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Harold Perrineau, Tom Everett Scott and DJ Qualls have been announced as key cast members in SyFy’s ensemble zombie series, “Z Nation,” which will debut a 13-episode season this fall.
Other stars in the action-horror show from The Asylum, the production company behind “Sharknado,” include Michael Welch (“Twilight”) and Kellita Smith (“The Bernie Mac Show”).
See video: ‘Family Feud’ Contestant Thinks Zombies Are Black
“Z Nation” takes place three years after a virus has turned the country into a zombie wasteland, and follows a team tasked with transporting the only known human to have resisted the virus to a lab in hopes of creating a vaccine. Although the antibodies he carries are the world’s last hope for survival, he hides a dark secret that threatens them all.
Perrineau will play Hammond, the leader of the group headed west; Scott portrays Garnett, Hammond’s second-in-command; and Qualls plays the role of Citizen Z, a computer hacker who joins the team and helps them navigate the zombie-infested terrain. Welch and Smith are Mack and Addy, respectively, two disparate wanderers drawn to the team — and to each other — by a shared goal: survival.
Also read: Paramount Delays ‘Friday the 13th’ 8 Months for ‘Scouts vs. Zombies’
Karl Schaefer (“Eureka”) serves as executive producer and showrunner. John Hyams will direct the pilot. |
Frankie Edgar has campaigned in the cage and outside of it for another featherweight world title shot for what must feel like forever to him. He was crushed to have gotten passed over again when UFC 189 needed a last-minute replacement to face Conor McGregor after champion Jose Aldo pulled out with a broken rib.
"The Answer" made sure to be on hand to watch UFC 189 on Saturday night in Las Vegas, and also to greet and challenge the new interim champion immediately afterward.
"I do [feel like I’m next in line for a shot]. Actually, I went up to the cage, I told Conor ‘Congrats,’ and why don’t me and him do it before Aldo?" Edgar revealed to Megan Olivi late Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. "Because, who knows how long Aldo is going to take. Let me and him figure this out."
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Edgar is right that it is unknown how long the champion Aldo will be out. However, there’s no telling when McGregor, who has been rumored to have an injured knee for weeks and begins filming a season of TUF as a coach alongside Urijah Faber this week, will be ready to fight again, either.
Unfortunately for Edgar, he may have to wait, or fight on, for some time before getting another chance at a UFC title. Should he get to face McGregor, Edgar is confident he’ll do what Chad Mendes could not.
"I think Chad, it was going his way, he was able to get takedowns," Edgar said in analyzing the UFC 189 main event.
"Credit to Conor, he was able to stay composed. He was able to get back on his feet. Chad seemed to slow down, get tired taking a fight on short notice like that, and Conor capitalized.
"He wasn’t flashy or anything [on the ground]. He was able to, I guess, keep Chad at bay, but he was eating some big shots. I was just impressed how when he did get back to his feet, he was composed."
Edgar believes he can offer more movement and conditioning than Mendes. "I move a little more than Chad," he said.
"I think my takedowns are there like his, and I feel like I got good ground and pound. I don’t really slow down too much, you know?"
Indeed he does not. Edgar doesn’t know if telling the UFC brass he’s ready and deserving of another title fight will make a difference, but he’s positive he’ll be ready if and when it comes.
"Aww man, I feel it’s like beating a dead horse," he said.
"They know what I want and I seem to not get what I want, but my time is going to come." |
With all the changes taking place at Roush Fenway Racing for the 2015 season, it appears veteran crew chief Jimmy Fennig may be in his final year calling shots on the pit box.
Currently serving as crew chief for Carl Edwards — who will move on to Joe Gibbs Racing next season — Fennig indicated he would likely take a behind-the-scenes role with the team once the season comes to a conclusion.
Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway, Fennig told FOXSports.com he will have to wait and see what team owner Jack Roush has in store for him next year, but added that he will most likely not be atop the pit box after the 2014 season.
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Saying it would ultimately be his decision when to walk away, Fennig indicated he would most likely work with the research-and-development arm of Roush Fenway Racing.
Jack Roush said of Fennig’s future: "We don’t have a plan yet," Jack Roush said of Fennig’s future. "We haven’t heard definitively from Jimmy what his plans are, but he may be thinking about retirement. We’re just not sure."
Trevor Bayne is making his move to a full-time ride in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2015 and does not yet have a crew chief in place, so that is a possible spot for Fennig if he decides to continue working in a crew chief role.
One of the longest tenured crew chiefs in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage, Fennig has been calling the shots atop the pit box since getting his start in 1986 with Mark Martin.
Over the next 28 years, he would go on to work with the likes of Bobby Allison, Dick Trickle, Hut Stricklin, Jimmy Spencer, again with Martin, Kurt Busch, Kenny Wallace, Jamie McMurray, David Ragan, Matt Kenseth, and has spent the last two seasons calling the shots for Carl Edwards.
Edwards said Friday that he did not know what Fennig’s plans were at the end of the season.
Fennig’s most successful season came while working with Mark Martin in 1998, scoring seven wins, 22 top fives and 26 top 10s. Working with Kurt Busch in 2004, Fennig scored his lone NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. |
Japan and North Korea on Monday began a new round of official talks to normalize diplomatic relations in Stockholm, Sweden.
The three-day talks followed the previous round held in late March in Beijing. As with the Beijing session, the Japanese delegation is led by Junichi Ihara, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau at the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and Song Il Ho, Pyongyang’s ambassador for normalizing relations with Japan.
“Japan has imposed various sanctions on North Korea in cooperation with the international community,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday at a speech at Chuo University in Tokyo.
“Considering North Korea’s current difficult circumstances, we have achieved some positive results, and those pressures led to a resumption of official talks,” Kishida said.
Kishida also said that Japan will consider lifting some sanctions on North Korea in phases depending on whether Pyongyang shows concrete efforts to solve the long-standing issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in late 1970s and early 80s.
In previous sessions, the Japanese delegation has demanded that North Korea launch a fresh investigation into the fate of those abducted Japanese nationals. Pyongyang on the other hand, maintains its stand that the abduction issue has already been resolved.
In August 2008, the two nations agreed to complete a re-investigation into the Japanese abductees in North Korea, But then prime minister Yasuo Fukuda abruptly resigned. Negotiations on the abduction issue have stalled and no action has taken since then.
“Other than Japan, North Korea has a strained relationship with other nations such as South Korea and the US,” Hideshi Takesada, an expert on regional security at Takushoku University in Tokyo, told NK News on Monday. “So it must be serious enough to respond to Japan’s demand this time.”
“By holding negotiations with Japan, Pyongyang is also trying to make President Park Geun-hye’s administration feel unpleasant intentionally,” Takesada pointed out.
Lee Young-hwa, an expert on Korea and an economics professor at Kansai University in Osaka, disagreed with Takesada’s views.
Lee said North Korea has improved relations with China, which soured following the execution of Jang Song Thaek last December, damaging Japan’s improving ties with Pyongyang.
“Japan-North Korea negotiations will stall sooner or later,” said Lee, who is a third-generation ethnic Korean resident of Japan.
In Stockholm, Pyongyang is expected to call on the Japanese government to block the sale of the Tokyo headquarters building of Chongryon, the main pro-North Korea organization in Japan.
The Tokyo High Court recently dismissed the appeal filed by Chongryon against the sale of the building and land to Marunaka Holdings, a property investment company based in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture in western Japan.
“Pyongyang will bring up this thorny issue at negotiating table to kill negotiations,” Lee also said.
Takesada took a different view by saying “the sale of Chongryon’s headquarters is not something which will cause Pyongyang to kill negotiations with Japan.”
Picture: Abhimanyu, Flickr Creative Commons |
(Lula Marques/AGPT)
SÃO PAULO - O relator da reforma política na comissão especial da Câmara dos Deputados, deputado Vicente Cândido (PT-SP), deve incluir em seu relatório um artigo que, se aprovado, impedirá a partir da eleição de 2018 a prisão de candidatos até oito meses antes da eleição. As informações são do jornal "O Estado de S. Paulo".
Sem alarde, a proposta, que já ganhou o apelido de “emenda Lula”, alteraria o Artigo 236 do Código Eleitoral, que proíbe a prisão 15 dias antes do pleito.
Ao jornal, Vicente Cândido afirmou que a nova regra beneficia o ex-presidente petista, condenado nesta semana pelo juiz Sérgio Moro a 9 meses e meio de prisão, e que foi pensada para “blindar” não só ele, mas políticos investigados. “Lula também, como qualquer outro. É nossa arma contra esse período de judicialização da política", afirmou.
Para alterar o prazo que impede a prisão, o deputado criou a figura da habilitação prévia da candidatura. O político terá entre 1 e 28 de fevereiro do ano da eleição para solicitar o certificado à Justiça, que poderá concedê-lo até 30 de abril. Após obter o certificado, o candidato ganha uma espécie de salvo-conduto que o impediria de ser preso daquele momento até 48 horas depois do pleito. A exceção continua sendo a prisão em flagrante. A reforma política será votada no dia 3 de agosto pela comissão da Câmara e, para valer em 2018, precisa ser aprovada pelo Congresso até setembro.
A proposta gerou reações de políticos. A senadora Ana Amélia (PP-RS) escreveu em sua página noTwitter: "quando a sociedade exige uma reforma política moralizadora, é inaceitável e provocadora a manobra para livrar Lula e outros políticos da inelegibilidade nas eleições de 2018”.
Ao jornal O Globo, o deputado Espiridião Amin afirmou: "essa proposta não tem cabimento. Daqui a pouco a candidatura vai ser um passe livre para bandido. É uma ideia infeliz, a famosa proposta indecente. Não fui consultado e vou votar contra. É apenas uma tentativa de blindar bandido para se candidatar". |
[Episode 03 “Honky Tonk Woman”]
First let us pay attention to the assassination scene. This scene needed to several things well:
Depict Jet and Spike tracking down a bounty competently, if not impressively. Depict the bounty as an unsavory character, establishing therefore that Jet and Spike play for the side of the angels. Introduce the ‘real’ bounty of the episode, and depict them as more unsavory than the original bounty.
It accomplished all three very well, while interlacing with Faye Valentine’s adventures in failure in space. Humor is very much an element of this scene: it’s used as a tool of misdirection, making the remorseless violence that followed more shocking in effect. We know the violence is remorseless, because the ringleader of the assassination was dancing in the midst of the gunfire, reveling in it as if moved by the music.
All the diners save for Jet and Spike were mowed down by gunfire. Then something really interesting happens:
The “good guys” take a hostage. They seize the mother from her children (Twinkle Maria Murdock). This is a case of lowlifes turning on each other and it’s delicious. The Universal Environmental Protection Society is a family of terrorists who killed a guy, and everyone around him on a matter of principle. Spike and Jet took Maria as compensation for the guy she had killed. As it turns out, she’s the bigger bounty anyway.
Spike and Jet are not ‘morally outraged’ at the massacre they witnessed. They were too busy trying to make money. Lupin III is pretty much a lowlife, and characters from Nagai Go works are monsters, but it’s worth remarking on the utter callousness towards human life we are presented with. The sympathetic Spike Spiegel in the first episode is almost radically different from the person here. It’s like we now see the ruthless Spike who took on Asimov in “Asteroid Blues” along with the carefree, careless Spike who wasted his time chasing Hakim in “Stray Dog Strut.”
Is this inconsistency? Is it complexity? In any case, the Spike Spiegel who deals with these terrorists acts with haughtiness, with arrogance. But it’s not the kind that is founded on some kind of morals (perhaps), but rather it’s as if he’s invoking a fuzzy concept of class among criminals. He acts as if these terrorists were utterly beneath him. I think it’s cool stuff, also because this family of terrorist is mostly a bunch of retards.
But they’ve been an efficiently deadly bunch of retards. This brings me to how it contrasts with that which it remembers love for: The Army of the 12 Monkeys.
I truly adore this film. I must’ve seen it like 8 or more times, at least thrice in the theaters when it came out. This synopsis of the film compels me to link it with Cowboy Bebop:
An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he’s told was spread by a mysterious “Army of the Twelve Monkeys”) and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines, the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert.
In “Gateway Shuffle,” there is this virus called Monkey Business that, well, turns people into monkeys. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but there is something inherently humorous with the very idea of it. The reversal in Cowboy Bebop of the 12 Monkeys film is how ruthless the UEPS are. These characters are actual terrorists who kill people and want to turn them into monkeys. The Army of the 12 Monkeys was pretty much an organization reputed to have caused the end of the world as it was known, but in actuality their biggest act was to set zoo animals free in the middle of Baltimore (or was it Philadelphia?).
It is consistent, I think with how Cowboy Bebop did Desperado, wherein Asimov was an authentic criminal as opposed to a romanticized revenge-seeking hero in the form of El Mariachi. The UEPS are a far less complicated and nuanced set of ‘characters’ than the ‘Army’ but they are in turn more comically evil. Again I must say that it is never my intention to suggest that one version is better than another (personally I prefer the cruel irony in the film the same way I am nuts over Brad Pitt’s performance as the leader of the Army). The straightforward evil represented by Maria makes her ideal to be rendered as a comical villain as victim, as if within the tradition of Wile E. Coyote from Looney Tunes, to Spike Spiegel’s Road Runner.
But I’m letting myself get carried away. Both stories feature a threatening organization of malcontents humorously: one execution with black irony, the other with something akin to cruel slapstick. What this session really wanted to show is a battle in a hyperspace gate, to get the Foxtail and Swordfish into action, against one of the great Itano Circuses nearing the end of the millennium.
…which brilliantly serves as an expository piece of world building. The ‘ghosts’ of the missiles escape the hyperspace gate, scaring the piss out of Faye. Jet disses her for not remembering anything from high school science: Matter trapped in hyperspace may at times be visible in real space, but can never interact with matter in it.
Maria and the rest of the UEPS are stuck in hyperspace, the vial of the Monkey Business virus cleverly reverse-pickpocketed by Spike to Maria now surely to turn all of them into monkeys. The bad guys get what’s coming to them and yet the Bebop Cowboys end the session without their bounty.
“All that work for nothing… Oh, don’t look so down. We’ll make money next time.” Faye says this, and marks her informal inclusion in the group. She also said she was headed to the shower, which was totally a sexual flag of some kind. We are sure of this because Spike just had to call her on showering on their ship without their permission, then Cowboy Bebop slapped him with its cock-blocking chastisement. This show cracks me up. |
NEW DELHI: The
today set aside the
order asking the state government to pay for the reconstruction and repair work of religious structures damaged during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
A bench comprising Chief Justice
and Justice P C Pant allowed the Gujarat government's appeal challenging the High Court verdict that it should pay for reconstruction and repair works of religious structures damaged during riots.
Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who had represented the state government, said that "our plea has been allowed" and moreover the state government had told the court that it was willing to pay from ex-gratia amount for repair and reconstruction works of various structures, shops and houses which were damaged.
"This scheme (of the government) has been accepted," Mehta said.
The court was hearing an appeal filed by the Gujarat government against an order of the high court directing it to pay compensation to over 500 shrines damaged during the
, triggered after the Godhra incident. |
Mushroom Leather
Apart from Modern Meadow, a company that grows leather in the lab, another start-up is giving leather makers a run for their money. MycoWorks is using fungi to produce leather substitutes, through a process that’s cheaper and faster.
MycoWorks’ chief technical officer Phil Ross has been collecting and growing mushrooms since the 1980s. He discovered the vast possibilities resulting from manipulating the growing conditions of the mushroom mycelium—the spiderweb-like fibers that extend through soil or decaying matter to gather nutrients. “Fungi are very sensitive; they will change their growth in relationship to how they’re being poked and things like that,” Ross says. “You put it in a cup, it would take the shape of a cup.”
The mushrooms were grown and fed with mostly agricultural waste such as corn cobs and sawdust while altering conditions such as humidity, light exposure, exchange of gases, and temperature in an effort to coax the fungi to grow in different ways, textures, and with varying durability. They even grew the material hard enough to be used as a chair.
The company is currently using Ganoderma lucidum, also known as the reishi mushroom (commonly found in Asian remedies and teas) because it has been proven safe for human skin and consumption. |
OTTAWA – A fresh batch of Canadian military trainers is about to deploy to eastern Europe, and the outgoing commander says his soldiers took a lot of their own notes in addition to handing out assignments to Ukrainian troops.
Lt.-Col. Jason Guiney, who is about to end his five-month stint, says even though their training bases are 1,200 kilometres away from the fighting in the breakaway eastern regions, his troops have learned a lot about the nature of the conflict.
“It’s a very big wake-up call for us as an institution,” Guiney said Thursday in a telephone interview from Lviv, located in western Ukraine.
In dealing with Ukrainian troops, he said, they’ve had an up-close look at how Moscow-backed separatists have mixed high-tech Russian weaponry, cyberattacks, propaganda, conventional warfare and insurgency warfare into a toxic, deadly campaign.
READ MORE: Canada asked to help train new Ukrainian cops
“There’s a lot of very modern Russian equipment in there,” Guiney said, referring to armoured vehicles that have the ability to deflect anti-tank rockets.
“We’ve learned about how Ukrainians are deploying methods to defeat that.”
The speed and sophistication of the conflict, which began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, has startled many western military planners who’ve come to describe what’s happening the country as hybrid warfare.
“We’ve learned they’ve experienced cyberattacks; electronic warfare, like radio jamming; heavy use of drones, like UAVs, which are used for precision artillery strikes,” he said.
Following more than a decade of guerilla warfighting in Afghanistan, he added, the Ukraine experience is making an impression and “forces us to get back to our basics and take a hard look at our own doctrine.”
The mission, which is slated to go until March 2017, has allowed ordinary Canadian soldiers “and even senior (non-commissioned officers) to take this experience back to Canada with them.”
The first rotation of Canadians, from Garrison Petawawa, Ont., will slowly be replaced by a fresh batch of troops from CFB Valcartier, Que.
READ MORE: Over 9,000 people killed in 21 months of Ukraine fighting
Up to 200 Canadian trainers are teaching regular Ukrainian army units infantry combat skills, battlefield medical treatment and how to defuse and dispose of roadside bombs. Separately, a contingent of military police is working in Kyiv mentoring counterparts there.
Because of the unconventional nature of the conflict, Guiney said the military has taken steps to protect the identities of its trainers. National Defence was criticized last year for imposing restrictions on media photographs and video of troops departing for Ukraine.
Such restrictions are not unheard of. For instance, the military does not allow pilots and ground crew involved in airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to be seen or interviewed on camera – only the commander.
Similarly, there were restrictions during the Afghan war on reporting the identities and operations of special forces soldiers.
The directive for Ukraine – imposed even though it is not a war-time scenario – is meant to prevent retaliation in both the real and online world, Guiney said. |
The holidays are about giving, and my Santa went above and beyond the call of duty. My dogs are a big and furry part of my life and it breaks my heart that there are good dogs out there without homes, warm beds and nightly cuddles. I do as much as I can, but it never feels like enough. Santa sent a local animal charity $100 which will go SO far in helping the great people there save animals that would otherwise be homeless.
There are many of us who wish we could save them all. Thanks, Santa, for giving a few more animals a shot at their forever homes. Next time I'm there dropping off donations, I'll give one of the dogs a good belly scratch for you. |
It turns out that alt+tabbing doesn't turn off your webcam.
Not content to let Ilyes "Stephano" Satouri take the award for livestreaming gaffe of the month, a League of Legends player has been caught masturbating during a live match.
Andrew "Slooshi" Pham was livestreaming one of his rounds earlier today, when he decided to alt-tab, watch some porn and entertain a brief visit from Rosie Palm and her five daughters. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn off the livestreaming program he was using to capture his game. The program captured both the on-screen action - "Shower and Massage with hot beauty Asian Kina Kai" courtesy of SoapyMassage.com - and 17-year-old Slooshi's, uh, appreciation of the video.
Rather than curl up into a ball and wish for death, Slooshi seems to be taking the gaffe in his stride. Once he got a grip on the situation, he changed the banner of his streaming site to read "Got caught fapping AMA" and has even joked that his impromptu genital fondling was a legitimate "tactic."
Slooshi isn't the first victim of accidental livestreaming. Last month, small time DOTA streamer, Zyori, became infamous when he failed to turn off his streaming program before wandering around semi-naked. Viewers were treated to the sight of Zyori, naked from the waist down, scratching his scrotum and spending a minute appreciating its scent.
More recently, professional StarCraft 2 player, Illyes "Stephano" Satouri, was suspended from play for a month following a series of off-color jokes about child abuse he made during a game he assumed was private.
Source: Twitch.Tv |
Here's the thing about Mike Huckabee: just when you start to think he might be a reasonably decent guy (at least compared to the rest of the Republican presidential field), he reminds you of what an absolute asshole he really is.
The latest example: he thinks President Obama's decision to give up defending unconstitutional discrimination in the Defense of Marriage Act will "destroy" the Obama presidency. CBS:
In an interview with CBS News political consultant John Dickerson, Huckabee said the decision could "destroy" President Obama, though not marriage itself. "It may destroy him [Obama], may destroy his credibility, may destroy his campaign and candidacy and ultimately his term in office," Huckabee said.
And why does Huckabee think it will destroy Obama?
"He himself didn't take this position when he ran for president. I think if he had, he wouldn't be president," Huckabee said.
Except that's Bullshit. With a capital B. President Obama opposed DOMA throughout the campaign and supported its repeal.
Huckabee's dickishness doesn't stop with distorting Obama's record, however. Not even close. Get a load of this crap:
In his new book, "A Simple Government," the ordained minister writes that traditional families - those grounded in a marriage between a man and a woman - promote economic stability. "[Marriage] is the foundational form of government," Huckabee told CBS News.
Marriage is the foundational form of government? What the hell does that even mean? Was the American revolution fought over high divorce rates? Was the Egyptian revolution the result of too much casual dating?
And even if we took Huckabee seriously and we accepted that marriage really is the foundational form of government, then what does it say that every single American president has served alongside a male vice president? If same-sex marriage is so bad, then why hasn't he ever complained about same-sex government? |
Let’s face it, most modern liveries are boring, unimaginative and poorly executed. Gone are sleek lines to match the cars shape, instead replaced with bodged jobs, littered in sponsorship logos. Just look at the Sauber for example, black, white and red all work together and they still managed to make it look terrible.
Click below for some fantastic concept F1 liveries, adding proof to the argument that F1 fans can design better liveries than these supposed ‘designers’.
McLaren – Jezson
With McLaren no longer the Mercedes works team, it’s time for them to ditch the chrome. Jezson has made this sweet looking black and red McLaren livery.
Ferrari – mantovani
There’s not really a lot Ferrari can do but they could still do something a little bit more interesting. Bruno Mantovani has done this design which features an Italian flag flash down the side, Ferrari put an Italian flag on last years car to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy, but they stuck it on the rear wing like an after thought and it looked completely stupid.
Lotus – maximilian
Ah, the black and gold Lotus. Retro liveries are all the rage these days but rather then copying the Lotus from the eighties, how about doing something more original? Maximilian has done this original Lotus design using the black and gold colour scheme.
Sauber – sam3110
The new Sauber sucks. It’s terrible. They added black to make it less boring and they managed to make it look even worse. This design from sam3110 looks much more slick.
Toro Rosso – Jezson
With Toro Rosso being the Red Bull B-team, why not advertise another one of the companies energy drinks? Jezson has created this brilliant ‘Sugar Free’ Toro Rosso livery. You’d certinaly be able to tell the teams apart then.
Williams – Azhar
This retro Williams livery by Azhar is done in the style of the 1992 Williams Renault… and it looks pretty damn good.
Marussia – purplejohn
Finally purplejohn has mocked up this Marussia livery, featuring the colours of the Russian flag. So it may look a bit Team America but it’d certainly stand out on the grid.
Which concept livery would you most like to see used in F1? |
(Image: CNET/CBS Interactive)
Amazon has disclosed how many government data demands it receives -- finally.
Stephen Schmidt, chief information security officer for Amazon Web Services, broke the company's years of silence in a blog post late Friday.
"Where we need to act publicly to protect customers, we do," said Schmidt. "Amazon never participated in the NSA's PRISM program," he added, despite no evidence to date showing that the company had been forced to hand over data through the clandestine surveillance program.
Despite it being known best for its online retail business, its cloud services power millions of apps, sites, and services around the world. But the news couldn't come soon enough. Amazon is the last major technology company in the Fortune 500 to disclose how many times governments have come knocking on its door, demanding customer and user data.
Amazon, known by insiders for being notoriously secretive, was at no point under a legal obligation to report its numbers, but had faced mounting pressure in the face of transparency reports becoming an industry norm.
Schmidt said the report, which covers the six months starting January 1 and ending May 31, will be released biannually.
By the numbers:
Amazon received 813 subpoenas, of which it fully complied with 66 percent;
Amazon received 35 search warrants, of which it fully complied with just over half;
Out of the other 13 other court orders it received, Amazon fully complied with just four;
Amazon received 132 foreign requests, of which it fully complied with 82 percent;
Amazon complied with the one removal orders (like user data) it received
Amazon disclosed that it had received between zero and 249 national security requests, such as a court order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The company could not specifically say whether or not it had received a single classified order.
