 1099, as planned, to a good location for the imaging of the northwest wall of Bridger Basin. The Mastcam team verified that the pointing of the mosaic of that wall, planned to occur early on Sol 1100, is excellent. So the Sol 1100 plan includes another drive, to the southwest edge of the small plateau the rover is on. Before the drive, ChemCam and Mastcam will observe nearby layered rocks dubbed "Swan" and "Sunburst," and Right Mastcam mosaics will be taken of targets named "Studhorse," "Sweetgrass Arch" and "Silver Hill." After the drive, in addition to the standard post-driving activities, we're planning a Right Mastcam mosaic of "Beartooth Butte" and a SAM diagnostic activity in preparation for the next solid sample analysis. Fitting all of the desired observations into the plan was challenging, otherwise I've had an easy day as SOWG Chair.
The MRO operations team identified the cause of the communications relay problem we had over the holiday weekend, and sent commands to the spacecraft to correct it. We're happy that we are again receiving lots of good data via MRO!
Sol 1101 update from Ken Herkenhoff: Driving into the Saddle (10 September 2015)
The 34-meter drive planned for Sol 1100 placed the rover at the edge of the small plateau, as intended, with a good view of a bright Murray Formation outcrop. The center of the Murray outcrop is the target of the drive planned for Sol 1101, which will hopefully put the vehicle in position for contact science over the weekend. Before the drive, ChemCam RMI and Mastcam observations of targets named "Brady" and "Bradley" are planned, both of which are on the far wall of Bridger Basin. Mastcam will also observe a shallow trough in the soil next to the rover ("Blackleaf Creek") and acquire a mosaic of the Murray exposure, which has been named "Saddle."
Although MRO is now relaying data as expected, it will pass low in the sky over MSL after the Sol 1101 drive, so we aren't expecting to receive as much data as usual. The biggest challenge for me as SOWG Chair today was therefore planning and prioritizing the data we need for planning tomorrow. We're hoping that we get at least as much data as expected.
Sols 1102-1104 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Arm error recovery (11 September 2015)
The Sol 1101 activities that we planned yesterday did not complete due to an arm error while it was being stowed. Apparently the shoulder azimuth motor was too cold, so the rover software halted the stow, which precluded the drive that was to follow. The rover is therefore in the same position that it was yesterday.
I'm not scheduled in any operational role today, but I called in to help plan MAHLI imaging of the ChemCam optical window, to monitor dust accumulation. The operations team had to scramble to recover from the arm error and plan science observations, but was able to put together an excellent weekend plan. On Sol 1102, MAHLI will take the standard images of the rover wheels, then acquire a full suite of images of a rock dubbed "Badlands." APXS will then be placed on the rock for an overnight integration. Arm work will continue on Sol 1103, with MAHLI images of the ChemCam window. Then ChemCam and Mastcam will observe targets named "Madison" and "Jefferson." On Sol 1104, the RMI and Mastcam will take images of a bright ridge on the flank of Mt. Sharp, then ChemCam and Mastcam will observe "Lincoln." Mastcam will also acquire another mosaic of the wall of Bridger Basin, then the rover will drive to the bright Murray outcrop "Saddle" as planned yesterday. Fortunately, the Sol 1104 orbiter overflight geometry is better than it was yesterday, so we expect to receive all the data needed for planning on Monday. Finally, early on Sol 1105, Mastcam and Navcam will observe the sun and sky soon after the Mars Odyssey orbiter flies over, so that orbiter observations can be compared with nearly simultaneous observations from the surface. Overall, not a bad plan, considering that the operations team had to quickly respond to the arm error!
Sol 1105 update by Lauren Edgar: Murray Formation Contact Science (14 September 2015)
Over the weekend, Curiosity had a successful ~ 21 m drive, and we’re currently parked in front of a beautiful outcrop of the Murray formation (shown in the bottom half of the above Navcam image, overlain by Stimson). We’ve mostly been driving through the Stimson unit for the past 280 m, so this is a great opportunity to do contact science on the Murray formation to look for any changes in composition or grain size.
I was the Geology Theme Lead today, and our plan consists of 1.5 hours of targeted remote science, followed by contact science. We planned several ChemCam and Mastcam observations on the targets “Winnipeg,” “Alma,” and “Blackjack.” “Winnipeg” is a target in the Murray formation that we’ll also assess with MAHLI and APXS. “Alma” is aimed at characterizing the composition across the Murray-Stimson contact, and “Blackjack” is a resistant ledge within the Murray formation. We’ll also acquire a couple of Mastcam mosaics to document the Murray-Stimson contact and characterize the local structure and stratification, and a Mastcam tau to assess atmospheric opacity. In the afternoon we’ll acquire several MAHLI images of the “Sacajawea” target to investigate a resistant ledge. Then we’ll use the DRT to brush off the dust on “Winnipeg” and take some really close MAHLI images to look for grain size variations. Overnight, we’ll use APXS to investigate the composition of the “Winnipeg” target.
Sol 1106 update by Lauren Edgar: Searching for the Next Drilling Location (15 September 2015)
After some additional contact science on the Murray formation (of the location shown in the above Mastcam image), we’re now in search of a good sandstone for our next drill target.
The goal of today’s plan is to drive towards a bright patch of blocky outcrop that was first identified in orbital images, and to see if this outcrop is an area that we might want to investigate further. Today’s plan includes an hour of targeted science, followed by a short drive towards the bright outcrop, and post-drive imaging for targeting.
In the morning science block, we’ll acquire ChemCam and Mastcam observations of the targets “Prichard” and “Cat Creek” to look for changes in composition through the Murray formation. We also planned a Mastcam mosaic of the “Vaughn” area to document the Murray-Stimson contact. Then we’ll acquire a Mastcam mosaic of the “Rice” area to investigate the bright patch from our current location. After a short ~12 m drive, we’ll acquire standard post-drive imaging, as well as another large Mastcam mosaic of the “Rice” area. As the Geology Theme Lead today, I had to balance downlink priorities to make sure that we’ll get all of the necessary imaging down in time to make a decision tomorrow (is this a good place to investigate further? Or should we keep driving?). Can’t wait to see what the new images will reveal!
Sol 1108 update by Ken Herkenhoff: Limited data for planning (17 September 2015)
The 16.6-meter drive planned for Sol 1107 completed as planned, placing the rover in front of the bright outcrop of interest. As expected, only a few post-drive images were received in time for Sol 1108 planning, which made it more difficult than usual to pick targets for remote sensing observations and driving. However, we found some bright blocks that the Rover Planners confirmed would be good targets for contact science, and plan is to approach and study them this weekend. But first ChemCam and Mastcam will observe nearby rock and soil targets named "Sphinx," "Houle," and "Utopia." After the short drive, we decided not to acquire the usual MAHLI stowed image and MARDI twilight image, as the view from MAHLI will not be
very different than the previous image, and we can't acquire the MARDI image when we would like because there will be a Mars Odyssey communications session at that time. We can acquire these images on Sol 1109 anyway. So it was an easy day for me as MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, and I helped pick ChemCam/Mastcam targets. |
The US Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Tehran must pay nearly $2bn in frozen assets to victims and relatives of those killed in attacks the US has blamed on Iran.
In a 6-2 ruling, the court upheld a 2012 federal law over the distribution of Iranian bank assets, finding that the US Congress had not usurped the authority of lower courts in passing the legislation.
More than 1,000 Americans are affected by the decision, which relates to the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Lebanon, in which 241 US Marines were killed, and other attacks.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the court, which rejected efforts by Iran's central bank to stop the claim.
Iran's Bank Markazi complained that Congress was intruding into the business of federal courts when it passed a 2012 law that specifically directs that the banks' assets in the US are turned over to the families.
The law, Ginsburg wrote, "does not transgress restraints placed on Congress and the president by the Constitution".
Congress has repeatedly changed the law in the past 20 years to make it easier for victims to sue over state-sponsored terrorism; federal courts have ruled for the victims. But Iran has refused to comply with the judgments, leading lawyers to hunt for Iranian assets in the United States.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as the Obama administration, supported the families in the case. |
Early life Edit
Education and early loves Edit
Career Edit
Life abroad (1816–1824) Edit
Personal life Edit
Health and appearance Edit
Byron, 1830 Character and psyche Edit I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me.[118] As a boy, Byron's character is described as a "mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached", although he also exhibited "silent rages, moody sullenness and revenge" with a precocious bent for attachment and obsession.[92] Edit From birth, Byron suffered from a deformity of his right foot. Although it has generally been referred to as a "club foot", some modern medical authors maintain that it was a consequence of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis), and others that it was a dysplasia, a failure of the bones to form properly.[119] Whatever the cause, he was afflicted with a limp that caused him lifelong psychological and physical misery, aggravated by painful and pointless "medical treatment" in his childhood and the nagging suspicion that with proper care it might have been cured.[120] He was extremely self-conscious about this from a young age, nicknaming himself le diable boiteux[121] (French for "the limping devil", after the nickname given to Asmodeus by Alain-René Lesage in his 1707 novel of the same name). Although he often wore specially-made shoes in an attempt to hide the deformed foot,[36] he refused to wear any type of brace that might improve the limp.[7] Scottish novelist John Galt felt his oversensitivity to the "innocent fault in his foot was unmanly and excessive" because the limp was "not greatly conspicuous". He first met Byron on a voyage to Sardinia and did not realise he had any deficiency for several days, and still could not tell at first if the lameness was a temporary injury or not. At the time Galt met him he was an adult and had worked to develop "a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely at all perceptible".[19] The motion of the ship at sea may also have helped to create a favourable first impression and hide any deficiencies in his gait, but Galt's biography is also described as being "rather well-meant than well-written", so Galt may be guilty of minimising a defect that was actually still noticeable.[122] Physical appearance Edit Reproduction of Portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips Byron's house in Southwell, Nottinghamshire Byron's adult height was 5 feet 8.5 inches (1.74 m), his weight fluctuating between 9.5 stone (133 lb; 60 kg) and 14 stone (200 lb; 89 kg). He was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night.[123] He was athletic, being a competent boxer and horse-rider and an excellent swimmer. He attended pugilistic tuition at the Bond Street rooms of former prizefighting champion ‘Gentleman’ John Jackson, who Byron called ‘the Emperor of Pugilism’ and recorded these sparring sessions in his letters and journals.[124] Byron and other writers, such as his friend Hobhouse, described his eating habits in detail. At the time he entered Cambridge, he went on a strict diet to control his weight. He also exercised a great deal, and at that time wore a great number of clothes to cause himself to perspire. For most of his life he was a vegetarian, and often lived for days on dry biscuits and white wine. Occasionally he would eat large helpings of meat and desserts, after which he would purge himself. Although he is described by Galt and others as having a predilection for "violent" exercise, Hobhouse suggests that the pain in his deformed foot made physical activity difficult, and his weight problem was the result.[123]
Political career Edit
Byron first took his seat in the House of Lords 13 March 1809,[125] but left London on 11 June 1809 for the Continent.[126] Byron's association with the Holland House Whigs provided him with a discourse of liberty rooted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.[127] A strong advocate of social reform, he received particular praise as one of the few Parliamentary defenders of the Luddites: specifically, he was against a death penalty for Luddite "frame breakers" in Nottinghamshire, who destroyed textile machines that were putting them out of work. His first speech before the Lords, on 27 February 1812, was loaded with sarcastic references to the "benefits" of automation, which he saw as producing inferior material as well as putting people out of work, and concluded the proposed law was only missing two things to be effective: "Twelve Butchers for a Jury and a Jeffries for a Judge!". Byron's speech was officially recorded and printed in Hansard.[128] He said later that he "spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence", and thought he came across as "a bit theatrical".[129] The full text of the speech, which he had previously written out, was presented to Dallas in manuscript form and he quotes it in his work.[130] Two months later, in conjunction with the other Whigs, Byron made another impassioned speech before the House of Lords in support of Catholic emancipation.[127][131] Byron expressed opposition to the established religion because it was unfair to people of other faiths.[132] These experiences inspired Byron to write political poems such as Song for the Luddites (1816) and The Landlords' Interest, Canto XIV of The Age of Bronze.[133] Examples of poems in which he attacked his political opponents include Wellington: The Best of the Cut-Throats (1819); and The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh (1818).[134]
Poetic works Edit
Parthenon marbles Edit
Legacy and influence Edit
Bibliography Edit
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References Edit |
Buy Photo Cody Cousins will appear Thursday morning at a hearing in front of Tippecanoe Superior 2 Judge Thomas Busch. (Photo: John Terhune/Journal & Courier )Buy Photo
Cody Cousins is persistent in his efforts to fire his attorney.
Cousins, 23, is facing a murder charge. He’s accused of killing 21-year-old Purdue University student Andrew Boldt in the Electrical Engineering Building on Jan. 21.
His attorney, Robert W. Gevers II, filed a motion late last month to withdraw, but the motion was denied because it did not meet the state’s criteria for counsel to withdraw from a case after a specific court administrative date.
Gevers filed a second motion a few days after Tippecanoe Superior 2 Judge Thomas Busch denied Gevers’ first motion. In the second filing, Gevers stated, “... Mr. Cousins directly informed counsel that Mr. Cousins no longer desired counsel’s representation, and the attorney-client relationship has become irreparably deteriorated as a result of such conversations and encounters.”
That criteria fits one of the reasons for counsel to be granted permission to withdraw, which Busch cited in his order denying Gevers’ first motion.
But before Busch rules on Gevers’ second request, he set a hearing for 9 a.m. Thursday to vet Gevers’ motion and hear from Cousins about his effort to drop Gevers’ services.
Gevers was retained a day or two before Cousins’ Jan. 23 initial hearing. He also represented Cousins at a March 7 pretrial hearing, during which Cousins’ trial date was set for Oct. 6.
The Journal & Courier will cover Thursday’s hearing, and a story will be filed at jconline.com shortly after it concludes.
Related stories:
Read or Share this story: http://on.jconline.com/1qedLL2 |
Fans of John Martyn have long lamented Island's decision to allow this album to remain deleted from its catalog -- most of us consider it (along with 1973's Solid Air and 1980's Grace and Danger) to be one of John's real masterpieces. Thankfully, it was worth waiting for its reintroduction -- Island has done a very nice job with this 2-disc treatment. The first disc remasters the eight-song album, making John's shimmery, across-the-water (read the accompanying booklet and you'll understand) guitar work sound at once ethereal and immediate. You can also hear, for the first time, some of the really cool dub beats and rhythm tracks (on Smiling Stranger, for example) that got buried beneath hearing on the vinyl mix. Overall, it sounds like you're hearing the album for the first time, and it's a truly great album. The second disc, parts of which have been bootlegged around for awhile as "Another World," has a really nice 5-song live set with John at his most direct and accessible (if a bit out of tune on the acoustic guitar!). The rest is a fascinating set of alternative takes and working tracks that, unlike most such dross, actually enhance one's understanding of the album as released. Really thoughtful and well done. And the booklet is a treasure that explains how the album came to be and some of the recording techniques that give it its unique and path-breaking ambient sound, particularly on Small Hours. If you're not a John Martyn fan, you're much better off starting with the damn-near-perfect Island anthology, "Sweet Little Mysteries," than this reissue. But if you're already part of the club, this is revelatory stuff that brings a truly classic album into much clearer focus. |
Prime minister is to warn Tory right that party will consign itself to margins unless it remains on 'common ground'
David Cameron is to use Mitt Romney's failure in the US presidential election to warn the Tory right that the Conservative party will consign itself to the margins unless it remains resolutely on Britain's "common ground".
Hours after learning of Barack Obama's re-election during the final day of his tour to the Gulf and the Middle East, the prime minister said a "loud and clear" message had emerged from the US election.
Cameron also moved to scotch Labour euphoria at the success of its US sister party by saying that Obama's success with the Democrats showed governments can win by adopting a "right track, hard road" approach on the economy.
The prime minister breathed a sigh of relief after learning of Obama's success because the two leaders have built up a strong rapport over the last two years. Obama admired the prime minister for taking decisive action in Libya and he rewarded him with a reception on the South Lawn of the White House in March, which was a state visit in all but name.
Cameron would have had a prickly start to relations with a President Romney after delivering a public rebuke to the Republican candidate after he questioned London's preparedness to stage the Olympics. A Romney victory would also have emboldened the Tory right, which Cameron refers to with disdain in private.
The prime minister went further than offering the usual congratulations to a newly re-elected US president as he expressed delight at the result. Cameron, who is expected to meet Obama within months ahead of Britain's presidency of the G8 next year, said: "In terms of working with Barack Obama I am delighted with the result and congratulate him," he said.
He made clear that the Tory right, which is putting pressure on him to campaign on more traditional Conservative themes, should take note of Obama's success. "I believe that elections are won in the common ground – the centre ground," Cameron said. "That is where you need to be, arguing about the things that matter to most people – that is making sure they can find a good job, they can build a good life for themselves, that if people work hard and try to get on you are behind them and helping them. That is the message loud and clear from this election as it is from all elections. You win elections in the mainstream."
The prime minister did not identify any Tories on the right. But Downing Street is taking note of the new Conservative Voice group launched with the enthusiastic support of Tim Montgomerie, the founder of the ConservativeHome website, who was an enthusiastic Romney supporter.
While Cameron and Obama hail from vastly contrasting backgrounds, they have provided each other with useful political support. To the fury of Romney, Cameron accepted an invitation from Obama during his US visit last March to travel on Air Force One to watch a basketball game in the vital swing state of Ohio. Cameron is acutely aware of the immense political value for a Tory leader to be seen on easy terms with the US's first African-American president.
Cameron even suggested that he and Obama, whose fiscal stimulus programme was hailed by Labour, are adopting a similar economic approach.
"I was very struck by the fact that Barack had been saying it's a hard road but we're on the right track," he said. "And a government that's worked hard to deliver economic recovery can be re-elected … I do think: right track, hard road but if you deliver on the economy you can win re-election I think is an important message."
The prime minister felt confident enough to note that Obama had used some Tory language, new and old. "I even noticed in his tweet he had: 'We're all in this together.' So there's commonality. One Nation [also mentioned by Obama] is a famous Conservative phrase first invented by Disraeli."
Cameron qualified his remarks about the lessons for Britain by saying that the US and UK centre right occupy different parts of the political terrain. No 10 regularly jokes that the prime minister would be regarded as a socialist by many US Republicans after he declared that the NHS is his main priority.
"I think the thing about centre right parties is that we are different all over the world because centre right parties draw a huge amount from culture and history and the different conditions in different countries," he said.
"So there is no tradition on the centre right of arguments in this country about gun control. The Conservatives have always been able to work with American presidents of both parties and have good relations with both parties. So I think there are limited lessons to learn." |
I don't understand why so many white people think having white privilege means you live an easy life. It doesn't. No one is saying you don't have issues or obstacles to overcome. It just means that because if the color of your skin you don't encounter
problems like being racially profiled by police or even just little things, like having a smaller selection of foundation (even though people of color probably have a more broad spectrum of skin tone than white people) or bandaids that are flesh tone match your skin. Some of the privileges keep you from being beaten or murdered by police and some are small and not necessarily physically harmful but make you realize that mostlyeverything is geared towards or made to accommodate white people. |
We've all heard the stories that say it's impossible to develop for Android because of all the different possible screen sizes and resolutions. The flip side is that the way Android development is done, most of the time that doesn't really matter. I'm able to string together an Android application, but I'm no serious app developer, so I'm guessing the reality lies somewhere in the middle -- having a selection of screen sizes and resolutions to test on can;t be a bad thing.
If you have a Nexus 10, none of this matters. Using a tool first developed in 2011, you can use your Nexus 10 to simulate almost any Android environment. Because the N10 screen is so high resolution and has such a high pixel density you can emulate the different sizes and ppi right on the tablet with a few handy commands -- "adb shell am display-size" and "adb shell am display-density".
Using those two commands while the screen is off will let the attached device emulate the chosen parameters when the screen is turned back on. You'll want to read all the documentation before you get started, but this looks like a great (and inexpensive) way to test your app layout across many different environments.
Source: +Adam Powell |
Tuesday will mark the end of the line for four of the 12 Olympic teams while the other eight will be placed into the quarterfinal bracket where they will be two wins away from the podium. Like it or loathe it, the 12-team format means two of the three third-place finishers will advance and it also means any team could land on either side of the knockout bracket. There is also the matter of third place teams landing in different spots depending on which other third place team gets though. That’s plenty of possibilities for a small tournament.
What we know so far is that Brazil, Canada, and the United States are assured of the quarterfinals and every team is mathematically alive, even if some of the equations are scant and some of the necessary results would redefine the soccer upset.
Here is how it breaks down:
third place note: if the third place team from Group E gets through it will be drawn against the Group G winner; if the third place team from Group G gets through it will be drawn against the Group E winner; if the third place team from Group F gets through it will be drawn into the open slot based on the previous two possibilities
GROUP G
United States: The three-time defending champions are a draw against Colombia away from winning Group G. That would line them up against the third-place finisher in Group E or F. It would also put them in the same half as the Group E winner—almost certain to be Brazil. It would also mean being in the same half as Germany or Australia (barring a Zimbabwe result against Australia) though whether that would be a quarterfinal or potential semifinal depends on how the third-place scenario plays out. That might prove to be the more difficult half but the fact is every other team would be happier to avoid the U.S. than the U.S. would be to avoid them.