In the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal, tech companies demanded the right to disclose how many secret data demands they received from the government. The Justice Department eventually relented, allowing those figures to be reported in wide numerical ranges.
The company's second bi-annual report is expected later this year, or early next. |
The lock screen shows the carrier on top, the time at the bottom and a column of notification icons along the right side. Pulling the screen down reveals a menu -- the further you pull, the more menu items you see. This is accompanied by audible and tactile (haptic) feedback, which lets you "feel" which item you're selecting. Once you've highlighted the right menu item, just release your finger to select it. While difficult to describe, this gesture is extremely intuitive. It forms the basis for all menu interactions in Sailfish OS and allows easy one-handed operation regardless of screen size. The lock screen menu provides access to things like the phone app, camera app and profiles. Pulling the lock screen up lets you peek at detailed notifications, including the signal and battery status -- sliding all the way up unlocks the phone.
Once on the home screen, you'll find a customizable row of four icons at the bottom -- these are your commonly used apps. The empty space above is reserved for a grid of cards that represent each running app. As such, Jolla's using the home screen as a task manager. Sliding the home screen up reveals the launch screen, a traditional grid of app icons. Pulling the launch screen up reveals a menu with a single item that lets you return to the home screen. Launching an app is as simple as tapping an icon. Navigation is gesture-based -- pulling the screen down reveals the app's menu, swiping left to right replaces the back button. There's also a "depth indicator" in the top-left corner of each app that shows how far down the app's rabbit hole you are. Tapping this indicator takes you back up one level (this is useful when swiping back might interfere with other app controls).
Inside an app, "pushing" left from the right edge of the screen lets you peek at your notifications, while sliding all the way to the left brings you back to the home screen. Minimized apps appear as cards on the home screen but are still running in the background (Sailfish OS supports true multitasking). Cards can be customized by developers to display a UI with real-time info and controls. For example, while the card for the contacts app consists of static pictures of your friends, the card for the media player shows track details and includes play / pause and next track controls. Since tapping on a card results in maximizing its app, card controls are gesture based -- pulling right on play / pause and "pushing" left on next track triggers the appropriate action in the media player.
Another unique aspect of Sailfish OS is the ambience concept. Like with other platforms, you can personalize the lock and home screens by selecting an image from the gallery. Jolla takes things a step further by customizing the color of UI elements (including fonts and menus) to match the content of the picture you selected -- not unlike Apple's album display mode in iTunes 11. A blurred and dimmed version of the image even becomes a background overlay for the launcher and the apps. It's completely seamless and it looks great. Overall, we came away reasonably impressed with Sailfish OS, despite experiencing only a fraction of its functionality. Performance was decent considering the N950's relatively modest single-core underpinnings -- then again, MeeGo's no slouch either. Obviously, we'll reserve judgment until we have the opportunity to play with the final product sometime in Q1 2013. |
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
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The Omaha man was driving near Sherbrook Street and Notre Dame Avenue when his 2012 Ford Focus got hung up on a snowbank. A van pulled up, and three people got out and said they could push the car out.
Winnipeg police say a Nebraska man got stuck in the snow last Saturday morning in the inner city and then had his car stolen when three seemingly kind-hearted Winnipeggers stopped by to help.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 7/1/2014 (1875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 7/1/2014 (1875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Call them wolves in Samaritans' clothing.
Winnipeg police say a Nebraska man got stuck in the snow last Saturday morning in the inner city and then had his car stolen when three seemingly kind-hearted Winnipeggers stopped by to help.
The Omaha man was driving near Sherbrook Street and Notre Dame Avenue when his 2012 Ford Focus got hung up on a snowbank. A van pulled up, and three people got out and said they could push the car out.
Their intentions were less than honourable.
"The keys were in the ignition. A male got into the car and when it was freed, he drove off," said Const. Jason Michalyshen, a spokesman for the Winnipeg Police Service.
Two females then jumped in the van and sped off, leaving the man stranded in the bitter cold.
Michalyshen said the car was recovered Monday in a Windsor Park shopping mall lot, but sustained damage and was towed to a Manitoba Public Insurance compound.
The American visitor, who has relatives in Manitoba, has since returned home.
No arrests have been made. Investigators are checking footage from surveillance cameras near where the vehicle was stolen and also where it was dumped by the car thief.
Christine Fisher, whose business is near the lot where the car was dumped, contacted police about the abandoned Focus. She was later told by an officer about the scam to rip off the car.
"These thugs make me embarrassed to be a Winnipegger," said Fisher. "I'm sure this man will think Winnipeg is a horrible place."
The story was just one of many over the last few weeks where a warm vehicle was a hot item for car thieves.
In fact, of the 166 vehicles stolen in the city in December, 52 were taken when the vehicle was running with the keys in the ignition. Another 34 vehicles were stolen after the keys were lifted (or misplaced) in public areas, and 15 vehicles were swiped when owners left spare keys in the vehicle. Another 65 vehicles were stolen in Winnipeg under different circumstances.
Though starting the car and letting it warm up is a common practice during this chilly winter, police remind residents to never leave their vehicles unattended while running or just with the keys in the ignition, for any period of time.
Police are also looking at how many of the 166 pilfered vehicles were used in other criminal acts.
While he couldn't say definitively, Michalyshen said one was used to facilitate a break-in to another vehicle, two were intentionally set on fire after being stolen and another was involved in a gas-and-dash from a service station.
While stealing a car is a crime, the larger and more pressing concern is what car thieves do with the vehicle once they get their mitts on it.
"That is the concern. It's not just the vehicle being stolen... In a lot of different cases, as soon as these vehicles are stolen, (thieves) will use those vehicles to become involved in other criminal acts," said Michalyshen. "Having a stolen vehicle, for some of these individuals, it almost feels like a bit of a force field — no one's going to identify them... and they will drive these vehicles erratically, put other people at risk; they'll put officers at risk."
— with files from James Turner
[email protected] |
I usually make my pick of books for a month mid the month before and you will find more information about the books there. This is my teaser page of things to come. Remember that the further away a release is the less certain is the information, covers can change from week to week and delays are common. This is also a collection of data from public sources like Amazon, Publisher and Author home pages that might contain errors or old information. So you can’t trust this calender like it was written on stone.
I love to get information on future releases for this Calendar. Comment here or email me ove at cybermage.se. Everyone is welcome authors, agents, publishers to.
2010
December 2010
2011
Daring (Kris Longknife 9) by Mike Shepherd (ACE) – probably fall/winter
Darkship Renegade (Darkship Thieves book 2) by Sarah A. Hoyt (Baen) – probably fall/winter
Safehold book 5 by David Weber (Tor) – probably early 2012, he started writing it in Oct 2010
Clan Chronicles: The Reunification Cycle book 1 by Julie E. Czerneda (DAW) – she started writing it in Oct 2010
January 2011
February 2011
March 2011
April 2011
Betrayer (Foreigner book 12) C. J. Cherryh (Daw)
May 2011
Dreadnaught (Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier 1) by Jack Campbell (ACE)
Dead Reckoning (True Blood 11) by Charlaine Harris (Gollancz, Ace)
Embassytown by China Miéville (Tor UK | Del Rey)
Summer 2011
The Unincorporated Woman (The Unincorporated Man 3) by Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin (Tor)
June 2011
Blue Remembered Earth (Poseidon’s Children Book 1) by Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
July 2011
War in Heaven (Veteran book 2) by Gavin G. Smith (Gollancz)
August 2011
Unti (Star Corpsman 1) by William Keith (Eos)
The Departure (Owner Trilogy 1) by Neal Asher (Tor UK) – unconfirmed date
Blight of Mages (prequel to King breaker King maker) by Karen Miller (Orbit)
The Ascendant Stars (Humanity’s Fire 3) by Michael Cobley (Orbit)
The Iron Jackal (Tale of the Kitty Jay 3) by Chris Wooding (Gollancz) – will probably be delayed to october
Pearlant (Light Universe) by M. John Harrison (Gollancz)
September 2011
Dust 514 by Tony Gonzales (Gollancz)
Bitterblue (Seven Kingdoms Trilogy 3) by Kristin Cashore (Gollancz) – will probably be delayed to 2012
October 2011
A Beautiful Friendship (Honorverse YA) by David Weber (Baen?)
The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy 3) by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
2011 winter
Ganymede (Clockwork Century 4) by Cherie Priest (Tor)
2012
Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2) by Neal Asher (TorUK) august?
A Rising Thunder (Honor Harrington/Torch/Saganami) by David Weber (Baen)
In the Mouth of the Whale (Quiet War Universe) by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
The Traitor Queen (Traitor Spy Trilogy 3) by Trudi Canavan (Orbit) – Trudi starts writing Oct 2010
Intruder (Foreigner book 13) C. J. Cherryh (Daw) – in the writing Oct 2010
January 2012
In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
August 2012
The Quantum Thief 3 by Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz)
September 2012
Ragnarok 3 by John Meany (Gollancz) – delayed from feb 2012 in October 2010
November 2012 |
We all have those days when we feel like we're worthless,useless human beings.Trust me,I've been there too.For whatever reason,at some point we feel sad.So I decided to share with you guys some things I usually do to cheer me up (with extra details,links and more).Let's get into it.Yes,that's right.It might sound ridiculous,but watching some cute beings be dumb or tricky really helps.Since I'm assuming you're sad and have no nerve to search for some videos,here are my favorite:Just click it.It'll be worth it,I promise.Hope these cheer you up :)They make such a good impact on your mood.Here are some links,even though I don't know your current situation.I couldn't find more links for general quotes because it all depends in what you're going through.If you're sad over a break up Click Here If you're sad over your grades : Click here If you're sad over bullies : Click here If you're sad over your own thoughts : Click Here I really hope it helped something. :)Jokes always make the day better.So why not enjoy a good laugh with those pages I found just so you could be happy? At least smile for me,so I can be glad I spent hours looking.+funny videos such as pranks,challenges and more.To make this party funner,make sure you're either home alone or you close your bedroom with a lock.Go grab some food (whether it's healthy or not),turn the music on,and just start dancing and singing around! It sounds cheesy but it really helps you get distracted from the sadness.If you don't want to dance/sing you can:-build a fort-watch a movie-play games online (Such as Cards Against Humanity -etc.Last but not the least,open up about it (keeping the anonymity).I love those pages where you can write anonymously and get advice:Also you could write to me,you know.My email is [email protected] you for reading this! I hope you feel better now.: if you know someone who's feeling sad and empty,please send this blogpost to help them.Comment down below if I helped or not,and if you want me to do more of these.See you tomorrow,xo |
poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201709/3816/1155968404_5574215224001_5574193639001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Group linked to Bannon runs tough ad against Sen. Strange before Alabama runoff
An outside group linked to Steve Bannon is venturing into the closely watched Alabama special election with a hard-hitting commercial that goes after Republican incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, as well as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Bannon’s nemesis.
The spot , from the pro-Trump organization Great America Alliance, describes Strange as a “big time lobbyist” who was “appointed by the swamp” and is “in the pocket of Mitch McConnell.”
Story Continued Below
“It’s time to drain the swamp,” the ad says. “Take your voice to Washington, and vote for someone to represent you. On Sept. 26, don’t let the swamp take over Alabama.”
The ad also features a clip of former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley saying that he consulted with McConnell before appointing Strange to the Senate seat, which was vacated when Jeff Sessions became attorney general.
With just two weeks until the GOP runoff, Bannon has declared his support for Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme court chief justice, who is running as an insurgent. By backing Moore, Bannon is going up against McConnell, who is boosting Strange and has directed millions of dollars toward his campaign.
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President Donald Trump endorsed Strange last month. But he has been conspicuously silent about the race since the first round of voting on Aug. 15, when Moore finished ahead of Strange. The White House has been noncommittal on what, if anything, the president will do in support of Strange before the runoff.
The Alabama race is the first front in what Bannon has described as a broader battle against McConnell that is expected to play out in Republican primaries across the country. The bomb-throwing former Trump chief strategist has expressed an interest in supporting primary challengers to McConnell-backed incumbents in several states, including Arizona, Nevada, and Tennessee.
Bannon has taken early steps to turn Great America Alliance into an apparatus that could be used to take on incumbents. Last week, he installed his political adviser, Andrew Surabian, at the group.
Great America Alliance also plans to begin airing a pro-Moore digital advertisement that says the former judge “isn’t the D.C. swamp’s choice, but he is Alabama’s choice.”
A spokesperson for the group declined to say how much was being spent to run the commercials. Great America Alliance is also expected to air TV ads and is planning a pro-Moore bus tour in Alabama leading up to the runoff.
The winner of the late-September runoff will face off in a Dec. 12 general election against the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Recent polls have shown Moore with a substantial lead in the runoff. |
AMG
Since adding more cool to anmachine is a very difficult task, you should not be surprised it took 9 months to design the new bike. Similarly to how long it takes for a new human being to be conceived and born, the Vilner AMG Diavel needed an immense amount of careful planning and revising the details until the modifying process could begin.The only thing which sustained a high degree of re-working was the tail of the bike, now slimmer and sporting a more aggressive stance.White was used for the frame and several other bodywork parts: the contrast enhances the mean nature of the Diavel as the visual effect puts more of the complex shapes on display.New air ducts have been crafted, and they received black leather straps with contrasting white stitching, all in perfect harmony with the white swingarm covers and headlight trim. And since the rear end was changed, Vilner also reworked the suspension covers for the fork.The AMG wheels, exhaust and the luxurious Alcantara embossed seat were left untouched, as there was nothing more one could do to make them better.It looks like the owner of this Ducati Diavel AMG (#350, by the way) was not entirely happy with the degree of uniqueness of his ride. We totally understand the guy, but after these final Vilner touches the bike simply cannot get any more exclusive and singular. |
Urban beekeepers in New York City no longer have to keep the honey of their labors a secret. The city's health board voted Tuesday to overturn a longtime ban on beekeeping within city limits.
Previously, the city's health code had placed honeybees in the same category as about 100 other creatures deemed too hazardous to be kept in town, including ferrets and poisonous snakes. Bees do sting, after all, and their venom can be dangerous to some people with severe allergies.
Yet, over the years, the ban was both little-known and lightly enforced. Some New Yorkers have secretly tended hives on rooftops and gardens for years in either defiance or ignorance of the regulations. [Click here to read the Monitor's article on urban beekeeping – City bees are all the buzz – which was published before the ban was lifted.]
And lately, bees have picked up political cache among a growing number of green-minded folk interested in seeing organic agriculture return to big American cities. The movement to end the ban picked up after Michelle Obama had a hive installed on the South Lawn of the White House.
"The bees are a great way to start that conversation," said David Vigil, a coordinator at the urban agriculture group East New York Farms!, which conducts seminars on beekeeping and has two hives at its youth garden in Brooklyn.
A hive can produce as much as 100 pounds of honey per year, he said, and the bees are useful for pollinating all sorts of crops.
"There are very few instances of people being stung," he added. Honeybees "are naturally defensive, but they are not aggressive at all."
People interested in starting a bee colony will need to register their hives with the city, but no license will be required. Health officials said the register will mostly be used to help resolve any complaints that may arise.
Previously, the city had investigated a few dozen complaints a year about illegal hives, and issued fines to some violators as high as $2,000.
The city lifted the ban for only one type of bee, the honey-producing Apis mellifera. Wasps, hornets, and other types of stinging insects are still banned.
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To read more about gardening, see the Monitor's main gardening page and our lively gardening blog, Diggin' It. Both of these have new URLs, so we hope you'll bookmark them and return. Want to be notified when there's something new in our gardening section? Sign up for our RSS feed. |
A spreading corruption crisis has slammed economic confidence in Turkey, sending the nation's currency to a record low and stocks plunging.
The lira hit an all-time low against the dollar Friday. The key index for stocks on Turkey's main exchange, the Borsa Istanbul National 100, has slumped 6.2% this week and is down more than 18% this year.
Related: Latest on Turkey's corruption probe
A wide-ranging probe into corrupt practices has damaged the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and continues to spook investors.
The crisis intensified this week as three ministers stood down and one, Urbanization and Environment Minister Erdogan Bayraktar, called on the country's leader to follow suit.
The ministers resigned Wednesday after their sons were detained in a roundup that included the head of a public bank, several bureaucrats and high-profile businessmen.
The detentions came after a two-year investigation by the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office into allegations of corruption, including money laundering, gold smuggling and bribery.
Prime Minister Erdogan reshuffled his cabinet, but the moves failed to restore investor confidence in the Turkish economy.
On Friday, the Turkish military said it would stay out of the crisis. In a statement posted on its website, the country's armed forces said it "does not want to, in any way, be a part of political discussions."
It's more pain for an economy that has suffered significant bouts of market turbulence in 2013.
Anti-government protests sparked a sharp sell off in Turkish stocks in June, as demonstrators accused Erdogan of creeping authoritarianism and demanded his resignation. |
New Delhi: Rejecting criticism about Rahul Gandhi's leadership, Congress leader AK Antony today said he was not responsible for the party's Lok Sabha poll debacle and exuded optimism that it will revive under Sonia Gandhi and Rahul.
Antony, who headed a committee that probed the reasons for the party's poll debacle and submitted its report to Sonia Gandhi yesterday, dismissed reports that there was a question mark on the leadership of Rahul after the elections and that the committee has suggested something like that.
"This is all speculation. Nothing. Absolutely wrong. Those who are spreading this kind of rumours want to weaken the party. Such things are being spread by mischievous people, who want to weaken the party," he told reporters on the sidelines of the flag hoisting ceremony at AICC headquarters.
Antony said the "reasons for the Congress defeat were something else".
However, he did not elaborate as to what conclusions the panel has arrived at for the worst-ever defeat of Congress in the 2014 general elections.
Sonia and Rahul did not take questions from the media and left after wishing 'Happy Independence Day' to all.
Antony insisted that it was Sonia Gandhi and Rahul, who toured throughout the country and addressed rallies in the run-up to the polls.
At the outset, he said the panel chaired by him submitted the report to Sonia yesterday but refused to divulge details.
All the four members of the panel Antony, Mukul Wasnik, RC Khuntia and Avinash Pandey had met the Congress President and submitted the voluminous report.
"I do not want to go into details. I will not reveal the details. I do not want to say anything about the content of the report," was his brief response to questions like whether his panel has faulted the communication strategy of the party or blamed the way media reported during Lok Sabha polls.
"We are confident; like we did in 1977, we will overcome this difficult phase as well. Congress will overcome this. We will be able to regain the loss, strengthen our party, strengthen our mass base again. We will revive under leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul," Antony said.
Asked about murmurs of dissent within the party over leadership, the party veteran, who had proposed anointment of Rahul as Vice President during Congress Chintan Shivir in Jaipur last year, said such leaders should instead do something to ensure that the party regains lost ground.
"They must do something to regain the ground. That we are confident of. We are 100 per cent confident of regaining lost ground," he said.
Apart from giving a condensed over-all report on the Congress' poor show nationwide, the report has also focused on specific states incorporating discussions held with their leaders on the reasons for the defeat and the recommendations of the panel, sources said.
With the Assembly polls in four states approaching, the report would help the leadership take remedial steps at the earliest to stem the rot.
Antony said during discussions with leaders from various states, it came out that only Sonia and Rahul campaigned. The veteran leader suggested that the party did not work at other levels as strongly as was required.
Asked whether there will be changes in the party set up since he has already submitted the report citing reasons for the defeat, Antony said this is for the Congress President to decide.
On speculation of a larger role for Priyanka Gandhi in the party, Antony said, "There is already a clarification from Priyankaji. I will not add anything."
Priyanka had last week dismissed speculation surrounding her as "conjecture" and "baseless rumours".
Sources indicated that instead of being critical of the leadership, the report talks about the alleged "manipulation of media coverage by the BJP, the lacunae in Congress campaign vis-a-vis the blitzkrieg of Narendra Modi's election campaign and organisational weaknesses" of the party.
Antony downplayed his earlier remarks that proximity to minority communities had led people to doubt the party's secularism, saying it was "Kerala specific" remark made in a particular speech in a context.
Party general secretary Mukul Wasnik said the panel talked to around 500 leaders from various states before finalising its report after a comprehensive discussion.
He said nobody raised questions about the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul.
The four-member panel was set up a fortnight after the results were out on May 16, which had come as a huge shock for the party.
The panel had begun the review exercise in June starting from Delhi, where all its seven Lok Sabha candidates including Union Ministers Kapil Sibal, Ajay Maken and Krishna Tirath had lost the polls.
The panel had also met the PCC chiefs, CLP leaders and other party functionaries from various states during the exercise.
The Congress had got its lowest tally of 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha in the general elections held in April-May this year.
PTI
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It may be time to install some solar panels on your roof to counter that electricity bill that is through the roof. Here is a brief guide to solar panels and solar electricity systems.
How do solar panels work?
Photovoltaic (PV) cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. Today, thousands of people take advantage of this process by using individual solar PV systems to power their homes. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the solar panels used for homes are made up of modules of about 40 solar cells. The average home will need 10 to 20 solar panels.
What are the benefits of solar power?
The U.S. Department of Energy reports that most solar electric systems usually pay for themselves in four to five years. They tend to last up to three decades, and can increase the value of your home. There are also federal and state incentives that come along with solar installations. Find out what kind of tax credits and utility rebates are available in your state.
And then there are the environmental benefits of switching to solar power. Solar electric systems reduce greenhouse gas emission, as well as the dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil.
How do I decide which solar panels to buy?
There are two main types of solar panels: crystalline silicon and thin film. Dan Bedell, the executive vice president of marketing and corporate development at Principal Solar, says to keep in mind that, while thin film panels may be less expensive than silicon-based ones, they usually produce less electricity.
When selecting solar panels, Bedell says that you should pay attention to the price per watt calculation (divide the price of the module by the number of watts it is rated to produce). You should also consider your location, the amount of sunlight your home receives and the average temperatures for your area.
"The best module for Boston might not be the best module for Phoenix," Bedell says.
Other factors to think about when you are picking out a system include your budget, the available space on your roof or in your yard for the solar panels, and the degree to which you want to offset conventional power with solar power.
Can I install the panels myself?
No. Bedell says that installing a solar electricity system is not a do-it-yourself project.
You will need a licensed electrician or certified solar installer. Consult the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) for a list of certified systems installers. Ask any solar energy dealer or installer if he or she handles the tax incentive paperwork.
Your system will require a certain level of maintenance. Review the maintenance instructions in your system manual so you are aware of these requirements.
Make sure to check with your city, county or homeowner association to see if there are any restrictions and whether you need to get permits before you can install the system. Your installer should be able to help you out.
Bedell says that the engineering of the installation is important to the functionality of your system.
"Orienting a very high quality hardware installation in the wrong direction, or in a partially-shaded area will likely result in far worse electricity production than orienting a very low quality hardware installation in the right direction and free of shade," he says. |
Crates of monastery stones and statue of the King of Seville arrive in Miami. St. Bernard de Clairvaux was dismantled and shipped from Spain by William Randolph Hearst. (Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)
We had been driving through what felt like one continuous Miami strip mall for almost an hour. Our GPS promised that in a few short minutes we would reach the destination we had traveled some thousand miles to find: a Spanish monastery, from the 12th century, once inhabited by a bevy of monks, moved stone by stone across the ocean, now set in the middle of a swamp-jungle. As we passed each pawn shop, shuttered record store, and strip mall-based high school, it became increasingly plausible that perhaps the guidebooks, Wikipedia, and Catherine Zeta Jones’ jarringly kinky scene from Rock of Ages had somewhat oversold whatever we were about to experience.
When the GPS told us to turn left, our earlier suspicions were confirmed. The side streets did not really offer an escape from the strip mall, but merely extended it in all directions.
Then, suddenly, on the right, a break in the uniform storefronts. A little further on, a small sign announcing the Ancient Spanish Monastery.
At the back of the parking lot, a wrought iron gate blocked off a graceful 16th century gate just wide enough for a small truck. Mary and Bernard of Clairvaux looked down lovingly from delicate niches on either side of the gate, their gazes falling on a cluster of cats that had found shade next to the plastered support posts. It was the quintessential Southern Mediterranean/Under the Tuscan Sun vibe, except, in the background, giant tropical plants, complete with dangling vines. The trees loomed over a church, courtyard and dining hall built in the middle of nowhere in Spain almost nine centuries before. From the gate, we could see bright flowers splayed against the pitted stone, a little worse for the wear after 900 years of use, a trip across the Atlantic ocean, several fires, and a quarter-century sabbatical in the damp crates of a Bronx warehouse from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The exterior of St Bernard de Clairvaux, Miami. (Photo: Jorge Elías/flickr)
This was Medieval America—one of several dozen centuries-old buildings imported to the U.S. in the early 20th century. They lie scattered around the country, a hidden patchwork of mostly-illegal monasteries and mansions whose history has been largely forgotten. In reporting this story, Atlas Obscura dug into both scholarly and journalistic texts, and spent time on both coasts, to understand how and why a handful of the country’s most famous families spent small fortunes helping themselves to whole European buildings. The story that emerged is part caper, part mystery, and part tragedy: American robber barons snuck ancient stones out of the war-torn countryside in the dead of night, Europeans fretted over how their familiar landmarks were rapidly disappearing, and U.S. cities spent decades of the 20th century fighting over what to do with tens of thousands of displaced medieval remnants.
How to Steal a Monastery
There are two Americans to thank for the strange fact of a 12th century Spanish monastery’s existence only a few miles from Miami Beach: notorious plutocrat William Randolph Hearst, and his art dealer, Arthur Byne. Together, these two men thwarted Spanish authorities, angry townspeople, and all common sense to drag not one, but two monasteries to the shores of America.
In December 1926, the New York Times printed a brief article on Hearst’s importation of St. Bernard de Clairvaux, stone-by-stone, from Segovia, Spain. William Randolph Hearst was no stranger to the Times—a newspaper magnate, short-lived Congressman for New York, and perpetual tabloid fixture for his high profile romantic affairs and fights with fellow tycoons, Hearst had a proclivity for spending money in the most ostentatious, self-congratulatory ways. A regular Times reader of the era would not be surprised to hear that Hearst had imported an entire medieval building.
The Map of Medieval America: From Florida to California, the U.S. has a whole village worth of medieval buildings hiding in plain view. Here are 20 of them, in whole and in parts, mostly open to the public as museums (or parts of museums). But this map barely scrapes the surface of the stories behind these structures, which have endured arduous journeys to their current resting places.
The complexity of that achievement was given scant space. The journalist covering the purchase included only a brief note on the obstacles Hearst faced in dismantling and moving a monastery out of Spain: “Twice during the work of removing the cloister, the villagers, banding together, drove the workingmen away on the ground that foreigners were robbing the community of its greatest treasure.” The article went on to assure readers that “the cloister will be the only precious work of art allowed to leave Spain for a law passed two months ago prohibits further exportation of works of art and ruins.”
Yet just five years later, 11 ships filled with the pieces of a second Spanish monastery bought by Hearst docked in San Francisco Bay, in spite of the new laws. Who let this happen? And why were Americans buying, shipping and reconstructing medieval European buildings in the first place?
The answer to both of these questions was, at least in part, Arthur Byne. In 1930, Byne, a renowned American dealer of Spanish art, stumbled upon the monastery of Santa Maria de Óvila, nestled in a small valley created by a bend in the River Tagus in central Spain. Byne had developed something of a complicated reputation in the country since arriving there 20 years earlier. In 1910, Byne undertook his first trip through Spain to photograph and catalog the nation’s medieval monuments. He soon earned the trust of the Spanish government and its art community and became a leading expert on Spain’s cultural heritage, even receiving recognition from the king in 1927. But at the same time, Byne was leveraging these relationships to build a bustling business in the antiquities trade, exporting furniture, fireplaces, ceilings, statues, and other Spanish treasures to his American clients. “My only role in life is taking down old works of art, conserving them to the best of my ability and shipping them to America,” Byne reflected in a 1934 letter to Julia Morgan, an architect colleague back in California.
The monastery, a home to Cistercian monks beginning in 1180, had a typically medieval monastery plan, with a series of buildings constructed around a cloister with arcaded walkways. The church sat on the north side of the cloister, while the monks’ wing attached to the east side, which included the sacristy, the library, the chapter house and probably a common room for the monks. On the south wing opposite the church stood the refectory, kitchen, pantry, and a calefactorium (warming room). The bodega, a utilitarian building containing a long subterranean vault for wine storage, made up the monastery’s west side.
Upon encountering the site, Byne knew he had an ideal buyer in William Randolph Hearst. Hearst had a reputation as an unpredictable, but prolific, art collector; as one of his dealers assessed in a very backhanded compliment, “nobody I have known showed simultaneously such a voracious desire to acquire and so little discrimination in doing it.” Hearst also had a particular interest in Spain. He once wrote in a letter to his mother that Spain was “a tired, worn out monarchy” prime for exploitation by foreign elites. He declared, “[we] will burst through the Pyrenees into Spain, and ravage the country. How does that strike you?”
William Randolph Hearst, c. 1906. (Photo: Library of Congress)
However, Hearst also had a specific goal in mind for Santa Maria de Óvila. It would be part of a 61-bedroom “medieval castle” in the California wilderness, called Wyntoon Castle. Hearst was less interested in historical preservation, and his design included a swimming pool constructed from Santa Maria de Óvila’s 150-foot-long chapel with a diving board installed on the site of the former altar. The choir at the north end of the church would serve as a women’s dressing room, and the chapel’s apse would be scattered with two or three feet of sand, creating a “beach” for sunbathing. After a series of exchanges with Byne, Hearst approved the purchase of the entire monastery.
From the moment Hearst agreed to shell out the cash—around $300,000 in total—Byne realized he was facing a number of challenges in moving a monastery, stone by stone, across the Atlantic Ocean to a California forest. Luckily, American money worked wonders on a weak Spanish government.
The first, and perhaps most pressing issue, was that taking a monastery out of Spain violated a host of Spanish cultural preservation laws, many of which the Spanish government had generated in the wake of Byne’s previous antiquities-purchasing binges. “It is forbidden to ship a single antique stone from Spain today—even the size of a baseball,” Byne himself admitted. Thus, Byne took extreme precautions in keeping his project quiet. Two of Hearst’s architectural consultants, Walter T. Steilberg and Julia Morgan corresponded about the “need for secrecy in this matter.” “I am not trusting, in this talkative country, to the discretion of any typist, and shall send all of my reports in pencil…” wrote Steilberg.
One of the ways Byne convinced the Spanish government to turn a blind eye to his pillaging was by convincing the Spanish Ministry of Labor that his project was a “partial solution to the serious problem of unemployment.” In the midst of a serious Spanish economic depression, Byne hired more than 100 local townspeople to dismantle the monastery. The disassembling process went quickly, thanks to the neat construction of the site—Byne described the monastery as “a joy to take down.”
The dismantled cloister of the Monastery of Ovila, 1930s, said by Byne to be a “joy to take down”. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
But moving the many heavy stones presented a more imposing challenge. Byne needed to transport the stones across the countryside to the port, about 100 miles away. However, there were no paved roads in this part of the country, nor did it have accessible railroad networks. Undeterred, Byne found the remains of a trench railway from Paris, a leftover relic of World War I, when Allied forces needed to deliver supplies to soldiers in the trenches. The railways were less expensive to build and could be easily moved and reconstructed, allowing Byne to quickly lay down tracks in Spain. The simple, makeshift rail lines previously used to deliver critical ammunition, food, and medicine to trench-bound Allied soldiers were now being used to move metal push carts filled with ancient stones through a Spanish valley.
But building a railway to transport one rich man’s illegal purchase was not enough. Byne’s workers also needed to get the stones across the River Tagus, which ran alongside the site. Hearst’s architects, in cooperation with the local workers, developed a pulley system that used the current of the riverto pull a raft filled with stones connected to a series of cables: It took the workers thousands of trips, over the course of six months, to get the stones across the 100-foot-wide river.
The instability of the Spanish government provided a final challenge for Byne and Hearst. When Byne began removing the monastery in early 1931, Spain had a largely ineffective monarchy and a sluggish economy. This helped Byne convince the government that monastery exportation was a boon to the Spanish economy—creating jobs and bringing in some much needed revenue. But it also meant that the government might collapse any day, and could be replaced with a new government less willing to ignore Byne and Hearst’s antics. In a March 1931 letter, Steilberg relayed:
Mr. Byne is very anxious to just remove from the site all the carved or moulded members, as he fears interference by the authorities at any time. We presented the entire matter to the national art commission and they were entirely agreeable to him taking this forgotten and shameful neglected and abused group of buildings; but it is quite possible that some of the politicians, in an effort to discredit those in power, may bring pressure to bear through the press that would halt the work at once.”
A month later, in April 1931, Byne’s fears were realized as the Spanish king fled the country, and an anti-monarchist regime came to power. But, luckily for the Americans, the Second Spanish Republic was about as effective as its predecessor when it came to protecting cultural heritage sites. Byne declared that the revolutionary Spanish government “(has) more important problems than to bother about than the demolition of an old ruin.” Time magazine later reported, “[Byne’s] workers nailed the red flag of revolution to the church they were illegally tearing down and went right on working.”
By the time the stone-laden ships arrived in the San Francisco harbor in 1931, Hearst and Byne faced a challenge even more imposing than angry townspeople and interloping Spanish bureaucrats: the Great Depression. As the stock market crashed, Hearst’s net worth plummeted and his desire for a personal medieval castle with a chapel swimming pool began to seem like a pipe dream. Estimates for the cost of completing the castle came in at around $50,000,000 and Hearst’s financial advisors finally convinced him that he could not afford to take on this expense. After all of Byne’s effort and ingenuity, Santa Maria de Óvila was retired to a warehouse, then dumped in a San Francisco park.
Why Buy A Monastery
The idea to buy a medieval building, dismantle it, ship it across an ocean, store it, and then rebuild it in a new location was not just a lavish fantasy formed in Hearst’s money-addled brain and turned into reality by an army of fearful yes-men. An English antiquarian noted somewhat darkly to the Manchester Guardian in 1926 that “there [seemed] to be a craze in the United States at the moment for this sort of thing.”
He was right. Significant portions of at least 20 medieval buildings made their way across the Atlantic, almost all between 1914 and 1934. As a result of this veritable industry, medieval structures now reside or resided in major cities across the country (New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, and Miami), as well as in regional centers (Richmond, VA; Toledo, OH; and Milwaukee; WI), and even in the middle of nowhere (Vina, CA).
American billionaires like Hearst and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. played a significant part in this trade, but they weren’t the only ones involved. Many wealthy folks seemed to consider the purchase of a medieval building a reasonable personal expense.
Segovia, Spain, where the St. Bernard de Clairvaux was originally located. The city walls date from the 8th century. (Photo: Carlos Delgado/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
The buildings were not that expensive, at least for an early 20th century American magnate. Even slightly less-rich people could afford them: An American diplomat and his heiress wife purchased a medieval English manor house and brought it to Virginia. The daughter of a railroad magnate had a Gothic chapel moved from France to her estate in Long Island, where she installed it next to a (now destroyed) Renaissance castle that she had acquired earlier. Most of the structures were little more than ruins after the Wars of Religion of the 16th century and the nationalization of religious institutions at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Governments in the 19th century had given the buildings to local, private owners for a song.
More difficult for the prospective medieval building owner was the politics. To facilitate the legally ambiguous trade, Hearst had Byne, John D. Rockefeller had George Grey Barnard, Virginia business people used Henry G. Moore. Stealing a monastery was all about networking.
But, speaking more broadly, the desire for such properties was probably rooted in the American interest in the European past. At the beginning of the 20th century, American elites began incorporating elements of medieval architecture into everything from universities to churches to department stores. By the time that Hearst, Rockefeller, and the others started importing medieval buildings, Americans had been collecting medieval art and sculpture in earnest for about 40 years. Americans wanted anything that could be labeled “medieval”: the sturdy, stark lines of the 11th century Romanesque or the effusive ornament of the early 16th century flamboyant Gothic, it didn’t matter.
Nowadays, the dominant cultural expression of the Middle Ages seems to be the sex and violence of Game of Thrones. But at the turn of the century, Americans thought of the era as a time of serenity; piety; and ideal, harmonious communities. Medieval Europe had not yet suffered the traumas of industry, and medieval objects became a way to demonstrate that the capitalism of the early 20th century had its genteel side. In the case of the 15th century Tudor manor house Agecroft Hall, the effect was supposed to be actually transformative. One pamphleteer writing about the arrival of the hall in Virginia claimed rapturously that “England [was] literally being brought to America.” She did not mean that America was claiming a part of England, she meant that part of the U.S. had been turned into a medieval English agricultural estate—an improvement.
Any coherence that the medieval buildings bought by Americans might have had in the 1920s and 1930s disappeared almost as soon as the buildings arrived in America. The Depression shifted financial priorities away from moving buildings across oceans and the fad for all things medieval had faded by World War II. The Medieval American buildings might have been acquired for similar reasons but soon after their arrival in the U.S., they began wildly disparate journeys.
What Happens When Your Building Arrives in America
A lot could go wrong even once a medieval building finally made it to America. Geopolitics, the global economy, and public health regulations all had unexpected consequences. And, of course, there never seemed to be enough money.
Even the buildings that would become The Cloisters, that venerable model of American medievalism, faced some challenges on this side of the pond. George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and antiquities dealer who was deeply in debt and living in France, began in 1906 to acquire large portions of four monasteries: Sant-Miquel-de-Cuixà, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Trie-en-Bigorre, and what he thought was Bonnefont-en-Comminges. He planned to sell the buildings to wealthy individuals and institutions from New York to L.A., but plan after plan fell through. By 1913, he had few prospects and was quickly running out of time, as laws forbidding the export of French monuments would come into effect on January 1, 1914. He threw the cloisters on boats as swiftly as he could—the authorities, who knew what he was doing, tried to stop him—and got the stones out in the nick of time.
George Grey Barnard, sculptor and medieval art dealer, in 1908. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
In early 1914, these cloisters arrived in New York, and Barnard decided that he would keep them for the immediate future, creating an installation on some undeveloped land in Upper Manhattan. This predecessor to today’s Cloisters proved immensely popular, with papers heralding it as the Gothic jewel of New York’s cultural institutions.
By the mid-1920s, however, Barnard needed money, badly. He quietly let it be known that his cloisters, and the land they were on, were collectively for sale. Barnard’s agent approached John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on March 25, 1925, and offered everything for $1 million. Barnard had bought art for Rockefeller in the past, and the two had previously discussed the creation of a great museum of medieval objects. Now, with the fate of New York’s premier medieval exhibit uncertain, Barnard stressed to Rockefeller the importance of keeping his cloisters in the city if at all possible. With stronger antiquities laws in place, it could prove tricky for Rockefeller to simply go buy a new set of medieval buildings in France.
Rockefeller, a brutal negotiator, indicated his interest to Barnard’s dealer and then ceased contact with them for several weeks. Rockefeller then wrote to The Metropolitan Museum of Art with an offer to buy the cloisters for the museum, eventually settling on a donation of $500,000 to buy the buildings and an additional $300,000 to maintain them. A decade earlier, The Met had promised to buy Sant-Miquel-de-Cuixà from Barnard, but backed out. This time, the sale went through, and Barnard agreed to sell his cloisters to The Met for $650,000, a sum much lower than the million-dollar offers he had entertained in 1915 and 1922. By 1933, the cloisters were moved to Fort Tryon Park and were newly combined and augmented into the complex that is The Cloisters today.
Saint-Michel-de-Cuixa, late 1800s, prior to parts of it being dismantled and shipped to New York, where is makes up part of The Cloisters. (Photo: Bibliothèque de Toulouse/flickr)
Another Spanish monastery acquired with Hearst money veered even further off course. Before Hearst bought Santa Maria de Óvila in 1930, he had purchased another Spanish monastery: Saint Bernard de Clairvaux from Segovia, Spain. St. Bernard de Clairvaux charted a curious course from Spain to Miami by way of New York.
Byne got St. Bernard de Clairvaux out the same way he moved Santa Maria de Óvila, but this trip proved much easier. He built 40 miles of road through the mountainous Spanish countryside, hired more than 100 men and ox-cart teams to stomp down his newly laid roads, and constructed a 20-mile narrow-gauge railroad. Spain’s cultural preservation laws hadn’t been enacted yet, so Byne didn’t have to worry about interference from the authorities; he just slipped cash into the waiting hands of the dockworkers. In about a year’s time the monastery had been blueprinted, dismantled, packed into 10,571 crates and shipped to a Bronx warehouse, where it arrived in 1926.
Then the monastery landed in the crossfire of an international public health scare. Byne’s workers packaged the pieces of monastery stone with hay to cushion the blocks during the long journey across the Atlantic—standard practice, particularly when trafficking fragile goods out of a rural region. But in 1924, the United States experienced its seventh outbreak of the unfortunately named and highly contagious “hoof and mouth disease.” Past outbreaks of the virus had devastated American agriculture, as swine, sheep, and cattle broke out in the gruesome mouth and hoof blisters characteristic of the ailment. A 1914 epidemic of hoof and mouth disease spread across the eastern and midwestern United States, forcing farmers to slaughter 200,000 diseased animals at an appraised value of almost $6 million. The USDA believed that the disease had come from overseas, as both Europe and Latin America had experienced epidemics.
When Spain experienced another eruption in 1925, the USDA was not taking any chances. American authorities figured the odds were good that the hay used to pack Hearst’s crates had been exposed to animals in Europe and demanded the quarantine of all 10,571 crates. Within a few days, government workers burned every scrap of the packaging hay in an attempt to protect America’s cows from yet another round of a foreign plague.
When the stones finally made it to the Bronx warehouse, Hearst realized he had yet another administrative catastrophe on his hands—the workers repacked the stones without returning them to their original wooden crates. The crates had departed from Spain with an identifying number and a compass direction on each crate, so that the 10,571 pieces of monastery could be reconstructed.
Now that blueprint was completely, irrevocably gone. Hearst was the overwhelmed owner of what Time magazine christened “the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history.”
St. Bernard de Clairvaux languished in the warehouse for almost 30 years while Hearst plotted his next steps. Putting the monastery back together would require both money and motivation, and by the 1930s, Hearst was running out of both. Now in possession of multiple piecemeal medieval monasteries he had neither the plans nor the resources to rebuild, Hearst began to seek someone—anyone—to take this giant stone burden off his hands. Beginning in 1937, Hearst started liquidating his massive art collection, as the New York Times morbidly noted, “in anticipation for his death.” (Hearst’s death wouldn’t come for another 14 years.) Hearst tasked his art dealers with the work of pawning an art collection that had cost him a cool $40 million (not adjusted for inflation), and included such eccentricities as dozens of full suits of armor, an Egyptian mummy, a pair of Benjamin Franklin’s glasses, and of course, full fledged medieval monasteries. But while the suits of armor flew off the shelves (in many cases almost literally, as some of the Hearst artifact fire sales were held at department stores), a Spanish monastery in 10,000-plus pieces was a much harder sell.
The cloisters at St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church, Miami, as they look today. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
But in 1952, St. Bernard de Clairvaux finally found its buyers. William Edgemon and Raymond Moss, two businessmen from Cincinnati, purchased the cloisters and shipped the crates down the east coast to Port Everglades, at a cost of $60,000. After retrieving the crates from the Florida docks, Edgemon and Moss transported the stones to North Miami Beach; they hired an expert stonemason who spent the next 19 months re-erecting the monastery at a cost of nearly $1.5 million—later assessments would say that the stonemason got the gigantic puzzle “about 90% right.”
The choice of Miami as the location had its own peculiar logic, somewhat tied to the new popularity of central air conditioning. Reasoning that people might eventually get bored of the beach—or, at the very least, that it might occasionally rain—enterprising businessmen opened new tourist attractions, including amusement parks, aquariums and a wax museum around the city. The Ohio entrepreneurs banked on the monastery being beautiful and novel enough (“STEP BACK IN TIME 800 YEARS!”) to draw in some of Miami’s sunburned masses, and thus invested heavily in its reconstruction. (Similar reasoning would bring another medieval monastery to the Bahamas, too.)
The monastery never took off in the way the entrepreneurs hoped. Tourism in Miami began a downward slide in the early 1960s (due to, among other things, unseasonably cool temperatures and growing concern about drugs) and the monastery’s trickle of guests proved insufficient to recoup its enormous start up costs. In 1964, the cloister was saved from demolition when a philanthropist donated $400,000 and gave the property to the local Episcopal diocese. The Episcopalians continued to operate the site as a local attraction, but eliminated the admission fee and outfitted the locale to be a more suitable place for church services. They brought in carpets, found a new altar among Hearst’s still-for-sale possessions, and set up a church day care. The site’s new chaplain told the New York Times in 1964: “We feel we are redeeming this beautiful edifice. It has fallen very far from grace. After centuries of consecration by the prayers of the faithful, it is ignominious for it to be classified as a ‘giant jigsaw puzzle.’”
Miami of the 1950s, and future home to St. Bernard de Clairvaux. (Photo: Florida Memory/flickr)
If the tale of Hearst’s first monastery seemed complicated, his second monastery would prove no easier to unload. In the case of St. Bernard de Clairvaux, Hearst owned the Bronx warehouse, meaning that having the stones sit around wasn’t costing him much. But in San Francisco, Hearst needed to rent 28,000 square feet of warehouse space to house the crates containing Santa Maria de Óvila. With the onset of the Depression, and Hearst at real risk of bankruptcy, the tycoon could no longer afford to hemorrhage money in this manner.
Hearst’s agents began to look for a buyer, but as a Time journalist critically assessed, “(there) was probably not a sane man in the country who would have paid a reasonable price for it in 1939.”
After it became clear to Hearst that he was not going to make any money selling this monastery, he decided to try giving the stones away. In 1941, he proposed donating the stones to the City of San Francisco with the provision that the City would use them to reconstruct the original monastery buildings, and that these would form the main attraction of a Museum of Medieval Arts to be operated by the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. De Young administrators and city officials were enthusiastic; the Museum’s director Walter Heil wrote in a letter to Hearst that this was the most thrilling news he had received in his tenure in office. In anticipation for the move, Hearst took the stones out of the warehouse and had the crates placed in Golden Gate Park.
But like all previous plans for the stones, this dream too would prove short-lived. With the outbreak of World War II, municipal planning ground to a halt as government agencies refocused on defense and military operations. Directing energy to building a giant medieval museum also seemed somewhat tone-deaf when the nation was in the middle of a violent international entanglement. One museum board member recalled a heartfelt plea to the city “to reassemble the monastery’s stones at a dire point in the war when courage born of faith—any faith—could be reborn and flower in the lyrically soaring arches of a resurrected Santa Maria de Óvila.” Unfortunately, just three months after Pearl Harbor, Americans were not apt to see parallels between the courage of wartime valor and the “courage” of rebuilding a European cultural site.
Monastery stones in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. (Photo: Binksternet/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Any last hope for the museum went (literally) up in smoke, after a series of fires damaged the unattended monastery stones. Between 1941 and 1959, no fewer than five inflagrations tore through the stones. Arson was heavily suspected (though never officially proven), and employees of the museum speculated the fires were related to a vocal faction of San Franciscans who did not want any construction in Golden Gate Park. This was a depressing time for Hearst’s architect, Steilberg, who was still hoping for a grand medieval structure. As Time would later note, “a kind of fatalistic lethargy seems to have settled on the California project.”
The ruins remained in Golden Gate Park until the end of the 20th century, as most people initially involved in the project either passed away or lost interest. The stones became weathered and overgrown with grass and weeds, morphing into the landscape of the park. Among their many new purposes, the stones served as a playground for children, a canvas for graffiti artists, and a site of “meditation and love” for San Francisco’s druid community.
Europeans to American Medieval Building Buyers: Drop Dead
From riots in Spain to scathing op-eds in English papers, Europeans did not let their medieval buildings sail quietly to America. In the face of energetic opposition, it is shocking how successful Americans were at taking these pieces of cultural heritage. Of course, it was sometimes legal for them to do so—barely legal, but often technically legal. England’s series of Ancient Monuments Protection Acts had not defined “ancient” in such a way that encompassed Agecroft Hall and Warwick Priory, Spain did not move to forbid the export of cultural heritage until after Byne had bought his first monastery, and George Grey Barnard famously finished putting his cloisters—The Cloisters—on boats just two days before France’s cultural heritage laws came into effect. However, to understand how Americans kept taking buildings and how Europeans made sense of these thefts, we need to look beyond the formal laws to the complicated and often tragic histories of the medieval buildings themselves.
Often, it came down to one critical question: How much of a building do you need to own to say that you own a building?
For something like the late Gothic chapel from the Chateau d’Herbéville, now at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the answer might be fairly simple. The nobles Jean Bayer de Boppart and his wife, Iseberg decided they wanted one of these private chapels that were all the rage, they hired skilled craftsmen to append it to their family home, and up it went. When antiquities dealer G. T. Demotte came across the building after World War I, he removed the walls, roof, interior stone and wooden elements of the chapel from the rest of the structure—by then mostly ruins—and could market the thing as a late Gothic chapel.
The St. Joan of Arc Chapel, Milwaukee, originally built in the Rhône River Valley in France. (Photo: Emma Stodder)
Something like the monastery of Sant-Miquel-de-Cuixà is a little more complicated. Physically, it’s a mass of different constructions, assembled over time. To a 9th century foundation, the monks added a church in the 10th century that was then refurbished, then consecrated, then overshadowed by a larger church built a few years later, all of it ultimately bolstered by many additional structures in the 11th century that helped to get more foot traffic going past the monastery in the form of pilgrims who donated and spent their way from their homelands as they traveled to Saint James of Compostela. In other places, building programs extended centuries further, into the 1400s. Americans were especially interested in Gothic and Romanesque stone—when Byne took his monasteries out of Spain, he just left the post-1200 material in ruins and in situ.