France: Assuming the U.S. handles Colombia it will take only a draw against New Zealand to secure second in the group (if the U.S. lose, France wins the group with a victory regardless of the score of either match) and a daunting quarterfinal date with the Group F winner which is down to Canada or Germany. If they get tripped up by the Kiwis—who will have Abby Erceg after her red card was overturned—it will still take a cataclysmic series of other results to send them home and third place from this group will face the Group E winner, again almost certainly Brazil.
New Zealand: A draw will assure the Football Ferns a place in the quarterfinals and even a narrow loss is likely to get it done. And of course if they upset France they are certainly through as runner-up and even in with a mathematical chance to win the group.
If they lose as most expect it will come down to either Zimbabwe getting a result against Australia or more realistically the final score in the China-Sweden match. Let’s assume Australia beat Zimbabwe and focus on New Zealand’s chances for advancing as the other third place finisher even without a result against the French. They are currently minus-1 in the goal difference column, the same as China and two better than Sweden. So they will need to keep it close enough to beat out the loser of that match on goal difference. The second tiebreaker is total goals and New Zealand current have 1 while China and Sweden both have 2.
The schedule does not work out in New Zealand’s favor either. If they lose then both China and Sweden are through with a draw and New Zealand are out (again assuming Australia beat Zimbabwe) and with New Zealand playing first, a loss to France could pave the way for China and Sweden to lull each other to sleep to prepare for the quarters.
Colombia: Colombia need to beat the United States…enough said?
Probably, but since we don’t assume anything, it is notable that even a shocking upset of the best team in the world could well leave Colombia at the bottom of the group on goal difference. But if they can somehow do it and manage to turn around their goal difference deficit against the France-New Zealand loser (if those two draw, Colombia are out) they would still need to hope that either: China and Sweden don’t draw and the score is lopsided enough to help on goal difference OR Australia does not beat Zimbabwe.
GROUP F
Canada: The conspiracy theorists began shouting the moment Kadeisha Buchanan took a yellow card against Zimbabwe that defied explanation. Is John Herdman sandbagging to try and finish second in the group for a quarterfinal against the Group E runner-up (likely the China-Sweden winner)? If Canada get a result against Germany they will win the group and face the Group G runner-up (likely France). Either way, by securing a top two spot it means they won’t see the Group G winner (likely the United States) until the gold medal match.
There could be another good reason to try and sandbag against Germany. The kooky setup of the bracket means the top two teams in the group are on a semifinal collision course. Either way, Herdman and the 2012 bronze medalists are undoubtedly thrilled to have a top two spot locked up before kicking off against the Germans.
Germany: Math says Germany is not booked to stay in the tournament beyond Tuesday, but would take a loss by at least eight goals to even start the conversation. Realistically they will win the group by beating Canada and finish second by losing or drawing. See above for what that means.
Australia: It hasn’t been the tournament the Aussies were hoping for to this point, but there should still be time to salvage things. And if they beat Zimbabwe they will be through almost certainly as the third place finisher which means they will get the Group E or G winner depending on which other third place team advances. Australia currently trail Germany by 7 on goal difference and can finish second by making that up in a win combined with a Germany loss to Canada. Anything other than a win sends Australia home.
Zimbabwe: No one expected Zimbabwe to do anything but finish last in this ultra-tough group and they will do just that barring a monumental upset of Australia. To advance they have to win and make up at least 6 in the goal difference column on the losers of China-Sweden and France-New Zealand.
GROUP E
Brazil: After passing the Sweden test with flying colors the hosts are in the catbird seat in Group E and will finish top with a draw against South Africa and maybe even if they get pipped since they’re dominating the group on goal difference. Winning the group will put them in the same half as the United States (assuming they win Group G), but the Brazilians will have a keen interest in what goes on with the third place teams. If New Zealand gets through from Group G they will face the Group E winner, but if a team from Brazil’s group gets through that means the Samba Queens will see Australia or Germany in the quarters.
China: The Chinese are a draw away from second place in Group E and watching Sweden through two matches that doesn’t sound as outlandish as it may have even a few weeks ago. Even if they lose China are in a good position on goal difference to get through so long as New Zealand and France don’t draw (assuming Australia win). If they finish second, the Group F runner-up awaits. If they finish third and advance, the Group G winner looms—likely the United States.
China can still mathematically win the group if South Africa can shock Brazil but the current margin in goal difference in minus-8. A South Africa upset could also send the Chinese to the bottom of the group should they fall to Sweden.
Sweden: Saturday night only felt like the end for Sweden when they were massacred by Brazil following a dull, 1-0 victory over South Africa. But if they beat China it will be on to the quarterfinals. A loss or draw though and the Swedes will be in trouble. If they draw and every third place team ends up on 4 points they are out. If they lose it will depend on goal difference but at minus-3 they are already behind France and New Zealand and they would have to beat out the loser of that match or hope Zimbabwe can get at least a draw against Australia. The good news is that Group E plays last on the day so Pia Sundhage’s side will have it all in front of them at kickoff.
South Africa: The team that held the United States to 1-0 in a friendly last month is in a world of trouble. For starters they need beat Brazil to have any chance. Beyond that they would have to make up goal difference on the loser of China-Sweden and the loser of France-New Zealand while hoping that neither of those end in draws. The only other path involved Australia not beating Zimbabwe. |
Disney’s animated Polynesian adventure “Moana” led U.S. moviegoing on Thanksgiving Day with $9.9 million at 3,875 locations as it heads towards the $85 million to $90 million range during the five-day holiday break.
Warner Bros.’ “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” finished a close second with $9.6 million at 4,144 sites on Thanksgiving, pushing the Harry Potter spinoff to $110 million in its first seven days.
But three other wide-release openers aimed at adults found only moderate traction on Thanksgiving with Brad Pitt’s “Allied” grossing $2.3 million, Billy Bob Thornton’s “Bad Santa 2” with $1.4 million and Warren Beatty’s “Rules Don’t Apply” nearly invisible with $285,000.
“Moana” has now taken in $25.6 million in its first two days. It’s on a similar pace to Disney’s “Frozen,” which had hit $26.5 million at the same point in 2013 on its way to a record $93.6 million for the five-day Thanksgiving opening.
Thanksgiving Day tends to be the slowest by far of the five days and the next day tends to be the heaviest day for moviegoing. “Frozen” scored its best single day on that Black Friday with $26.8 million.
Related Film Review: ‘Moana’
“Moana,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the voice of a Polynesian demigod named Maui, received an A Cinemascore from audiences and has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Fantastic Beasts,” starring Eddie Redmayne, is on pace to take in around $65 million over the five days, which will push it to $155 million by the end of the weekend.
Disney-Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” brought in $2.5 million on Thursday and should finish the five days with around $20 million. The Benedict Cumberbatch vehicle has totaled $191.7 million in its first three weeks.
Paramount’s “Allied,” starring Pitt and Marion Cotillard as World War II spies, is heading for about $16 million at 3,160 screens over the Thanksgiving period. That’s around the same range as the studio’s Amy Adams sci-fier “Arrival,” which has now gone past $51 million in its first two weeks.
“Bad Santa 2,” released by Broad Green and Miramax, has grossed $2.9 million at 2,920 sites in its first two days and is headed for around $10 million for the five days. The original “Bad Santa” opened with $16.8 million in five days during the 2003 Thanksgiving break on its way to more than $60 million by the end of its run.
“Rules Don’t Apply,” which marks Beatty’s first directing gig since 1998’s “Bulworth,” has grossed a miniscule $600,000 at 2,382 locations in its first two days for Fox and will wind up the five days outside the top 10 with less than $3 million. Beatty portrays eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in a comedy-drama set in 1958.
Overall business during the five days won’t eclipse the Thanksgiving record set in 2013, when “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” and “Frozen” drove the box office to a massive $293.6 million. But thanks to “Moana” — which was projected prior to its release to gross about $70 million — the period may top last year’s $258 million, which was propelled by “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2,” “The Good Dinosaur” and “Creed,” according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore.
“Suddenly a 5-day frame that was destined to play second fiddle to last year’s $258 million now has a shot at exceeding that total and landing in the top echelon of all-time Thanksgiving holiday box office performances,” he added. “The over-performance of ‘Moana’ made all the difference and took this week from a box office footnote to one of the stronger such holidays for the industry.” |
Microsoft hasn't pushed gaming enough on Windows Phone, which has been adequately covered in our series of editorials by Paul Acevedo. We've gone into some detail as to who Microsoft can save Xbox Games for Windows Phone, but it seems the company does have plans to tackle the issue. Still aiming for the "Three Screens" goal, Microsoft is looking to release some titles in the future to take advantage of cross-platform support.
It makes perfect sense. Windows Phone. Windows PC (and tablets). Xbox. That's a massive family of potential with Xbox powering the video game console industry, Windows advancing the desktop environment and Windows Phone sporting Xbox Live connectivity. It's a recipe for success, but Microsoft really has to step up its game to take full advantage of the integration with Microsoft Account. This will require developers to be on-board to produce content. Senior Xbox Live Product Marketing Manager Peter Orullian has promised that Microsoft is going after mobile in a big way, urging developers to take full advantage of Xbox Live servers to build cross-platform games with asynchronous multiplayer elements and cloud storage. During a phone conversation with PC World, Orullian confirmed that at least two more cross-platform titles are coming to the Windows Store. It's reported these games will enable consumers to start a game on a device of choice, pause it, and start again on a completely different platform where the state was paused. For example, you could be battling hard on a Windows 8 tablet on the train, to then continue on Windows Phone while on the move through the station. It's exactly how we all imagine Xbox Live gaming to be, with Windows Phone at the very heart of the experience alongside Xbox and Windows 8.
Indie game Armed! is cross-platform
Orullian points out that Music, Video and Games apps that are bundled with Windows Phone, Windows and Xbox are proof that Microsoft is committed to unifying digital entertainment across a number of devices, within the new Windows ecosystem. Unfortunately, this hasn't quite become the story for gaming, which surely has to change should it become anything but a failure. The PC World article brings up a point which many Windows Phone owners have shouted about since the platform launched. Xbox Live games don't actually sport special functionality with Xbox Live, beyond being a dumping ground for achievements. Fast-paced multiplayer would be difficult to implement correctly, taking into account multiple form factors and control layouts, but turn-based gameplay is definitely a perfect suit for Microsoft's cross-platform approach. The company already knows this, cue Skulls of the Shogun.
Skulls of the Shogun proves Microsoft can do it |
WWE Tag Team Champion Big E suffered an injury at the hands of Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson following their match on Raw, WWE.com can confirm.
After Gallows & Anderson pulled Big E groin-first into the turnbuckle at the end of a post-match brawl between Gallows, Anderson and the entirety of The New Day, the WWE Tag Team Champion was taken to the trainer’s room. He underwent several tests and medical examinations, but WWE officials did not confirm the specifics or severity of Big E’s injury at this time.
UPDATE Aug. 5, 2016: WWE.com can now confirm that Big E suffered a contusion to the affected area. It is unknown at this time when the WWE Tag Team Champion will return to in-ring competition.
Stay with WWE.com for more information as Big E’s condition is revealed. |
When Premier Rachel Notley turned up for Canada Day celebrations at the legislature grounds Friday, she was all smiles.
She happily flipped pancakes, posed for pictures and took part in a citizenship ceremony in front of hundreds of cheerful parents and children who turned up for a free breakfast to celebrate Canada’s 149th birthday. All of it under a beautiful, sunny summer sky.
Notley, who always seems to enjoy meeting the public, was in a particularly good mood because she had a particularly good week. Well, a particularly good Wednesday. Well, a particularly good moment on Wednesday.
Notley had accepted an invitation to stand with dignitaries, Canadian and American, in the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon to watch U.S. President Barack Obama address Parliament.
During the speech, to Notley’s great surprise and delight, Obama singled out Alberta for praise.
“Alberta, the oil country of Canada, is working hard to reduce emissions while still promoting growth,” said Obama, referring to the Alberta government’s climate change plan. “So if Canada can do it and the United States can do it, the whole world can unleash economic growth and protect our planet. We can do this.”
Obama’s brief mention of Alberta was followed by thunderous applause from the audience — and another surprise for Notley.
“Most of the House of Commons rose to give (Obama) a standing ovation and (U.S.) Secretary of State John Kerry turned around and shook my hand, which was lovely,” Notley told Postmedia on Friday.
But the “lovely” moment for Notley didn’t make headlines. It was ignored by the national media that was mesmerized by the parliamentary swoon over Obama and it was largely overlooked by Alberta’s media, which focused on the province’s $6.4-billion deficit.
And it was dismissed by Notley’s political opponents back home.
“The carbon tax was supposed to buy more than a line in a speech from President Obama,” said Wildrose Leader Brian Jean with a shrug.
Jean’s dismissiveness — and the news media’s indifference — to Obama’s shout-out to Alberta is deeply irritating the NDP government that is fighting, and apparently winning, a battle to improve Alberta’s environmental image.
No, Obama didn’t reverse himself and approve the Keystone XL pipeline, but Notley said his comment Wednesday indicates politicians outside Alberta are viewing the province differently.
“What it shows is that there is a greater level of recognition amongst opinion leaders across the continent that what Alberta is doing is substantial and meaningful,” says Notley. “It therefore means that we’re able to have conversations, for instance on pipelines which we know is critically important to Albertans, with people that we didn’t have conversations with before.”
Notley argues that if other jurisdictions in Canada realize Alberta is becoming an environmental leader, they will no longer feel the need to oppose energy pipelines as a way to strong-arm Alberta into taking action on climate change.
“Our government is taking climate change seriously,” says Notley. “We’re not just putting out press releases saying it.”
For Notley, reversing years of climate inaction by previous Conservative governments — both federal and provincial — remains an uphill fight. Making the climb more onerous is a Federal Court of Appeal decision Thursday that overturned approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline. The court said the federal government failed in its duty to consult First Nations along the project’s proposed route through British Columbia.
By “federal government,” the court meant the previous government of Stephen Harper.
The ruling doesn’t mean the Northern Gateway project is dead, but it does mean the new Liberal government might have to redo consultations with indigenous groups.
Notley, never a fan of the controversial project, said the court ruling could be useful in finding ways to get approval for the Kinder Morgan pipeline to the West Coast or Energy East to New Brunswick.
And she’s still hopeful that Obama’s shout-out to Alberta will eventually be heard across Canada.
[email protected]
Twitter: Graham_Journal |
Under development for the past six months, Aston Martin has taken the wraps of its new GT4 race car. The GT4 is based on the new model 4.7L V8 Vantage road car and will take the reins from the outgoing 4.3L Vantage N24.
The new Aston will have some big shoes to fill with the N24 having won the Nurburgring 24 hour event and a handful of FIA GT4 races this year.
In standard guise, Aston's 4.7L V8 produces 313kWs, already more than the 305kWs of the N24, but we've been unable to obtain official output figures for the GT4. What we do know is that the ECU has been re-jigged and that free-flowing exhausts and air filters have been fitted. Given the N24 was around 22kWs more powerful than standard, the GT4's output should be in the 330-340kW range.
More power is nice but reduced weight is even better when it comes to racing and the GT4 doesn't disappoint. A staggering 300kgs has been lopped off the donor vehicle for a kerb-weight of 1330kgs. To achieve this, Aston has almost completely stripped the interior with the exception of the facia molding which is now trimmed in Alacantra and the console and door trims which have been replaced by lighter material.
A high-strength steel roll-cage improves safety and chassis rigidity while Recaro competition racing seats combine with a Sabelt six-point harness to keep the driver securely in place. A suede-trimmed quick-release steering wheel and Lifeline Zero 360 extinguisher system complete the interior appointments.
Naturally, suspension has been heavily revised with the re-tuned Vantage set-up receiving larger diameter front and rear anti-roll bars and adjustable ride height aluminium dampers. Single rate, flat ground springs with separate helper springs and a modified front subframe (for extra camber) complete the revisions. The standard dry-sump lubrication system found on the V8 Vantage is carried over to keep oil surge under control during hard cornering.
Braking upgrades are minimal with the larger front discs benefiting from revised cooling to keep brake fade at bay. Braking performance is improved thanks to the addition of Yokohama high-performance A048-R tyres which now come fitted to the GT4's cast magnesium wheels as standard.
Manual or sportshift automatic transmissions (with paddle-shifters) will be available and both gearboxes will receive the same Valeo twin-plate 'cerametallic' racing clutch and lightweight flywheel.
The standard Vantage's active safety systems are still in place and include dynamic stability control, traction control, ABS and electronic brake-force distribution (which should make even the least-experienced drivers look like professionals).
The GT4 will go on sale in January next year and will come in around the AUD$220,000 mark. That might seem like a lot of coin but remember it is an Aston Martin and it can be driven on the road. James May might not have enjoyed the experience of driving the N24 on public roads, but we'd be more than happy to give the GT4 a fling. |
Craig Lowndes, Shane van Gisbergen, and French factory driver Côme Ledogar will share a McLaren in February’s Bathurst 12 Hour.
The highly-rated trio have been named to race a YNA Autosport-entered 650S GT3 which will be supported by McLaren GT.
Lowndes will arrive at Mount Panorama as one of the defending race winners having combined with his other Triple Eight Supercars team-mate Jamie Whincup and Finn Toni Vilander to win the 2017 Bathurst 12 Hour in a Ferrari 488.
While he has two wins to his name in Ferraris (the other being in his second most-recent 12 Hour start in 2014), and a runner-up finish in one of three campaigns in Audis, the 43-year-old is yet to race a McLaren around Mount Panorama.
“The Bathurst 12 Hour is one of my absolute favourite events, so I am delighted to have the chance to defend my win in 2017 but in a McLaren for the first time,” said Lowndes.
“McLaren is an iconic name in motor racing and the 650S is a serious bit of kit, so I am really excited about the opportunity to race it at Bathurst with Shane (Van Gisbergen) and Côme (Ledogar). I can’t wait.”
Between he and van Gisbergen, the combination represents winners of the last two editions of the Bathurst 12 Hour.
The New Zealander has favourable history in McLarens, winning the 2016 12 Hour with Alvaro Parente and Jonathon Webb in a Tekno Autosports entry and setting a lap record which held up this year.
That car is now owned by Patrizicorse.
In addition, Ledogar and van Gisbergen were co-drivers when they won the 2016 Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup in a McLaren.
“I’m excited to be back in a McLaren for the Bathurst 12 Hour,” said van Gisbergen.
“It’s good to team up with Côme again, I drove with him in 2016 when we won the Blancpain Endurance Series in a McLaren 650S GT3, and driving with Craig to help him defend his 2017 title.
“I think we’ve got a strong driver line up, a strong team and a strong car, so I’m looking forward to the event.”
While van Gisbergen’s race ended on a sour note this year, when he was penalised before crashing while trying to make up ground to leader Whincup, Ledogar brought a McLaren home in fifth outright.
The 26-year-old also piloted the YNA McLaren with Fraser Ross in the first two rounds of this year’s Australian GT Championship before having to focus on his International GT Open commitments, in which he took two class race wins.
The Lowndes/van Gisbergen/Ledogar entry will face stiff competition from a host of Class A runners already announced, including Jamec Pem’s factory Audi trio, a Schnitzer Motorsport BMW entry featuring Chaz Mostert, and an all-Pro Team WRT Audi.
Class A for GT3 cars is split into the Pro (all professional), Pro/Am (up to two professionals), and Am (no professionals) sub-classes.
Meanwhile, YNA Autosport has also flagged plans to enter selected overseas races next year.
The 2018 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour will be held from February 2-4. |
Mohammed al-Shaikh, AFP | Archive photo of pilgrims walking counterclockwise around Islam's holiest shrine, the Kaaba, at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on September 21, 2015
Iran said Sunday its pilgrims will miss the pilgrimage this year because Saudi Arabia, custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, was raising obstacles and “blocking the path to Allah” for its faithful.
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The Iranian Hajj Organisation said: “Saudi Arabia is opposing the absolute right of Iranians to go on the hajj and is blocking the path leading to Allah.”
The Saudi side had failed to respond to Iranian demands over “the security and respect” of its pilgrims to Mecca, of whom 60,000 took part in last year’s hajj, the organisation said.
In the latest dispute between regional rivals Tehran and Riyadh, “after two series of negotiations without any results because of obstacles raised by the Saudis, Iranian pilgrims will unfortunately not be able to take part in the hajj” in September, Iran’s Culture Minister Ali Jannati said.
Saudi officials have said an Iranian delegation wrapped up a visit to the kingdom on Friday without reaching a final agreement on arrangements for pilgrims from the Islamic republic.
The Saudi hajj ministry said it had offered “many solutions” to meet a string of demands made by the Iranians in two days of talks.
Agreement had been reached in some areas, including to use electronic visas which could be printed out by Iranian pilgrims, as Saudi diplomatic missions remain shut in Iran, it said.
It would be the first hajj in almost 30 years to take place without the participation of pilgrims from Iran.
Riyadh-Tehran ties were severed for four years after more than 400 people were killed in Mecca during clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces in 1987.
In January, relations were severed again after Iranian demonstrators torched Saudi Arabia’s embassy and a consulate following the kingdom’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Shiite Iran and predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia are at odds over a raft of regional issues, notably the conflicts in Syria and Yemen in which they support opposing sides.
Hajj ‘sabotage’
Earlier this month, Iran had accused its regional rival of seeking to “sabotage” the hajj, a pillar of Islam that devout Muslims must perform at least once during their lifetime if they are able.