As far as Hearst was concerned, he owned Santa Maria de Óvila after his years of toil and millions of dollars spent, all culminating in the monastery’s relocation to America. In spite of the building’s epic journey, many in Spain do not realize that it ever left. The remaining buildings were rebuilt on their original site decades later, yielding the extreme oddity of a medieval monastery that is apparently now in two places at once.
While these layered and often confusing histories have today resulted in an alarming metaphysical conundrum, they were very convenient for American buyers in the early 20th century. Plus, from their perspective, they weren’t stealing history—they were doing the structures a favor. Time and war had left many of Europe’s “treasures” in sad shape. In England, religious institutions like that housed at Warwick Priory were dissolved under Henry VIII in the mid-16th century. Practically, that meant that the buildings were stripped of their furnishings and their inhabitants were released from their vows and sent away. In France, the Revolution led in 1790 to the dissolution of all religious orders and the nationalization of all Church property, with devastating consequences for the buildings and their communities (as well as for historians, since many, many archives were destroyed as a result).
What wasn’t destroyed, the state sold to private owners, usually for extremely low sums. One element of The Cloisters was, after 1792, used as a stable, a jail, a weapons foundry, a private residence, a garrison, and a hotel warehouse before locals dismantled the structure to make room for another hotel.
Americans and Europeans both hurled these long histories at one another when, on the one hand, staking a claim to medieval buildings and, on the other, repudiating American theft of cultural heritage. When the U.S. media reported on medieval acquisitions, they often revered American tycoons as heroic preservationists of the past. A 1936 New York Times editorial on The Cloisters praised the “patient [sic] genius” of George Grey Barnard and the “discerning and generous genius” of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in bringing the medieval sites to New York City. Both the media and the buyers of the monasteries were eager to draw connections between American and European history. “Mr. Rockefeller has helped to pay one great debt of our age to the Middle Ages by choosing to repair the Cathedral of Rheims,” opined the Times.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., c. 1915. (Photo: Library of Congress)
World War II further cemented Americans’ belief that what Europeans had labeled “kidnapping” and “acts of thievery” actually represented actions for the good of humanity. When the Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, acquired a 13th-century French cloister in 1943, one curator declared its removal from Europe as “a splendid thing,” since now “we have [the elements] in this country where they are safe.”
The European side was just as entrenched. Perhaps the most brutal fight occurred over the purchase of a monastery and a great manor house by Virginians. The back-and-forth, waged through the press of each country, reached comically great heights.
In the summer of 1925, England was up in arms about the impending destruction of Warwick Priory, a group of formerly monastic buildings in the north. A meeting of the House of Commons on the subject exploded, but no political salvation could be found. The city of Warwick came up with ingenious solutions, all of which failed. It offered the buildings free of charge to the bishop of Coventry, but he refused to live so far from his flock. Undeterred, the city tried to turn the old monastery into public housing, but plans quickly fell through.
Then, on September 25, the papers reported the shocking news that Warwick Priory had been sold—to an unnamed American. The building, once visited by Queen Elizabeth I herself, would be transported to the U.S.
Virginia House, from the dismantled Warwick Priory, Warwickshire, England, c. 1929. (Photo: Library of Congress)
At first, news was scarce. Details only emerged a week later, when the AP cleared up “mysterious reports” by identifying the purchasers as Alexander and Virginia Weddell of Richmond, Virginia. They had bought the buildings to recreate another Warwickshire monument: Sulgrave Manor, English home of George Washington’s ancestors. Facing a barrage of criticism that they were stealing a vital piece of English history, the new owners went on the attack, giving interviews far and wide to make the case that they were the best caretakers for the property.
The Weddells developed two now-familiar rhetorical strategies. They immediately pointed out that they were doing Europe a favor by rescuing and restoring neglected treasures. Everything inside the buildings, even the stairs, had already been stripped and re-installed in an English factory. Adding insult to injury, the sale had been publicly announced and no one else had bothered to cough up the money. Alexander Weddell claimed he had never schemed to get his hands on an English home, he just happened upon the announcement when reading the newspaper his sandwich had been wrapped in.
Second, the Weddells explained, with the help of the American media, how Warwick Priory would fit in as well in Virginia as in Warwickshire. Papers on both sides of the Atlantic fixated on the fate of the priory for more than a year, from the first shipment of material from England to the U.S. on November 28, 1926, to breathless reports that the Weddells’ new home was nearing completion on May 8, 1927.
Each report brought with it new details, many of which strained credulity. The New York Times wrote that Virginia Weddell herself was a descendant of George Washington’s family in an article titled “American Buys Warwick Priory As Shrine Here to Washington.” Another paper speculated that Warwick Priory would yield 6,000 to 10,000 tons of brick and stone for the replica from the exact same quarry that had supplied material for Washington’s ancestral home. The Boston Globe’s long profile detailed the centuries of close friendship enjoyed by the Washingtons and the owners of Warwick Priory before the colonists came to America.
The interior of Virginia House, 1929. (Photo: Library of Congress)
Virginia Weddell herself waded into the fantasy of Warwick Priory as not just an English building, but a proto-American one. She reminisced about how the ships sailing with the building materials followed the same trail that the colonists had taken when they came to Virginia, where they built English-style houses of their own. “True, those brave pioneers started from Blackwell, near London; but their little ships, the Sarah Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery, passed Old Point Comfort, as will my ship; and the Priory is to be unloaded at a point not far removed from the landing place of Captain John Smith.”
While all of this glorification of a new, medieval monument to George Washington was going on, a new scandal was brewing in Britain. On January 25, 1926, the chairman of the Manchester Art Gallery Committee told a meeting of the Ancient Monuments Society that he had received a letter from an American correspondent. The letter asked if it was true that the great manor Agecroft Hall had been purchased and would be dismantled and shipped to America.
It was Warwick Priory all over again. The society’s secretary, John Swarbrick, immediately went to see the purported seller of the house, who confirmed that the rumors were true: A Mr. T.C. Jackson Jr., of Elizabeth, New Jersey, had purchased the hall and it would be moved to New Jersey imminently. Swarbrick warned in an interview that there was a craze for medieval buildings in the U.S., that the same people involved in Warwick Priory were responsible for the sale of Agecroft Hall, and that more purchases of the kind were underway.
Agecroft Hall, in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo: Fopseh/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Swarbrick was wrong about almost everything, though it was true that the architect Henry G. Moore participated in both purchases. Moore had found the building for Richmond businessman T. C. Williams, Jr., who wanted it for his Virginia—not New Jersey—estate. Williams was enthusiastic not so much about the (non-existent) colonial connections, but about the opportunity to recreate a pre-industrial haven along the lines of the medieval English village. There would be no skyscrapers, no intensity of urban industrial life, nothing but idyllic communities and authentically “Old English” country homes—the aesthetic apparently being a critical component of both the lifestyle and the values it implied.
Two great houses pillaged by Americans in less than six months was too many for the English. In 1926, the Manchester Guardian ran several dozen editorials and letters to the editor decrying the sale and removal of Agecroft Hall. One editorial called for stronger laws to protect British landmarks, calling it “a national loss”: “Warwick Priory is gone. Agecroft Hall is going. No building of decent age and character is safe from the danger of kidnapping.” Another editorial labeled the sale “a raid.” The sale of Agecroft Hall and Warwick Priory even prompted the House of Lords to debate a law forbidding the export of English cultural heritage (opponents weren’t comfortable telling people what they could do with their private property), though the Ancient Monument Protection Act was not strengthened until 1931.
The Elizabethan knot garden at Agecroft Hall. (Photo: Fopseh/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
In spite of all this rancor, the kinds of arguments that the Weddells and Williams made seem to have struck a chord. Agecroft Hall, like Warwick Priory, had been in sad shape when it was purchased by an American. The Industrial Revolution left the hall uninhabitable. Coal pits surrounded the house; a freight railway skirted the buildings. One British writer turned his criticism of the sale inward, calling filthy, despoiled Agecroft Hall “too reproachful a jewel to leave in that ruined landscape.”
Medieval Buildings Home to Roost
Americans did, for the most part, make good on their promises to preserve these sites. By the 21st century, almost all of the medieval buildings brought to America had ended up in museums—some in well-endowed East Coast institutions with entire wings dedicated to medieval art and devoted to “transporting guests back in time to the Middle Ages,” others in small Midwestern galleries, with a handful of medieval pieces thanks to a local bigwig’s fleeting interest in the period. A few, like the Hearst buildings in California and Miami, are slightly more accessible, but are still framed by exhibitions and have a museum-y look-but-don’t-touch air about them for most visitors. The uniformity of the sites today stands in stark contrast to the variety of uses envisioned by those who brought medieval buildings to the U.S., or the experiences of the buildings throughout the 20th century: They were or might have been tourist traps, chapels, swimming pools, museums, private residences, or piles of rubble in warehouses and in parks.
By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many different communities had become deeply invested in the medieval buildings that by then littered the American landscape. The effect of the historical bricolage sometimes borders on the surreal. Agecroft Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 because it reflected the “social and aesthetic ideals of upper-class Virginians in the 1920s,” not so much because of its medieval heritage. The final nomination form noted that it was “unaltered” and in its “original site;” its period “1900-” and significance fell under the “agriculture” and “community planning” categories.
Photograph of the central yard surrounded by the cloisters of the St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church, Miami. (Photo: Rolf Müller/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
There were occasional calls for repatriation of the sites mentioned here to Europe, but the medieval European buildings eventually became too entangled in America to be so easily returned. In 1940, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco demanded the return of the monasteries that Hearst, in his words, stole, but nothing was done. More recent and sustained calls for repatriation of The Cloisters buildings to France faced criticism from no less than the eminent social theorist Jean Baudrillard, who used the medieval buildings in America as a case in his Simulacra and Simulation. Baudrillard thought that by this point “demuseumification [was] nothing but another spiral in artificiality”; The Cloisters were already artificial, returning Sant-Miquel-de-Cuixà to its original site would be even more so “a total simulacrum.” Leaving the cloister in New York “in its simulated environment … fooled no one,” while moving it was a “supplementary subterfuge,” a “retrospective hallucination.”
The retroactive reality Baudrillard described did not come to pass. The buildings continue to have vibrant and multiple lives within American communities today. At two sites that we visited, Ancient Spanish Monastery in Miami, and the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, California, extensive preservation efforts were matched with a variety of contemporary roles. In these transposed places, community members meet, families pray, and people hold weddings, funerals, and, of course, yoga classes.
In the 1970s, the stones of Santa Maria de Óvila, at long last, caught a break. A Cistercian monk named Thomas X. Davis heard about the remains of the monastery and became interested in bringing them to his abbey, about three hours north of San Francisco in the small town of Vina, California. His timing overlapped fortuitously with the research of Dr. Margaret Burke, an art historian who received funding from the Hearst Foundation to study the stones. Burke began categorizing the stones, determining what part of the monastery they would have originally belonged to, and, in 1984, offered the city a comprehensive report of each stone, its condition, and whether it could be preserved. Meanwhile, the monks continued requesting that the city take their proposal seriously. After extensive discussions between the monks, the De Young Museum, and the city, the museum’s trustees agreed to relinquish control of the stones in 1992. Two years later, the stones began their journey to Vina—but even this short trip had its hurdles. Father Davis reported that on several occasions, individuals who opposed the stones leaving San Francisco pushed the stones off their pallets during the night, leaving workers to reload the trucks in the morning.
View from within the 800-year-old chapter house brought from Santa Maria de Óvila, now at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina CA. (Photo: Frank Schulenburg/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Though the monks took the majority of the stones to Vina, some remnants stayed behind in Golden Gate Park. Debates about what constituted an “appropriate use” for the leftover stones continued into the 21st century. A 2001 investigation into the stones in SF Weekly noted that though most of the materials had gone to Vina, there had been an “odd truce” negotiated among the park, the De Young museum, and the monastery regarding the remaining abbey stones. For nearly 50 years, the gardeners of Golden Gate Park had access to their own private quarry of ancient limestone, which they could use whenever the park needed new retaining walls or landscape decoration. For instance, some of the stones became part of a decorative rock wall at the Strybing Arboretum library. “We think the wall that we constructed outside the library is the most sensitive use yet,” said Scott Medbury, a park employee. What one art historian labeled “the worst act of desecration of a medieval monument during the last half-century,” the city lauded as a practical and thoughtful use for the materials that had sat abandoned for the majority of the 20th century.
So what to make of the current state of these medieval buildings-as-museums? Certainly, good preservation practices will ensure a long life for the aged stones. But there is also a sense in which the medieval buildings have been deadened by their modern lives as display pieces. Old material given life through new use, called spolia, is, after all, very medieval. The altar at Sant-Miquel-de-Cuixà, the very heart of the religious life of the monastery, was itself made of part of a Roman column. Reuse did not erase the old meaning, it augmented the new one, though of course that column did not mean the same thing to a medieval person as to a Roman, nor is a modern library wall the same thing as a medieval one. Even now, many San Franciscans share memories of crawling over the medieval stones in their park as children, of the blocks as meeting places and landmarks. On the other hand, maybe the distinction between the museumified version of these places and their “freer” state is not so different, since New Yorkers are equally eager to describe their memories of childhood trips to The Cloisters.
But even in Vina, at a monastery that exudes austerity and age, traces of 2015 slip through. The monks, concerned about the challenges of recruiting young men to the brotherhood, have taken to Instagram (@monksofvina), where they update their followers on paintings in progress, their 3:30 a.m. prayer meetings, and the status of the harvest. Common hashtags include #monks, #cistercian, #monastic, and #monkslife. In Miami, too, the medieval buildings live modern lives. The site’s cloistered halls have become the backdrop for such pop culture gems as the spectacular flop of a 2011 Charlie’s Angels TV reboot, a scene in the 2012 film Rock of Ages in which Catherine Zeta Jones sings “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” and Rick Ross’s music video for “Ten Jesus Pieces.”
But for every Victoria’s Secret catalog photo shoot, the Miami monastery also sees a steady flow of more ordinary life events—the monastery receives 50,000 visitors a year, and hosts 200 weddings annually. People are free to wander throughout the monastery when it isn’t being used for pilates or baptisms. The medieval history of the site isn’t absent from these events, though; it’s often omnipresent: one woman at the monastery enthusiastically told us that she had had three of her children baptized at the monastery because she was so impressed with the site’s history and the effort to move it from Spain to America. In typical Miami fashion, the conspicuous and the commonplace often careen wildly into one another—the priest of the monastery’s Episcopalian congregation mentioned that in the first wedding he officiated at the monastery he noticed a familiar-looking bridesmaid—Britney Spears. It’s hard to imagine a more American fate for these medieval stones.
Medieval America received funding from History in Action, an American Historical Association/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation initiative at Columbia University. |
After talking about how unlikely it is that the Astros would sign Jose Abreu on the latest podcast we get this tweet from Buster Olney:
Bidding on Cuba defector Jose Abreu is expected to be for a $70 million deal, sources say. White Sox,Astros, Rangers viewed as frontrunners. — Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 16, 2013
Interesting.
Now I will say that we did leave open the small possibility that the Astros would go after Jose Abreu, but we leaned towards the Astros being more efficient with their money this offseason. $70 million is a lot of money and probably takes up a good chunk of Jeff Luhnow's spending money this offseason so I question how serious the Astros really are.
As noted in the MLB Trade Rumors article, Yoenis Cespedes signed for four years at $36MM and Yasiel Puig signed for seven years at $42MM. $70MM is a huge jump from that, but the six years and a $54MM in the article seems like a more reasonable number. While Abreu may have a better bat than Cespedes and Puig he lakes the positional versatility that those other two have so I really have a hard time seeing the Astros spend $70MM on a first basemen unless the scouting department and the analytical department says he can be a Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera or Joey Votto type of hitter. That's a really high bar and a big risk for anyone willing to spend that much money. Even if the deal is 10 years for $70MM I have a hard time seeing the Astros committing to that kind of deal. They do after all have Jon Singleton at AAA.
Either way I think this shows the Astros are serious about spending money this offseason, which is simply awesome. |
According to the highest-rated definition on Urban Dictionary, "Spursy" means: "To consistently and inevitably fail to live up to expectations. To bottle it."
As has happened on so many occasions, that happened again last season when Mauricio Pochettino's side crumbled under the pressure of their unexpected title push and fell behind their old rivals Arsenal at the last in what felt like an inevitable collapse. Pochettino admitted he wanted to "kill" his players.
But something very special is happening at White Hart Lane: Spurs aren't very Spursy at all. Actually, on current form, they are the best team in the league. Could Pochettino be on the cusp of an era of success? There are remarkable similarities with a previous Premier League great...
Spurs could be the new (old) Man Utd
Pochettino has assembled a balanced squad of players, instilled a winning group mentality and sprinkled a little star dust over it. It's a team Sir Alex Ferguson would be proud of and you only need to look at the individual components to see how Pochettino has followed a blueprint for success.
Spurs have, as Man Utd had: |
We first learned about the Dell Inspiron Duo a few weeks ago and were rather intrigued by the convertible ultra-portable device. It has the distinction of being half netbook and half tablet, making it a compelling choice for those not yet ready to go all touch.
The device is made possible by a unique mechanism that flips the screen, transforming the device from a netbook into a tablet. The 10-inch touchscreen makes it one of the bigger tablets on the market, while its dual-core 1.5GHz Intel Atom processor is a first among tablets, although netbooks have had them for some time.
In addition to what we already knew, today we learned that the device includes a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive. It's a bit strange that Dell has opted for a physical drive over a solid state one, but we can be thankful that it's 7200RPM instead of 5400RPM.
The Dell Inspiron Duo is available now directly from Dell for $550. If you pick one up, please let us know your thoughts on the device. |
Electing Democrat Hillary Clinton president will lead to a “very harsh climate” for the press in which the First Amendment “will be very significantly eroded,” contends WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange.
“What kind of press climate is going to exist afterwards, especially if Hillary Clinton is elected?” he asked in a radio interview with Sean Hannity.
“It will be perceived to be a validation of that hysteria, and so the press afterwards will be cracked down upon and online publishers and people on social media, you know, it will lead to a very harsh climate where the First Amendment will be very significantly eroded,” Assange said.
Hear the interview:
Assange made news days ago when he was erroneously reported to have called Clinton a “demon” in an interview with the New York Times.
He immediately set the record straight, blasting both the Times and Clinton.
On Twitter, he posted, “What we were drawing attention [to] is the amazing transformation that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are by becoming the national security party and the national security candidate by whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia.
It’s crazy Uncle Joe in his own words! New book has dozens of QR codes for an evening of laugh-out-loud gaffes — don’t miss “Biden Time”
“Any serious analyst understands that China and the U.S. are the only real games in town. China has ten times the population of Russia, seven times the GDP. Russia has the GDP of Italy. It’s interesting in that it makes provocative statements and so on. It’s interesting, and of course in its own neck of the woods – countries between Russia and China, the Caucasus and so on—of course Russia is very significant for them, but in the world stage Russia is a bit player.
“That attempted re-framing by Hillary Clinton to declare media organizations that are publishing material that shows illicit behavior in the DNC to fix the election for her as somehow us being Russian agents, similar criticism has emerged from people connected to her campaign against the Intercept, where Glenn Greenwald works,” he said.
“Her campaign has effectively, and maybe even directly, called Donald Trump, the opposition leader in this case, a Russian agent. … Jill Stein, the Greens Party candidate, effectively the 4th candidate in terms of numbers – has also been called a Russian agent,” he continued.
“This is a neo-McCarthyist hysteria. What kind of press environment is this going to lead to, post-election? The American liberal press, in falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, are erecting a demon that’s going [to] put nooses around everyone’s necks when she wins the election which she is almost certainly going to do.”
What do YOU think? What do you think Assange has on Hillary? Sound off in today’s WND poll.
On Hannity’s radio show, he continued the conversation, charging Clinton and her campaign are “trying to whip up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”
He explained: “The Democrats are always speaking about how terrible McCarthyism was, and it was in many ways. But at least the USSR actually existed then and there were actually Russian-influence campaigns which were serious. What we’re seeing now is Hillary Clinton and her campaign trying to whip up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria.”
He said she charges that anyone critical of her or who opposes her is in league with Russia.
“She claims Donald Trump is effectively an agent of the Russians. That WikiLeaks is an agent of the Russians. And where her campaign has also implied that Jill Stein, the Greens’ leader, is a Russian agent. And the Intercept, which is an American publication, are effectively Russian agents.”
He said the campaign’s objective is to chill free speech to protect her if she wins in November.
WND reported WikiLeaks already has had a significant role in the presidential election.
It has released Democratic Party emails resulting in the resignation of top party officials and documents related to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, and promises an “October surprise” of information that could damage Clinton’s White House bid.
Earlier, he ridiculed the claims that DNC documents leaked were provided by Russian agents.
There was “no evidence” of that, he said.
It’s crazy Uncle Joe in his own words! New book has dozens of QR codes for an evening of laugh-out-loud gaffes — don’t miss “Biden Time” |
Image copyright Thinkstock
A man in Edmonton was allowed to board a flight after a pipe bomb found in his bag was confiscated by airport security, it appears.
A security guard at Edmonton International Airport even tried to hand the bomb back to the passenger, CBC News reports.
The passenger in question, 18-year-old Skylar Vincent Murphy, was on his way to Mexico when the explosive device was found by airport security in his bag. A guard was reportedly caught on camera passing the bomb back to Murphy after inspecting his carry-on luggage. Apparently the teenager refused to take it back even when told he could keep it.
The bomb was said to be 15cm long and filled with gunpowder. The teenager claimed to have forgotten it was in the bag after making it with a friend for fun some months before.
He subsequently pleaded guilty and was fined 100 Canadian dollars.
According to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, several officers involved have been suspended. Canada's Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt told CBC News it was "unacceptable" that someone found in possession of a bomb was allowed to continue with his journey.
Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter. |
The thing that always bothered me about “Day In The Life” sections is that they always seemed so planned and scripted. Like the camera guy comes in and “wakes the skater up”, they visit a couple cool spots, “accidentally” bump into all their homies, crack a beer and fade to black. So naturally (stupidly) for this segment, we did the total opposite and came in with absolutely no preparation or really any idea of what we should be shooting. I figured we’d spend a couple of hours and hang out – whatever Alex is doing that day, we would do it with him, whether that’s grabbing a coffee, listening to music or holding his groceries. Here’s just a small glimpse of time we spent over at his place in Brooklyn. |
One thing I am certain about in Washington, D.C., these days. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and its director James Comey, and the intelligence agencies, are no longer to be believed, as if they ever were.
The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by an establishment Republican, and as might regrettably be expected the self-serving and two faced establishment Republican Senator John McCain, along with Democrats bent on bringing down the Trump presidency, have demanded that the commander in chief cough up evidence by today that he and others on his staffs, both before and after the inauguration, were wiretapped by the Obama administration.
This ultimatum, coming from a congressional committee, senators and representatives which have known for a long time of the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but covered it up, is despicable.
The bottom line is that the truth concerning these wiretaps will never be forthcoming from either the FBI, Comey, or the heads of congressional intelligence committees or the intelligence committees themselves. It will take someone in the Trump administration taking charge and “delving in with a no holds barred vengeance” with a loyal staff, perhaps Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions should not and cannot recuse himself from this endeavor. Heads will need to roll!
We at Freedom Watch will also play a role through our lawsuits against the NSA, CIA, and DIA to get to the truth and seek justice, but it's high time that an uncorrupted forceful government investigation take place. Our current government outside of the White House, infested with Obama and Clinton loyalists and establishment Republicans who want to see President Trump irreparably damaged so they can run their presidential candidate against him in 2020, cannot be trusted.
They have broken away from representing the American people and now are simply in practice a “secret government” that has effectively taken over the nation for their own nefarious ends. And these ends are potentially fatal to the republic.
Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more of his reports, Go Here Now. |
FBI Continues To Foil Its Own Devised Terrorist Plots
from the sarcastic-golf-clap dept
Adel Daoud, 18, was arrested following a months-long FBI undercover investigation. He was taken into custody after he parked a Jeep Cherokee in front of the bar Friday night and walked into a nearby alley where he tried to detonate the device, court documents allege.
The bomb, which was inert and had been constructed by FBI technicians, didn't explode, according to federal authorities.