Tehran said Riyadh had insisted that visas for Iranians be issued in a third country and would not allow pilgrims to be flown aboard Iranian aircraft.
But the Saudi hajj ministry said on Friday that Riyadh had agreed to allow Iranians to obtain visas through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which has looked after Saudi interests since ties were severed in January.
Riyadh also agreed to allow some Iranian carriers to fly pilgrims to the kingdom despite a ban imposed on Iranian airlines following the diplomatic row between the two countries, the ministry said.
Last week’s talks were the second attempt by the two countries to reach a deal on organising this year’s pilgrimage for Iranians after an unsuccessful first round held in April in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi ministry said at the time that the Iranian Hajj Organisation would be held responsible “in front of God and the people for the inability of its pilgrims to perform hajj this year.”
Another contentious issue has been security, after a stampede at last September’s hajj killed about 2,300 foreign pilgrims, including 464 Iranians.
(AFP) |
The numbers of unionists and their share of the U.S. workforce both declined in 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated. In Minnesota, union membership held steady at 14.2 percent of the workforce.
Unions had 14,555,000 members in 2016, the BLS survey of 60,000 households shows.That's 10.7 percent of all U.S. workers. It's down 0.4 percent and 240,000 workers from the year before. Union contracts also covered another 1.7 million non-members last year.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had a somewhat sarcastic reaction to the figures. But he admitted labor “has challenges” from “corporations and their hired politicians.”
“The sky is falling! The labor movement is dead! These are the canned reactions that out-of-touch people who want to believe their own story about unions will tell themselves” about the BLS data. “Neither reflect a real understanding about a movement that cannot be defined by government statistics,” Trumka defiantly declared.
“The truth is, collective action in America is stronger than ever,” Trumka added. He cited defeat of the jobs-destroying Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” pact “even when most people told us we couldn’t” and successful state and local raise-the-wage campaigns.
Labor will use collective action “to begin to change the tide for all working people, because a strong labor movement raises wages for all working families and improves our entire economy. For decades, study after study has proven that all wages in America have a direct tie to union density. And according to today’s report, workers in a union made $202 more per week. That’s money in people’s pocket. That’s a government statistic we can get behind.”
Once again, BLS calculated that unionists were concentrated in the Northeast, the Great Lakes and the Pacific Coast states, with more than half of all union members living in just seven states: California, 2.551 million (15.9 percent union), up 65,000; New York, 1.942 million (23.6 percent), down 96,000; Illinois, 812,000 (14.5 percent), down 35,000; Pennsyl-vania, 685,000 (12.1 percent), down 62,000; Michigan 606,000 (14.4 percent), down 15,000; New Jersey 644,000 (16.1 percent), up 68,000; and Ohio, 617,000 (12.4 percent), up 11,000.
New Jersey and Ohio passed Michigan, which now has a right-to-work law, for fourth place. New York was the only state where more than one-fifth of workers were unionized. Its union share dropped from 26 percent in 2015. The other state more than one-fifth union then, Hawaii, slid to 19.9 percent. Union numbers stayed the same, but Hawaii’s workforce grew.
South Carolina was the least unionized state for the second year in a row, at 1.6 percent. In general, Southern states have low union densities, thanks to histories of anti-unionism, employers' efforts to pit the races against each other and right-to-work laws.
Despite the declines, unions still represented more private-sector workers (7.4 million) than public-sector workers (7.1 million), BLS said. But the public sector was more heavily unionized, with education and library servicers leading the way (34.6 percent) followed by protective services, such as Fire Fighters and emergency medical technicians (34.5 percent).
One of every 11 factory workers (8.8 percent) were unionized, for a total of 1.295 million, but union contracts also covered almost 130,000 non-union factory workers. One of every seven construction workers (13.9 percent) was unionized, but construction union contracts covered not just their own 1.039 million members, but 550,000 non-members.
As usual, union members had huge weekly earnings edges over their non-union colleagues. The median weekly wage for all unionists was $1,004, compared to $802 for non-unionists. Union women and minority groups fared particularly well: The male-female wage gap shrank to nine cents per dollar between union men and women, with union women garnering median weekly pay of $955.
Unionized Latinos, Latinas and African-American men all had higher median weekly wages than the entire non-unionist median. Even workers in the lowest-paid sector, bars and restaurants, showed the edge, with a $567 weekly median, to $490 for non-unionists. |
Ministers have been accused of ignoring a public consultation and ploughing ahead with plans that will make their “fitness for work” testing regime even more stressful and unfair for sick and disabled people.
A presentation delivered by two senior Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servants earlier this month suggests that ministers have decided – as many disabled activists feared after the publication of last year’s green paper – to introduce new benefit sanctions for sick and disabled people with the highest support needs.
The presentation at a DWP “Operational Stakeholder Engagement Forum” appears to confirm that the government had decided how it would reform the system of out-of-work disability benefits before its “consultation” process had finished on 17 February.
The government had claimed that it wanted to make the work capability assessment (WCA) less of an ordeal for claimants, with work and pensions secretary Damian Green telling last October’s Conservative party conference he wanted to support those disabled people who cannot work, and “sweep away unnecessary stress and bureaucracy which weighs them down”.
But slides from the presentation appear to show that his new regime will be even harsher, and that many employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants with the highest support needs and barriers to work will for the first time face having their benefits sanctioned if they do not co-operate with the regime.
The slides show DWP has already begun introducing a compulsory, face-to-face “health and work conversation” (HWC) with a jobcentre work coach that will apply to nearly all new claimants of ESA, weeks or even months before they go through the WCA process to decide whether they are not fit for work and eligible for the benefit.
The presentation says that “vulnerable” claimants will not have to take part in the face-to-face HWC.
A DWP spokesman has told Disability News Service (DNS) that work coaches will be “issued clear guidance on who will be exempted from the HWC” and “will also be able to defer the HWC if the claimant cannot attend due to temporary circumstances”.
But disabled activists have warned that these decisions will be taken by non-medically trained civil servants.
The slides say: “Currently Jobcentre staff do not routinely engage with ESA claimants before the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) which can take place many months into the claim.
“We know that the start of the claim can be a challenging time for claimants and that the longer a claimant is on benefit, the more difficult it is for them to move into employment where appropriate.
“The Health and Work Conversation (HWC) will provide this early support to claimants.”
The presentation said the HWC – which it claimed was co-designed with some disabled people’s organisations – will draw on “behavioural insight techniques and research” to “develop voluntary action plans” and help claimants “move closer to the workplace”.
And it said that all new ESA claimants would have to sign a new “ESA Claimant Commitment”, which would “set out the expectations and legal requirements that claimants will be required to accept in order to receive ESA”.
It added: “A sanction will be applied for failure to attend or participate in the HWC without good cause. This means a claimant’s ESA payment will be reduced.”
It also appeared to suggest that jobcentre work coaches would only receive one day of face-to-face training – as well as online training – before they begin delivering the HWCs.
Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London, said the presentation “confirms our worst fears about the green paper”, that the consultation was “nothing more than a tick box exercise and the DWP had no intention of listening to feedback and reviewing their proposals”.
She said it confirmed that “instead of overhauling the WCA in order to make it fairer and less stressful for claimants, the green paper instead seeks to make applying for ESA even more difficult, with the aim of excluding as many disabled people as possible from entitlement to social security”.
She said: “Imposing a mandatory HWC will create an added barrier and undoubtedly cause more harm and distress.”
Gail Ward, from Black Triangle, who discovered the presentation slides and passed them to DNS, said they showed that “DWP skullduggery is at play yet again” and that the green paper consultation was “merely a tick box exercise” that will be ignored by DWP.
And she said they showed the government was again using sanctions like a “rod of iron to effect behavioural changes”, even though they have been shown as an “ineffective means to get people into work and find them suitable employment”.
Joe Whittaker, chair of Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said: “The imposition of yet another stage in the already oppressive process to ‘support disabled people into employment’, cynically named a ‘health and work conversation’, is another pernicious attempt to weaken the rights of disabled people.”
He said that conversations “should be based upon mutual respect, honesty and transparency”, whereas the government was “conditioned to treat disabled people in a callous way, making any meaningful conversation impossible”.
Gerry Zarb, from SPECTRUM Centre for Independent Living, said the impact of the HWCs on disabled people “crucially depends on how they are conducted, and how they are to be used.
“If they are genuinely used as a means of exploring what kind of support people might need to move them closer to work then that would be positive, as some people need all the help they can get.
“However, if the main intention behind the proposals is simply to add to the existing checks on eligibility then the process is much more likely to be detrimental to disabled people.
“At this stage we cannot be sure – although it’s fair to say that previous experience with DWP is unlikely to fill most people with optimism.”
Caroline Richardson, one of the authors of a report on the green paper for the Spartacus Network of sick and disabled campaigners last month, said the plans show “a total ignorance of the level of sickness or disability that the claimant may be experiencing, and will subsequently lead to huge stress and deprivation at what may be a crisis point in people’s lives”.
The Spartacus report accused ministers of using the green paper as a “smokescreen” to disguise their intention to cut support and force sick and disabled people into inappropriate work.
Richardson said it seemed “incredible” that the government believed that a non-medically trained jobcentre worker would be able to “triage the most sick and disabled people via a conversation and a fit note, and hence make them subject to sanctions, two months before the claim is assessed under the WCA.
“It is a callous and ignorant process that cannot benefit the claimant, and will significantly harm many more than it helps.”
Another disabled activist, Rick Burgess, said the slide showed the claimant commitment would be similar to the one the government had introduced for the mainstream jobseeker’s allowance under the new universal credit system.
He said: “So together with sanction-mandated HWCs this is further making ESA as punitive, abusive, and conditional as the system is for well and non-disabled people.
“As such it will simply harm more people at the time when they are most vulnerable.
“It makes clear the government remains determinedly set on their policy goals without regard to how much damage they do, their consultations are a mockery, their ‘parity of esteem’ a falsehood. These are the politics of democide.”
The new HWC system began with “small-scale ‘test and learn’ activity” in Alfreton, Chesterfield and Tottenham jobcentres on 30 January, with “incremental rollout” due to begin in further national jobcentres from today (30 March).
The government plans to lay regulations in parliament this summer to allow it to introduce the new ESA “claimant commitment”.
Asked about fears that the new plans would put more people’s health at risk and would make ESA more “punitve” and “abusive”, a DWP spokesman said the HWC was “an opportunity for the individual to get to know their work coach, and hear about the support available to them early in their claim.
“Any actions agreed in the conversation will be voluntary and safeguards will be put in place to ensure there are appropriate exemptions from attending the HWC.
“The ESA claimant commitment is a tailored agreement between the individual and the work coach that sets out the expectations and requirements to receive ESA.
“This agreement can be updated if the claimant’s situation changes.”
He said that work coaches would “receive training to deliver the HWC safely and effectively – the conversation will cover a wide range of issues but will not cover subjects requiring medical expertise.
“Sanctions are only ever used as a last resort and there will be extensive safeguards in place to ensure individuals are not sanctioned inappropriately.”
He claimed that the HWC and the claimant commitment were not part of the green paper consultation and that the powers to implement them had been introduced in 2008 and 2012 respectively and were “debated extensively at the time”.
He said: “The consultation process for the green paper ended on the 17 February and the feedback is now being considered.”
He also said that ESA claimants subsequently placed in the support group “will not be required to undertake mandatory activity” as part of the HWC.
But he stressed that the HWC was separate to a proposed post-WCA “keep-in-touch discussion” for those in the support group that is part of the green paper consultation and is “currently under consideration”, and according to the green paper could be a mandatory requirement.
Despite the presentation saying that the claimant commitment would set out the “legal requirements that claimants will be required to accept in order to receive ESA”, he said: “Any actions agreed in the claimant commitment prior to the WCA will be entirely voluntary.”
He had not confirmed by 1pm today (Thursday) how both of these statements could be correct. |
SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — Curling legend Kevin Martin is leaving the sport at the top of the mountain.
Martin previously announced he would retire after the Players’ Championship and finished his career on a high note Sunday, defeating Brad Jacobs 4-3 in the men’s final to capture one final Grand Slam of Curling title.
The Edmonton native is the all-time Grand Slam wins leader with 18 titles, including eight Players’ championships.
It came down to, fittingly enough, Martin’s last shot ever. Martin held a two-point lead but was facing three and needed a vintage Martin maneuver — an out-turn draw — to pull it off. He didn’t get shot rock but only gave up a steal of one that preserved the victory.
Martin said he was more focused on winning the game and the title for his team rather the personal moment.
“If I’m a little heavy and it slides out of the house, it’s my last shot and we don’t win,” Martin said. “So it was more important to focus on staying in the moment but over the last few years, being an Olympian and things, it teaches you to do that, stay focused on the job at hand and when it works out then you can breathe and let it go.”
Among Martin’s many accolades include four Brier titles, a world championship in 2008 and representing Canada twice at the Olympics winning gold in the 2010 Vancouver Games and silver in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
Martin had been in a bit of a Slam drought with his previous title in 2011, coincidentally at that season’s Players’ Championship. He said winning No. 18 was as much pressure as anything.
“Eighteen Slams is just so difficult,” Martin said. “I know when (Jack) Nicklaus did it in golf he was 46 which is very difficult and it took me an extra year. Geez, I wanted that bad so it was a big day.”
Martin led 4-1 after four ends thanks to a pair of deuces and Jacobs struggled to find the equalizer. He blanked two ends before settling for a single in the seventh but gave up the hammer to Martin coming home.
Jacobs, who won the gold medal at the Sochi Olympics, was disappointed his team lost but thought it was neat that his team from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., was Martin’s final opponent.
“Who would have thought it would be our team?” Jacobs said. “I definitely would have thought it would be (Glenn) Howard or (Jeff) Stoughton or someone like that but it’s something we’ll remember, for sure playing Martin the last game and he really wanted to win. … It was a really fun game.”
The 47-year-old Martin announced his retirement Friday night on Sportsnet and will now join the Grand Slam of Curling as a broadcast analyst and official spokesperson.
“I’m excited about it, it’s a new start,” Martin said. “I’ve done a little bit of the analyst stuff with NBC at the Olympics and I’m definitely looking forward to it.
“The neat part is for me, especially in the men’s division, I know them all. They’re all friends of mine so I know most of their wives, a lot of their kids and what they do outside of curling. It’s going to be so much fun.” |
Buy Photo Police tape. (Photo: Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
A 21-year-old Orion Township man was handling a plastic bottle bomb when it blew up, severely injuring his left hand, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.
The man and another 21-year-old from Orion Township said they made the compressed air bomb with a 2-liter bottle for entertainment and "did not expect the device to be as explosive as it was" when it blew up before 1 p.m. Thursday, said the release, which was issued Sunday night. The man was taken to Beaumont hospital in Royal Oak for treatment.
Deputies used a shotgun to detonate three additional bottle bombs that were found behind a house in the 4800 block of Joslyn Road, the release said.
The incident was reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and will be reviewed by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office for possible charges.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1EIcteB |
At least 65 members of Venezuela's military, ranking from officers to the captain of an important border region unit, have been detained, raising questions about whether a fissure exists within the nation's armed forces, according to an attorney representing several of those arrested.
Some of the officers have been charged with betraying the motherland and instigating rebellion while others are still awaiting a court hearing, said Alonso Medina of Foro Penal, a non-governmental lawyers' organization.
VENEZUELA SAYS FECES BOMBS LAUNCHED IN PROTESTS ARE
'BIOCHEMICAL WEAPONS'
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said last week that dozens of officers had been detained for "expressing discontent" and said Thursday the nation's military is "profoundly unhappy" with the government.
"The armed forces are completely divided," he said.
Embattled President Nicolas Maduro's administration rejects any notion that the 60,000-member strong military is wavering in its support as hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans take to the streets demanding elections.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez told Russian broadcaster RT that the armed forces are concentrated on their "constitutional work" and that any suggestion that their loyalties are divided is an attempt to promote a military uprising.
VENEZUELA ILLEGALLY ISSUED 10K PASSPORTS TO SYRIANS, IRANIANS, REPORT SAYS
Venezuela's Ministry of Communication did not respond to a request for comment on the military officer detentions.
Analysts are doubtful the defections represent a significant turning point.
"If people were to storm the palace, the military would not intervene to save Maduro," said Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, a Northwestern University professor. "But the military would not storm the palace under present conditions."
Venezuela's armed forces are considered a critical component to the stability of Maduro's government, and during the four years of his administration, he has significantly increased their authority over a wide range of affairs. He has also ensured that in a country with triple-digit inflation and shortages of everything from toilet paper to Tylenol, they have access to hard-to-find benefits like food imports and bonuses in dollars.
AP EXPLAINS: WHY ARE PROTESTS ROCKING VENEZUELA NOW?
A wave of street protests has clearly put strain on national guardsmen on the frontlines of the protests. Demonstrators frequently walk up to where they stand shoulder-to-shoulder blocking roads, urging them to think twice before repressing demonstrations. On Wednesday, protesters hurled jars filled with fecal matter in their direction.
"When those vagabonds arrived, we were the first to stand in front of you," one national guardsman told protesters Wednesday after a group of pro-government armed civilians arrived. "Guaranteeing your lives without even having the means to combat that."
On Monday, high-ranking retired Venezuelan military officers in Florida urged protesters to stay in the streets and urged the armed forces to stop repressing the demonstrations, which frequently end with plumes of tear gas and shots of rubber bullets. At least 38 people have been killed in the unrest and more than 700 injured.
Lansberg-Rodriguez said those within the military who dislike the government tend to be lower-ranking officers, and that it is possible there will be more defections. But he said none of the four branches are likely to move against him.
"The government has done its best to keep the military comparatively happy," he said. |
Americans support Israel, but do Democrats?
A recent Gallup survey demonstrates that Americans favor Israel over “Palestinians” by terrific margins. Seven out of ten Americans have a “mostly favorable” or “very favorable” view of the State of Israel. In contrast, less than two in ten have a “mostly favorable” or “very favorable” view of the Palestinian Authority.However, when one breaks the findings down by political party a very different image emerges. A full 83 percent of Republicans sympathize more with Israelis than “Palestinians” in the Arab-Israel conflict.However, only a minority of Democrats sympathize more with Israelis – a mere 48 percent – which when I went to school suggests that a majority of Democrats dosympathize more with Israel than with the “Palestinians.” My suspicion is that this is probably the first time within polling Americans on the Arab-Israel conflict that a majority of Democrats favor the Arabs over the Jews.
The consensus among American Jews – if not Jews, more generally – is that support within the United States for Israel must remain bi-partisan. It seems, however, that this bi-partisanship is in considerable jeopardy.
The Democratic party comes out of the tradition of social justice and Civil Rights as it expressed itself in the last half of the twentieth century. Democrats stood with Martin Luther King, Jr., not Republicans. Democrats fought for feminism and a woman’s right to choose an abortion, not Republicans. It was Democrats who both started the Vietnam War and did most to end it on the grassroots level, not Republicans.
The natural sympathies of American Jewry has been with the liberals and the Democrats since FDR, because it was the liberals and the Democrats who were fighting for the little guy, the down-and-out, the outsider. And if there is one thing that Jewish people know a little something about it is, as we recently saw on PBS’ Downton Abbey, what it is like to be an outsider.
However, after the 1967 6 Day War, Israel gradually went from being “David” to being “Goliath” in the popular imagination of the progressive-left and the activist grass-roots of the Democratic party. This development was very much encouraged by the Arabs who realized that since they could not defeat Israel militarily then they could, perhaps, defeat it on the field of propaganda which is the western mind.
For thirteen centuries Jews lived under the jack-boot of Arab-Muslim Supremacy.
Our numbers were kept low and any security that we had depended on knowing our place as dhimmis within the system of Islamic imperial jurisprudence known as al-Sharia. We were not allowed to ride horses, only mules. We were not allowed to repair or build new synagogues. In some places we were not even allowed to go out in the rain lest Jewish filth wash onto, and thereby contaminate, the clean Muslim streets.
And now the West is telling us that Jews are being mean to Arabs.
The Arab states, plus the Arab residents of Judaea and Samaria, launched a war against the Jews directly after the Holocaust that is ongoing ever since. World War II never actually ended for the Jews of the Middle East, it merely morphed into the Long Arab War.
The people who call themselves “Palestinian” are the forward cadre of the much larger forces arrayed against those Jews. Their job is to attack and attack and attack in any manner that they possibly can – including encouraging their children to engage in the traditional Arab sport of stoning Jews – until Israel responds and then, as soon as it does, the western propaganda machine rolls into action.
For years the Gazans were shooting rockets into southern Israel making life impossible there. The economy was in shambles and children were developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because they were continually having to race into bomb shelters. However, as soon as Israel responded by destroying those terror tunnels and targeting Hamas fighters, the progressive-left and the grassroots-netroots of the Democratic party rose up as one to denounce Jewish Israelis for genocide, ethnic-cleansing, targeting children for death, and any other vile accusation that they could throw onto the wall in order to see what might stick.
Needless to say, western journalists did more than their part in the defamation game as Matti Friedman has so nicely illustrated. It is as if they honestly think that Arabs have every right to try to kill Jews and if Jews fight back, this represents a form of aggression.
Meanwhile, of course, the academics – such as the vile SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, of Race and Resistance Studies fame, who advised the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) during a period when they were holding up signs calling for the murder of “colonizers” – were telling their students that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid, militaristic, racist state… despite the fact that it has far-and-away the best human rights record of any country in the entire region.
In any case, an ongoing campaign of defamation against the Jews painted them as modern monsters or the New Nazis and has succeeded in turning progressives and Democrats against one of the most persecuted people in human history… on moral grounds. The Jews of Israel may believe that they are acting in self-defense, but progressive Democrats know that they really act out of racism and white privilege, or Jewish Supremacism, or the shear lust for violence.
And this, ultimately, is why the Democrats have turned against the Jews.
They honestly think that the Jews of the Middle East richly deserve whatever beating they get. |
Due to boring circumstances beyond my control, I will not be online much for awhile. Fortunately I’ve been able to line up a number of stellar guests to fill in for me. Most are writers, but I also thought it would be fun to get some publishing types to explain what it is they do, teach you some more about the industry, and answer your questions, as well as one or two bloggers.
Alaya Dawn Johnson is a wonderful writer, whose short story in Zombies v Unicorns, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is jaw-droppingly good. Her next novel, Moonshine, out in May is my fave New York City vampire novel. I love it so much that it’s been killing me waiting for it to come out because I’ve been dying to rave about Moonshine to youse lot. Trust me, you want this book.
– – –
Alaya Dawn Johnson dated a zombie once in high school, but it didn’t stick. Her first novel was Racing the Dark, the first in a trilogy she decided to call The Spirit Binders once her publisher told her trilogies needed names. The second book, The Burning City, is due out in June. She is also looking forward to the May 11 publication of Moonshine, her 1920s vampire novel set in the Lower East Side of New York City.
Alaya says:
What My Dad Said
When I first showed my dad the new paperback cover of Racing the Dark, I was pretty proud of it. I thought that it evoked the book and was fairly striking. I won’t lie, I pretty much expected him to pat me on the head and say, “Looks great, honey.”
Instead, he picked it up and turned it over a few times. His face took on that serious, thinking expression I recognized meant he was considering how to phrase something important.
“Alaya,” he said, “the art is lovely. The image and everything is great. But are you sure you want to limit yourself like that with this cover?”
“Limit myself?” I asked.
“White people are going to be way less likely to pick up a book with a cover featuring a brown person. That’s just the way the world works.”
I told my dad (with some annoyance) that I didn’t think that was true, and anyway, my book is about a brown person, so these hypothetical white people would just have to suck it up.
Cut to this past Christmas, when my Dad, my sister, my brother and I were all last-minute shopping at the local mall. Like we do every Christmas, we all tromped through the local Borders, looking for presents. This time I was especially excited, because the store claimed to have a copy of my book.
My dad and I searched all through the fantasy section, just so I could experience hasn’t-gotten-old-yet zing of seeing my own work in a bookstore. But Racing the Dark wasn’t there. Finally, we went back to the computers to look for it again.
And we saw what we had missed the first time: though Racing the Dark is clearly labeled “fantasy” on its spine, the powers that be at Borders, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to shelve me in the “African American” section.
At least I was in good company. On the shelves surrounding my book were works by Octavia Butler, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. I’ve looked through this peculiar hybrid section before, and I’ve always been bewildered by the mish-mash of genres and writers all sandwiched together on two narrow shelves. Would someone like to tell me what on earth Zane and Toni Morrison have to do with each other?
Dad and I stared at the book in dismay. “I can’t believe they did this,” I said.
“Honey, I told you,” he said. “You should have had a more generic cover.”
I couldn’t really disagree with him, at that point.
So Dad picked up the book and we physically marched it over to the Fantasy section, where we left it, cover side out.
“Alaya,” my Dad said, later that day, over dinner, “you have to understand that you live in the world. You can’t mess around with the way you wish things would be. You have to deal with the way that they are. A black woman writing a book with a cover like that is going to get shoved in a category you might not want to be in.”
Considering that we had just seen the physical evidence of my being shoved into that category, I just nodded and went back to my food.
It stuck with me, though. And I realized that my dad’s point of view hasn’t really been in much of the ongoing discussion about cover art and whitewashing.
In a lot of discussions about race, my Dad and I suffer from a pretty profound generational gap. My dad is of the Old School, which we could call “determined pragmatism.” As far as my dad is concerned, he grew up in a world where he couldn’t sit down at half the lunch counters in Richmond, where he had to sit in the balcony of the theater, drink from labeled water fountains and sit on the black side of the court house.
Now, in his sixties, my dad owns a business that actually works with the same governments that supported Jim Crow laws. He’s moved into that small percentage of the black upper-middle class, and as far as he’s concerned, race is something you deal with and move on. If you have to change something because white people don’t like overt blackness, then you do that. It’s not that my dad doesn’t understand my points about how frustrating and degrading it can be to always have non-whiteness relegated to this unwanted subcategory (or, even worse, an exoticized one). He does. He just feels that if the world works this way and if I’m just a writer struggling to make a living, then I ought to find a way to help myself within that existing power structure.
Now, I still don’t think he’s right. I still like my cover and I’m still very happy that it very clearly features my non-white main character.
But I will say that it felt like a gut punch to see Racing the Dark shelved—with such a contemptuous lack of care for its content or its audience—in the African American section of Borders. |
It’s been 7 months now since I packed all of my belongings into a moving van and hopped onto a flight with my toddler from San Diego to our new home in Austin, TX. I figured since the new and shiny has worn off and I’ve settled completely into normalcy, it’s a good time to assess and compare the city with my beloved San Diego.
Current Austin Verdict: B-
Let me preface this by saying that I’m a bit of an odd duck when it comes to fitting in places and finding the perfect living situation for myself. You see, I’m a country girl in my heart, though I’ve always lived in either the city or a bland suburb. I want acreage, farm animals, my own woods to explore, a dirt road leading up to my modest house, room to garden and have goats and chickens and horses. However, I’m also liberal and atheist, therefore I don’t really fit in with a lot of the “country folk” around Texas. I have teal hair and piercings. But on the other hand, I’m a single mother of a toddler and I really appreciate things such as: good schools, neighborhood parks, private pools, and safe sidewalks and streets. I also really love being able to “walk to stuff”. So in the absence of having my own farm, the second best option is a nice, safe, walkable, “hip” neighborhood in a good school district. And that’s something that’s out of my price range and/or too far from work.
My living situation has been in between my ideals, a place that has been suitable and adequate, but not exactly awesome. I’m in Avery Ranch, which is very far north of Austin, basically between Cedar Park and Round Rock yet somehow still given an Austin proper address despite not feeling like Austin at all. It’s the very definition of a cookie cutter suburb. It’s quiet, neighborhoody, with lots of children. The homes all look the same, are giant (like I need a 2200 square foot house), and are all walkable from our zoned elementary school. My yard is large, there is a bit of racial diversity, and we get our own private pool with a zero-depth wading entry for my son. There are parks and playgrounds. And the very best thing is that I’m a short walk from an access point onto the Brushy Creek Hike & Bike Trail, a true north Austin gem. I’m paying $300 less a month than I was paying for a house almost half the size in San Diego. However, it’s not walkable to anything. The nearest restaurants and coffee shop are a mile away, and sure I do walk there on occasion, but it’s not “quick jaunt” levels of close, especially when it’s 100+ degrees in the summer.
I’ve come to realize that I’m not really a suburb person. I can live here, and I think it’s probably great for Henry (and my finances) which is why I’m going to move in with my best friend when our leases are up and stay in the suburbs so I can save, save, save. But it’s making me feel like this isn’t my forever home. I try to imagine the future with me as a single person (because I don’t want to have to rely on someone else financially) and I’m just not sure that my dream of owning a little hobby farm can become reality here, as long as I need to be commuting distance to the videogame studios.
So, I feel like my Austin experience is colored a bit by the part that I live in. I spend most of my time in Cedar Park, Leander, North Austin, or Round Rock. Getting downtown only happens on the weekends, maybe one weekend a month to go to Lady Bird Hike & Bike Trail or Zilker Park. Occasionally I’ll go west to Dripping Springs for the zoo. I’ve only been to South and East Austin once since moving here. I feel like if I lived somewhere like Hyde Park, I’d feel more surrounded by “my people” and get that Austin feel that I was hoping for, but it would make my commute to work long and I’d have to switch my son’s school which would be a huge bummer.
Things I Love:
First and foremost, the parks and trails. Obviously since I started this blog, it’s clear that I’m really enjoying exploring the outdoors here. Surprisingly for a city with such oppressive weather, there is even more to do outdoors here than San Diego. You can’t drive far without running into a neighborhood park. They all have beautiful shaded playscapes for the kids, lovely big green trees, manicured paths and trails. Some have peacocks, or creeks to wade in. There are some utterly amazing playgrounds like the Play for All Abilities Park in Round Rock, Joanne Land, Katherine Fleicher, Milburn park.
There are also the pools and creeks. Gone are the days where you have to go to a full-on waterpark. Almost every neighborhood has its own pool (ours has 5…) with waterslides, splash pads, toddler pools, and big fountains. Many of them are 100% free. There are spring-fed pools that stay the same temperature year-round. There are random splash pads all over, including this incredible dinosaur one in Leander. If we want to wade in a more natural environment, there are creeks and swimming holes in the rivers. There are sandy “beaches” on some of the lakes here. There is an ocean a few hour drive away. You can definitely get all the outdoor water fun you could ever want here.
It’s so kid-friendly here. There are so many restaurants with beautiful attached outdoor playgrounds, so parents can chat and kids can play. There are also drop-in childcare places where for $8-10 an hour, you can leave your child to play in a safe, structured environment. It really takes the stress away from finding last-minute sitters during the daytime, and it’s great when school is closed and you still have to work. I’ve used it a few times and as Henry gets older I could see myself using it even more. There’s also so much to do with kids here, and it only increases as they get older: botanical garden, Zilker Park, hikes, zoo, horseback riding, sculpture gardens, nature preserves, amazing toy stores, aquarium, libraries, museums, trains, malls, the list goes on.
The preschool choices are vast and affordable compared to CA. My 2.5yo goes to Waldorf-inspired outdoor farm school and the cost for full time care is $1100/month which includes meals and snacks. This same program would easily be $1600+ in San Diego. There are STEM schools and play-based schools, tons of montessoris, secular and religious, language immersion, and the choices never seem to end. If I wasn’t so happy with Henry’s current school, there are at least a dozen I’d be looking into.
The cost of living is substantially lower. While some things seem to cost about the same (hair salons, groceries), some things are way cheaper (gas, housing outside the city, utilities). So far the only thing that seems more expensive is auto insurance.
Within Austin itself, there’s a ton to do especially if you enjoy good food and hanging around outdoors. Tons of bars and restaurants, live music, great BBQ and Tex Mex. Every restaurant pretty much has a beautiful patio. It’s a culture here that really embraces people being unique and I like that a lot. There are tons of family-friendly events all over the Austin area on just about every weekend. We never sit around bored wondering what to do here.
I love that my neighborhood I live in is so quiet and safe. I’ve only heard sirens a couple of times. My house is nice, clean, and pretty new. My neighbors don’t talk to each other, but they’re polite. I have a nice big backyard for my dog and my son, and I have ample space in general for what I need (and for guests).
Things I Don’t Love:
The traffic here is just abysmal. When I read about Austin traffic before moving here, I was thinking that it couldn’t really compare to LA traffic so it must not be that bad. The problem is — this city grew fast and it’s still growing fast. It can’t support the amount of cars on the road. The city is also spread out far — you can’t live in South Austin for example and expect to commute to work in North Austin within a reasonable time. Drivers are rude and reckless here; I’ve never seen more car accidents in my life. I’ve been nearly t-boned twice, almost sideswiped a dozen times, and just about rear-ended at least 5 times. If you add any rain or ice to the road — just stay inside and don’t go anywhere. The traffic is currently my biggest complaint here, because I could live in a fun area like Hyde Park and commute to Riata area no problem if it wasn’t for the awful traffic. I’m just not willing to spend 45+ minutes on the road because that takes away time I could be spending with my son. There is so much fun stuff to do on ALL sides of Austin, and I feel pretty contained to North Austin just because of how long it takes to get anywhere via Mopac or 35.
The weather is not great. Granted, I’m coming from San Diego where I had very few complaints to make about the weather. We moved here in June and instantly it got oppressively hot and didn’t let up for months. It was fine at first, I made it work, but by late August I was sick to death of it. We’d have to wake up early and do anything outdoors we wanted to do first thing in the morning. We’d then have to stay inside in the afternoon because it would get too hot/humid outdoors to do anything. If you’re not in water, you’re dripping in sweat. So many activities are prohibitive unless you do them in the morning. It doesn’t even let up at night – it would be 90+ degrees at 10pm. October and November were definitely more reasonable, but then December/January happened. There were so many days where the temps were in the 30’s and 40’s for the high. I didn’t know that it would get that consistently cold. I didn’t know it would freezing rain and that schools would close as a result. I didn’t realize that I’d have to wrap my outdoor pipes in cloth and leave my faucets dripping to prevent my pipes from bursting.
The bugs are gross. Now, I’m an outdoorsy person so I’m used to seeing bugs here and there and it’s fine. But I’m not really okay with the amount of wasps around here (and how they keep building nests on my house and deck) or the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes got really terrible for a while in the late summer, and I was getting destroyed by them when I went out hiking. I’m not used to having to wear bug spray and it’s pretty annoying. The worst of all is the fire ants. I’ve now had my whole foot chomped on by them, and it was itchy and terrible for WEEKS. My son gets bit regularly at school and at parks. They’re stupid fuckers and I want them gone forever.
The allergies. Oh man, I forgot how terrible they make you feel. I had bad hay fever when I lived in Minnesota, but it wasn’t quite like this. Allergies here will knock you out. In fact, I called in sick to work today due to allergies for the first time in my life. It’s not just a stuffy nose or itchy eyes. Here, the cedar will destroy you — it makes your whole body fatigued, your eyes heavy and painful, your brain foggy, and your throat sore. No amount of Allegra or Zyrtec seems to help, so people tend to get allergy injections. It’s just terrible.
Not enough indoor activities for toddlers. When the weather is too hot, too cold, or raining, I struggle to find things for us to do. There’s a couple indoor playgrounds and the Thinkery children’s museum, but my son gets sick every single time we go there. There’s only so many times we can go to the mall, and he’s not old enough for trampoline parks or movie theaters. San Diego didn’t have that many indoor activities either, but we rarely needed them.
~*~
In summary, I’m giving Austin a B- score as of right now. It doesn’t (yet) feel like my forever home, however if I imagine leaving it that makes me sad as well. I’m being hit right now with a douse of heavy homesickness for my beloved San Diego, but I don’t know if that’s a phase or not. Austin has a lot of wonderful perks for outdoorsy, diverse, active families. These things come with a bit of pain points, like most major cities in the U.S. It’s nice to be close to the beautiful Hill Country, and not too far from San Antonio or Waco (which offer bigger, better zoos). I’m missing a few things dreadfully from SoCal: the Mexican food, Disneyland, the Safari Park, and the zoo. I even miss the ocean, despite not spending much time there. Hopefully time will heal these wounds…otherwise I’m going to be spending this time in Austin saving up money for my inevitable return to Southern California in the future. 😉 |
June has finally arrived and it has brought with it an entirely new slate of TV titles to Netflix for your streaming pleasure. The original programming juggernaut is right in the middle of releasing a one-two punch of its most talked-about and celebrated shows. Last week, Netflix unveiled the highly-anticipated fifth season of the political drama House of Cards. Now, just over a week later, the service is preparing to launch Season 5 of everybody's favorite prison-based dramedy, Orange is the New Black. For fans of Netflix original programming, this is one hell of a week. If you're not totally into those two shows, there's no need to worry. There are plenty of other great shows to binge through on these late summer nights. Here are some of the best TV shows to stream on Netflix for the week of 6/5-6/11. Photo Credit: Netflix
Slide 1/4 – Orange Is The New Black Season 5 Like we already talked about, Orange is the New Black is the talk of the TV town this week. Despite the hacker scandals and leaked episodes, fans are still excited about the new installment of Piper Chapman's saga. The only unfortunate thing about this release, is that it's being done in typical Netflix fashion - meaning the episodes aren't hitting your watchlist until early Friday morning. If you're having too hard of a time waiting for the new season, there's always time to binge through the first four seasons again. Well, maybe if you binge really, really hard. Come 3 AM Friday morning, Orange is the New Black will have an all-new slate for you to enjoy. (Photo: Netflix)
Slide 2/4 – Superheroes on Superheroes If women in prison really isn't your style, maybe try taking up archery or sprinting. Well, try watching people shoot bows and run faster than the speed of light. The newest seasons of TV's biggest superhero shows have been added to the Netflix roster, and not long after they ended their latest seasons. Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl both had their second seasons put on Netflix in the past couple of weeks. However, in the past seven days, the fifth season of Arrow and the third season of The Flash were put on the streaming service. With 12 total seasons of CW superhero programming currently streaming on Netflix, there's more comic material than you can imagine. (Photo: CW/WB)
Slide 3/4 – America The Beautiful Memorial Day may be behind us, but the Fourth of July is still on the horizon. Right in between these two holidays, many will find themselves feeling very patriotic. If you fall into this category, you're definitely in luck. There are two great American programs for fans to binge through on Netflix. As we mentioned at the top of the article, House of Cards has just debuted its fifth season. The political drama has had fans buzzing since its premiere, and the new episodes contain some of the biggest moments and most shocking twists of the series. On the other end of the spectrum you've got the Revolutionary War drama, Turn: Washington's Spies. The AMC series is about to premiere its fourth and final season this summer and, in order to adequately prepare, all three current seasons are now available to stream (Photo: Netflix) |
Whenever we find a potentially good business idea, or perhaps a strategy that could help improve our lead generation process, there will always be some people who will discourage us about it. The question here is this: will we let them do it?
This is where the words of Sir Richard Branson, owner of the Virgin Group, make some sense: “Screw it. Just do it.” No phrase emphasizes the importance of just going ahead with your plans or goals as what he said. Truly, this is an inspiring piece for many telemarketing representatives who are looking for better b2b sales leads.
Often, a lot of enterprising businesses fail to generate B2B leads using new marketing tactics due to discouragement from many quarters. Sure, naysayers and critics may have a point in what they say, but that should never be your reason why you should stop your plans. Rather, this is your chance to prove them wrong, to show them that you really are in the right track.
Besides, even if you are wrong, starting from scratch meant you really have nothing much to lose. You can always do better next time. Now, if you succeed on your new appointment setting strategies, then it is your big win. It is all about willingness to take risks, as well as ingenuity in making your venture successful. Richard Branson did it. Look at where he is now.
That is all there is to it, apart from outsourcing your work to professional lead generation services. That would be a different story. |
19 in 20 Members Of Congress that Support a Federal $15 Minimum Wage Don’t Even Pay their Interns
There’s nothing I hate more than a hypocrite. Sadly, in the business of politics, hypocrisy is ubiquitous.
A new study out of the Employment Policies Institute shows a staggering fraction of policy makers who support a minimum wage bump don’t even pay their interns—a whopping 95% of progressive legislators who proposed the Raise the Wage Act pay their interns $0 per hour.
The Employment Policies Institute gives some examples of the big-shot progressives who endorsed the bill who are categorically hypocrites:
In the Senate, Senators Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and 20 other cosponsors hire unpaid interns. Of those that do offer a stipend, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only member who pays an hourly wage. However, Senator Sanders’ office only pays interns $12 an hour, short of his $15 proposal. In the House of Representatives, Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Keith Ellison, Maxine Waters and 145 other cosponsors do not pay their interns. Only 9 members from both chambers offer some form of a stipend, representing 5 percent of cosponsors.
Now, this is nothing new as far as Federal Senators and Representatives go, but it makes an important point: what incentive is there to craft good policy if the policy doesn’t affect you?
No, seriously.
It’s a concept not unknown to those avid readers of Nassim Taleb, who refers to these types as intellectual-yet-idiots (or, alternatively, charlatans). For those who haven’t read his work, do yourself a favor and read the previously linked article; you’ll be better off.
He hits the nail on the head: without skin in the game there is no reason to do something. A lack of skin in the game is the reason Taleb often berates tenured economists for advocating for policies that would destroy their personal finances, but do nothing that would affect their comfy tenured positions. Here Taleb is describing briefly this principal:
For more on this, click here.
And this applies most saliently to politics.
For example, why should Republicans repeal and replace Obamacare if it doesn’t even affect them because of the Congressional exemption? This is one of the reasons that President Trump should remove the exemption: it may help force Congress to act in our best interests, rather than play political games with other people’s lives and wealth.
Going back to the minimum wag: it’s appalling that these Members of Congress would try and push additional policies that would only affect others and not them. It’s bureaucracy at its finest.
Furthermore, there are plenty of examples showing that raising the minimum wage actually hurts the very people it’s suppose to help. For example, Harvard released basic research this year that posits minimum wage hikes have a detrimental effect to the economy overall. This has been confirmed in real time in Seattle.
Up in Canada, a study found that Ontario’s minimum wage hike also would disproportionately impact immigrants and ethnic minorities—the very people the government claims to be looking out for.
But none of this matters unless Congress has to live with the consequences of their policies like the rest of us. |
What is the new module system in Java 9? In Java 7, the JDK was a complex monolithic platform. With Java 9, the platform itself needs to be modular to introduce the new system. Alan Bateman explains the underlining organization of the module system. He shows how modules are linked to each other within an application and how to create runtime images with the jlink tool, for example.