It seems there's a new pattern showing itself every time I read a news report in which the FBI proudly announces it foiled a terrorist plot. That pattern goes something like this: hear that a huge explosion was averted and lives were saved, find out the plotter was an American citizen, find out he was under investigation by the FBI for several years, and then finally find out that it was the FBI that egged on the suspect and built his "bomb" for him. In other words, the only way these things could become less impressive is if the FBI actually decided to quit finding these loner folks to urge into violence and just built their own physical straw man to parade in front of the cameras.This whole game of pretend law enforcement showed up at my doorstep this weekend, when the FBI announced yet another arrest of a potential terrorist , this time an 18 year old suburbanite whom the FBI (you guessed it) encouraged to try to bomb a downtown bar in Chicago.Oddly, the article notes that Daoud allegedly gave the FBI more than two dozen high profile Chicago targets to 'splode, but decided eventually on this unnamed bar instead, perhaps because they had, like, totally taken his fake ID that one time. Actually, I just made that up because I can't think of a single reason why a supposed terrorist would settle on a drinkery as their target.Now, it is true that Daoud professed his wish to participate in jihad. It is true that he attempted to set off this pseudo bomb. He does indeed sound like a disturbed kid that needs to be dealt with in some fashion. But would he have participated in any of this without the urging of the FBI?Perhaps more importantly, is foiling their own plots the best use of law enforcement in Chicago, a city that appears to be engaged in a concerted effort to have the most murders ever in a calendar year?
Filed Under: chicago, entrapment, fbi, terrorism, terrorist plots |
Former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband strongly urged Israel Sunday to lift its sea blockade of Gaza. Miliband, who is the current favorite to head Britain's recently defeated Labor Party, was interviewed on British television.
Israel's three-year blockade of Gaza is counterproductive to all parties concerned. That is the view of leading British politician David Miliband. "Resolution 1860, the U.N. resolution that brought the Gaza war to an end which I actually co-authored 18 months ago in New York, says very clearly that the arms trafficking into Gaza has to stop but the blockade has to stop and that is absolutely basic," he said.
Interviewed by the BBC, the former Foreign Secretary said the blockade has in effect marginalized Gaza. And he added, it has represented a stain on policy right across the Middle East for a very long time. "It has been a disaster for the people involved, obviously those many killed and injured, it has also been a disaster for Israel. I think there have been a series of deadly and self-defeating actions by successive Israeli governments in respect of Gaza. There cannot be a Palestinian state and therefore cannot be peace for Israel and rest of Middle East with Gaza isolated with people unable to get in basic commodities, unable to rebuild their lives," he said.
Miliband also expressed his frustration that the long stalled peace process has not moved forward. He wants to see more energy put back into the process. "What is corroding any confidence at all among Palestinians and Israelis that they are going to be able to find a way to live together is the absence of a serious political process to negotiate the terms of a Palestinian state. There are these so called proximity talks, that means they are not even sitting in the same room - the Palestinians and the Israelis, and unless that is jump started, if not by the parties then by outside parties, the Americans, the U.N. with E.U. support, then I am afraid this is not going to get resolved," he said.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States said on American television that his country will reject an international proposal to investigate the deadly raid on the Gaza flotilla that left nine dead on a Turkish ship. |
TV star Kapil Sharma, who has been going through a rough phase in his professional life, will not be seen on TV for some time as his hit show - The Kapil Sharma Show - has been pulled down. A day after a channel spokesperson confirmed news of the show going off air, the comedian-actor has given the reason behind the decision - he is unwell.
“Yes, I am just going to rest for some days. It is just a drop of a few episodes because I cannot ignore my health at this stage when my movie is also going to release and the coming schedule is going to be more hectic. I will come back with full force. I am thankful to the channel that they allowed me and did not put any pressure,” Kapil told Pinkvilla.
Kapil Sharma, Kiku Sharda and Chandan Prabhakar during a press conference in Amritsar on Saturday, March 05, 2016. ( Photo by Sameer Sehgal/ Hindustan Times )
“Kapil is suffering from blood pressure issues and stress, which is affecting his work. The decision to take a break from shooting fresh episodes was taken mutually between Kapil and the channel,” a source close to the show had told Hindustan Times.
“Kapil has been under the weather for sometime now. Due to this, we have mutually agreed to take a short break. However, once Kapil has recovered completely, we will start shooting again. We value our relationship with Kapil and wish him a speedy recovery,” an official spokesperson from the channel said.
Sony plans to re-run old episodes of the The Kapil Sharma Show for the time being, with a change in the timing.
“From the coming weekend, our other comedy show, The Drama Company (starring Krushna Abhishek, one of the main rivals of Kapil Sharma) will be on air at 9pm, and The Kapil Sharma Show’s re-run episodes will be aired at 8pm,” the source from the channel added.
The TRPs of Kapil’s show have been in a free fall since his mid-air fight with Sunil Grover. Sunil left the show as did Ali Asgar and Chandan Prabhakar. Kapil’s troubles only increased when he had to cancel a shoot with Shah Rukh Khan after he fainted on the sets. In fact, since July, Kapil cancelled shoots seven times with A-list Bollywood celebs for a variety of reason. The recent team to return without shooting their episode was Baadshaho team led by Ajay Devgn.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
First Published: Sep 01, 2017 09:35 IST |
Pattern for the Valentine Headband
THIS IS A FREE PATTERN
Materials Needed:
Caron Simply Soft Yarn
Harvest Red
Off White
Yarn Needle
I/9 Hook 5.50 MM
Stitches:
ch: Chain
sc: Single Crochet
sc2tog: Single Crochet 2 Together for Decrease
hdc: Half Double Crochet
slst: Slip Stitches
st: Stitches
Guage: 2 Inches = 8 hdc & 6 Rows
Skill Level: Easy
Making the Headband: Using Harvest Red
Baby (17 inch Head Circumference)
ch 52
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (52)
Rnd 2-8: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 8
Child (1-3 years) (19 inch Head Circumference)
ch 59
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (59)
Rnd 2-9: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 9
Child (3-10 years) (21 inch Head Circumference)
ch 66
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (66)
Rnd 2-10: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 10
Adult (Small) (22 inch Head Circumference)
ch 70
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (70)
Rnd 2-10: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 10
Adult (Medium) (23 inch Head Circumference)
ch 74
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (74)
Rnd 2-10: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 10
Adult (Large) (24 inch Head Circumference)
ch 78
Join with slst in 1st ch (careful not to twist ch)
Rnd 1: ch 1, hdc in same st, hdc around. Slst in 1st hdc (78)
Rnd 2-10: Repeat Rnd 1 Fasten off at the end of Rnd 10
Weave in tails.
Note** You will see a line where you joined each row. That is ok. You will cover it with hearts.
Large Heart:
Using Off White
ch 2
Row 1: Make 2 sc in 2nd ch from hook, ch 1, turn (2)
Row 2: 2 sc in each st, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 3: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 2 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (6)
Row 4: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 4 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (8)
Row 5: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 6 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (10)
Row 6: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 8 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (12)
Row 7: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 10 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (14)
Row 8: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 12 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (16)
First hump of the heart:
Row 9: sc in next 8 st, ch 1, turn (8)
Row 10: sc2tog, sc in next 4 st, sc2tog, ch 1, turn (6)
Row 11: sc2tog, sc in next 2 st, sc2tog, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 12: sc2tog, sc2tog, ch 1, Fasten off. (2)
Second hump of the heart:
Attach to 9th st of Row 8
Repeat Row 9-12.
Sc all the way around the piece, Fasten off.
Weave in tail.
Medium Heart:
Using Harvest Red
ch 2
Row 1: Make 2 sc in 2nd ch from hook, ch 1, turn (2)
Row 2: 2 sc in each st, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 3: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 2 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (6)
Row 4: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 4 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (8)
Row 5: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 6 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (10)
Row 6: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 8 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (12)
First hump of the heart:
Row 7: sc in next 6 st, ch 1, turn (6)
Row 8: sc2tog, sc in next 2 st, sc2tog, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 9: sc2tog, sc2tog, ch 1, turn (2)
Second hump of the heart:
Attach to 7th st of Row 6
Repeat Row 7-9.
Sc all the way around the piece, Fasten off.
Weave in tail.
Small Heart:
Using Off White
ch 2
Row 1: Make 2 sc in 2nd ch from hook, ch 1, turn (2)
Row 2: 2 sc in each st, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 3: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 2 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (6)
Row 4: 2 sc in 1st st, sc in next 4 st, 2 sc in last st, ch 1, turn (8)
First hump of the heart:
Row 5: sc in next 4 st, ch 1, turn (4)
Row 6: sc2tog, sc2tog, ch 1, turn (2)
Second hump of the heart:
Attach to 5th st of Row 4
Repeat Row 5-6.
Sc all the way around the piece, Fasten off.
Weave in tail.
Attachment
Lay the medium heart over the large heart and the small heart over the medium heart. Place the 3 stacked hearts over the slanted line on the headband. Sew only around the small heart to secure the hearts to the headband. Weave in or hide the tails in the headband.
If you want to download this pattern, you can get it from Etsy for just $1.00! |
President Trump on Friday said Republicans should just repeal ObamaCare and replace it later if they are unable to agree on healthcare legislation.
In doing so, he appeared to offer support for an idea that conservative lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.), have floated in recent days.
If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
The call for action comes days after GOP Senate leadership postponed a procedural vote on their healthcare overhaul in the face of sinking support.
The conservatives say their repeal now and replace later plan is a way to make sure the GOP keeps its promise to repeal the law before worrying about the harder task of replacement. It's likely a nonstarter with moderate Republicans, however, who fear it would leave too many without coverage.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Friday sent a letter to the president calling for the same strategy of passing repeal first and replacement later, if Republicans cannot reach a deal by July 10.
Paul has also proposed the idea of passing repeal first and then separately working on replacement, and praised Trump's suggestion.
I have spoken to @realDonaldTrump & Senate leadership about this and agree. Let's keep our word to repeal then work on replacing right away. — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 30, 2017
Paul and Sasse are frustrated that Senate Republicans are struggling to move forward with healthcare reform legislation at the moment.
But more moderate senators already rejected this strategy early this year, saying that the public needs to know what the replacement is at the same time repeal passes.
Updated at 9:32 a.m. Tristan Lejeune contributed. |
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GUANTANAMO, Cuba, Nov 16 (acn) The participants to the 1st National Scientific Event Reflecting on the Ideals of the Cuban leader said on Thursday in Guantanamo that the best tribute to Fidel Castro's life is to study his thinking and follow his teachings.
The scientific program began on Thursday with a conference by Dr. Rafael Cervantes Martinez, Director of the Department of Marxism and History of the Ministry of Higher Education (MES) who spoke on the influence of the Marxist-Leninist ideology in the actions of the leader of the Revolution.
Cervantes Martinez said at the 1st National Scientific Event on the thinking of Fidel Castro in Contemporary Times, that one must lead a country with intelligence to face a power like the United States for so long.
He added that Fidel Castro enriched Marxism-Leninism, developing and assuming the history that ended under the premise in continuing a doctrine without betraying his principles.
Cervantes Martinez pointed out that the leader of the Revolution constitutes a permanent summary of the best of culture and universal science, as a gifted being with a profound dialectic character in the understanding of society and capable of forming an ideological and political unity of the Cuban nation.
A special panel on the importance of the revolutionary and political thinking of Fidel Castro was carried out during the first day of sessions with the participation of PhD's Eugenio Suarez Perez, Elvis Rodriguez Rodriguez and Jose Antonio Rodriguez Ben.
During the event, the panelists highlighted the confluence between Fidel and Raul Castro and their affinity in the need to guarantee unity in the construction of a political model chosen by the Cuban people.
Thursday's program included symposiums with issues like the fundamental thinking in the ideology of the Cuban Revolution in addition to the influence of National Hero Jose Marti, Heroic Guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara and the Marxism-Leninism in the actions of Fidel Castro.
Sponsored by the 1st National Scientific Event, among other institutions, MES, the Jose Marti Cultural Society, the Cuban Pedagogical Association and the Honorific School for the Study of the Thinking and Work of Fidel Castro and the Afro-Caribbean Studies of the University of Guantanamo. |
Everyone agrees that Gary Johnson, who is pretending to be an actual candidate for the presidency under the banner of the Libertarian Party, humiliated himself this morning by not knowing what “Aleppo” was. The New York Times immediately read his embarrassing gaffe into the record. It wrote:
“What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the Syrian city that is the de facto capital of the Islamic State.
The Syrian city of Aleppo is not the de facto capital of the Islamic State. When the New York Times was apprised of this, it quickly rewrote the piece:
“What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the Syrian city that is a stronghold of the Islamic State.
Aleppo is also not a stronghold of the Islamic State. Here is a concise account of the state of the politics of the fighting in Aleppo:
In Aleppo, the forces fighting the government range from groups with American backing to factions that until recently were officially affiliated with Al Qaeda. The Islamic State is not a player in the city.
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That is from a story on the Times’ website today, written by Anne Barnard, who has been steadily covering the horrors of Aleppo for the newspaper. It is about a chlorine gas attack against civilians in the city yesterday, probably perpetrated by the government. The chemical weapons sickened some 120 people and killed two, including a 13-year-old girl.
If you follow Barnard’s Twitter account, you wake up every morning to a fresh roundup of war crimes and other atrocities being perpetrated across Syria, in unending violence that has made a mockery of every pretense of international order or human rights doctrine. What is happening in Syria is a stain on civilization.
And, clearly, it’s too much for the New York Times campaign desk to keep up with. The Times writes about a dire and ongoing failure of foreign policy, and the people who are covering presidential politics for the Times don’t read it. Mistaking Aleppo for the Islamic State capital is a particularly glib and reductive error to make, suggesting an inability to conceive of the multi-sided debacle in Syria as anything beyond terrorist villainy.
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Finally, on the third try, somebody straightened it out:
“What is Aleppo?” Mr. Johnson said when asked on MSNBC how, as president, he would address the refugee crisis in the war-torn Syrian city.
What a dummy, that Gary Johnson! How can you consider yourself seriously involved in politics if you don’t even know what Aleppo is?
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Here’s a Google Trends graph for “Aleppo” in the past week:
That line stayed flat through yesterday’s chlorine gas attack. The only thing that got people to care about Aleppo was the chance to make fun of someone for accidentally admitting that he didn’t care about Aleppo. |
Overview
In this tutorial, learn to use the Debian package management tools to manage the packages on your Linux system. Learn to:
Install, reinstall, upgrade, and remove Debian binary packages
Find packages containing specific files or libraries, even if the package is not installed
Obtain package information like version, content, dependencies, package integrity, and installation status, even if the package is not installed
This tutorial helps you prepare for Objective 102.4 in Topic 102 of the Linux Professional Institute’s Linux Server Professional (LPIC-1) exam 101. The objective has a weight of 3.
Introducing package management
In the past, many Linux programs were distributed as source code, which a user would build into the required program or set of programs, along with the required man pages, configuration files, and so on. Nowadays, most Linux distributors use prebuilt programs or sets of programs called packages, which ship ready for installation on that distribution. In this tutorial, you learn about package management tools that help you install, update, and remove packages. This tutorial focuses on Advanced Package Tool (Apt), the package management system used by Debian and distributions derived from Debian, such as Ubuntu. Another tutorial in this series, “Learn Linux 101: RPM and YUM package management,” covers the Red Hat package management tools.
About this series This series of tutorials helps you learn Linux system administration tasks. You can also use the material in these tutorials to prepare for the Linux Professional Institute’s LPIC-1: Linux Server Professional Certification exams. See ” Learn Linux, 101: A roadmap for LPIC-1” for a description of and link to each tutorial in this series. The roadmap is in progress and reflects the version 4.0 objectives of the LPIC-1 exams as updated April 15th, 2015. As tutorials are completed, they will be added to the roadmap.
From a user perspective, the basic package management function is provided by commands. As Linux developers have striven to make Linux easier to use, the basic tools have been supplemented by other tools, including GUI tools, which hide some of the complexities of the basic tools from the user. In this tutorial and in “RPM and YUM package management,” I focus on the basic tools, although I mention some of the other tools so you can pursue them further.
Prerequisites
To get the most from the tutorials in this series, you need a basic knowledge of Linux and a working Linux system on which you can practice the commands that are covered in this tutorial. Sometimes different versions of a program format output differently, so your results might not always look exactly like the listings and figures shown here. In particular, much of the output I show is highly dependent on the packages that are already installed on my system. Your own output might be different, although you should be able to recognize the important commonalities. The examples in this tutorial come from a 32-bit Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system.
Installing Debian packages
When you install a Linux system, you typically install a large selection of packages. You can customize the set to the intended use of the system, such as a server, desktop, or developer workstation. And at some time, you will probably need to install new packages for added functionality, update the packages that you have, or even remove packages that you no longer need or that have been made obsolete by newer packages. Let’s look at how you do these tasks, and at some of the related challenges such as finding which package might contain a particular command.
Suppose you want to compile a Fortran program and a colleague tells you to use gfortran command. You might try gfortran –help gfortran --help , or you might try which gfortran whichgfortran or type gfortran typegfortran . But if your system can’t find gfortran , you might see output similar to that shown in Listing 1.
Listing 1. Missing gfortran command ian@attic‑u14:~$ gfortran ‑‑help bash: gfortran: command not found ian@attic‑u14:~$ gfortran ‑‑help The program 'gfortran' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt‑get install gfortran ian@attic‑u14:~$ which gfortran ian@attic‑u14:~$ type gfortran bash: type: gfortran: not found Show more Show more icon
If you did not get the helpful suggestion from the second form of output in Listing 1, you can check back with your colleague to find out which package to install. Otherwise, you can just guess that the gfortran command is in the gfortran package. This is often a good guess, but not always the right one. You’ll see later how to find the right package. In this case, you use the gfortran package, and you install it using the apt-get command with the install option as shown in Listing 2. Note that apt-get determines which extra packages you need to satisfy dependencies and then gives you a list of all the packages that will be installed. At that point, you are prompted to continue. In our example, we respond y to install gfortran and the additional required package, gfortran-4.8, libgfortran-4.8-dev, and libgfortran3.
Listing 2. Installing gfortran using apt-get ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get install gfortran Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 Suggested packages: gfortran‑multilib gfortran‑doc gfortran‑4.8‑multilib gfortran‑4.8‑doc libgfortran3‑dbg The following NEW packages will be installed: gfortran gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 23 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/5,039 kB of archives. After this operation, 17.6 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y Selecting previously unselected package libgfortran3:i386. (Reading database ... 202395 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../libgfortran3_4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04_i386.deb ... Unpacking libgfortran3:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Selecting previously unselected package libgfortran‑4.8‑dev:i386. Preparing to unpack .../libgfortran‑4.8‑dev_4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04_i386.deb ... Unpacking libgfortran‑4.8‑dev:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Selecting previously unselected package gfortran‑4.8. Preparing to unpack .../gfortran‑4.8_4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04_i386.deb ... Unpacking gfortran‑4.8 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Selecting previously unselected package gfortran. Preparing to unpack .../gfortran_4%3a4.8.2‑1ubuntu6_i386.deb ... Unpacking gfortran (4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6) ... Processing triggers for man‑db (2.6.7.1‑1ubuntu1) ... Setting up libgfortran3:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Setting up libgfortran‑4.8‑dev:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Setting up gfortran‑4.8 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Setting up gfortran (4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6) ... update‑alternatives: using /usr/bin/gfortran to provide /usr/bin/f95 (f95) in auto mode Processing triggers for libc‑bin (2.19‑0ubuntu6.6) ... Show more Show more icon
From the output in Listing 2, you see that apt-get has read a package list from somewhere (more on that shortly), built a dependency tree, and determined that gfortran-4.8, libgfortran-4.8-dev, and libgfortran3 are required prerequisites that are not currently installed. You will also notice the suggestion to install several separate packages gfortran-multilib, gfortran-doc, gfortran-4.8-multilib, gfortran-4.8-doc, and libgfortran3-dbg. After some additional summary information, including space usage, you are prompted to continue, and gfortran is installed along with the prerequisite packages. Debian packages usually have an extension of .deb, and you see that the packages are downloaded and unpacked as shown in the lines:
Preparing to unpack .../gfortran‑4.8_4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04_i386.deb ... Unpacking gfortran‑4.8 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Show more Show more icon
Suppose that, instead of installing a package, you want to find out whether the package depends on other packages. You can use the -s (for simulate) option on apt-get . There are several other options with equivalent function, such as --just-print and `–dry-run`. Check the man pages for full details. Listing 3 shows what happens for a simulation of installing the gfortran-doc package.
Listing 3. Simulated or dry-run install of gfortran-doc ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get install ‑s gfortran‑doc Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: gfortran‑4.8‑doc The following NEW packages will be installed: gfortran‑4.8‑doc gfortran‑doc 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 23 not upgraded. Inst gfortran‑4.8‑doc (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04 Ubuntu:14.04/trusty‑updates [all]) Inst gfortran‑doc (4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6 Ubuntu:14.04/trusty [i386]) Conf gfortran‑4.8‑doc (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04 Ubuntu:14.04/trusty‑updates [all]) Conf gfortran‑doc (4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6 Ubuntu:14.04/trusty [i386]) Show more Show more icon
As you see, the gfortran-doc documentation package requires the gfortran-4.8-doc packages. The reverse is not the case. Try it for yourself.
Package locations
In the previous section, you learned how to install a Debian package. But where do the packages come from? How does apt-get know where to download packages from? I mentioned that apt-get reads a package list from somewhere. The starting point for that somewhere is /etc/apt/sources.list. The list tells apt-get where to look for packages, including from a CD-ROM, from your local file system, or over a network using HTTP or FTP. You can add more sources in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory.
Listing 4 shows the first few lines of /etc/apt/sources.list on my system. Note that the distribution CD on the first line is commented out (# in position 1). If you need to install several new packages that have not been heavily updated, it is worthwhile to uncomment this and install from your distribution CD or DVD. If you have a broadband network connection or need several updates, it is more efficient to download the additional packages at the latest level from the network sources that follow in /etc/apt/sources.list.
Listing 4. /etc/apt/sources.list ian@attic-u14:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS Trusty Tahr - Release i386 (20150218.1)]/ trusty main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ##review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse Show more Show more icon
Apt-get and similar tools use a local database to determine what packages are installed. They can check installed levels against available levels. To do this, information on available levels is retrieved from the sources that are listed in /etc/apt/sources.list and stored on your local system. You use the command apt-get update apt-getupdate to synchronize the information in your local database with the sources specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. You should do this before installing or updating any package, and always after modifying /etc/apt/sources.list or adding files to /etc/apt/sources.list.d.
Removing Debian packages
If you want to remove a package, you can use the remove option of apt-get . A simulated run is shown in Listing 5.
Listing 5. Simulated removal of gfortran ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get remove ‑s gfortran Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 Use 'apt‑get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED: gfortran 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 23 not upgraded. Remv gfortran 4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6 Show more Show more icon
Notice that the gfortran-4.8, libgfortran-4.8-dev, and libgfortran3 packages that we installed as a prerequisites for gfortran are not actually removed automatically, although the output tells you they are no longer needed. The autoremove function of apt-get (or the equivalent remove function and the --auto-remove option) removes the requested packages, along with any packages that were installed as dependencies but are no longer required by any installed packages. This can include dependencies installed by packages other than the one or ones you are trying to remove. Listing 6 shows a simulated removal of gfortran and its dependencies. I show how to remove just gfortran, and then use apt-get autoremove apt-getautoremove to clean up the newly orphaned dependencies.
Listing 6. Removing gfortran and dependencies ian@attic‑u14:~$ #Simulate removal of gfortran and dependencies ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get autoremove ‑s gfortran Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: gfortran gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 4 to remove and 23 not upgraded. Remv gfortran 4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6Remv gfortran‑4.8 4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04Remv libgfortran‑4.8‑dev 4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04Remv libgfortran3 4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04ian@attic‑u14:~$ #Remove just gfortran ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get remove gfortran Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 Use 'apt‑get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED: gfortran 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 23 not upgraded. After this operation, 33.8 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y (Reading database ... 202421 files and directories currently installed.) Removing gfortran (4:4.8.2‑1ubuntu6) ... Processing triggers for man‑db (2.6.7.1‑1ubuntu1) ... ian@attic‑u14:~$ #Autoremove unneeded packages ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get autoremove Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 23 not upgraded. After this operation, 17.6 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y (Reading database ... 202416 files and directories currently installed.) Removing gfortran‑4.8 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Removing libgfortran‑4.8‑dev:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Removing libgfortran3:i386 (4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04) ... Processing triggers for man‑db (2.6.7.1‑1ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for libc‑bin (2.19‑0ubuntu6.6) ... Show more Show more icon
As you see, you use the autoremove function of apt-get without any package name, to remove all unused packages that were installed but are no longer required on your system. You can also use the apt-get purge apt-getpurge option to remove configuration information. See the man page for more information.
Updating Debian packages
If you need to update an individual package, use apt-get with the install option again. Listing 7 shows how to update the already installed ghostscript package on my system. Note that the prerequisite packages ghostscript-x and libgs9 will also be upgraded. Remember to run apt-get update apt-getupdate before updating packages to make sure your local database reflects the latest available updates.