The JDK 9 will work with your application the same as JDK 8 did. To make sure your code will run, you need to understand the deprecation process, encapsulation, and how to check your applications for unsupported APIs. Read all about it in the blog “Gear up for Java 9.”
You will still be able to use the class path with Java 9. Alan shows how to use the module and class paths together in the video below. He walks you through an example of an application with several modules. He also dives into modules themselves and explains their nomenclature, packages with many resources, configuration, and commands, to name a few.
I recommend watching the entire video. To help you go back to this content, I listed the topics addressed in this video:
Part 1: Modular development starts with a modular platform
Java Linker (10:02)
Part 2: Introduction to modules (13:53)
An example with multiple modules (15:38)
Commands for compiling modules, How to compile and package modules (25:13)
Using the module path and classpath together (35:45)
Linking - a runtime image (38:39)
Related to the module system:
JEP 261: Module System
JEP 201: Modular source code
JEP 200: The modular JDK
JEP 220: Modular run-time images
JEP 282: The Java Linker (jlink)
JEP 260: Encapsulate Most Internal APIs
OpenJDK Jigsaw Project
Related blogs
Gear up for Java 9
Prepare for JDK 9
Looking at JDK 9 with Categories |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Premium power hitters don’t often get to the open market, which is why the free agency of Chris Davis is one worth keeping a close eye on for the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Baltimore Orioles are said to have tabled their slugger an offer of $150 million over seven years, and he is reportedly looking to crack $200 million. If you’re Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista, both eligible for free agency next fall, that’s catching your attention.
Whatever number Davis lands at doesn’t offer an exact barometer of the future for the Blue Jays power duo should they reach the marketplace – they hit home runs but are different players with significantly different variables – but it will offer some indication of how other teams value power.
We know already how stupid the money has gotten for upper- and middle-tier starters this off-season and now Davis, Jason Heyward, Yoenis Cespedes and Justin Upton are looking to get theirs.
“These would be unique guys in free agency, if you look at the circumstances around them for both performance levels and other things as well,” Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro said of his sluggers Wednesday at the winter meetings. “You never know what a free agent market is going to be until you’re in it, that’s where the risk comes in for the player. You just don’t know what that’s going to be.”
The reasonable guess, especially if they can perform similarly next season to the way they did this past one, is that the market for them is going to be rather robust. As a general rule, these types of players don’t tend to get cheaper.
“We’ve seen a dramatic reduction in power and the ability to hit even 30 home runs,” said agent Scott Boras, who represents Davis, among other prime free agents. “It’s something that’s really going to be a commodity in the future.”
Worth noting, too, is that the New York Yankees have at least $38 million coming off the books next year when the contracts for Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran expire, which could mark their return to free agency and significantly alter the market. Put all together, if the Blue Jays want to lock up one or both of their sluggers beyond 2016, they’re better off doing it sooner rather than later.
That being said, Shapiro certainly changed the conversation Wednesday by saying he does have an interest in extending both players, but also explaining that there are enough other things on the team’s plate right now that take a higher priority. Between filling out the 2016 roster, building up minor-league depth, restructuring the front office and preparing for up to nine arbitration cases in January, the Blue Jays have plenty to work through.
“We’ve only got so many human beings who can lift the rocks up the hill,” said Shapiro, adding later: “At some point we will turn our attention away from this year’s team, at least a portion of it, and start looking at those contract issues and the other things that lurk for us.”
There are also longer-term planning questions, particularly when it comes to the payroll for 2017 and beyond, the Blue Jays will need a better grasp of before they can make the type of financial commitment that will be required to re-sign Encarnacion and/or Bautista.
“It’s a business so you know where revenues are now, you know where you hope to grow them to, you know what it could mean if you have a winning year this year to continue to grow upon last year, so you start to get some ideas of where the upper range of payrolls might be,” said Shapiro. “Obviously team performance will be a big part of that.”
Another issue is the weakened Canadian dollar and its growing gap against the American greenback. Shapiro insisted the 2016 payroll will be higher than that in 2015, but when asked if that is partly because the same amount of U.S. money is more expensive now than last season, he replied: “The exchange rate has a factor on expenses.”
As things stand now, the Blue Jays have an estimated $135 million committed to their roster. For 2017, they have $67.5 million committed to four players, $53 million on the books to three players in 2018, although Josh Donaldson will be making major money in arbitration those seasons and that needs to be considered, too.
If the payroll doesn’t rise substantially from the $135-$140-million range it’s believed to be at right now, the Blue Jays will have a very hard time shoehorning in both Bautista and Encarnacion.
Asked if they could afford to extend both players, Shapiro replied: “Theoretically, at the expense of other players, yes. The question gets back to what would the team look like around them if you did that, what are your revenues going to be, where will your payroll be. We don’t have certainty on a lot of those things right now. As time goes on we’ll get more and more of those answers.”
Time, however, is not necessarily on the Blue Jays’ side.
Encarnacion’s representatives made it clear to the Blue Jays that he doesn’t want negotiations extending into the regular season. Ideally, neither he nor Bautista has to deal with the distraction while trying to help defend the American League East championship.
Additionally, the closer a player gets to free agency, the less incentive he typically has to sign an extension without learning how the market values him.
“We’ll be respectful of a player’s wishes, but we’re not going to be black and white,” Shapiro said of Encarnacion’s deadline. “So we may say, ‘Hey, is there an ability to revisit it for three days over the all-star break when you’re not playing? Is that something you want no matter what?’ That’s one of the reasons agents exist, to deflect that from a player. They’re going to know their player. So we’re never going to set rules that are so rock solid that we can’t reconsider them if it benefits both parties. The underlying desire is always going to be to keep a player like that here.”
The Blue Jays kept both Bautista and Encarnacion in Toronto the last time they approached free agency with what turned out to be very club-friendly deals.
Bautista’s contract signed in February 2011 will pay him a total of $78 million over six years, while Encarnacion’s deal agreed to July 2012 will pay him a total of $37 million over four years. Both are believed to want to stay, but neither is likely to offer a major hometown discount.
“A multi-year contract is about sharing risk and can you find that sweet spot where the player feels good about the risk he’s taking, giving up what could be out there on the open marketplace, and the club has to assess what risks exist for them, either in health, performance or the other circumstances, which is team performance, revenue, all the other things that go into building a team,” said Shapiro.
“Right now, we’ve got some other things we’ve got to take care of. These jobs are you’ve got 1,000 balls up in the air, and to be successful you have to prioritize. Those are big issues that are looming but right now we’ve got to fill some spots on this team. In order to have the best team possible to ensure the best sources of revenue and the most excitement for our fans, what we need to focus on right now is 2016.”
Searching for the sweet spot will mean a whole lot more than just putting barrel to baseball this spring training for the Blue Jays. |
Colin Everett recounts the anarcho-syndicalist origins of the Brazilian labour movement, and its eventual supersession by authoritarian, state-linked unions.
The roots of organized labor in Brazil as in most other Latin American countries, lies in the often forgotten realm of anarcho-syndicalism. Brought to life with the flood of immigrants around the turn of the century, Brazilian labor grew in the industrial cities along the coast. This radical movement which grew with the anarchist passion of Southern European immigrants and fanned by the repression of both church and state was the single largest force behind Brazilian labor for the first twenty-five years of its development. While the movement suffered harshly under the Vargas regime it retained its original strength but on a much smaller scale. Anarcho-syndicalists were still deeply involved in Brazilian labor until the nineteen thirties when worker-controlled labor suffered a slow death and the government took control of organized labor.
Brazil underwent the full spectrum of development in its organized labor, from advocating worker control and anarchist organizing to authoritative and government controlled. This paper will show the influence that anarcho-syndicalism had on the growth of the Brazilian labor movement and how it was the most dominating force in Brazilian labor during the first quarter of the century of its formation until labor's decline in 1937.
Brazil is a country of vast extremes. The story of labor in Brazil displays all the diversity of thought and action likely on the subject of organized labor. From one extreme of an anarchist controlled industrial labor force to the other a completely authoritarian government controlled labor bureaucracy. The story of organized labor in Brazil even at its height only represents a fraction of that countries population. In 1920, of the 30 million people living in Brazil only 250,000 were members of the anarchist unions at their height While this is like a minority of the population Brazil's anarcho-syndicalist movement was the second largest in Latin America during the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Brazil went through some important changes during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Slavery in Brazil was only abolished in 1888. In 1887 literacy in Brazil was still only at about 45% of the population. The majority of Brazilians during this period still lived in the country's vast interior. Everything changed around the turn of the century when massive immigration from Southern Europe took place and over 10 million Europeans entered South America from the 1870's until World War I. Out of that 10 million, 3,390,000 had entered Brazil between 1871-1920. Most of the immigrants arrived in the first decade of the century. This massive wave of immigrants combined with the growth of industrial Brazil lead to one of the worlds largest anarchist-controlled labor forces and helped shape the history of Brazil.
This paper will detail the lives of those immigrants and, joined with the native Brazilians, the new land they created. The development of organized labor through various labor congresses and strikes will be studied in detail, as well as the influence of the ruling class, Catholic church, and the industrial workers themselves who controlled the world they lived in. All these things combined created this unique workers movement which made anarcho-syndicalism the most important force in organized labor both in Latin America and in Brazil for the first quarter of this century.
Brazil was still primarily an agricultural country when it began to be flooded with immigrants around the turn of the century. Many immigrants were brought into Brazil to work the country's numerous coffee plantations. Unfortunately for the plantation owners many of the immigrants just kept on moving because they did not want to replace the slave labor force who had been freed only a few years before. One Italian journalist writing for the Italian Geographical society remarked that the plantation owners of Sao Paulo simply wanted to " replace black slaves for white ones". Many of these immigrants just kept on moving and finally settled in Brazil's two major industrial centers: Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Once immigrants started to arrive in the industrial cities they were shocked to find the crowded filthy conditions. In Sao Paulo poor working people were crammed into small rooms averaging 10 by 10 by 18 feet, often with four to six people in each room. The sanitary conditions were just as deplorable, the poorest 15% of Sao Paulo was forced to share one toilet for twenty people. The poorest 10% had to share one toilet for every one hundred to two hundred people.
Industrially Brazil slowly grew as a textile center for South America. The port cities of Santos and Rio de Janeiro shipped much of Brazil's coffee and rubber overseas to European and American markets. Brazil's ruling class still operated as if they were in a slave economy demanding sun-up to sun-down labor; both in the fields and in the factories. The popular opinion that the ruling class shared about class division in their society was to completely deny it. Rodriques Alves, the president of Sao Paulo, when asked about class division in Brazil stated, " among us (Brazilians) there is frank democracy and a complete absence of social classes". With a developing industrial economy and a massive interior filled with natural resources, Brazil was making itself one of South America's leading economic centers. Brazil, although it was growing slowly, remained a minor industrial center on a global scale till World War I came about and Brazil was cut off from its trading partners. As a result it was forced to develop itself industrially to make up for what could not be imported from Europe or America. This can be seen in the startling growth of Brazil's leading city at the time, Sao Paulo. In 1900 Sao Paulo had 239,820 people and 22,407 buildings, in 1918 the population and buildings doubled to 504,278 and 55, 256 respectively. But industry and government were corrupt organizations who served only the interests of those in power. Newly arrived immigrants saw this decadent system based on human exploitation and violence and rejected the whole system as beyond redemption, in this belief lies the popularity of anarchism for Brazil's immigrant working class. In the words of historian Fanny Simon, " Fraud, violence and control by landed oligarchs were the rule in South America. Many workers accordingly, came to believe that direct rather that political action was the only way to improve their status." Organized labor as well as the growth of urban Brazil begins with the massive wave of immigration that changed the whole world during the first half of the twentieth century.
Throughout its history Brazil has long suffered an identity problem. The capitalists who ran the factories and plantations preferred immigrant labor over that of the Brazilians. They considered anything European to be superior over anything Brazilian; Brazilian workers included. Of the 3,390,000 immigrants who flooded into Brazil the majority were from Italy (1,373,000), the Portuguese made up the second largest group (901,000), Spanish immigrants were numerous as well (500,000). German, Polish, Jewish, Russian and Danish immigrants all moved to Brazil is less sizable numbers. By far the majority of the Italian immigrants hailed from the country and cities of Northern Italy where a firm labor tradition had been in place for a generation. As mentioned earlier many of the immigrants skipped the cities and moved into the countryside to find horrible conditions: trachoma alone infected 305,000 people in 1905 on coffee plantations in rural Sao Paulo. Besides the European immigrants flooding into the cities, Brazilians were often forced by the decline of Brazilian sugar on the global markets to move from the Northern regions to the urban centers of the south. Overwhelmingly, it was immigrants who made up the industrial and urban work forces and it was they who were the force behind the growing anarcho-syndicalist movement in Brazil.
Anarchism was the favored political ideology of the immigrants for a variety of reasons. While it was definitely a response to the harsh treatment handed down from Brazil's ruling class, it consisted of much more than simply a reaction to cruelty. One of the reasons for the popularity of anarchism was that few immigrants had any desire to become citizens. In 1920, only 6,441 or 1.45% of the 444,374 foreigners in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro had become Brazilian citizens. The Brazilian immigrant therefore existed outside of the traditional political system. Government was something removed to them, something distant. Anarchism was the only political philosophy that actually encouraged its supporters to live outside of the traditional political spectrum. Socialist and reform parties in Brazil always encouraged its followers to become citizens, register to vote and elect them into positions of power; anarchism makes no such requests to its adherents. It was the relative few demands that anarchism prescribed from its followers that made it so popular. Anarchism simply asked for less from the workers than other political parties of the time. Anarchism was also popular to the immigrant because many had wished to escape the rigid 'hierarchical structures' and control that was prevalent in so many Southern European communities. To them Brazil represented a new world with the possibility to free themselves from the restraints of the old. Anarchism was also a strong political force in Southern Europe, with thousands of followers in both urban and rural Europe.
One thing that almost all immigrants to Brazil shared in common was a Catholic background. While the immigrants may not have hailed from a personally religious background the society they left as well as they society they entered was dominantly Catholic. The anarchists who organized Brazil's labor movement had a delicate relationship with Catholicism. Immigrant workers drawn to anarchism in Brazil realized the hypocrisy of the church's action; but at the same time yearned for fierce moral guidelines. This is truer are of the anarchists who took on the role of organizers rather than the rank and file members of anarchist unions. Anarchist labor organizers in Brazil followed a strict code of conducting themselves, as many opposed all forms of alcohol, tobacco, and the eating of meat. The anarchists in Brazil fiercely attacked the church on many issue's including the Church's refusal to promote or acknowledge any form of birth control. Brazilian anarchists thrashed the Catholic Church for allowing such madness as Carnival claiming it was a waste of human life. In the words of one critic writing in A terra livre, " Carnival is over, and what is left ? Squeezed buttocks and breasts and other lovely things". To anarchists who were trying to organize Brazils poor, Carnival was a distraction for the poor so that they could forget about their miserable lot in life in a decadent display of drinking and other unseemly behavior. Anarchist labor organizers would cite the same distaste for any diversion created as a chance for the workers to temporally rise above their misery. Alcohol was the chief cultural enemy of the anarchists, but anything that diverted the poor was open to attack: tobacco, cinema, and soccer. The anarchists begged the poor of Brazil not to wait for eternal redemption while living their lives in utter misery and poverty; but to grasp the situation and take control of their destiny. They charged that the Church was content to let the poor suffer, content to allow them to be merely passive observers in their own lives. For these diehard activists spreading the word of workers rights and anarchism was the same as spreading the word of a religion. Interestingly enough one of the favorite topics among anarchist was; Was Jesus Christ an anarchist ? These anarchists’ activists considered themselves closer to Christ's message than the Catholics. Closer to his personality and to his predicament of one man against an empire. When militant labor organizers went out to the poor to speak of workers rights and the great division between rich and poor they present their views just as Christians would. The evangelical spirit and the conversion experience were two traits that militant anarchists shared with Christian missionaries and preachers. What the anarchists opposed with all their strength, down to their last breath, was the horrible hypocrisy of the Church. A betrayal of the Church to its own message, of authority and hierarchy covered up in the illusion of a world for the meek.
Traditionally, many historians have simplified the anarchist experience in Brazil and all of South America by simply stating that anarchism was very popular among the poor of Southern Europe, and that it was simply imported with the immigrants. When the immigrants arrived in South America they simply tried to recreate their old world in every way and that included their political affiliations. The Brazilian anarchist experience was far more complex than that quick equation. As historian Sheldon Maram suggested anarchism flourished in Brazil because not because it was imported with all other Southern European characteristics but because it was the movement most attuned to the situation in Brazil. This is a major theme in the development of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Brazil, that anarchism was the only political philosophy capable of uniting Brazil's immigrants and serving the organized labor needs at the same time.
The very first people to organize themselves into unions in Brazil were not industrialists or factory workers but artisans and skilled workers. It was their fierce independent spirit of the artisan the flamed the fires of anarchist organizing among Brazil's working class, " Anarchism drew its early strength from the artisan. Who valued self-teaching and individual enterprise and therefore saw a rise in industry a threat to his way of life ". It was in this immigrant population that Brazil's most active anarchists dwelled. One of Brazil's most active fields and areas for anarchist action was the stonecutters of Greater Sao Paulo. Stone cutting by its very nature was an independent activity. Stonecutters were not paid a wage, they profited in small groups of workers and got paid on the delivery of finished products; they needed neither the government nor the employer. By their positions as skilled workers who could not be easily replaced when they struck or withdrew their labor over an issue immediate action would be taken to remedy the problem by the people the stonecutters worked for. In this sense 'direct action' as a political philosophy made sense to them. In contrast factory workers because of the nature of their work and the ease of replacing the work force were often subjected to longer more drawn out strikes.
There was often tension among Brazils diverse population in this era. Among the Italians and Portuguese the labor movement was often divided among the different races. Language was the chief barrier as most labor publications and radical newspapers in Brazils up until 1920 were published in Italian. Union’s locals, were often divided by language. Only minor conflicts arose between the European immigrants. The serious divisions among races in Brazil took place between native Brazilians and Afro-Brazilians and the massive immigrant populations. Immigrants constantly complained that the Brazilians had no class conscious and no passion for working class issues. Often the Brazilians would be used as 'scabs' to break up immigrant strikes. In the world of organized labor a person who turns their back on his fellow workers and agrees to replace a striking worker in considered the lowest form of human scum. This division created by the employing class in Brazil created a huge gulf between these two populations. This tensions over Brazilians (often blacks) crossing immigrant picket lines created distrust and hate between these two groups that otherwise would of shared many things in common.
Afro-Brazilians did organize themselves into political groups but these groups most often focused on racial politics rather than labor issues. Occasionally an Afro-Brazilian group would form a 'socialist' organization like the Brasil Novo newspaper that was founded by a black lawyer Gurana Santana in 1932.
Immigrants often charged that Brazilians had no working class traditions to draw on. While the Brazilians may not of had a specific working class tradition to draw on many anarchists were impressed with the inhabitants of rural Brazil ability to exist peacefully with very little government interference. Oreste Ristori, a famous Brazilian anarchist writing for a Geneva newspaper wrote that, " Whole areas of Brazil are free of government, one could travel for weeks, even months..without seeing a policemen...that the law everyone respected was work."
The diverse anarchists of Brazil sponsored and took part in many activities besides the labor movement. Brazil was particularly well known for instituting Fransico Ferrer Free Schools. Francisco Ferrer was an internationally known anarchist educator who was murdered in his homeland by Spanish officials for criticizing the Catholic Church as an educational institution. Free Schools were anarchist run institutions built on learning, through free exploration of ideas rather than forced information. Besides education, the anarchist was often at the cultural forefront of Brazil. They were the only group that tried to bring plays to the poor working class. They also published literary works not related to politics in their newspapers, like A terra livre. They always organized celebrations and festivals on the traditional anarchist holidays, like May 1, November 11, and March 18. Anarchism was not a simple one-sided political philosophy but rather a complex ideology with a diverse movement in Brazil.
The anarchists did not break out of their political isolation until 1902 when many started to take an active interest in the development of trade unions. The first major strike in Brazil occurred in Rio de Janeiro in 1903 when workers at the Aliaca Textile Mill walked off the job. This strike paralyzed Rio de Janeiro for twenty days when over 40,000 workers from all the city’s textile mills went on strike demanding better conditions and pay. Most strikers did not win but instead they settled for a nine and a half hour workday.
The first Brazilian Labor Congress was held in 1906. The major event of this congress was the founding of the Congresso Operario Brasileria (C.O.B.), this new labor system was based on anarcho-syndicalism. The system of organization the Congress endorsed was the federation system where unions were held in loose associations but retained their individual autonomy. This federation system was directly based on the radical French anarcho-syndicalist union the Confederation Generale du Travail (C.G.T.). In the anarchist federation system there exists no paid officials, only temporary officers and no official leaders.
Many of the workers in urban Brazil were actually not industrial workers but instead worked in the cities extensive service industries. It was just these type of workers who struck in 1906, at the Compahia Paulista Railroad. The government reacted quickly to an anarchist lead strike that threatened Brazils transportation network; immediately the government sent 500 troops to break up the strike. Attorneys who tried to help strikers were arrested and the government stopped all telegraph service in all areas around the strikers. Next, the government went to the company housing that they provided railroad workers and started kicking families out of their homes. The government and the Catholic Church did not know how to handle their urban poor striking. Catholic leaders sent letters to the strikers asking them to call off the strike; but even the urgings of the church could stop the strikers. The real reaction came when workers in Santos threatened a sympathy strike. The immediate reaction of the government was to send to warships to that port city.
Leaders in government and industry had good reason to fear a sympathy strike in Santos. As Santos was regarded as Brazil's most radical city it earned the nickname 'little Barcelona'. The C.O.B., one of Brazil’s leading anarchist labor organizations always had higher membership numbers in Santos. In 1907, shortly after the C.O.B. was created Santos had Brazil's highest concentration of organized labor and four times the members of Rio de Janeiro unions (22,500 in Santo to 5,000 in Rio de Janeiro and 12,500 in Sao Paulo). Santos had the highest concentration of anarcho-syndicalists in Brazil for several reasons. Since the city served as a port and satellite city for Sao Paulo it consisted of very little industry. The residents of Santos were highly skilled laborers compared to Brazils other major cities. Working in a port city provided for constant interaction with anarchist, socialists, and communists who were arriving from Europe and other South American countries. Santos tended to be a city of single men in the anarchist movement. Men with families were more likely to live in the larger cities of Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. A work force of single men without the burden of families is going to have the flexibility to take more chances and less fear of the consequences of direct action than men who had to support a family. In this respect, Santos shared more things in common with the huge anarchist movement in Argentina where families were rare as the concentration to men over women was greater.
The next strike to shake Brazil was a general strike in the textile industry of Sao Paulo in 1907, it was a short unsuccessful strike. After the enthusiasm of 1906 and 1907 Brazilian labor went into a bit of a lull and little activity took place. The anarchists continued to publish their newspapers and organize their free schools but little labor activity took place until the massive resurgence of 1912.
While labor activity slowed down for about five years between 1907 and 1912 the seeds for further revolt were being planted in the minds of the workers. During this time Brazils leading anarchist paper A terre livre published seventy five issues and kept a weekly readership averaging around 4,000. The paper was being recognized on an international scale when Peter Kropokin the famous Russian anarchist wrote to the paper thanking them for a donation to the Russian anarchist movement and publishing a fine newspaper.
This lull in labor activity fit right into the anarchist plan for organizing. Their pattern was for years organizers would spread propaganda among the workers. When unrest happened on the labor agitators would organize a union for a strike. If the strike was successful than the union was kept; if the strike failed then so did the union. This was the pattern of labor organizing that anarchists employed all throughout the 1910s and 1920s.
The C.O.B. was not the only labor organization attracting workers along anarchist lines the Workers Federation of Sao Paulo (F.O.S.P.) was very militant among many fields between 1908 and 1912 especially among construction workers in Sao Paulo. These construction workers like the stone cutters of Sao Paulo were very aggressive in their demands and their actions. One strike in Rio Grande do Saul, which was led by that cities Federacao Operaria Syndiacal by 1913 this group which had its headquarters in Porte Alegre which represented 42% of all the federations members.
Textile workers had always been considered hard to organize for the Brazilian anarchists because in 1911, for example 72% of all textile workers in Sao Paulo were women and children. These textile workers were not all together cautious though they probably just seemed harder to organize because there were so many textile factories. Between 1901 and 1914, twenty six of the seventy five strikes in Sao Paulo somehow involved textile workers. In general though labor was considered to be in a decline between 1908 and 1912.
The resurgence was strong when in 1912 anarcho-syndicalist unions represented over 60,000 workers in Brazil. This new wave of unionization carried Brazil towards its second national labor congress which took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1913. The themes for this congress where simple shorter hours, better pay, and safe work conditions. Anarchists from all over South America attended the 1913 labor congress and many were impressed with the Santos Labor Federations plan to recruit members strictly along anarchist lines. Brazil experienced a depression in 1913 and 1914 but the labor movement only slowed slightly.
In 1915, Rio de Janeiro hosted an international South American anarcho-syndicalist conference with delegates attending from: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and five Brazilian States. The major themes for this conference was building an anti-war movement to oppose the war in Europe.
Brazil was unique in that it maintained a large and often stable organized labor force capable of conducting numerous strikes; while at the same time constantly having a surplus of labor. This may prove more toward the racism of the Brazilian ruling class than the solidity of the working class as the ruling class preferred to pay European immigrant women and children to work than use the countries massive Afro-Brazilian population. Industrial employers on the whole considered blacks to be fit for menial labor only as they were considered inferior to Europeans.
The years 1917 through 1920 represent the height of Brazil's worker led labor movement. The winter of 1917 is considered one of South America's most impressive displays of human solidarity and radical labor activities. In these years Brazil's anarcho-syndicalist movement would ignite like a fresh struck match. Then just a quickly as the match ignited, the flame would burn the match until only a smolder of what was before remains. Brazil's labor unrest was ignited not by political ambitions but instead by the ambitions of bread.
In 1916 and the first part of 1917, Brazil was experiencing a huge increase in the cost of living in food and fuel prices. This rise was dramatic and combined with non-increases in wages and the populations of industrial cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were not happy. Any attempt to better conditions or pay was quickly turned down. In June of 1917 workers at the Contonficio Crespi plant in the Mocca district of Sao Paulo asked for a 25% wage increase; although business was booming their request was turned down.
Unions like the F.O.S.P. who started 1917 with membership around 30,000; organized rallies to protest the high cost of living. At one such of these rallies on July 11, a common worker who had no connection with the rally, Antonio Martinez, was beaten to death by Sao Paulo police. Sao Paulo erupted in shock at the brutal death of a 21 year old worker. Antonio Martinez's funeral was a massive event. The funeral procession marched throughout the city and at one point the police confronted the mourners. After a shuffle the police began to attack the crowds. Police on horseback attacked one portion of the processional with swords. The result of this was massive unrest and rioting in Sao Paulo. The next day, July 12, 15,000 workers walked out on strike. The day after another 5,000 workers joined the strike. Soon a general strike was declared and the city was at a standstill. The government declared martial law and brought in the army. The main cause behind all the strikes was the high cost of food and the brutal death of Martinez was just the catalyst. Eventually, the strike ended when the government put pressure on the industrialists to end the strike; the workers settled for a 10% wage increase.
Sao Paulo was actually just the begging to the strikes of 1917. News of the unrest was not slow to reach Rio de Janeiro. When descriptions of the strikes reached one furniture worker on the morning of July 18, he immediately walked off the job calling for a strike at his factory; two others workers joined him. By the afternoon of July 18, only 150 workers had walked out in solidarity with the strikers of Sao Paulo. On July 19, five factories were on strike and the movement was growing uncontrollably. On July 22, the F.O.S.P. of Rio de Janeiro called for a general strike. To their surprise 50,000 workers went on strike on the morning of July 23. Later in the afternoon of July 23, 20,000 metal workers walked out in solidarity with the factory workers. The demands for all the workers were universal; an eight hour work day and a 20% wage increase. This was a textbook spontaneous general strike and all of industrial Brazil was stopped and in control of the workers.
The reaction of the government was swift and severe. By July 26, the government had used all its resources and declared martial law. Army, navy, and police were guarding all the major areas of Rio de Janeiro. The strike carried on into August when the government finally realized they could not keep control of a whole population. The government soon forced the leaders of industry to settle with the workers. On August 2, 1917 the Rio de Janeiro general strike ended with the workers settling for a fifty six hour work week and a 10% wage increase.
In a few short months Brazilian labor had shown its incredible strength and power. The workers displayed that they were powerful enough to call strikes on a national scale. The organization and influence of the anarchist played an important role in the speed by which union leaders called strikes. Traditional reform unions have always been slow to call strikes preferring long meeting with employers and drawn out negotiations. The anarchist leadership of the F.O.S.P. knew the pulse and passions of the workers and had the good sense and timing to know when to call the strike at a time when they knew they could get massive workers support.
The government too was impressed with the actions of the anarchists and the realized that they had a problem with their labor unions. In September 1917, in response to open German bombing to Brazilian merchant shipping the South Atlantic, Brazil entered the war against the Germans. While Brazil had entered the war near its end and they played a very small role the Brazilian government used the war as an opportunity to solve their domestic labor problems. The Brazilian government declared that the strikes of July and August were the work of German and Italian agitators who had the backing of their respective governments to cause unrest in Brazil. The response was the deportation of hundreds of labor leaders, the closing down of labor newspapers and the threatened deportation of anyone professing leading labor activity in the July and August strikes. This was a devastating blow to the labor movement that had just made so much progress with the workers. The labor forces of industrial Brazil was at this time still mostly immigrant and most often these immigrants’ worst fear was being deported from Brazil.
1917 was the height of anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil. As a result of the general strikes the industrial employers and the government realized they had a common goal in the destruction of the anarcho-syndicalist unions. The government used World War I as an excuse to tear apart the leadership of the anarcho-syndicalist unions but they needed a bigger event to give them an excuse for more repressive deportations and a public crackdown of the radicals. The attempted revolt of 1918 signalled the decline of anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil.
The world at this time was a place of great change and social unrest. The standard Marxist notion that capitalism would be destroyed and a new world would arise was a commonly held sentiment at the time. Workers truly believed that the great socialist revolution was a just about upon them and why would they have any reason to doubt that notion. The whole world at his time was in a great state of revolution as socialist movements were alive in every industrial country on the earth. When the news of the Russian Revolution first reached Brazil; anarchists were ecstatic. Radicals of all sorts were convinced that the Russian Revolution had spread farther and was much more utopian that was being described to them by the capitalist press. It was a commonly held belief among radicals everywhere that it would be only a short time to a revolution came to a town near them. It was with thoughts like these in their heads that a group of anarchist labor leaders planned the overthrow on Rio de Janeiro and eventually the whole Brazilian state. With the exception of this incident (which as we will see never got off the ground) Brazilian anarchism was an incredibly peaceful movement. Bomb throwing were almost unheard of as the Brazilian anarchists did very little to live up the phantom notion of the violent lone anarchist bomb thrower.
The 1918 revolt was being planned by a group of forty anarchist labor leaders who met in one of the classrooms of one the group’s leaders. The group had a considerable plan and arsenal for their attack. They had gathered 1,600 bombs, a detailed plan with people in all the key positions of the city: power, radio, telegraphs, and transportation. They also had over 40 barrels of gasoline ready to burn down the key structures of government the city hall, police station, and banks. Also included in their portfolio was an small army of 4,000 militant anarchists union members who were ready for street battles with the authorities. The group’s plan was to take over the city and lead the workers to a general strike that would shut down industry which then would fall under worker control. The plan actually never got a shot to be put into action because one of the men attending the organizational meetings was an informant for the Rio de Janeiro police. The only results were massive arrests and deportations of all involved and some small instances of street fighting. The majority of the labor movement and the majority of the anarchists never had any knowledge of the plan but they certainly felt the repression that followed as this incident gave the Brazilian government full authority to persecute those in the anarchist and labor movements. Actions like this attempted revolt were a direct result of the Russian revolution which had a enormous effect on the radical labor movement in Brazil.
1919 was an important year in the development of Brazilian labor. 1919 signaled the turning point in Brazilian labor history when control of organized labor shifted from the anarcho-syndicalist to the reformist unions. The year consisted of many strikes and for the first time the strikes to place in different regions of Brazil. Bahia, Pernambugo, and Rio Grande do Sul as well as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Santos all had consistent labor activity. 1919, was the first year that Brazil enacted a workers compensation law. As the anarchists would be fond of pointing out the government could create all the laws they wanted to because it made no difference in the lives of the workers; as this labor law was the quickly ignored Brazil's employing class.
The first major strike of 1919 took place in early May and sections of it lasted until June and July. It is important to note that even during a general strike not all workers would be out on strike. Workers would often strike a few days then return to the job as another factory or section of the factory went out on strike. This tactic frustrated the anarchist labor leader's who saw it as a determent to achieving the end result. The simple truth was the often times were just too tough in Brazil and common workers did not have the savings to support themselves during a long strike. It seem of confusing way to conduct of strike but these were unsettling times in Brazil. Organized labor in Brazil was considered at this time still very radical by global standards. A delegate from Brazil that traveled to a world labor congress in Europe reported that Brazilian syndicalism was not plagued by ' Socialists Parliamentary Illusions'. In others words anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil was still a revolutionary and not a reform organization.
On May Day 1919, in Sao Paulo an anarchist rally attracted 60,000 workers who spent the day listening to revolutionary speeches. One month latter, 20,000 factory workers struck in Sao Paulo. Around the same time as the May Day rally in Sao Paulo another massive strike was brewing in Rio de Janeiro. Finally on the 4th of May 1919, 50,000 factory workers went out on strike in Rio de Janeiro. Their demands were the same as always an eight hour work day and a 20% pay increase. Both the Rio de Janeiro and the Sao Paulo strikes lingered on well into June and July and the government was starting to get serious about Brazil's growing urban labor problem. During this time the Catholic Church displayed which side they were on. One Catholic center in Sao Paulo begged the workers to be peaceful and give, " Unrestricted support to all conservative classes in the present emergency and (to) declare themselves at the side of the government for the repression of anarchism".
With the government finally forcing the hand of the industrialists the strikers in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro won an eight hour day and a 20% wage increase. It was a short lived victory as the trade off for the shorter hours and pay increase was that workers had to give up their unions. An organization Centro Indsutrial de Fiacao e Tecelegem de Aldgodai, was set up to mediate the strikes they were a composition of half workers and half employers, they made the decision to drop the unions. Shortly after the workers in Sao Paulo lost the unions their new victories from the strike slowly started to wither away and in some of the same factories that struck conditions reverted to pre-strike within a year. This was the first time that the anarchist started to loose their control over Brazilian labor. Brazil at the same time was getting serious about the anarchist threat and in September of 1919, Brazil signed a pact with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to rid themselves of their mutual anarchist enemies. This was a direct result of an international labor congress in 1919 that called for the formation of the South American Syndical International, a conference that Brazilian delegate took an active role in. Almost immediately the arrests and deportations started. Newspapers and the offices of anarchist lead labor unions were trashed, labor leaders were beaten and killed.
The rebellious workers of Santos took instant action. In mid-October 1919 strikers from Santos were arrested as part of the repression of labor activity. Leaders at the F.O.S.P. called for an immediate general strike on October 20, to protest the arrests of strikers in Santos. Only four factories took part, and the general strike was over before it had a chance to begin it was considered a complete disaster for the F.O.S.P.
The amazing instincts of the anarchist labor leaders in 1917 were missing now as the Brazilian workers were not in a desperate food shortage and would not rise up solely for political reasons. Unfortunately for the anarchists the failed Santos general strike started a self destructing pattern for the anarchist labor unions. The exact same thing happened again when a general strike was called in 1920 for factory workers in Rio de Janeiro and the workers did not arise. This pattern of failed general strikes would the most important cause of the slow decline of anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil.
Industrial Brazil was getting more concentrated. In 1920, Rio de Janeiro 17,641 out of the 19,924 textile workers labored in factories employing more than 100, 14,090 worked in factories that employed more than 1,000. The situation was similar in Sao Paulo were in large factories employers had gotten better at spotting agitators and removing them before trouble started.
At the third Brazilian labor congress in 1920, the congress formed the Comussao Executova do Terceiro Congresso which tried to do away with the C.O.B. At this congress the delegates also voted unanimously to condemn an international labor congress that was to be held in Washington DC because the employers and governments were allowed to choose the delegates for the congress. This congress showed a slow decline in anarchist sentiment and the growth in the popularity of communism.
1921, saw another failed general strike in Rio de Janeiro where maritime workers were on strike. The government was now all too prepared for the anarchist predictable pattern of striking and union organizing. Before a movement could get started they would step in and arrest all the labor leaders and most often deport them.
Anarchist activity slowed considerably during the 1920's for a number of reasons.
Anarcho-syndicalism became a more concentrated movement not reaching the large numbers it did earlier but still keeping control over a number of unions if different parts of Brazil. One well known Brazilian labor leader was Jose Righetti, a weaver and an anarchist who founded the Textiles Workers' Union on April 14, 1924. During this time the loose nature of the anarchist organization allowed this Textile Workers' union to build ties to a number of community organization. This came in helpful in July 1924, when a group of dissident military officers took over Sao Paulo as a coup against the government in Rio de Janeiro. During July 5-28, this military coup ran the city and kept Sao Paulo in a state of siege. 1,000 Paulistanos were dead and 4,000 more wounded in bombing and shelling; another 300,000 fled into the interior around Sao Paulo. In desperation, lead by Jose Righetti, people from all over Sao Paulo raided food warehouses in Bras and Mooca. Bringing the anarchists again a surge of popularity for their leadership and skills in direct actions and times of crisis. Once order was restored the government blamed much of the chaos in Sao Paulo on the anarchists. This was cause for even more repression as dozens of labor leaders and anarchists not associated with the anarchist movement were banished to rural prisons and labor colonies near the French Guinea Border.
1925 saw more labor laws passed by the Brazilian government. This new law tried to enforce a two week vacation for workers and put down on child labor. As is often the case with labor laws a chasm exist between the law and what is enforced.
Another major factor in the decline of anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil was that the focus of anarchists shifted from labor to other concerns like fascism. The late 1920s saw the anarchist movement shift away their focus from labor and start to address issues that were harder to control and fight like the global rise in fascism and the growing communist threat.
During the first twenty years of the century communist had existed in Brazil but their power was marginal as they were too removed from the masses and too authoritarian for the anarchists. In 1923, all of the communists in Latin America numbered only 50,000. In Brazil former anarchist lead by Astrogoldo Pereira formed the Partido Communista do Brasil (PCB) in 1922. Over the next decade most of the energies of both the anarchist and communist movements in Brazil went to discrediting each other. The largest issue of dispute in Brazil as well as between anarchist and communists all over the world was the uses of force and authority in the Russian Revolution. Anarchist papers like the famous A Pleb would print articles by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, well known American anarchists who had been to Russia at the invitation of Lenin shortly after the Revolution. The communists would print revenge articles by Lenin denouncing Goldman and Berkman, and so in Brazil the political left eroded with bitter fights like these. The ideological dispute put off workers from joining the PCB and all during the 1920s their movement lacked the support of the working class.
The anarchists were right to concern themselves with the spread of fascism but unfortunately for them they lacked the power to do anything to halt it. Fascism rose in Brazil just as it did all over the world in direct response to the global depression. Brazilian nationalism was appearing in organizations like to Brazilian Intergralist movement which was based in Sao Paulo and sputtered the motto 'God, Fatherland, and Family'.
The change from a radical libertarian majority in politics and labor to an authoritarian majority was a slow process that took the entire 1920s to slowly unfold. At the same time labor was shrinking in power and influence an eager politician Getulio Getulio Vargas (1930-1945) was making a bid to come to power. In 1930, union membership for all of Brazil was only at 220,000 with a fraction belonging to anarchist (2,000) and communists (4,000) sponsored unions. In 1935, one last attempt at uniting the parties of the left in Brazil took place. The Alianca Nacional Libertadora was founded in 1935 and had four months of incredible growth until it was banned by the Vargas administration.
Even with unionized labor being such a minority in a country of 30 million politicians like Vargas knew the importance of controlling urban Brazil. These few workers produced more wealth with their labor then millions of rural Brazilians. One company in Sao Paulo in 1932, paid more taxes to the federal government that 15 of Brazil's rural states.
The government was supportive of unions it could control. When Confederacao Operaria Catolica (Catholic Action) was founded in 1933 it had the full support of the government. These Catholic Action groups were supported in a number of dioceses but never really gathered any enthusiasm among the church's hierarchy. Another Catholic organization named the Workers Circle tried to organize workers but made very small membership and it lacked the full approval of the Catholic Church.
Vargas came to power in 1930 after he declared that the election he had just lost for president was fixed. Almost immediately after taking power he attacked the Brazilian left. Vargas closed down labor publications, arrested 600 labor leaders and prohibited strikes and meetings and demonstrations. Throughout his time in office Vargas had a perennial fear of the PCB in Brazil as they were in constant contact with Moscow. Vargas used this as an excuse to restrict foreign memberships in unions and to denounce communism as a 'exotic ideology' and a ' non-Brazilian doctrine'. This fear unfolded and on January 31, 1931 Vargas ordered all communists arrested and their property seized. Anarchists were less of a threat as they had no national power behind them as the Moscow backed the PCB.
Estado Nova (New State) was the program Vargas implemented when he implemented a complete take over of the Brazilian government in 1937 but in reality it was a slow progress and not an over-night rebellion. The Unionization Law of March, 19 1931 or Decree 19,770 legalized trade unions but provided tutelage for the unions. Vargas, wanted to implement control over his unions in the same way the Mussolini in Italy had dealt with his anarchist and communists by making the unions there legal and controlling them. By 1934, the Ministry of Labor was suppose to attend all union meeting to monitor them; and the state only recognized one union for every industry of workers. Finally on September 30, 1937 the Brazilian army claimed they discovered a 'Cohen Plan' for a communist revolution in Brazil. Vargas's reaction was to cancel the upcoming presidential election and with the help of the military complete his blood-less take over of Brazil.
On November 10, 1937 Vargas officially announced Estado Novo a new constitution based on corporatist and fascist ideas. The Vargas government dissolved national, state and city councils and banned any thing close to union activity as 'anti-social and harmful'. Vargas's Estado Novo was not a quick development but a long gradual process in which Vargas was very interested in promoting industrialization and proving to major American investors like Standard Oil and the United States Steel Corporation that Brazil was a stable place. This truly was a fascist takeover of Brazil as Italy and Germany congratulated Vargas on his success and photographs of Brazil's new leader where mandated in all public places.