Listing 7. Updating a single package ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get install ghostscript Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: ghostscript‑x libgs9 Suggested packages: hpijs The following packages will be upgraded: ghostscript ghostscript‑x libgs9 3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/1,967 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y (Reading database ... 202535 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../ghostscript_9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3_i386.deb ... Unpacking ghostscript (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) over (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.2) ... Preparing to unpack .../ghostscript‑x_9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3_i386.deb ... Unpacking ghostscript‑x (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) over (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.2) ... Preparing to unpack .../libgs9_9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3_i386.deb ... Unpacking libgs9 (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) over (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.2) ... Processing triggers for man‑db (2.6.7.1‑1ubuntu1) ... Setting up libgs9 (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) ... Setting up ghostscript (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) ... Setting up ghostscript‑x (9.10~dfsg‑0ubuntu10.3) ... Processing triggers for libc‑bin (2.19‑0ubuntu6.6) ... Show more Show more icon
Updating all packages or upgrading to a new distribution
Rather than updating individual packages, you can update all packages on your system using the apt-get upgrade apt-getupgrade command. Similarly, apt-get dist-upgrade apt-getdist-upgrade helps you migrate to a new level of your distribution.
For more information on other capabilities and options for apt-get , see the man page.
APT configuration—the apt.conf file
The man page for apt-get shows that there are many options. If you use the apt-get command a lot and find the default options are not to your liking, you can set new defaults in /etc/apt/apt.conf. A program, apt-config , is available for scripts to interrogate the apt.conf file. See the man pages for apt.conf and apt-config for more information.
Reconfiguring Debian packages
APT includes a capability called debconf, which configures packages after they are installed. Packages that use this capability (and not all do) can be reconfigured after they are installed. The easiest way to do this is to use the dpkg-reconfigure command. For example, the adduser command might create home directories that are readable by all system users. You might not want this for privacy reasons. Similarly, the tzdata package supports changing the time zone using dpkg-reconfigure tzdata dpkg-reconfiguretzdata . You must run dpkg-reconfigure with root authority.
shows the first question that you are asked if you run sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata sudodpkg-reconfiguretzdata . Your preset default might not be America; it reflects your own system. Navigate around this text-mode screen using the Tab key and the cursor movement keys.
Figure 1. Using dpkg-reconfigure to reconfigure time zone
You can also use debconf-show to view the current configuration for a package as shown in Listing 8.
Listing 8. Displaying tzdata configuration using debconf-show ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo debconf‑show tzdata tzdata/Zones/Pacific: tzdata/Zones/Europe: tzdata/Zones/Indian: tzdata/Zones/Australia: tzdata/Areas: America tzdata/Zones/Arctic: tzdata/Zones/Atlantic: tzdata/Zones/Etc: UTC * tzdata/Zones/America: New_York tzdata/Zones/US: tzdata/Zones/Africa: tzdata/Zones/SystemV: tzdata/Zones/Antarctica: tzdata/Zones/Asia: Show more Show more icon
Debian package information
Now let’s look at some tools for getting information about packages. Some of these tools do other things as well, but the focus here is on how to get information.
Package status with dpkg
Another tool that is part of the APT system is the dpkg tool. This is a medium-level package management tool that can install and remove packages and display status information. You can control configuration of dpkg by /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg, and you might also have a .dpkg.cfg file in your home directory to provide further configuration.
The dpkg tool uses many files in the /var/lib/dpkg tree in your filesystem. In particular, the file /var/lib/dpkg/status contains status information about packages on your system. Listing 9 shows the use of dpkg -s to display the status of the tzdata package after we updated it and the gfortran package after we removed it. If configuration remains, which it can in some cases, you can use the purge option to purge downloaded package files from the cache and remove configuration information.
Listing 9. Tzdata package status ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑s gfortran tzdata dpkg‑query: package 'gfortran' is not installed and no information is available Package: tzdata Status: install ok installed Priority: required Section: libs Installed‑Size: 1538 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu‑devel‑[email protected]> Architecture: all Multi‑Arch: foreign Version: 2015d‑0ubuntu0.14.04 Replaces: libc0.1, libc0.3, libc6, libc6.1 Provides: tzdata‑jessie Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf‑2.0 Description: time zone and daylight‑saving time data This package contains data required for the implementation of standard local time for many representative locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, and daylight‑saving rules. Homepage: http://www.iana.org/time‑zones Original‑Maintainer: GNU Libc Maintainers <debian‑[email protected]> Use dpkg ‑‑info (= dpkg‑deb ‑‑info) to examine archive files, and dpkg ‑‑contents (= dpkg‑deb ‑‑contents) to list their contents. Show more Show more icon
Packages and the files in them
You might want to know what is in a package or what package a particular file came from. These are both tasks for dpkg. Listing 10 illustrates the use of dpkg -L to list the files (including directories) installed by the libparted package. For most packages, you can just give the package name and not worry about specifying a particular version. However, some packages might be available in multiple versions, so you might need to specify a more detailed package name when using dpkg to interrogate the package information.
Listing 10. What is in the libparted package? ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑L libparted dpkg‑query: package 'libparted' is not installed Use dpkg ‑‑info (= dpkg‑deb ‑‑info) to examine archive files, and dpkg ‑‑contents (= dpkg‑deb ‑‑contents) to list their contents. ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑L libparted0debian1 /. /usr /usr/share /usr/share/doc /usr/share/doc/libparted0debian1 /usr/share/doc/libparted0debian1/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/libparted0debian1/copyright /usr/share/lintian /usr/share/lintian/overrides /usr/share/lintian/overrides/libparted0debian1 /lib /lib/i386‑linux‑gnu /lib/i386‑linux‑gnu/libparted.so.0.0.1 /lib/i386‑linux‑gnu/libparted.so.0 Show more Show more icon
To find which package contains a specific file, use the -S option of dpkg, as shown in Listing 11. The name of the package is listed on the left.
Listing 11. What package contains a file? ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑S /lib/i386‑linux‑gnu/libparted.so.0 libparted0debian1:i386: /lib/i386‑linux‑gnu/libparted.so.0 Show more Show more icon
Sometimes, a file appears like it doesn’t belong to any package. When this occurs, you need to do some extra sleuthing to find where a package comes from. For example, the installation setup step can perform tasks such as creating symbolic links that are not listed as part of the package contents. A relatively recent addition to Linux systems is the alternatives system, which is managed using the update-alternatives command. Alternatives are frequently created for commands such as java , which might be the openJDK, Oracle or IBM version, among other possibilities.
Listing 12 shows how to use the which command to find what is invoked if we try to run java . Then we use the ls command to see what that java command is symbolically linked to. The link to the /etc/alternatives directory is a clue that we are using the alternatives system, so we use the update-alternatives command to find more information. Finally, we use the dpkg -S dpkg-S command to confirm that the java command comes from the openjdk-7-jre-headless. The setup for the alternatives system would have been done by a post-install script that is part of the openjdk-7-jre-headless package.
Listing 12. A more complex use of dpkg -S ian@attic‑u14:~$ which java /usr/bin/java ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑S /usr/bin/java dpkg‑query: no path found matching pattern /usr/bin/java ian@attic‑u14:~$ ls ‑l $(which java) lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Jul 24 18:06 /usr/bin/java ‑> /etc/alternatives/java ian@attic‑u14:~$ update‑alternatives ‑‑display java java ‑ auto mode link currently points to /usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/bin/java /usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/bin/java ‑ priority 1071 slave java.1.gz: /usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/man/man1/java.1.gz Current 'best' version is '/usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/bin/java'. ian@attic‑u14:~$ dpkg ‑S /usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/bin/java openjdk‑7‑jre‑headless:i386: /usr/lib/jvm/java‑7‑openjdk‑i386/jre/bin/java Show more Show more icon
Using aptitude
Earlier, I mentioned that the status for packages is kept in /var/lib/dpkg/status. I also mentioned that dpkg could do more than just display package information. Now, let’s look at the aptitude command, which provides a text-based full-screen interface (using ncurses) to the APT package management functions. You can install aptitude using apt-get if it is not already installed. You can use aptitude to install or remove packages and to control status flags that indicate whether packages should be kept up-to-date or held in their present state, for example. If you run the aptitude command (as root), you see a screen similar to Aptitude 1.
Figure 2. Running aptitude
Press Enter to expand or collapse the various selections, then use ctrl-t to access the menu bar. Aptitude 2 shows that a new kernel version, 3.16.0.43.34, is available for my system, among other available updates. The ‘i’ in the left column indicates that the current status is to install the package. The Help menu item explains the various options you have, including holding a package at its current level rather than updating it, removing it, or marking it as being automatically installed and thus eligible for automatic removal. Remember the autoremove option of apt-get ? Now you know how to examine or control which packages are eligible for automatic removal. Use the keyboard shortcuts described in the Help or use the Package menu item to change the flags.
Figure 3. Running aptitude and examining package flags
You can use the slash (“/”) key to search for packages. For example, if you wanted to reinstall the gfortran package that we removed earlier, simply type “/gfortran” to search for it. If the search takes you to something else with gfortran in it, such as gfortran-doc, press the n key to advance to the next match. Then use the Package menu to mark the package for installation.
When you are finished, select Actions->Install/remove packages (or press G) to apply your selections to the system. You can also click the quit option if you do not want to apply the changes.
For help at any time, use the menu bar or type “ ? ” (question mark) for help, and then press the Q key to exit the help.
You see that aptitude can help you install or remove individual packages and upgrade all the packages on your system to the latest level.
In addition to aptitude, there are several other interactive package management interfaces for Debian systems, including dselect, synaptic, update-manager, gnome-apt, and wajig. Synaptic is a graphical application for use with the X Window System. shows the synaptic user interface with our old friend, the gfortran package, marked for installation.
Figure 4. Installing gfortran using synaptic
The Apply button installs gfortran and updates any other packages that are scheduled for update. The Reload button refreshes the package lists. If you are accustomed to GUI interfaces, you might find synaptic easier to use than apt-get, dpkg, or dselect.
Similarly, you might find that your system includes update-manager , an X Window System application, specifically tailored to help you keep your system up-to-date. If installed, it is likely to be started automatically on a regular basis, so that you don’t forget to update. shows how Update Manager displays the set of updates that you saw in Aptitude 2. As was the case with aptitude, the updates are classified so that you know which updates are important security updates.
Finding Debian packages
In the final topic on Debian package management, I look at ways to find packages. Usually, apt-get and the other tools discussed here already know about any Debian package you might need from the list of available packages. A command that we haven’t used yet is apt-cache , which is useful for searching package information on your system. apt-cache can search using regular expressions (see “Learn Linux, 101: Search text files using regular expressions” for more information on regular expressions). Suppose you wanted to find the name of the package containing the Linux loader. Listing 13 shows how you can accomplish this.
Listing 13. Searching for the Linux loader with apt-cache ian@attic‑u14:~$ apt‑cache search "linux loader" lilo ‑ LInux LOader ‑ the classic OS boot loader lilo‑doc ‑ LInux LOader ‑ Documentation for the classic OS boot loader Show more Show more icon
You saw earlier that aptitude and synaptic also offer search tools. If you use synaptic, note that you have options on the search menu for searching only package names or package descriptions as well.
If you still can’t find the package, you can find it among the list of packages on the Debian site (see the resources at the right side for a link) or elsewhere on the Internet.
Most of the package tools can tell you a lot more about an installed package than about one that you do not yet have installed, such as the list of files within a package. If you need to find what package contains a program that you do not have installed, there are a few ways:
You can guess what package might contain it and download the package without installing. Once you have the package, you can interrogate it.
You can search the Internet.
You can try the command-not-found capability, which is described under Command not found later in this tutorial.
The apt-get command has a -d option to download a package and not install it. There is also a --print-uris option to show where a package would be downloaded from and what its checksum would be. Current checksums are likely to be SHA256 checksums, so you can check the integrity of the downloaded package using the sha256sum command. Note that the URI and checksum information are not displayed if you have already downloaded the package, so you should get this information before downloading the package.
Suppose you want to know whether the gfortran command is really contained in the gfortran package. Listing 14 shows you how to use apt-get to download the gfortran package without installing it.
Listing 14. Using apt-get for download-only ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo apt‑get install ‑d gfortran Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 Suggested packages: gfortran‑multilib gfortran‑doc gfortran‑4.8‑multilib gfortran‑4.8‑doc libgfortran3‑dbg The following NEW packages will be installed: gfortran gfortran‑4.8 libgfortran‑4.8‑dev libgfortran3 0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/5,039 kB of archives. After this operation, 17.6 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y Download complete and in download only mode Show more Show more icon
Once you have the package downloaded, you can use the --info option of dpkg to display the package information, or the --contents option to show what files the package installs. The downloaded file is usually located in /var/cache/apt/archives/. Listing 15 shows how to locate the file you downloaded and find out what binaries it will install (assuming they are installed in a …/bin/… directory).
Listing 15. Using dpkg to list the contents of a .deb ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo find /var/cache ‑name "gfort*.deb" /var/cache/apt/archives/gfortran_4%3a4.8.2‑1ubuntu6_i386.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/gfortran‑4.8_4.8.4‑2ubuntu1~14.04_i386.deb ian@attic‑u14:~$ sudo dpkg ‑‑contents > /var/cache/apt/archives/gfortran_4%3a4.8.2‑1ubuntu6_i386.deb | > grep "/bin/" drwxr‑xr‑x root/root 0 2014‑04‑07 18:49 ./usr/bin/ lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2014‑04‑07 18:49 ./usr/bin/gfortran ‑> gfortran‑4.8 lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2014‑04‑07 18:49 ./usr/bin/i686‑linux‑gnu‑gfortran ‑> gfortran‑4.8 Show more Show more icon
If you do find and download a .deb file using something other than apt-get , you can install it using dpkg -i .
If you decide you do not want to install the package you downloaded into the APT archives, you can run apt-get clean apt-getclean to clear out any downloaded package files.
If all else fails, there is another possible source for packages. Suppose you find a program packaged as an RPM rather than a .deb. You can try the alien program, which can convert between package formats. You should read the alien documentation carefully as not all features of all package management systems can be converted to another format by alien. Use what you’ve already learned in this tutorial to help you find the package containing the alien command.
Command not found
Back in Listing 1, you saw a helpful message telling you what package to install to get the gfortran command. How is this done? When the Bash shell searches for a command and does not find it, then the shell searches for a shell function named command_not_found_handle . Listing 16 shows how this is defined on my Ubuntu 14 system.
Listing 16. command_not_found_handle ian@attic-u14:~$ type command_not_found_handle command_not_found_handle is a function command_not_found_handle () { if [ -x /usr/lib/command-not-found ]; then /usr/lib/command-not-found -- "$1"; return $?; else if [ -x /usr/share/command-not-found/command-not-found ]; then /usr/share/command-not-found/command-not-found -- "$1"; return $?; else printf "%s: command not found
" "$1" 1>&2; return 127; fi; fi } Show more Show more icon
If the command_not_found_handle function exists, it is invoked with the original command and original arguments as its arguments, and the function’s exit status becomes the exit status of the shell. If the function is not defined, the shell prints an error message and returns an exit status of 127. The function is usually set in the system /etc/bash.bashrc file. You can see from Listing 16 that the function checks for the existence of /usr/lib/command-not-found and runs it as a Python script if it exists. If it does not exist, perhaps because the command-not-found package that supplies it was removed after the shell session was started, then the function mimics the standard system behavior and returns 127.
PackageKit
No discussion of package installation would be complete without mentioning PackageKit, which is a system designed to be cross platform and to make installing and updating software easier. The intent is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions. PackageKit uses a system activated daemon, which means that the daemon is activated only when needed. PackageKit has versions for Gnome (gnome-packagekit) and KDE (KPackageKit).
There is a lot more to the Debian package management system than covered here. There is also a lot more to Debian than its package management system. See the resources at the right side for additional details and links to other tutorials in this series. |
When one fiasco settles down, another begins for United Airlines — or so it seems.
On Sunday evening, a video surfaced on social media showing a man being dragged from a United plane because his trip was overbooked. This comes just weeks after United stopped two female teenagers from boarding its plane because they were wearing "form-fitting" leggings. However, they were traveling as "representatives" of the company, a United spokesperson later argued.
"Denied boarding is usually handled with a whole lot more maturity," former United Airlines parent United Continental Holdings' (UAL) Chief Executive Gordon Bethune told CNBC in an interview Monday, referring to the forced removal of the male passenger.
"[United] tries to do a professional job, but not everybody on the plane is professional," thereby creating a "scene" on Sunday evening that carried over onto social media, Bethune added. "This immature reaction disturbs us all."
The former Continental CEO, who serves on the boards of Honeywell, Sprint and formerly on Prudential Financial, said he thinks United's current chief executive, Oscar Munoz, should issue an apology for Sunday's incident and for the passengers who had to endure it. "I'm sure there will be reconciliation ... some effort to show they care about passengers," Bethune said.
"I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion [at United] about how to handle this in the future."
Shortly after Bethune's interview on CNBC, United CEO Munoz issued a statement, saying: "This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened."
But for many airlines, incidents like Sunday's come as no surprise, one social media and brand expert said.
"The thing about airlines is they have a low happiness level to begin with," Andy Swan, the founder of social media monitor LikeFolio, told CNBC in an interview on Monday. Swan said he's not sure United ever "bounces back" from public relations nightmares like this — because it's really "nothing new."
This is likely the reason why United Continental's stock hardly reacted negatively to Sunday's debacle, with shares actually up about 1 percent by Monday afternoon, Swan added.
As he monitored social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to see how the public was responding to the video of a passenger being dragged, Swan said: "You see very negative reactions, lots of negative tweets about the brand. But the thing to remember is on airlines' [stock] it almost never matters."
Unless it's a real safety issue that blows up — like when the roof tore off a Southwest Airlines (LUV) plane in 2011 — most companies don't see changes in consumer purchasing behavior based on these types of events, Swan told CNBC. And that's what Wall Street is concerned about — ticket sales and seats filled.
At the end of the day, bad brand image or not, many people are going to continue to buy their airline tickets based on metrics like the lowest price or the best arrival time, social media expert Swan said. It's not like Chipotle (CMG), for example, which has to fight to win back customers after its E. coli fiasco.
"Tomorrow we'll be talking about something else," Swan laughed.
CORRECTION: This story's headline has been updated to say a United passenger was being immature, according to former Continental CEO Bethune's interview on CNBC.
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With public outrage growing over the paltry six-month sentence handed down to a Stanford University student who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious drunk woman, many are blaming “rape culture” for what seems to be a widespread, casual acceptance of rape. While we may be at a loss to explain what, precisely, rape culture is, that doesn’t mean that we can’t get rid of it. Dandy Goat moral indignation correspondent Richard Omega interviewed Victoria N. Pedestal, author of “How to End Rape Culture in Six Steps,” who explained just that.
Stop sending our sons to summer rape camp
This might seem obvious, but many families still think that summer rape camp is an integral part of growing up. I remember the year that my own brother went to rape camp in the Pocono Mountains. Before he left, he was really into the idea of consent. He even asked for my permission to give me a hug when we dropped him off at the train station. When he returned home at the end of the summer, he was a veritable rapist. Tragic.
Remove pro-rape literary works from public school curricula
It’s time that canonical pro-rape works like Hemingway’s “Rape Is Good” and Shakespeare’s “Many a Rapes Doth a Man Make” are forever removed from English classrooms, no matter how important some say these novels and plays are. The other day, I caught my seventh-grade daughter reading the classic pro-rape poem called “She Deserved It.” When I asked her where she got such drivel, she said that her teacher had asked the whole class to write an essay about how the poem speaks to fundamental truths. Awful.
Petition Congress to get rid of National Rape Day and replace it with a more deserving federal holiday
Every first Wednesday of October, Americans stay home from work and school to celebrate National Rape Day. Sure, a lot of people don’t even rape each other on this day, and more and more businesses are deciding to remain open for Rape Day sales. Still, the message to people is clear: rape is part of our culture. Horrible.
Pressure Hollywood to stop making movies celebrating rapists as heros
Most of what comes out of Hollywood these days is decidedly pro-rape. Chances are, the last movie you watched featured a male protagonist who goes around remorselessly raping women, much to the delight of other characters in the movie. And television is no better. With everyone watching shows like “Raping with the Stars” and “Rape and Recreation,” it’s no wonder why rape is so widely accepted. Unacceptable.
Close down campus rape clubs
On almost every college campus, you can find rape clubs, some of them dating back to the 1760s. At my alma mater, Penn State, there were no fewer than 16 rape clubs, and worst of all, some were even open to having female members and officers. My freshman roommate even dated the president of one of these rape clubs. Needless to say, he was a repugnant rapist. Disgusting.
Make rape illegal
Some people might argue that outlawing rape constitutes an invasion of the privacy between two or more people engaged in a very intimate act, but such measures are necessary to extinguish rape culture. Think about it: if you’re a man and you’re considering raping a woman this evening, wouldn’t the fear of a few years in jail deter you? Unless you’re a total psychopath, which few rapists are, I’ll bet the answer is yes. We already take a stand against murder, theft, and tax evasion by making these activities illegal, so why not do the same with rape? Indeed.
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So I wake up this morning and as I am pilfering through the morning news I read a story on the NYTimes about how the Strauss-Kahn case is “on the verge of collapse.” Now, when the allegations came out against Strauss-Kahn I was shocked at the media’s response to the case. There were minimal stories on the background of the accuser, on what she was doing that day, on who she hung out with or the things she liked to do. She was taken seriously as someone who was REPORTING A CRIME, her credibility was not undermined by journalists “uncovering” facts about her sexuality, her situation or things of that nature.
As the media ran out of things to write about, with Strauss-Kahn awaiting his trial and the accuser silent, the NYTimes began to look into her background, and profiled her as what Jezebel termed a “Noble Savage” – a “good victim”. Now, as we can all probably remember, the NYTimes happens to have a HORRENDOUS track record when it comes to reporting on victims of rape, so perhaps type-castingStrauss-Kahn’s accuser was their attempt to showcase their journalistic abilities, which resulted in a weird stereotypical portrait of a noble immigrant.
Well folks, it seems this morning things have just got a lot worse. The crux of the article is in this paragraph, “Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.”
So. Even though Strauss-Kahn fled the scene, even though numerous other victims are coming out and taking a stand against him, and EVEN THOUGH THERE IS FORENSIC EVIDENCE TO PROVE AN ENCOUNTER HAPPENED, now the accuser is discredited because apparently the accuser did not tell officials that she was involved with an incarcerated man. And there is more; the prosecution just got a hold of the taped conversations. Conversations where she ASKS HIM IF SHE SHOULD PRESS CHARGES – where she weighed the pros and cons of pressing charges. Wow, apparently that is enough to mar her reputation as a noble victim. Also, apparently there are “inconsistencies” about how the accuser describes her own FGM experiences. These “revelations” in my mind are laughable, however I know that this morning many people will read this article and for the first time believe that Strauss-Kahn might actually be innocent.
The thing is, the story about her attack hasn’t changed. And even if it had that shouldn’t discredit her. The fact that the NYTimes is yet again publishing alarmist calls about a rape case isn’t particularly surprising. The fact that their story unquestioningly takes the tactics that are being used to discredit people who bravely report and accuse rapists is sad, it is unjust, and it is not surprising that even police officers who admit their rape on tape are not charged. Even if the accuser was running a drug-ring out of her basement, that should not affect her being taken seriously as a victim of sexual assault.
There should not be such a thing as good victims and bad victims. All victims, all women and men, should be taken seriously when they take the difficult step of reporting sexual assault. Until we stop type-casting women, until we stop assuming that WOMEN are the case of rape and not the RAPISTS WHO RAPE THEM, and until news sources like the New York Times are held accountable for the damage that they cause every time a story like this passes an editor’s desk, we will have to keep marching as sluts, hand in hand.
**Slutwalk is coming to NYC on August 20th, 2011** |
A money-making venture to lure out-of-town drug buyers into Sunrise to purchase cocaine from police has been halted as a result of a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation.
Mayor Michael Ryan, who supports the undercover stings, lay blame for ending the operation on the newspaper's reporting techniques. He said the paper exposed police tactics and strategy and compromised the work.
Ryan did not express concerns about cocaine buyers being lured into the city and closing deals in such public locations as parking lots and family restaurants. In a statement to the paper, he said he was told by police that the public has never been in danger.
The mayor did not address huge overtime payments to undercover officers and lucrative rewards to a network of secret informants.
Four of the five commissioners, including the mayor, support the practice. Commissioner Neil Kerch, a defense attorney, declined to comment because of the nature of his profession.
"It bothers me that they don't see a problem with it," Sunrise resident Roseanne Eckert told the Sun Sentinel Friday.
The mother of a teenage boy, Eckert wrote to the mayor earlier in the week, expressing concern about the safety of her son and his friends riding bikes near Sawgrass Mills, the sprawling outlet mall where undercover police and informants posing as cocaine dealers have staged stings.
"I now have to worry that your ... police will be out guns blazing because of criminals they brought to our city?" she asked the mayor.
Sunrise made its last major cocaine trafficking bust July 3, jail and police records show. The sting and arrest took place in the parking lot of the Don Pan International Bakery, just south of the mall. Detectives arrested a New Jersey man who came to town to buy a kilo of cocaine from them.
The Sun Sentinel published the results of a six-month investigation Oct. 6 and 7 exposing how the police department's narcotics unit has made millions of dollars in recent years -- not by capturing local drug dealers but by drawing high-dollar cocaine buyers into Sunrise from far away and then seizing their cash and cars.