Anarchists in Brazil now had to struggle for breath. Their daily mission was simply to maintain their freedom and keep their passionate struggle alive. Many a jaded anarchist decided to leave Brazil like Oreste Ristori, who left to fight in the massive anarchist revolution in Spain. Ristori kept on fighting in Europe just as he spent a lifetime promoting the anarchist cause in Brazil, he was finally shot to death by the Germans as a member of the Italian resistance in 1944.
In a span of forty years anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil had come full circle. What had started out as a small movement of anarchists who took an interest in organized labor ended up just as it had started: a small determined segment of Brazil's population. Anarcho-syndicalism is important to the history of organized labor in Brazil because it represented the position of a whole generation of Brazilian immigrants. It displayed through dramatic events like the general strikes of 1917 that Brazil's working class had the capacity to organize themselves without coercion, without authority, outside of the capitalist system. The failed revolt of 1918 is important because if it succeeded (if only for a short while) it would have been the Paris Commune or Spanish Civil War of South America. At that point in 1918 the working class population of Brazil had no love of the government or the employers and riding the success of 1917 the anarchists might have taken power. The results of the attempted revolt of 1918 was the political repression that deported most of the anarchist leadership of the syndicalism unions. The result of years of political repression is a movement in 1919 that was missing many of the key players in the 1917 general strike. The failed general strikes in 1919 signaled the end of massive anarcho-synicalist unions and the start of a more repressive political state in Brazil.
Passionate Brazil experienced the full spectrum of modern political diversity in the first four decades of the 20th century. The sad result of one of South America's greatest organized labor achievements was the rise fascism in Brazil and the rule of Vargas.
In 1999, anarcho-syndicalism is alive in Brazil. The C.O.B. still keeps an active voice in national and international politics. The rebirth was a result of the massive wildcat strikes on the Brazilian waterfront in the mid-1980s. In 1988, the C.O.B. aligned itself with the International Workingman’s Association (IWA). The IWA today is the world’s largest anarcho-sydicalist organization with chapters in many countries and the Brazilian C.O.B. plays an active role within that organization.
Poem by Sylvio de Figueredo Jesus Christ
Great Anarchist! Oh pallid figure
of a rebel who, among the insane,
dared to raise ever bigger
a ringing cry against slavery.
Who, in contrast to the Roman rot,
against the foul opulence of the orgies,
dreamed of a universal redemption.
My poor Christ, good martyr sublime,
the cross is not required to redeem
the generation of despised poor,
But the struggle on that final battle
among the shouts of your brothers in the fight
and the rubble of the rebels on the barricades.
Anarchism- A philosophy of resistance to, and criticism of, all statist laws and authoritarianism; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. (For the record the anarchist of Brazil during this time would not associate anarchism with any form of violence). It is important to note that in Brazil at this time not all anarchists were supporters of the labor movement. Some strongly criticized the anarchist role in labor unions as reformative and not revolutionary. There are a number of forms of anarchism that are neither communist or syndicalist in nature. In Brazil at this time the only other factions were individualist and mutualists. An example of an individualist-anarchist would be Max Stirner in Germany or Henry David Thoreau in America. A famous mutualist would be Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
Syndicalism- A theory of economy that advocates worker-controlled unions controlling the means of production in loosely connected associations. Reform Syndicalist were not numerous in Brazil but they were in some countries like Italy. A reform syndicalist would advocate that workers take over the means of production through reform within the existing political system.
Socialism- In this time and region of the world, socialism was used as a common term for anyone who opposed capitalism and tried to organize a world without it. Both anarchists and communists considered themselves socialists. Anarchists were not reform socialists but rather 'libertarian socialists', which is a term still used today by some factions of the anarchist movement.
Communism- Communists were party socialists who backed highly-organized and authoritative socialist organizations. In Brazil communists were closely connected with the USSR, and followed a similar political agenda.
Anarcho-Syndicalism- Anarcho-syndicalism is the vision of a worker controlled economy free from the authority of government and the ruling class. Anarcho-syndicalism is organized along industry rather than by trade. Anarcho-syndicalism maintains that economic and social monopolies must be replaced by free, self-managed federations of agriculture and industrial workers united in a system of councils.
Anarcho-Communism- Although rare in Brazil, anarcho-communists advocate a direct path to the pure communism at the end of the communist revolution. The PCB communists advocate a communist state where in theory, a communist government is established in order to destroy itself and slowly erode away and dissolve. Anarcho-communist advocates disagree with the traditional communist claim that a strong communists state is needed, they advocate a direct path to the pure communism that Marx spoke of. To summarize they agree with the traditional PCB communists on the end result of a communist revolution they just disagree on the methods used to achieve those ends.
General Strike- One of the most important tools in the anarcho-syndicalist revolution. The general strike is used to halt industry and the economy while the transition to a libertarian and socialist economy could be set up.
Libertarian- Before the 1950s libertarian was synonymous with anarchism. This word is used in the anarchist sense and has no connection to the bourgeois laissez faire libertarian party of modern times and their capitalist agenda.
Direct Action- As opposed to the lengthy process of conventional political action, direct action promotes action without government interference.
Scab- A scab is someone who crosses a picket line and replaces the labor of workers on strike.
Alba, Victor. Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin America Stanford, Californian: Stanford University Press, 1968.
This is a massive work on the politics of labor in South America. This book contains excellent information on South American anarcho-syndicalism and has a chapter on anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil.
Arvich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Paul Avrich is foremost English-language expert on anarchism in America. This book contains a chapter that outlines general anarchist activity in Brazil.
Bookchin, Murray. The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936. San Francisco, California, AK Press, 1998.
Murray Bookchin's history of the Spanish Civil War provided some information for comparisons between anarcho-syndicalism in Brazil and Spain as well as information on the famous educator Francis Ferrer.
Butler, Kim D. Freedoms Given Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
This work provided for the examples of conflict between Afro-Brazilian and Brazilian Immigrant workers.
Chilcote, Ronald H. Brazil and Its Radical Left: An Annotated Bibliography on The Communist Movement and the Rise of Marxism, 1922-1972. Mildwood, New York: Kraus International Publications,1980.
This is a mainly a reference book but its introductory essay provided some information for this report.
Dolgoff, Sam. " Revolutionary Unionism in Brazil Today: The COB " Libertarian Labor Review. #6: 23-26, Winter 1989.
This is an interview of Leonardo Morelli of the present day COB. The interview was conducted by the French anarchist weekly Le Mondo Libertaire and translated by Sam Dolgoff. The information in this article was only used to summarize the conclusion of the paper.
Dulles, John W. F. Anarchists and Communists in Brazil, 1900-1935. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1973.
John Dulles is one of leading Brazilian historians in America. This work serves as one of the main sources for this report.
Dulles, John W.F. Vargas of Brazil: A Political Biography. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1967.
This biography of Vargas was used as a source for information on Estado Novo which is an important element in this paper.
Fausto, Boris. A Concise History of Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
This survey of Brazil was used for background information on general Brazilian history.
French, John D. The Brazilian Workers' ABC: Class Conflict and Alliances in Modern Sao
Paulo. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
The area directly around Sao Paulo and its labor history was the theme for this book. This detailed work provided much information that related directly to Sao Paulo and its anarcho-syndicalist labor movement.
Gordon, Eric Arthur. Anarchism in Brazil: Theory and Practice, 1890-1920. Dissertation. Tulane University, 1978.
This dissertation was one of the main sources for this report. This concise history of Brazilian anarchism provided much of the information about anarchism that is not directly related to anarcho-syndicalism.
Hall, Michael McDonald. The Origins of Mass Immigration in Brazil, 1871-1914. Dissertation: Columbia University, 1969.
This dissertation was only cited once in the form of a statistic.
Herman, Donald L. The Communist Tide in Latin America: A selected Treatment. Austin Texas: The University of Texas, 1973.
Only information that related to South American Communism and Brazil was selected from this book. It is not a main source.
Howowitz, Irving Louis. Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing Nation. New York: E.P. Dutton & CO., INC., 1964.
The theme of this book was revolutions and conflicts in mid-twentieth century Brazil nut the introductory essay provided some information for this paper.
International Workers Association. " Principles of Revolutionary Syndicalism." Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. Number 25, Pg., 2, 1999.
This article only contributed to the official definition of syndicalism in the glossary section of the paper.
Kadt, Emanuel de. Catholic Radicals in Brazil. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
This book provided information about Catholic worker groups in Brazil as well as a general history of Brazil.
Levine, Robert M. Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
More details about Vargas' rise to power and Brazil in the 1920's.
Maram, Sheldon L. " Labor and the Left in Brazil, 1890-1921: A Movement Aborted." Hispanic American Historical Review. 57:2 (1977) 254-273.
This article provides information not in Maram's dissertation.
Maram, Sheldon L. Anarchists, Immigrants, and the Brazilian Labor Movement, 1890-1920. Dissertation: University of California Santa Barbara, 1972.
This is the book that is cited the most in this report. This book specifically details the role of anarchist-immigrants in the development of the Brazilian labor movement.
Skidmore, Thomas E. " Workers and Soldiers: Urban Labor Movements and Elite Response in Twentieth-Century Lain America." Elites, Masses, and Modernization in Latin America 1850-1930 Austin Texas: The University of Texas Press, 1979.
Skidmore, like Dulles is a major Brazilian historian in America. This essay deals directly with the development of organized labor in Brazil and often referring to the anarchist influence on labor.
Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
A general history of Brazil which was used in this report to provide a general background to the labor movement in Brazil.
Simon, Fanny S. " Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in South America." Hispanic American Historical Review. February (1946): 38-59.
A very compressive survey of Latin American anarcho-syndicalism with only a section on Brazil.
Spalding, Hobart A. Jr. Organized Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Urban Workers in Dependent Societies. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977.
A historical work that focuses on industrial labors in organized labor. This book provided very few examples of the anarchist influence on Brazilian labor, but did provide information about both topics separately.
Troncoso, Maoise`s Poblete & Ben G. Burnett. The Rise of the Latin American Labor Movement. New York: Bookman Associates, 1960.
A broad survey of Latin American labor with only a small section on Brazil.
Wolfe, Jon. " Anarchist Ideology, Worker Practice: The 1917 General Strike and the Formation of Sao Paulo's Working Class. " Hispanic American Historical Review 71:4 (1991): 809-846.
A very opinionated and detailed article that focuses on the role on women in the 1917 general strike in Sao Paulo. Jon Wolfe makes a very clear stand against romanticizing the Brazilian anarchists and holding those anarchists to modern anarchist moral standards (positions such as sexism and racism). His thesis is attacked by Jon D. French in a response in the same issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review.
Woodworth, Fred. "Definition Of Anarchism". The Match, Pg,1, Number 94, 1999.
This source was used to provide a clear definition of anarchism for the glossary.
Written in 1999. A large number of corrections for spelling and grammar have been made by libcom.org. |
Illustration by Lucie Rice Illustration and Design (lucierice.com)
Sometimes the most amazing feats are the simplest, and the ones pulled off in plain sight. In our 24th annual Best of Nashville issue, the Scene salutes the people who produce wonders around us every day, without the aid of smoke or mirrors. Over the past year, we’ve seen the city rise to remarkable prominence on the national stage — our chefs, our musicians, our filmmakers, our fashions. No less important, though, are those whose wizardly deeds, goods and efforts are known mostly to locals and neighbors, and deserve to be known to more.
So pick a page. Any page. And take a closer look at the riches our city has to offer. You won’t believe your eyes.
To view the Best of Nashville Magic Show:
Click here |
INDEPENDENT & UNBIASED MyGolfSpy accepts $0 advertising dollars from any of the major golf manufacturers. We believe in always putting #ConsumerFirst. 17 Hours
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2017 PERFORMANCE GOLF GLOVE BUYER’S GUIDE
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The process of buying anything in today’s time has become stressful and time consuming. We want to help solve that problem for you. The MyGolfSpy mission is simple: create the world’s most objective and comprehensive testing in the industry. We feel the best reviews are those that help you make the right choices and help you get the most out of your time and money.
One key to our testing protocols is testing products head-to-head. We select the top products from each category and put the products through detailed head-to-head testing. We test both in the lab and in the field. We score each product across a range of weighted categories. We then rank the products and explain why, and give awards to the best performing products in the category.
This year we approached performance glove testing with more critical scoring and improved protocols. This was based on an intensive look at the market and feedback from consumers just like you. Several key findings from that research influenced the bag testing process for 2017.
For a comprehensive performance glove test, the norms – feel, comfort, fit, and grip – are always considered. In addition, for this year we examined the glove’s material dispersion, seam comfort, wrist design, strap efficiency, and material quality. We also received multiple units from every test participant in order to test the consistency of sizing and build for each submission.
THE METRICS
We’re always fine-tuning the process to make sure we’re collecting the best data possible. Continuing that trend we’ve updated and refined this year’s analysis to bring you the best buying advice possible.
FEATURES CHART Name Sizes Cadet Materials Colors Ball Marker Hand PING SPORT S-XXL Y Leather/Lycra 1 N R/L ZERO FRICTION MOTION FIT One Size N Leather/Spandex 12 Y Left SRIXON ALL WEATHER S-XL N Leather/Synthetic/Lycra 1 N R/L MIZUNO ELITE S-XL N Leather/Synthetic/Mesh 1 N R/L FOOTJOY WEATHERSOFT S-XL Y Leather/Microfiber 2 Y R/L HJ GRIPPER S-XXL Y Microfiber 11 N R/L MIZUNO COMP S-XXL Y Synthetic 1 N R/L MG TECHGRIP S-XXL Y Leather/Spandex 1 N R/L HJ DURASOFT S-XXL Y Leather/Mesh 1 N R/L GRIPBOOST SECOND SKIN S-XL N Leather/Mesh 1 N Left ZERO FRICTION COMPRESSION FIT One Size N Leather/Spandex 9 Y R/L CADDY DADDY TALON GLOVE S-XXL Y Synthetic Leather/Silicone 1 N R/L
How We Tested
Scoring Metrics
Final Grades We put in hours of testing utilizing data-driven protocols to test new metrics. The numbers are better than ever. Over the course of the test, testers hit balls wearing each glove. For each glove testers hit eight shots, and gave some scores during and some after the test. We were particularly interested in the phrasing of the testing questions, so prompt words were discussed prior to testing to ensure objectivity. By choosing when particular questions were asked, we were able to limit bias. Their were opportunities for breaks in the test both in attempt to limit sweat and tester fatigue. Fit (35 points)- Quite simply how the glove fits…except a whole lot more. We examined every glove’s fit on every tester’s hand to look for things like excess leather in the palm, pinching around the fingers, and tapering design of the wrist. Think of this category like the “design” category of the glove guide. The best gloves in the fit category seemed to mold snuggly to every testers hand. We also tested consistency for all entries to ensure that companies provided products that are always the same. You may want to note, we did deem the fit category to be the most important. Quite simply how the glove fits…except a whole lot more. We examined every glove’s fit on every tester’s hand to look for things like excess leather in the palm, pinching around the fingers, and tapering design of the wrist. Think of this category like the “design” category of the glove guide. The best gloves in the fit category seemed to mold snuggly to every testers hand. We also tested consistency for all entries to ensure that companies provided products that are always the same. You may want to note, we did deem the fit category to be the most important. Comfort (15 points)- Score is given based on whether there are any flaws in the glove, including abrasive material, poor stitching, or long fingers. Questioning for this category was done while the tester was hitting, as comfort is especially important during a shot. While playing, it’s imperative that your glove feel like there’s nothing there. Feel (25 points)- Typically there’s a lot of ambiguity regarding the definition of feel in terms of golf, but for our purposes it’s how the glove performs during the shot. Was it easy to ‘feel’ the club throughout the swing? Did the glove help or hinder your ability to hit a good shot? What we tended to find was that lots of gloves did well here, while some missed the mark entirely. Grip (25 points)- Does the tester feel like their connection to the club is adequate? Does the club move around in the tester’s hand during the swing? A good score in this category really indicates that there are no issues. It was clear that when gloves performed poorly in this category they really had no chance of being successful within our test.
Final grades were awarded based on total scores. Best Overall is our highest overall scoring performance golf glove, and awards are awarded to the top five gloves. In addition, more specific Best in Class recognitions are awarded to gloves in certain categories (like grip, feel, comfort and fit) that push the industry ‘envelope.’ Final grades were awarded based on total scores. Best Overall is our highest overall scoring performance golf glove, and awards are awarded to the top five gloves. In addition, more specific Best in Class recognitions are awarded to gloves in certain categories (like grip, feel, comfort and fit) that push the industry ‘envelope.’
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PING SPORT Editor's Choice Fit 3rd Comfort 1st Feel 2nd Grip 1st Score 88 1 Shop & Support When you shop online consider using our special link. It helps support this site and other golfers around the world. #ConsumerFirst Check Latest Price Trade In/Up What We Liked -PING Sport is by far the Best Performance Glove for 2017. -Pre-curved fingers make for an almost custom fit -Ultimate in feel for a Performance Glove Pros -“Best in Class” Grip -“Best in Class” Comfort –Solid performer across all categories Cons –Pinky consistently too long -Pulling feeling between middle and index fingers
ZERO FRICTION MOTION FIT Fit 2nd Comfort 2nd Feel 1st Grip 5th Score 75.5 #2 Shop & Support When you shop online consider using our special link. It helps support this site and other golfers around the world. #ConsumerFirst Check Latest Price Trade In/Up What We Liked -Numerous color options allow the Motion Fit to be matched with any apparel -Motion fit allows for adequate flex in the glove Pros -“Best in Class” Feel -Great fit -Ball Marker Cons -One size fits all can cause some sizing issues -Tee can poke some in hand -Padding around the fingers limits mobility -Uncomfortable mesh -No cadet option
SRIXON ALL WEATHER Best Buy Fit 4th Comfort 3rd Feel 2nd Grip 7th Score 71 #3 Shop & Support When you shop online consider using our special link. It helps support this site and other golfers around the world. #ConsumerFirst Check Latest Price Trade In/Up What We Liked -MyGolfSpy “Best Buy” at only $7.99 -Affordable yet functional glove Pros -“Best in Class” Grip -“Best in Class” Feel -Effective tapering of wrist Cons -Non-Leather material doesn’t form well to hand -Fingers are a little short -Excess material in fingers -No cadet option
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FOOTJOY WEATHERSOF Fit 6th Comfort 5th Feel 4th Grip 2nd Score 66.5 #5 Shop & Support When you shop online consider using our special link. It helps support this site and other golfers around the world. #ConsumerFirst Check Latest Price Trade In/Up What We Liked –Exactly what you expect from Footjoy -Consistent fit -Great overall glove Pros -Ball marker -Grip maximized by tackiness of glove Cons – Material causes abrasion and limits motion -Design causes pinching around the index finger |
Darlington residents "on high alert" after man in white van approaches several children Copyright by WBTW - All rights reserved Video
DARLINGTON, SC (WBTW) – Darlington police are warning parents about a suspicious man in a white van trying to lure in children in the Oak Dale community.
Police are describing him as a clean shaven, white, male driving a white van with dark, tinted windows.
Tonya Ward lives in the Oak Dale community, and she says she's a little more alert this week after one child in her neighborhood ran to her house for help.
"One of the kids was coming from the country club walking and just was a little concerned and smartly ran to my house and let us know," said Ward.
He said he saw a strange man in a white van around the neighborhood, and he's not the only one.
Darlington police say several people have reported seeing the van around Oak Dale, and it's not something they are taking lightly.
"Within thirty minutes, there was a police officer at my house taking a report from us. They've been patrolling the area, and we're very, very grateful," said Ward.
Lt. Kimberly Nelson with the Darlington Police Department says although nothing serious has happened, you can never be too careful.
"A simple thing can sometimes turn into a big thing but, you know, caution. We don't mind we work twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. We don't mind checking out and finding out what's going on," said Nelson.
Lt. Nelson says you should remind your children the following safety tips:
-Don't talk to strangers.
- Don't take anything from strangers.
- Don't go anywhere with someone you don't know.
- Stay more than an arm's reach from strangers. If you are approached by a stranger, seek help immediately.
- Trust your instincts, if you feel you are being followed or something is not right, seek help immediately.
-Use the buddy system, avoid walking anywhere alone.
- Review contact telephone numbers and home safety practices.
When seeking help, always go to a trusted adult – teacher, coach, police officer, other parent, or older siblings.
-If a stranger grabs you, do everything you can to stop him or her from pulling you away.
- Drop to the ground, kick, hit, bite, and scream. Do whatever it takes to attract the attention of others who can help you. If someone is dragging you away, scream, "this is
not my dad," or "this is not my mom."
- Report any suspicious activity to your police department. |
Check out the Easter Eggs from this week's Arrow!
Wondering what tidbits and easter eggs from the Green Arrow comic books you missed in last night's episode of Arrow? Arrow Annotations is here to help, providing some additional notes and background info from last night’s episode. Arrow spoilers follow!
Adam Hunt - We all remember Adam Hunt, right? Hunt was the first person on the List to be taken down by Ollie in the pilot episode.
Commissioner Nudocerdo - Nudocerdo appears in the comics as the corrupt chief of police in Star City. Nudocerdo clashed with Ollie during the Emerald Archer's time as mayor of Star City and frequently turned to dirty tactics to undermine him. Nudocerdo arranged for Deathstroke and Drakon's release from prison and exposed Ollie's connection to the Outsiders (which were running around as outlaws at the time). He ended up getting killed by an assassin named Nix.
O'Neil and Adams - The street intersection where Detective Lance drops off Meryln's arrow is named for Neil Adams and Dennis O'Neil, the creators of one of Green Arrow's most popular stories. O'Neil and Adams pushed Green Arrow into the world of social issues and forced Ollie (and Green Lantern Hal Jordan) to deal with issues such as racism and drug abuse.
Sagittarius - Sagittarius, the shell company used by Merlyn, is the name of a zodiac symbol and constellation. In Greek mythology, Sagittarius is most often associated with Chiron, a centaur who trained many Greek heroes.
Merlyn - We've briefly talked about Merlyn when talking about Tommy, but let's get into some more detail about the character. Merlyn and Ollie have had a combative relationship in the comic books, starting from when Merlyn publicly challenged Green Arrow to an archery contest and won (sound familiar?). Merlyn later tried to assassinate Batman as a member of the League of Assassins, a group led by the Batman villain Ra's ah Ghul, but was thwarted by Green Arrow, who deflected one of Merlyn's arrows with one of his own. Merlyn is seen as the foremost villainous archer in the DCU and is a well-respected member of the villain community. Merlyn's also been associated with various groups that have tried to bring down the Justice League.
And to close out the year, here's a list of some of the Easter Egg's I've missed in past episodes.
Broome's Restaraunt - In "Legacies", Tommy mentions a "Broome's" restaraunt in Coast City. Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Coast City were both created by John Broome.
Case File 1941: In "Damaged", Ollie's case number is 1941, a reference to the year Green Arrow was created. Another document mentions the number 73, a reference to Fun Comics #73, the comic in which Green Arrow first appeared.
So that's all I found this week. See you all next year! |
When you’re a 69-year-old extrovert, you’ve amassed quite a record of declarations and pronouncements. So when we say a Donald Trump presidency would harm America, don’t take our word for it. Take his.
What America Needs Is Bankruptcy, Right?
Trump on the economy: “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
If his record for the past 25 years is any indication, there is a 75 percent chance Trump would declare bankruptcy during his presidency. Trump has declared bankruptcy for his Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, and Trump Entertainment Resorts during the presidencies of Bush 41 (twice), Bush 43, and Obama. Only the boom years of the Clinton presidency appear to have kept Trump out of bankruptcy court for a fifth time.
As the presidential hopeful often reminds the public, performance and winning are where it’s at, and his four bankruptcies do reflect a distinguished performance of sorts—placing Trump in the bottom 5 percent of his corporate peers. No wonder that part of the bankruptcy deals required Trump to give up ownership or removed his authority to make day to day decisions for the company.
On a positive note, he’s been bankruptcy-free for six years, though this coincides suspiciously with his tax plan estimates to deliver “tremendous” economic growth if elected, as much as 6 percent annually. The last time America had that type of growth? 1984—seven years before Trump first declared bankruptcy.
Attacking People Always Brings Unity
Trump on social conflict: “I will be a great unifier.”
Across the aisle and within the party, unity is needed so the big things can get done and Trump can make America great again. For us average Americans, it’s obvious that Trump will be the great unifier he’s told us he will be. As he reminds, he’s been at the top of the polls since he declared his candidacy, and his venues cannot even fit all of us trying to get in. We’re unified!
He is unifying the Republican Party, starting with that ‘p-ssy’ Cruz, ‘low-energy’ Bush, ‘weak like a baby’ Rubio, and Fiorina with the face that no one could vote for.
For some, though, there’s still work to be done. Take Iowa, for example. When Trump asks how stupid are the people of Iowa, that’s a legitimate question. They wavered in their support of the Great Unifier, which Trump correctly identified as a sign of stupidity.
All right, so maybe there’s some unifying still to do beyond Iowa. Thankfully, though, it’s mostly with women, so half of America appears to be safe. “Disgusting” Rosie O’Donnell needs to be less “fat” and less of a “slob.” If Arianna Huffington weren’t so unattractive, Trump would not have needed to state the obvious: “I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”
But then, Megyn Kelly’s disregard for journalistic standards overwhelmed even the Great Unifier’s capacity for tolerance. Referencing those comments and others that disparaged women, Kelly asked how the comments might impact the general election. Initially, Trump reminded her and debate watchers that he’s too busy for political correctness (a sweeping term meant to negate the consequences of anything you say if you’re Donald Trump). The following day, however, the Great Unifier did what he does so well: taunting Kelly for the “blood coming out of her wherever,” he set about to unify.
He is unifying the Republican Party, starting with that “p-ssy” Cruz, “low-energy” Bush, “super low-energy” Carson, “weak like a baby” Rubio, and Fiorina with the face that no one could vote for. Then, there’s “not a war hero” McCain (don’t tell him that McCain was awarded America’s second- and third-highest military decorations for his gallantry and heroism). No one wants a stupid military.
‘I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.’
Trump’s also reaching out across the aisle. He’s unifying as he goes with Clinton, the “single worst secretary of State in the history of this country,” and the Democratic Party writ large, despite their polices that are “going to end up kicking them – you know where.”
But what about race relations, a topic so tricky that not even Barack Obama, America’s first African-American president, has managed to move the needle on it? Fear not! Trump has reassured us that he is the right man for that job, too, since “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”
We Need a Hair-Trigger Temper Holding the Red Button
Trump on international relations and national security: “Listen, you mother f—ers!”
On the international stage, Trump appears equally committed to and gifted at unifying. We know already that Trump would “get along very well with Putin,” noting that “at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.”
With more than 23,000 bombs already dropped by the United States in 2015, Trump’s promise to really light up the sky is reassuring.
The Great Unifier in Chief has also shared his plans for rising powers like China, “Listen you mother f——, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” Bold words, but as Trump tells us, it’s all in how you sell it.
Closer to home, Trump is very aware of the problems of illegal immigration from Mexico. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. … And some, I assume, are good people.”
Thankfully, Trump has the solution and it’s simple: “I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
And when it comes to terrorism, Trump has another simple solution: “I would bomb the s—t out of ISIS… I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to ISIS.” It sounds well thought-out and with more than 23,000 bombs already dropped by the United States in 2015, Trump’s promise to really light up the sky is reassuring.
Finally, what about the ultimate deterrent in the U.S. arsenal? Surely a commander in chief needs a clear vision about nuclear weapons. Luckily, Trump’s views are clear to all potential adversaries: “For me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.”
I’m a Winner—Except at Work
Trump on problem-solving: “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
Aiming high is always easier when you’ve led your business into bankruptcy … again … again … and again. But Trump’s quarter-century of poor performance aside, let his words speak to you: “We’re going to win so much — win after win after win — that you’re going to be begging me: ‘Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We can’t stand it any more.’ And I’m going to say: ‘No way. We’re going to keep winning. We’re never going to lose. We’re never, ever going to lose.’”
Politics Is a Disgrace
Trump on governing: “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” Like any good lie, there’s a ring of truth to it, but Trump is not the antidote.
Donald Trump isn’t a statesman; he’s incendiary.
Donald Trump isn’t a commander-in-chief; he’s a bully.
Donald Trump doesn’t love America; he loves himself. |
Enormous wealth and influence wielded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is distorting the direction of international development in a global vacuum of accountability, a new report claims.
With assets totaling $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the world’s biggest charitable group. It is viewed by some as the most powerful actor on issues of international health, environment and agriculture, and distributes more aid for global health than any democratically elected government.
Critics warn this concentration of political and monetary clout is skewering the direction of international development in an undemocratic and unaccountable fashion. A report, conducted by UK campaign Global Justice Now, warns this trend could bolster corporate power and exacerbate global inequality.
The study, titled Gated Development – Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?, was published on Wednesday. It argues the power and influence of the BMGF has a silencing effect on NGOs and agencies that are critical of its operations, but are also dependent on the foundation's funding.
Why should Bill Gates get to set the agenda for internationl development, asks @PollyJones76https://t.co/H5ssTFTbPDpic.twitter.com/HKYeDd87V0 — Global Justice Now (@GlobalJusticeUK) January 20, 2016
The report’s release coincides with Bill Gates’ promotion of his very own brand of philanthrocapitalism at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The gathering brings together some 2,500 top business chiefs, global political leaders, intellectuals, and reporters to discuss the most serious issues facing the world.
Among the report’s key criticisms was the relationship between Microsoft’s tax-dodging practices and the money that the BMGF donates. According to a 2012 US senate report, the Gates-owned tech giant used offshore subsidiaries to avoid $4.5 billion in taxes, while the foundation issued grants totaling $3.6 billion in 2014.
The study also condemned the foundation’s close relationship with corporations whose policies entrench global poverty and accused the BMGF of profiting from investments in controversial firms than drive socioeconomic injustices. In addition to this, the report criticized the foundation’s promotion of private healthcare and education, citing multiple agencies that insist such programs drive inequality.
It also accused the foundation of undermining sustainable, small-scale farmers that are providing food security in Africa by promoting the adoption of GM, patented seed systems and chemical fertilizers across the continent.
Gates Foundation accused of exploiting its leverage in Africa https://t.co/5OPbnuzBTf Our new report covered by @AJEnglish — Global Justice Now (@GlobalJusticeUK) January 20, 2016
Global Justice Now is urging the foundation to undergo an independent international review. The campaign says this could be orchestrated by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee, but insists such a process should be transparent and include a range of stakeholders, including those impacted by foundation-funded projects.
Head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now Polly Jones said the Gates Foundation is the most influential actor across the globe in terms of health agriculture. However, she warned it is operating in the absence of accountability or oversight.
“This concentration of power and influence is even more problematic when you consider that the philanthropic vision of the Gates Foundation seems to be largely based on the values of corporate America,” she said.
“The foundation is relentlessly promoting big business-based initiatives such as industrial agriculture, private health care and education. But these are all potentially exacerbating the problems of poverty and lack of access to basic resources that the foundation is supposed to be alleviating.”
Time to scrutinise the philanthropic work of the Gates Foundation? @GlobalJusticeUK https://t.co/w6FwgmDhDKpic.twitter.com/5aihC5W2VE — Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) January 20, 2016
The BMGF said the report misrepresents the organization, its work and its partnerships.
“The foundation’s mission is to improve quality of life for the world’s poorest people. This is a complex challenge, and solving it will require a range of approaches as well as the collaboration of governments, NGOs, academic institutions, for-profit companies and philanthropic organizations,” the foundation said.
“Governments are uniquely positioned to provide the leadership and resources necessary to address structural inequalities and ensure that the right solutions reach those most in need. The private sector has access to innovations – for example, in science, medicine and technology – that can save lives.”
The foundation argued that the role of philanthropy is to take risks where others won’t or can’t. “In all of our work – whether helping women access life-saving prenatal care or ensuring that small holder farmers can produce enough food to feed their families – partners guide our priorities and approach. We listen to experts and practitioners and take action based on evidence,” it said.
The foundation refuted claims that it is unaccountable, saying that it was one of the first organizations to join the International Aid Transparency Initiative and report to the OECD. |
Throughout history, armed priests or soldier priests have been recorded. Distinguished from military chaplains who served the military or civilians as spiritual guidance (non-combatants), these priests took up arms and fought in conflicts (combatants). The term warrior priests is usually used for armed priests of the antiquity and Middle Ages, and of historical tribes.
History [ edit ]
In Greek mythology, the Curetes were identified as armed priests.[1] In Ancient Rome, the Salii who were armed priests carried sacred shields through the city during the March festivals.[2] Livy (59 BC–17 AD) mentions armati sacerdotes (armed priests).[3]
Medieval European canon law said that a priest could not be a soldier, and vice versa. Priests were allowed on the battlefield as chaplains, and could only defend themselves with clubs.[4]
The Aztecs had a vanguard of warrior priests who carried deity banners and made sacrifies on the battlefield.[5] A Cherokee priest who killed during battle received the title of Nu no hi ta hi.[6]
The warrior-priest was a common figure in the First Serbian Uprising (1804–13). Several archpriests and priests were commanders in the uprising. Serbian Orthodox monasteries sent monks to join the ranks of the Serbian Army.
Legacy [ edit ]
The "Pyrrhic" dance in Crete is said to have been the ritual dance of armed priests.[9]
Notable groups [ edit ]
Sōhei, Buddhist monks in feudal Japan[10]
Notable people [ edit ]
Eastern Orthodoxy
Catholicism
Other
The tlatoani , ruler of Nahuatl pre-Hispanic states, were high priests and military commanders.
, ruler of Nahuatl pre-Hispanic states, were high priests and military commanders. Dutty Boukman (d. 1791), voodoo priest and Haitian Revolution leader.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
To build soccer stadium, Orlando will condemn church
The city went to court months ago to take two other vacant parcels next door, but continued negotiations with Faith Deliverance Temple, understanding the sensitivity of knocking down an African American-owned place of worship to build a professional sports venue.
After failed negotiations to buy a small family-owned church in Parramore that stands in the way of a new Major League Soccer stadium, City Hall plans to condemn the building.
City officials offered $1.5 million — more than twice the appraised value — but Pastor LeAndrew Shack said that's not enough to move the church.
"That wouldn't even be enough to rebuild what we have, at what it costs today," Shack said. "How is that fair?"
Records show the church's board countered with a much higher number: $35 million in cash. Plus, the board wants the city to buy and renovate another property in MetroWest that's listed at $2.9 million.
Mayor Buddy Dyer isn't willing to go that high.
"We've tried to be as reasonable as we possibly can be," Dyer said Wednesday. "But a counter-offer of [nearly] $40 million for a $700,000 piece of property, we don't think is being reasonable."
The city plans to file eminent domain proceedings, asking a judge to decide the fair market price and allow the city to take the property.
There were two appraisals, including one by an appraiser selected by the church. One put the value at $675,000, the other at $695,000.
"We have an obligation to expend taxpayer funds in a responsible manner….Unfortunately it feels as if we have no choice but to initiate the process of acquiring the property by eminent domain," Chief Assistant City Attorney Roy Payne wrote in a letter to the church.
In the same Dec. 17 letter, the city slashed its original offer by more than a third to $945,000, and gave church leaders 30 days to respond. That deadline has now passed, and the City Council on Monday is expected to approve going to court.
Major League Soccer granted the minor-league Orlando City Soccer Club an expansion franchise in November. A prerequisite of earning that franchise was that a new soccer stadium be built. The city and Orange County, along with the team, have already agreed to jointly fund the $84 million venue.
The team hopes to begin playing in the new facility in 2015, but the city has to acquire all of the land before work can begin. The city spent $8.3 million to buy most of the land last year and filed eminent domain actions against two holdout property owners a few months ago. |
Very Superstitious: 13 Sailor Superstitions
Ahoy Matey!
Seafaring is one of the world's oldest occupations, so it is only natural that in times where inexplicable events have happened, superstitions have played a major role in providing reasons for their occurrence.
The uncontrollable nature of the sea has given way to many a nautical lore, each one as curious as the next. So plunge in if you dare, and discover 13 common sailor superstitions.
1. No Bananas On Board
Aside from their peels causing many comedians to trip and fall down, bananas have long been thought to bring bad luck, especially on ships. At the height of the trading empire between Spain and the Caribbean in the 1700's, most cases of disappearing ships happened to be carrying a cargo of bananas at the time. Coincidence? Perhaps. Another theory suggests that because bananas spoiled so quickly, transporters had to get to their destination much quicker. Fisherman thus never caught anything while bananas were on board. Another danger caused by monkey's favourite fruit fermenting so quickly, was that in the heat of the storage hull, bananas would produce deadly toxic fumes. A final theory on the perils of bananas at sea (though there are tons) is that a species of deadly spider would hide inside banana bunches. Their lethal bite caused crewman to die suddenly, heightening the fear that banana cargo was a bad omen. Many boaters continue to avoid bananas at sea, some even avoiding banana smelling sun tan lotion. Bananas are evil
Image Source: YouThink.com
2. No Women on Board
Women were said to bring bad luck on board because they distracted the sailors from their sea duties. This kind of behaviour angered the intemperate seas that would take their revenge out on the ship. Funny enough, naked women on board were completely welcome. That's because naked women "calmed the sea". This is why ships' typically had a figure of a topless women perched on the bow of the ship. Her bare breasts "shamed the stormy seas into calm" and her open eyes guided the seamen to safety.
3. Son of A Gun
Image Source: Hampshirecam
Male children born on the ship were referred to as "son of a gun" because the most convenient place to give birth on deck (if you weren't too afraid of having a woman on board) was on the gun deck. Having a male child on board was a sign of good luck.
4. No Whistling on Board Mariners have long held the belief that whistling or singing into the wind will "whistle up a storm".
5. Red Sky At Night... "Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning" the old saying goes. A red sunset indicates a beautiful day to come, while a red sunrise indicates rain and bad weather.
6. Deathly Lexis At sea, some words must be strictly avoided to ensure the ship and crew's safe return. These include obvious ones like "drowned" and "goodbye". If someone says "good luck" to you, it is sure to bring about bad luck. The only way to reverse the curse is by drawing blood, so usually a good punch in the nose will do.
7. Beware of the Lurking Shark
A shark following the ship is a sign of inevitable death.
8. Welcome the Lurking Dolphins
Dolphins swimming with the ship are seen as a good sign.
9. Don't Sail On These Days...
Don't Sail On Thursdays, Fridays, the first Monday in April or the second Monday in August. Fridays: Fridays have long been considered unlucky days, likely because Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday.
Fridays have long been considered unlucky days, likely because Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. Thursdays: Thursdays are bad sailing days because that is Thor's day, the god of thunders and storms.
Thursdays are bad sailing days because that is Thor's day, the god of thunders and storms. First Monday in April: The first Monday in April is the day Cain slew Abel
The first Monday in April is the day Cain slew Abel Second Monday in August: The second Monday in August is the day the kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Superstitious sailors believe that the only good day to set sail is Sundays.
10. The Pirate's Look, is a Look For Me
Image Source: FOX
A pierced earlobe on a sailor meant that he had sailed around the world or had crossed the equator. Superstitious sailors wore gold hoop earrings because they believed it brought good fortune. Some believed that the gold possessed magic healing powers or that it served as a protective talisman that would prevent the wearer from drowning.
Tattoos were also seen as lucky. Seafarers would usually tattoo a nautical star on their bodies as the North Star represented a signal that they were nearing home.
Cutting ones hair, nail trimming, and beard shaving were seen as big no-nos.
11. Don't Change the Name of the Boat
It's bad luck to change the name of the boat. Boats develop a life and mind of their own once they are named and Christened. If you do rename the boat- you absolutely must have a de-naming ceremony.
This ceremony can be performed by writing the current boat name on a piece of paper, folding the paper and placing it in a wooden box then burning the box. After, scoop up the ashes and throw them into the sea [Source].
12. Pay Your Dues
Seamen that hadn't paid their debts were blamed for storms and any other misfortunate events that would occur on the ship.
13. Avoid Gingers Red heads were thought to bring bad luck to a ship if you happened to encounter one before boarding. However, if you speak to the redhead before they get the chance to speak to you, you're saved. In order not to kill our luck with this post we've added one more superstition…
Lucky 14: Don't Kill an Albatross Seabirds were thought to carry the souls of dead sailors and it is considered bad luck to kill one. However, it is considered good luck if you see one. These are just some of many nautical superstitions. What other superstitions have you come across in your seafaring experience?
Related Articles |
US President Donald Trump has been tough on Russia and expects Moscow to “return” the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine, the White House spokesman told reporters.
Addressing the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn – hounded by the media over his contacts with Russian diplomats prior to Trump’s inauguration – Spicer pointed out that Russia “seized” Crimea under the Obama administration and that the Trump-appointed ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has “strongly denounced the Russian occupation.”
"President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to de-escalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea," Spicer said at the daily news briefing on Tuesday. “At the same time, he fully expects to – and wants to – get along with Russia."
Read more
“Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine,” Haley said at the UN Security Council meeting on February 2.
Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin responded by citing the US Constitution and pointing out that Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to join Russia, after the US-backed coup in February 2014 overthrew the elected government in Kiev.
It is in the national and economic interest of the US to have a good relationship with Russia, Spicer explained, but said that Haley “speaks for the president” on the matter of Crimea.
Flynn’s resignation on Monday followed several weeks of media furor over his telephone conversation with the Russian ambassador to the US in December, after the outgoing Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and seized two properties. Moscow chose not to respond in kind.
“There is nothing that General Flynn did that was a violation of any sort,” Spicer said, explaining that the adviser was asked to resign because of Trump’s “eroding trust” after Flynn’s accounts of the conversation to administration officials did not square with what was leaked to the media.
Crimea ‘cannot be given back’ to Ukraine – Czech president https://t.co/Be2l1jrAOFpic.twitter.com/tzivssT7JO — RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2016
Crimea became part of Russia in 1783, but was reassigned to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 by the Soviet Union’s ruling Presidium. Following the 2014 coup, Crimeans overwhelmingly voted to rejoin Russia in a referendum.
Other regions of Ukraine also resisted the new government. Kiev was able to brutally suppress dissent in Odessa and Kharkov, but ran into armed resistance in Donetsk and Lugansk. Efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution between Kiev and the two breakaway regions, known as the Minsk Accords, make no mention of Crimea. |
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