The newspaper found that police departments in nearby cities don't systematically lure in drug buyers from afar. Nearly four out of every five suspects booked since 2009 for cocaine trafficking by Sunrise police listed home addresses outside Broward County.
The newspaper revealed that police enticed buyers with bargain prices and offers of coke on consignment.
The city also paid one lady informant -- a charming, shapely brunette -- more than $800,000 since 2008. She was credited by police with helping Sunrise set up 63 stings and reel in at least $5 million in cash and assets seized from criminals, according to a court record.
The newspaper also reported that a dozen undercover officers regularly working the stings made a total of $1.2 million in overtime over three-and-a-half years.
The stories were distributed widely online and were featured on television by CNN and ABC's Nightline. The coverage ignited an intense debate about the appropriateness of local police working to nab wannabe cocaine buyers living 1,000 or more miles away.
The police department, however, had its defenders, including the Greater Sunrise Chamber of Commerce.
"We support the efforts of the Sunrise Police Department to arrest people who are trying to buy drugs to sell in communities, whether our community or others," said Michael Jacobs, executive director.
Some elected city officials also stuck by the cops.
Commissioner Larry Sofield told Police Chief John Brooks at Tuesday's regular public meeting of the Sunrise Commission: "I don't see that you've been doing anything illegally or immoral. I think you and your unit, people, have been doing a great job."
Addressing the Sun Sentinel directly, Sofield said: "I think you have done a great service to the community. Unfortunately I think it was the criminal community that you have done service to."
Brooks has remained silent on the controversy, letting any response come from his staff or from the commission, to which he reports. He's repeatedly denied requests for comment from the Sun Sentinel before publication and after, and he hung up on a reporter Thursday.
Eugene O'Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said a cocaine-selling program like the one instituted in Sunrise must be carefully overseen.
"It brings up so many issues, ethical issues, safety issues. Is it being done for money? Those are all serious questions. There has to be oversight," he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General audits and investigates the receipt and expenditure of federal forfeiture funds, but due to the governmental shutdown no one was available to respond to inquiries from the Sun Sentinel.
Florida state Rep. Katie Edwards, a Democrat who represents Sunrise, said she plans to meet with city officials to learn more specifics about how the stings were carried out.
"As a legislator, my concern surrounds whether these practices are tantamount to entrapment and run afoul of the Constitution," she said.
Broward State Attorney Michael Satz said his office has found no problem with Sunrise officers posing as drug dealers, selling cheap cocaine, and luring in buyers from afar.
"South Florida is known as a source of drugs," he said. "People come to South Florida to buy drugs."
But Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said the police are "putting citizens at risk."
"They are bringing felons here," he said. "No one is going to think this is a good idea unless it's another police administration that wants to use this to raise money. We have enough drugs and criminals here. Now we are importing them?"
[email protected]; 954-356-4518. ___
(c)2013 the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
Visit the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) at www.sun-sentinel.com |
Amazon Lex, the technology powering Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, has exited preview, according to a report from Reuters this morning. The system, which involves natural language understanding technology combined with automatic speech recognition, was first introduced in November, at Amazon’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.
At the time, Amazon explained how Lex can be used by developers who want to build their own conversational applications, like chatbots.
As an example, the company had demoed a tool that allowed users to book a flight using only their voice.
However, the system is not limited to working only in the chatbots you find in today’s consumer messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger (though it can be integrated with that platform). Lex can actually work in any voice or text chatbot on mobile, web or in other chat services beyond Messenger, including Slack and Twilio SMS.
Amazon has suggested it could be used for a variety of purposes, including web and mobile applications where the technology provides users with information, powers their application, helps with various work activities, or even provides a control mechanism for robots, drones and toys.
Chatbots in messaging – and particularly in e-commerce bots – is a solid entry point for Lex’s technology, though. Consumers today have been frustrated by the current crop of chatbots that have clunky menus to navigate through, and a limited ability to respond to questions users asked. Lex, on the other hand, would allow developers to create bots that convert speech to text and those that could recognize the intent of the text, making the resulting bot more conversational, and more sophisticated than those on the market at present.
Lex, as a fully managed Amazon service, would also scale automatically as the bots’ usage increased, meaning developers would only pay for the number of text or voice queries that Lex processes.
Amazon’s goal with opening up Lex to the wider development community could give it an edge in its ability to compete with other voice technology, like Google’s Assistant or Apple’s Siri, for example. The company plans to take the text and recordings that people send to Lex-powered apps in order to improve Lex, and its ability to understand more queries, notes today’s report.
This openness has been Amazon’s larger strategy with much of its Alexa platform. For example, it already had rolled out Alexa Voice Services which allowed developers to integrate Alexa into their own devices, like speakers, bedside alarm clocks, and more.
Alexa’s software isn’t the only area where Amazon is embracing an open ecosystem. The company earlier this month said it would make the technology powering its Echo speakers available to third-party device makers as well. This includes the microphone array listening to Alexa commands, and the proprietary software that can recognize wake words, reduce background noise, and cancel out echos in large rooms.
By offering this to OEMs, other device manufacturers can build their own smart, voice-powered products – even those that would compete with Amazon’s own Echo speakers.
Developers interested in Amazon Lex can get started here. |
People who stay physically and mentally healthy in middle age may help avert the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, but not the underlying cause of the disease changes itself, according to research published in Neurology.
Prashanthi Vemuri, PhD, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues found that of the participants who had 14 years of education or more who were carriers of the APOE4 gene — which is linked to Alzheimer’s and affects about 20% of the population — those who kept mentally active in middle age had lower levels of amyloid plaque buildup in the brain compared with those who did not keep mentally active in middle age.
“Recent studies have shown conflicting results about the value of physical and mental activity related to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, and we noticed that levels of education differed in those studies,” said Dr Vemuri in a statement. “When we looked specifically at the level of lifetime learning, we found that carriers of the APOE4 gene who had higher education and continued to learn through middle age had [less] amyloid deposition on imaging when compared to those who did not continue with intellectual activity in middle age.”
To investigate the effect of various characteristics on Alzheimer’s disease biomarker trajectories, the researchers evaluated 393 participants without dementia (70 years and older) from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging using longitudinal imaging data (brain b-amyloid load via Pittsburgh compound B PET and neurodegeneration via 18fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET and structural MRI).
Of the 393 participants, 340 were clinically normal and 53 had mild cognitive impairment. The participants were grouped into high levels of education (≥14 years) and low levels of education (<14 years).
Using MRI and PET scans, the researchers searched for biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. They also evaluated weekly intellectual and physical activity in middle age with questionnaires.
For the entire group of participants as a whole, the researchers found that education, occupation, and mental and physical activity in middle age appeared to have little to no effect on the rates of amyloid plaque buildup. However, for carriers of the APOE4 gene, those with high education who continued stimulating their minds in middle age had less amyloid plaque deposition in the brain than those with high education who did not continue mental stimulation in middle age. |
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating a pair of Yahoo data breaches reported in 2016 to see if the company should have reported the breaches to investors sooner.
While the SEC investigation is in the early stages, according to the Wall Street Journal , a case brought against Yahoo could help clarify the timeline for companies to reveal such hacks.
The disclosures also prompted Verizon, which had reached a deal to acquire Yahoo before the hacks were announced, to look into how the hacks may have affected Yahoo's user numbers. At one point, after the second hack was announced, Verizon was reportedly considering exiting the deal but, according to Sunday night's WSJ report, Verizon says the deal is still in place.
The first data breach occurred in 2014, affecting up to 500 million users, and was reported in September 2016. Yahoo confirmed that user account information was stolen from the company’s network "in late 2014 by what it believes is a state-sponsored actor."
The company suggested at the time that the stolen information could include personal credentials such names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority protected by bcrypt) and even security questions and answers.
The ongoing investigation also revealed that unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information were not included in the stolen information, since that info isn't stored in the affected system.
The second incident occurred in August 2013, impacting nearly one billion users, and was reported in December 2016. That hack involved names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, MD5-hashed passwords (a form of encryption now widely considered insecure) and security question answers, according to the company.
Additional reporting by Nicole Galucci and Gianluca Mezzofiore |
Centrist Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach won't seek re-election to his eastern Pennsylvania district this fall, creating a pickup opportunity for Democrats.
Gerlach said in a statement that he had opted against seeking a seventh term in Congress. The news was first reported by PoliticsPA. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney narrowly carried the district in 2012 after its boundaries were shored up during the latest round of redistricting.
"Nearing the end of my sixth term in the House and following 12 years of public service in the Pennsylvania House and Senate, it is simply time for me to move on to new challenges and to spend more time with my wife and family, who have been extremely supportive and have made significant sacrifices during my tenure in public office," Gerlach said in a statement.
Before that, Gerlach won even as Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Barack Obama carried his district in 2004 and 2008.
Democrats have previously targeted Gerlach for defeat, but ultimately fell short. Democrats need to gain a net of 17 seats this November in order to win back control of the House from Republicans, a generally tall task at this stage.
Moreover, Gerlach's decision to retire adds to the ranks of moderate Republicans to announce their decision to leave Congress at their current terms. |
Sunderland were terrible. Their defending was appalling all game, most obviously on Everton’s third goal. Who the hell is marking Romelu Lukaku here?
For the first two goals of Lukaku’s hat trick, both headers at the far post, he was also given far too much space. Sunderland have one point from four games, sit in 19th place, defend like a Sunday League side, and are a prime candidate to be relegated.
But with that throat clearing out of the way, maybe Everton are going to put in a real challenge for the Champions League spots? After an extremely disappointing 2015-16 season that saw Everton finish 11th, manager Ronald Koemen was lured away from Southampton. Koemen and the Everton board splashed in the transfer market, spending a seemingly absurd £25 million for Crystal Palace winger Yannick Bolasie, as well as signing former Swansea center back Ashley Williams, Aston Villa midfielder Idrissa Gueye, and Fulham keeper Maarten Steklenburg. All this, and more, was financed by selling John Stones to Manchester City.
Against Sunderland, all four of these new signees started. But even though Everton were clearly the better side, they couldn’t find the back of the net in the first 45 minutes. Rather than wait and hope something would happen, Koemen made it happen by replacing Ross Barkley with Gerard Deulofeu.
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Deulofeu was immediately the most dangerous man on the field. In the 60th minute he led a counterattack that ended with Gueye picking out Lukaku at the far post. Eight minutes later Bolasie crossed to Lukaku for his second, and three minutes after that Sunderland’s shambolic defending led to the goal seen above.
Everton have won three of their first four games, with the fourth a draw with Tottenham. It wasn’t the most stellar of competition, but still, they have 10 points and sit tied for second, with the demolishing of a League Two side in the League Cup on their resumé too.
Last year’s disastrous campaign means no European distractions, and the growth of Deulofeu and addition of Bolasie has made for a more dynamic attack. Steklenburg has only conceded two goals, Williams is a solid defender to replace Stones (or back-up Ramiro Funes Mori), and Gueye has perhaps been Everton’s player of the season, shielding the back four effectively.
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Of course, Everton haven’t qualified for the Champions League in 13 seasons, and have even only qualified for the Europa League once in the last seven. But with Leicester (and to a lesser extent) Southampton’s success last season, and a number of the bigger clubs integrating new managers and implementing new systems while trying to remain competitive in four different competitions, who’s to say Everton isn’t capable of a surprise finish? |
JPMorgan Chase books $3.3 billion profit
While some of its peers spent part of 2009 in the red, JPMorgan Chase managed to stay profitable.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- JPMorgan Chase showed it was close to making a full recovery from last year's crisis after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly profits of $3.3 billion Friday.
The New York City-based banking giant also revealed that compensation expenses climbed 18% during the year to $26.9 billion, much of which is expected to doled out in the form of bonuses.
Kicking off the fourth quarter earnings season for the nation's top banks, the company said it turned a tidy profit during the final three months of 2009, earning 74 cents on a per share basis.
That was much better than Wall Street was anticipating. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report a profit of $2.46 billion for the quarter, or 61 cents a share.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) fell more than 1% in midday trading though as revenue numbers fell short of expectations.
"Though these results showed improvement, we acknowledge that they fell short of both an adequate return on capital and the firm's earnings potential," JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement.
Still, 2009 proved to be a stellar year for the bank, as profits more than doubled to $11.73 billion, besting consensus estimates.
One of the biggest drivers of its results in the quarter was the company's investment banking business, which earned $1.9 billion, largely helped by robust debt and stock underwriting fees.
"Earnings in the investment bank were better than we were expecting," Collins Stewart analyst William Tanona wrote in a note to clients Friday.
Executives at the company however, were reluctant to declare that the worst was behind them.
Mike Cavanagh, JPMorgan Chase's chief financial officer, noted that there were still areas of weakness within the company's mortgage portfolio. He also reiterated previous forecasts that its credit card division would likely lose $1 billion a quarter during the first half of 2010.
"We need to wait and see how the economy evolves," he said.
It was clear though that JPMorgan was taking no chances, especially with millions of Americans still out of work. During the quarter, the bank said it added an additional $1.9 billion to its consumer loan loss reserve.
Dimon said that the lack of clarity about the direction of the economy was also playing a big part in keeping the bank from boosting its dividend back to pre-crisis levels. JPMorgan slashed its dividend last year by 87% and currently pays one of just 5 cents a quarter.
JPMorgan Chase is the first of several big banks and Wall Street firms to report its fourth-quarter results. Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) are all slated to release their fourth-quarter and full year numbers next week.
JPMorgan Chase is widely believed to be among the strongest banks in this group though, and its healthy profits could lead to more criticism of the financial services industry.
On Thursday, the industry faced one of its harshest attacks yet after the White House proposed a new tax Thursday on big banks that it said helped to contribute to the financial crisis.
Dimon said Friday that he was not opposed to the concept given the financial services industry's role in the current economic mess. But he quickly rejected the notion that banks such as his should be held responsible for the problems in other industries such as the automotive business.
"I don't understand why we should have to pay for that," he said.
There is also the ongoing backlash among politicians and taxpayers about the size of bonuses doled out by financial firms that benefited from government bailouts.
JPMorgan, which accepted $25 billion in taxpayer aid last fall, revealed Friday that more than a third of its compensation expenses went towards its Wall Street employees.
The company said it spent $9.33 billion to compensate workers in its investment banking division, an increase of $1.6 billion from a year ago. That figure includes salaries as well as money set aside for bonuses.
Divided among the nearly 25,000 individuals in this business, the average annual compensation per employee was nearly $380,000. |
We all make mistakes and most of us feel bad about our screw ups, miscalculations, and forays down the wrong rabbit holes. It turns out being wrong some of the time is the price we pay for having powerful cognitive abilities.
Photo by nighthawk7.
Human thought process is driven almost entirely by inductive reasoning. We don't search for the answer or solution that is most absolutely correct in a given situation, we search for and provide the answer that has the highest probability of being correct. This leads to us being right most of the time—we're the experts in the animal kingdom at "guessing" with a very high probability of being right—but inevitably leads to us being wrong some of the time. Kathryn Schulz, the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error is intent on changing the way people view mistakes and embracing that errors are just part of the package when dealing with the brilliance of the human mind.
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So how can embracing error help boost workplace productivity? Once you acknowledge that people can't have a perfect record and that mistakes will happen you can start focusing on how to minimize the impact of mistakes and if there are external factors leading to the errors that are made. When you abandon the stance that the mistake-maker is flawed and embrace the stance that mistakes are part of human cognition and everyone will make them, you can focus on productivity instead of scapegoating the mistake makers. Where can we see this mentality in action? She writes:
The aviation industry has turned itself into what is arguably the safest high-stakes industry in the world by cultivating a productive obsession with error. Aviation personnel are encouraged and in some cases even required to report mistakes, because the industry recognizes that a culture of shame doesn't discourage error. It merely discourages people from acknowledging and learning from their mistakes. Cockpits are equipped with multiple backup systems - from copilots to autopilots to automated warnings to emergency checklists - to compensate for the most probable sources of human error. And those mistakes that do occur are exhaustively investigated in an effort to prevent them in the future.
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While you may not work in an industry where your "Oops!" moments result in the fiery deaths of hundreds of passengers you can still benefit from adopting a mindset that accepts mistakes will happen and focuses instead on mitigating them and looking at the environment to solve the mistake instead of punishing yourself or others. Check out the full article at the link below for a much longer and fascinating look at Kathryn Shultz's research. Have your own experiences at a company that has adopted a more progressive stance about mistakes and how to mend them? Let's hear about it in the comments.
The Bright Side of Wrong [The Boston Globe] |
By Rick Newman and Emma Peters
Bernie Sanders is far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, but the liberal curmudgeon is tied with Clinton in one interesting contest: the number of Google (GOOGL) employees donating to the campaign. Each candidate has received money from 26 Googlers, according to the latest federal fundraising records.
The 2016 presidential election is still 16 months away, but the fundraising push is in high gear, given that the winner may need $1 billion or more to win the White House. Candidates and groups supporting them are likely to spend the most money ever in a presidential campaign, partly because the Faustian innovation known as super PACs allows rich donors to give unlimited amounts to groups affiliated with candidates they support.
Two super PACs supporting Jeb Bush, the presumed Republican front-runner, have raised a whopping $108 million so far, according to the Bush campaign. They could pull in several multiples of that by Election Day. Super PACs supporting Hillary Clinton, Bush’s Democratic counterpart, have raised just $24 million so far, though Clinton’s campaign proper has outraised Bush's by more than 4 to 1.
Yahoo Finance is closely following the money pouring into the 2016 campaign, and we analyzed newly released data to see which companies are aligned with which candidates. (Our full methodology is at the end of this story.) Not surprisingly, Bush and Clinton are pulling down millions from deep corporate connections. But we found a few unexpected things as well. While it’s no secret that Jeb Bush is Wall Street's preferred candidate, for instance, Hillary Clinton more than makes up for that with thousands of donations from attorneys at powerful law firms.
Many analysts consider ultraconservative Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas a fringe candidate, yet his campaign ranked second in the amount of money raised through the first half of 2015. And the iconoclastic Sanders—a self-described socialist—has a respectable amount of support from pockets of corporate America, with donations coming from employees of Google, Microsoft (MSFT), Wells Fargo (WFC), United Airlines (UAL) and other firms.
We researched the top sources of money for the 7 candidates whose campaigns raised more than $5 million during the first six months of the year. Donor records list contributions by individual, not by company. But they require contributors to declare their employer, if they have one, which allowed us to see which organizations have the most employees donating to a particular candidate. Here's what we found:
Hillary Clinton (Democrat). Total raised: $47.5 million. Jeb Bush has the richest super PAC, but Clinton grabbed far more cash from donors giving directly to a campaign. Law firms were Clinton’s biggest donors. Florida-based litigation firm Morgan & Morgan had the most givers, with 155 different attorneys and other employees donating to Clinton. Powerhouse firms Debevoise & Plimpton and Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld came next, with 49 and 48 donors, respectively. Clinton’s fourth-biggest source of funds was L.A. talent firm Creative Artists Agency, with 47 donors—indicating her strong foothold in Hollywood. Rounding out the top 5: Morgan Stanley (MS), with 44 employees giving to Clinton’s campaign.
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Ted Cruz (Republican), $14.1 million. Cruz’s biggest source of funds so far is Texas-based Woodforest National Bank, whose CEO, Robert Marling, is a big Republican donor and Cruz backer. Other firms with employees donating to Cruz include mining firm Jennmar and the U.S. Postal Service. One surprise in Cruz’s records is the light showing by Goldman Sachs (GS), which only had three employees who donated to Cruz. The candidate’s wife, Heidi, is a high-ranking Goldman exec on unpaid leave for the duration of Cruz's campaign, which was expected to draw a meaty chunk of Goldman money but so far hasn’t.
Bernie Sanders (Democrat), $13.7 million. The left coast likes the leftist Sanders, with Google (26 donors) and Microsoft (15 donors) being his top sources of corporate money. Wells Fargo and United Airlines each had 8 workers donating to Sanders, while Princeton University had 5.
Jeb Bush (Republican), $11.4 million. Bush ranked fourth in money donated directly to the campaign, but he didn’t declare his candidacy until mid-June, so his $11.4 million haul represented only about two weeks of fundraising. Bush’s biggest source of funds is Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs, with 55 donors, followed by investing firm Neuberger Berman, with 23 donors. Tenet Healthcare (THC)—where Bush was a director from 2007 through 2014—is Bush’s third-biggest source of money, with 13 donors.
Story continues |
It was bad enough when Republican candidates in the presidential election invoked Jack Bauer from the TV show 24 as their model for how to deal with terrorists.
Now the National Review has published an incredibly surreal list of the “Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years“. Here’s the complete list:
#25: Gran Torino (2008)
#24: Team America: World Police (2004)
#23: United 93 (2006)
#22: Brazil (1985)
#21: Heartbreak Ridge (1986)
#20: Gattaca (1997)
#19: We Were Soldiers (2002)
#18: The Edge (1997)
#17: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005)
#16: Master and Commander (2003)
#15: Red Dawn (1984)
#14: A Simple Plan (1998)
#13: Braveheart (1995)
#12: The Dark Knight (2008)
#11: The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003)
#10: Ghostbusters (1984)
#9: Blast from the Past (1999)
#8: Juno (2007)
#7: The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
#6: Groundhog Day (1993)
#5: 300 (2007)
#4: Forrest Gump (1994)
#3: Metropolitan (1990)
#2: The Incredibles (2004)
#1: The Lives of Others (2007)
Their #1 Conservative movie of the last 25 years is The Lives of Others, a German film that is ironically about the evils of government wiretapping.
Other movies on their list are equally interesting. They picked #10 Ghostbusters because the bad guy (not counting the ghosts) is an obnoxious bureaucrat who works for the EPA. And how #24 Team America: World Police by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Brazil by Terry Gilliam (from Monty Python) got onto their list is a mystery.
UPDATE: Fark has the complete list, along with the conservative review of each movie from NRO. I love some of their comments — Brazil is “Vividly depicting the miserable results of elitist utopian schemes”. In The Cronicles of Narnia “The White Witch runs a godless, oppressive, paranoid regime that hates Santa Claus”. And in The Dark Knight, Batman represents none other than Dubya, whose “stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the tide of war” against the terrorist Joker — by devising new means of surveillance, pushing the limits of the law, and accepting the hatred of the press and public. I kid you not. |
The award is one of the most important in the auto industry -- and it's going to a startup electric-car maker
Motor Trend has given its Car of the Year award to Tesla for its Model S electric sedan (Photo11: Tesla) Story Highlights Motor Trend gives its highest honor to Tesla
The Model S sedan beat Porsche Boxster, BMW 3 Series and others
The magazine says its vote was unanimous for the first time "in memory"
In a move sure to shock the auto world, Motor Trend has named a startup company's plug-in electric vehicle as its coveted Car of the Year. The winner: Tesla's Model S sedan.
What's more, it wasn't even close: Motor Trend says it was first time time "in memory" that every judge agreed. In order to win for 2013, the Tesla had to beat luxury sedans like Lexus GS and BMW 3 Series and sports car like Porsche 911 and Subaru BRZ.
While the auto world is awash in awards, Motor Trend's nod is one of the most closely watched, along with the North American Car of the Year. The magazine didn't hold back its praise for the Tesla sedan.
A CLOSER LOOK: Cars.com checks out the Model S
"It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive. But it's also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius," Motor Trend writes "By any measure, the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable automobile, perhaps the most accomplished all-new luxury car since the original Lexus LS 400."
Tesla is the California-based automaker run by entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also is CEO of SpaceX, the rocket-launching firm. The Model S, which starts at about $57,000, is an all-electric sedan that in its longest range version is government-certified as being able to go 265 miles on a single charge.
"Our aspiration with the Model S was to show that an electric car truly can be better than any gasoline car," says Musk in a statement. "Nothing illustrates this more clearly than winning Motor Trend's Car of the Year by unanimous decision."
Motor Trend said it achieved the electric equivalent of 118 miles a gallon on a 212-mile jaunt. Yet the 4,766-pound car was able to bolt from zero to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds. It had a top speed of 133 mph. The performance version has electric motors that put out the equal to 416 horsepower in a gas engine.
Motor Trend calls it "one of the quickest American four doors ever built."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/RyA3TE |
"Trump rallies are still jam-packed, compared not only to Clinton's rallies, but the usual attendance we see at political rallies even this close to Election Day."
But what about that elephant in the Trump Tower penthouse? His personality is a problem. Most of the electorate simply does not see him as a good or even decent person. In any other election year, where the personal likability of the candidate is probably the most important factor, the public's lack of esteem for Trump would be lethal.
Yet this isn't any other election year. Trump is running against a candidate with an almost equally poor likability factor. So by definition, millions of us will be voting for someone we don't personally like or even greatly respect. And in this age of terror and Wikileaks, something could happen to make us switch our vote to the other candidate that we also don't like or respect all that much. Pollsters and other experts alike could be assuming that since most voters do not personally like Trump or Clinton, they won't vote for one or the other. Political choices are ultimately emotional choices for 99 percent of us, and polls can't always gauge emotions very well.
But let's look at some other polls for a second, because there is absolutely no diversity when it comes to what the polls are telling us about the direction of the country. Every major poll taken over the past two years has shown a massive majority of the respondents believe the country is going in the wrong direction.
The average of the last nine of those polls has the "wrong direction" folks with more than a 35 percentage point majority. That's well into the territory where historically the incumbent party in the White House is toast. And Clinton has done almost nothing to try to recast herself as a change agent. This is one key wildcard the election pollsters may not really be able to adjust for when it comes to how they measure Trump's support.
And that wildcard comes mostly from economic uncertainty and pain. No one thinks things are as bad as they were during the height of the 2008-09 Great Recession. But wages are still depressed, the GDP is barely growing, and a newly-leaked email shows even Democratic National Committee acting Chair Donna Brazile telling Clinton campaign Chair John Podesta that the economy is simply not good.
Economic disenchantment has been evident throughout this campaign, especially at the Trump and Bernie Sanders rallies. Perhaps the reason Clinton doesn't draw the big crowds despite a lead in the polls is that even her supporters may not be up for hearing happy talk about the Obama economy and how she'll keep it going. Economic despair, even among Clinton fans, has to be considered a possible drag on turnout for her and a possible lightning bolt for Trump.
The bottom line is that the usual election rules are in the trash in 2016; that's been apparent ever since Trump first surged in the early GOP primary polls. The question is why so many experts are so certain that things are back to normal enough to stop worrying about a Trump win. |
I’ve been working on a few nice things for the behind the scenes stuff.
First thing I did was make a few of the admin commands nicer. Banning now can take an optional timeout and unban automatically once the time is done. The cavaets are that the server needs to stay running, because temp bans aren’t stored, yet (perm bans are of course). This is useful for short term bans for someone to cool off, like 10 minutes or a few hours.
Next, I retooled a bunch of the duplicate admin commands to take a playerSpecifier instead. See my player specifiers post on the forums for more detail on how they work.
Then I changed /listcid to simply /list and modified it to also display the player’s UUID and if the player has characters that can’t normally be displayed by our font it will display the UTF escape code for the character instead. So if you have someone named “😀☃” you won’t be able to read their nickname normally but the list command will output them as $3 : \ud83d\ude00\u2603 : $$(uuid goes here).
You can use the unicode escape sequence to address them to any admin command.
Notice that I’m using the \u not the \U unicode escape sequences, which means much of my time this morning was taken up writing an encoder and decoder for UTF surrogate pairs and redoing bits of the parser to handle them better. This will save a lot of keystrokes though, because that sort of huge unicode codepoint is rare.
Next, I stuck a lua script hook into the command processor. Now you can define your own admin commands. There isn’t much to the lua API yet, but that will change as we figure out what you need.
Finally, I changed the format of the Lua callbacks so that Doxygen can parse them (some of them anyway, there’s still a lot to do), then I changed our doxygen settings to make documentation fit for public consumption (remove verbatim_headers and full_source).
You can find public documentation at: http://doc.playstarbound.com.
Currently it’s updated manually whenever I fancy it. But once we get the nightlies system working, I’ll make sure that the script that uploads the nightlies also updates the documentation. Enjoy modders. |
By Dan Williams
I'm excited to announce the release of Solo5! Solo5 is essentially a kernel library that bootstraps the hardware and forms a base (similar to Mini-OS) from which unikernels can be built. It runs on fully virtualized x86 hardware (e.g., KVM/QEMU), using virtio device interfaces.
Importantly, Solo5 is integrated (to some extent) with the MirageOS toolstack, so the Solo5 version of the Mirage toolstack can build Mirage unikernels that run directly on KVM/QEMU instead of Xen. As such, Solo5 can be considered an alternative to Mini-OS in the Mirage stack. Try it out today!
In the rest of this post, I'll give a bit of motivation about why I think the lowest layer of the unikernel is interesting and important, as well as a rough overview of the steps I took to create Solo5.
Why focus so far down the software stack?
When people think about Mirage unikernels, one of the first things that comes to mind is the use of a high-level language (OCaml). Indeed, the Mirage community has invested lots of time and effort producing implementations of traditional system components (e.g., an entire TCP stack) in OCaml. The pervasive use of OCaml contributes to security arguments for Mirage unikernels (strong type systems are good) and is an interesting design choice well worth exploring.
But underneath all of that OCaml goodness is a little kernel layer written in C. This layer has a direct impact on:
What environments the unikernel can run on. Mini-OS, for example, assumes a paravirtualized (Xen) machine, whereas Solo5 targets full x86 hardware virtualization with virtio devices.
Boot time. "Hardware" initialization (or lack of it in a paravirtualized case) is a major factor in achieving the 20 ms unikernel boot times that are changing the way people think about elasticity in the cloud.
Memory layout and protection. Hardware "features" like page-level write protection must be exposed by the lowest layer for techniques like memory tracing to be performed. Also, software-level strategies like address space layout randomization require cooperation of this lowest layer.
Low-level device interfacing. As individual devices (e.g., NICs) gain virtualization capabilities, the lowest software layer is an obvious place to interface directly with hardware.
Threads/events. The low-level code must ensure that device I/O is asynchronous and/or fits with the higher-level synchronization primitives.
The most popular existing code providing this low-level kernel layer is called Mini-OS. Mini-OS was (I believe) originally written as a vehicle to demonstrate the paravirtualized interface offered by Xen for people to have a reference to port their kernels to and as a base for new kernel builders to build specialized Xen domains. Mini-OS is a popular base for MirageOS, ClickOS, and other unikernels. Other software that implements a unikernel base include Rumprun and OSv.
I built Solo5 from scratch (rather than adapting Mini-OS, for example) primarily as an educational (and fun!) exercise to explore and really understand the role of the low-level kernel layer in a unikernel. To provide applications, Solo5 supports the Mirage stack. It is my hope that Solo5 can be a useful base for others; even if only at this point to run some Mirage applications on KVM/QEMU!
Solo5: Building a Unikernel Base from Scratch
At a high level, there are roughly 3 parts to building a unikernel base that runs on KVM/QEMU and supports Mirage:
Typical kernel hardware initialization. The kernel must know how to load things into memory at the desired locations and prepare the processor to operate in the correct mode (e.g., 64-bit). Unlike typical kernels, most setup is one-time and simplified. The kernel must set up a memory map, stack, interrupt vectors, and provide primitives for basic memory allocation. At its simplest, a unikernel base kernel does not need to worry about user address spaces, threads, or many other things typical kernels need.
Interact with virtio devices. virtio is a paravirtualized device standard supported by some hypervisors, including KVM/QEMU and Virtualbox. As far as devices go, virtio devices are simple: I was able to write (very simple/unoptimized) virtio drivers for Solo5 drivers from scratch in C. At some point it may be interesting to write them in OCaml like the Xen device drivers in Mirage, but for someone who doesn't know OCaml (like me) a simple C implementation seemed like a good first step. I should note that even though the drivers themselves are written in C, Solo5 does include some OCaml code to call out to the drivers so it can connect with Mirage.
Appropriately link Mirage binaries/build system. A piece of software called mirage-platform performs the binding between Mini-OS and the rest of the Mirage stack. Building a new unikernel base means that this "cut point" will have lots of undefined dependencies which can either be implemented in the new unikernel base, stubbed out, or reused. Other "cut points" involve device drivers: the console, network and block devices. Finally, the mirage tool needs to output appropriate Makefiles for the new target and an overall Makefile needs to put everything together.
Each one of these steps carries complexity and gotchas and I have certainly made many mistakes when performing all of them. The hardware initialization process is needlessly complex, and the overall Makefile reflects my ignorance of OCaml and its building and packaging systems. It's a work in progress!
Next Steps and Getting Involved
In addition to the aforementioned clean up, I'm currently exploring the boot time in this environment. So far I've found that generating a bootable iso with GRUB as a bootloader and relying on QEMU to emulate BIOS calls to load the kernel is, by the nature of emulation, inefficient and something that should be avoided.
If you find the lowest layer of the unikernel interesting, please don't hesitate to contact me or get involved. I've packaged the build and test environment for Solo5 into a Docker container to reduce the dependency burden in playing around with it. Check out the repo for the full instructions!
I'll be talking about Solo5 at the upcoming 2016 Unikernels and More: Cloud Innovators Forum event to be held on January 22, 2016 at SCALE 14X in Pasadena, CA USA. I look forward to meeting some of you there!
Discuss this post on devel.unikernel.org
Thanks to Amir, Mort, and Jeremy, for taking the time to read and comment on earlier drafts. |
The American Civil Rights Union’s Robert Knight, who has been encouraging Republicans to run on social issues such as hostility to abortion rights and opposition to LGBT equality, now thinks the GOP should campaign on denying the existence of evolution.
Citing a Pew poll which shows that belief in evolution has plummeted in the GOP and is now shared by only a minority of Republicans, Knight told the American Family Association’s One News Now that “Republicans have a great opportunity” to expose the “lies that liberals have told over the years” and begin “questioning evolution more than ever.”
He also warns that a belief in evolution “leads to terrible things like socialism and communism and fascism and Nazism and the more extreme forms of liberalism in this country.” |
DENVER (CBS4) – Legalized marijuana dents the drug’s black market.
That’s one lure Amendment 64 supporters employed in 2012 to entice voters hesitant about legalized pot to cast a ballot for it: Grow it, sell it and tax it legally and there would be fewer instances of back-alley, street-corner deals.
It didn’t take long for CBS4 Investigator Rick Sallinger to find the black market is still operating. A source provided some phone numbers and one quick call was all it took to set up a prospective deal. A CBS producer with a hidden camera met the dealer on the corner of 12th Avenue and Lincoln Street in Denver.
“What’s that?” the producer asked.
“That’s the skunk. I threw in a bonus bud of Afghan in there,” the dealer replied.
The producer did not accept the marijuana or provide any money.
But drug investigators and Denver Police Department numbers disagree.
“The black market has exploded and continues to,” Ernie Martinez, the president of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association and a Denver police lieutenant, told CBS4. “It’s totally Pollyanna to think it’s gone.”
Martinez says there are several reasons. Customers, he believes, might prefer to buy from their long-time dealers, they trust them and they like the product. But the key reasons are money and supply.
“Bottom line: It’s cheaper,” he said. “And you can get more of it. Unlimited amounts, as long as you have the money.”
Martinez says narcotics officers across the state see that financial undercutting daily.
Drug seizures have increased in the last several months, Martinez says. Distributors continue to haul the drug from Mexico along Interstate 25 and up through southwestern border states and into Colorado on Interstate 70.
“It’s very naïve and, in a lot of instances, it’s very disingenuous to think the cartel or the black market has gone away or been eliminated,” Martinez says.
But a street dealer disagrees.
“It’s destroyed the black market,” says a dealer who agreed to talk on the condition that CBS4 wouldn’t reveal his identity. “Five years ago, millions of dollars were still flowing down I-25 toward Mexico to supply the marijuana for the people who smoked here.”
Now, he guesses, only about 10 percent of the pot market is supplied illegally, down from his estimate of 90 percent before Amendment 64. He says he’s generating only 50 percent of the business he did three years ago.
CBS4 asked Denver police about the statistics. They pointed out they have changed methods of keeping track and many times marijuana sales are often included in other crimes not reflected in those figures.
The dealer, who spent six years in prison on a marijuana conviction before Denver loosened its restrictions, buys medical marijuana with a card and then profits through volume by selling smaller amounts — quarter- and eighth-ounces — for more money.
But if recreational and medical marijuana cost significantly more — at least twice as much as he offered it to CBS4’s undercover producer — how could he see a hit to his business?
“Anyone can go get a medical card for just about any reason. Why they don’t baffles me,” he says.
As prices drop, the black market will, too, he argues.
“It’s just a matter of time before the recreational prices come down and the laws of the marketplace step in,” the dealer says. “Once that price goes down to a fair level, there will be no use for someone like me.”
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Supernatural pulled another huge status-quo change at the end of last season, and now we've gotten our first glimpse of how this massive event will play out. And let's just say Demon Dean reminds us a little bit of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Spoilers ahead...
The Supernatural panel at Comic-Con showed us a clip where the demonized version of Dean Winchester meets Sam for the first time — from an episode directed by Jensen Ackles. (Ackles mentioned that Dean spends a lot of the episode tied up, a fact the fans were excited to hear.)
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The clip mostly consisted of Dean stalking Sam through the Men of Letters HQ with a big fire axe, and very nearly taking Sam's head off. Dean has a great snarky energy as he urges Sammy to come and get it. At one point he calls his brother "Sammy bear." Later, the two Winchesters are face to face, and Dean is telling Sam that he's the real monster — Dean may be a demon now, but Sam has done some terrible things (including recently, searching for Dean) that are more monstrous.
During the panel, Ackles mentioned that Demon Dean isn't like other demons we've met on the show — this isn't a demon possessing a "meat suit," it's Dean's soul twisted in a demonic direction. Dean is still himself, just evil and sadistic. And Demon Dean doesn't care as much about the Impala as regular Dean does.
Demon Dean is like the guy at the party who doesn't want the party to end, even after his friends have all left and the music has died down, Ackles told us in the media pressroom. He doesn't even care, he just wants to be an asshole. Demon Dean is constantly getting into fights. "Lot of booze, lot of babes, lot of fights." Demon Dean isn't comedic, but he's definitely lighter — especially after last year, where Dean was so guilt-ridden.
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A big deal last season was when Sam claimed that he would never go to as extreme lengths to save Dean as Dean had gone to to save Sam. But now, we're going to see Sam going to crazy lengths to find and save demon Dean. We asked Padalecki about this contradiction, and he said Sam was lying to Dean "because he was hurt," and "you always hurt the ones you're closest to."
Added Padalecki, "Sam wasn't saying, 'I don't care about you'... that was Sam's way of saying, 'You hurt me and you lied to me and you let me get possessed by an angel.' We do see how far Sam is willing to go, and Sam goes outrageously far, and we see the darker side of Sam, and we test the edges of morality."
But the time when Dean was in purgatory and Sam didn't look for him because he got a girlfriend and dog "was strange," added Padalecki.
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Padalecki said it's been a lot of hard work coming up with new versions of Sam — the soulless version, the angel version — and it's nice that Dean is dealing with that this time around, and Padalecki has has a much more relaxing summer. Padalecki enjoyed playing soulless Sam because he was a character of pure logic, and Padalecki drew on his past as a "mathlete" in school, with a version of Sam who's always calculating.
Mark Sheppard, who plays Crowley, hinted on the panel that nobody will ever believe that Crowley didn't know what would happen to Dean with the Mark of Cain — but at the same time, Crowley may or may not be able to control his new demon friend.
In the press interviews, I asked Sheppard if he thought the relationship between Crowley and Dean was mostly just Crowley manipulating Dean, or whether there was other stuff going on. Sheppard said "there's genuine affection" between Crowley and Dean, and Crowley "would have done a lot of things, if he didn't care for" Dean. You never quite know what Crowley's endgame is, but he always manages to resolve things so he comes out on top.
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Also, Misha Collins, who plays Castiel, said that Cas will be much more concerned with helping Sam to fix Dean than with his own fading grace. During the pressroom interviews, Collins told us:
"I think Cas has developed a somewhat fatalistic perspective on life, and I think that he feels like he's doomed because the only solution he now is to either get Metatron's cooperation, which he's too prideful to do, or slit an angel's throat and steal its grace and he doesn't want to kill any more angels, so he is somewhat resigned to his own expiration. So he's conerned about it, but he feels like doesn't have any options."
Showrunner Jeremy Carver said that Dean's demon transformation shapes everything that happens this season — and he also teased the 200th episode, which sounds like it's going to be not just a musical, but some kind of hair-metal tribute. Rawk on.
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In the pressroom interviews, Carver said the new season is "not going to be quest-oriented," and instead the arc is going to be much more character-based and built around the impact of the decisions the characters have made. "Crowley and Castiel are going to be confronted with some very personal issues," said Carver.
"Last year was certain people deciding who they wanted to be," Carver added. "Everybody had to make that decision in the season. This season is, 'I am who I am.' That could be a very good or very bad thing."
Carver also teased that there would be some returning characters — one episode will team Sheriff Mills with Sheriff Donna Hanscum from the episode "The Purge," and the show will be doing its own version of The Heat.
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In addition, "you're going to see characters that have been spoken of and have never been seen over the 10 years" of the series, Carver added.
Could Castiel star in a Supernatural spin-off? The writers are still "kicking around a lot of possible ideas about what a spin-off could be," said Collins in the press roundtables. "But nobody's talked to me." Asked about another attempted spin-off, Carver would only say that they're looking at the whiteboard and listing some ideas right now. |
For the first time in 25 years, staff at the Smithsonian's National Zoo are making preparations for the highly anticipated birth of an endangered Bornean orangutan. With a breeding recommendation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Species Survival Plan (SSP), the 19-year-old parents to be, female Batang and male Kyle, bred in January. On Feb. 2, a common human pregnancy test confirmed that Batang had successfully conceived. Earlier today, the Zoo announced Batang's pregnancy through a broadcast via Facebook Live of her ultrasound; it will continue to provide weekly updates on Batang through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #OrangutanStory.
Zoo veterinarians have conducted bi-weekly ultrasounds since Feb. 2 and are encouraged that the ultrasounds have shown fetal growth and development, heightening hopes that Batang will give birth for the first time. They are cautiously optimistic that she will deliver a healthy baby around mid-September. However, just like any animal pregnancy, there is a possibility that miscarriage, stillbirth or a complication could occur.
All of our perseverance and planning paid off when we confirmed Batang's pregnancy, said Meredith Bastian, curator of primates and member of the Orangutan SSP Steering Committee. Watching her fetus develop over the past few months has been incredibly exciting, and we're making every effort to ensure our efforts come to fruition.
For the past three years, keepers have been acclimating Batang to the experiences of motherhood and training her to care for an infant. Building upon behaviors Batang has learned through routine training sessions, keepers presented her with a plush, bean-shaped pillow and an orangutan stuffed animal to simulate a baby. Keepers trained her to hold the fake baby upright, carry it around the enclosure and return the pillow baby to keepers through a specially designed baby box when asked. Should animal care staff need to evaluate a real orangutan baby's health, this training would help staff retrieve the infant in a way that is safe and not stressful for the animals. Batang has also been trained to use a breast pump for milk collection in the event she is unable to successfully nurse.
Training increases the likelihood that orangutan mothers will care for their infants said Becky Malinsky, assistant curator of primates.This training is especially important for a first time mother, like Batang. It is our goal for the infant to be raised by her mother, learning how to be an orangutan from Batang and the other orangutans at the zoo.
In the event that Batang is unable or unwilling to care for her infant, keepers are training females Bonnie and Iris to act as surrogate mothers. They receive similar training to Batang, but with a slight twist: keepers ask them to bring the pillow baby and present it to the keepers for bottle feedings. Batang is also trained to present the infant for bottle feedings if she is unable to nurse. As a last resort, keepers will prepare a nursery in the event it is necessary for them to hand-raise the baby with the goal of returning the infant to its mother or surrogate as soon as possible.
Native to Indonesia, orangutans live in the tropical rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. For the past seven decades, humans have cleared land that was originally orangutan territory in order to meet the growing demand for palm oil products, fast-growing pulp wood and food crops leaving orangutans in competition with one another for space, food and mates. Scientists estimate that in the past 75 years, the number of wild orangutans has decreased by 80 percent. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the Bornean orangutan as endangered and the Sumatran orangutan as critically endangered.
Visitors can see the Zoo's six orangutans daily at the Great Ape House and the Think Tank. At the Great Ape House, visitors can meet a great ape keeper to learn about the fascinating world of apes at 11:30 a.m. daily. At Think Tank, staff and interpretive volunteers perform daily demonstrations and lead discussions on research in cognitive science, highlighting current and ongoing National Zoo studies at 1:30 p.m. Visitors can also see the orangutans traveling on the O-Line on warm-weather days in the late morning and early afternoon.
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Today we arrived at the mine to discover a major river running down the slope. With the intense rain and snow melt on the island, all the water had to go somewhere. When we walked down to the dive staging area we were shocked to discover that we had lost more than 20 feet of waterfront. The dock was close to the ceiling and the benches and staging area were submerging. It was simply not safe to use our walkways and dock.
Not to be discouraged, the skeleton team jumped into action. Volunteers were unable to make it across The Tickle on the ferry, so we were a little short handed. All hands moved tanks, tables and gear and deconstructed the lighting system and rest of the infrastructure. Repairs will need to be made when the water level drops. The water came up six feet through the day. With a hard freeze tonight, we are hoping the inflow subsides.
The rushing water also destroyed visibility for a significant distance. Cas Dobbin and I entered the water in another column and groped through 250 feet of zero-visibility muck. When we finally emerged from the clay colored water, we could see white misty in-feeding seeps further polluting the visibility. We made our way down to 130 feet of depth and spent some time shooting equipment near the pumping station. We found a lot more interesting graffiti and even managed to identify one of the people named on the wall. His friends were assisting at the mine and told us about his prowess playing strongman on their hockey team.
Cas and I were the only ones eager to make a second dive. We worked on a video mission and searched for the best area to lay line the following day. The visibility seemed to be best on the east of our entry, as far away as possible from the in-feeding meltwater. Our dive went well until our decompression stop when Cas tore a mouthpiece and experienced what we call a caustic cocktail. Water leaked into his rebreather and mixed with the carbon dioxide absorbent material, creating an alkaline fluid that can burn the mouth. We were in inches of visibility when he quickly switched off his loop and got on open circuit air. He coughed and I reached out to hold him. The scuba air was the same temperature as the water at 3 degrees, so he became quickly chilled. Rebreathers create an exothermic reaction that gives a diver warm moist air to breathe. Traditional scuba is like inhaling freezing air, chilling the diver more quickly. Cas handled the emergency like a really well practiced explorer and managed through the chill to complete his full decompression obligation.
After the dive, we jumped right into our medical tests and learned many more new things about decompression stress. I’ll leave the details for a future blog, but suffice to say, the medical research being done here is incredibly valuable to the team and to understanding extreme dive profiles. We are grateful for Neal Pollock and Stefanie Martina who have to put in days as long as ours to collect the important data. |
Authority vs.. Freedom
Why Islamists and Fascists Persecute Christians
FrontPage Magazine A study from the Europe-based Center for Studies on New Religions recently confirmed that “Christians continue to be the most persecuted believers in the world, with over 90,000 followers of Christ being killed in the last year [2016],” which computes to one death every six minutes. The study also found that as many as 600 million Christians around the world were prevented from practicing their faith. Which group is most prone to persecute Christians around the world? The answer to this was made clear by another recent study; it found that, of the ten nations around the world where Christians suffer the worst forms of persecution, nine are Islamic, though the absolute worst—North Korea—is not.
What is it about Christians that brings the worst out of some people, Muslims in the majority? Three main reasons come to mind, though there are more: Christianity is the largest religion in the world . There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world. Moreover, because much of the territory that Islam conquered throughout the centuries was originally Christian—including all of the Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa—Muslims are still confronted with vestiges of Christianity. In Egypt alone, which was the intellectual center of early Christendom before the Islamic invasions, at least 10 million Christians remain. In short, because of their sheer numbers alone, Christians in the Muslim world are much more likely to suffer under Islam than other “infidels.”
. There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world. Moreover, because much of the territory that Islam conquered throughout the centuries was originally Christian—including all of the Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa—Muslims are still confronted with vestiges of Christianity. In Egypt alone, which was the intellectual center of early Christendom before the Islamic invasions, at least 10 million Christians remain. In short, because of their sheer numbers alone, Christians in the Muslim world are much more likely to suffer under Islam than other “infidels.” Christianity is devoted to “proclaiming the Gospel” (literally, “the good news). No other major religion—not Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism—has this missionary aspect. These faiths tend to be coextensive with certain ethnicities and homegrown to certain locales. The only other religion that has what can be described as a missionary element is Islam itself. Thus, because Christianity is the only religion that actively challenges Muslims with the truths of its own message, so too is it the primary religion to be accused of proselytizing, which is banned under Islamic law. And by publicly uttering teachings that contradict Muhammad’s—including Christianity’s core message—Christians fall afoul of Islam’s blasphemy law as well. Hence why most Muslims who apostatize to other religions—and get punished for it, sometimes with death—apostatize to Christianity.
(literally, “the good news). No other major religion—not Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism—has this missionary aspect. These faiths tend to be coextensive with certain ethnicities and homegrown to certain locales. The only other religion that has what can be described as a missionary element is Islam itself. Thus, because Christianity is the only religion that actively challenges Muslims with the truths of its own message, so too is it the primary religion to be accused of proselytizing, which is banned under Islamic law. And by publicly uttering teachings that contradict Muhammad’s—including Christianity’s core message—Christians fall afoul of Islam’s blasphemy law as well. Hence why most Muslims who apostatize to other religions—and get punished for it, sometimes with death—apostatize to Christianity. Christianity is the quintessential religion of martyrdom. From its inception—beginning with Jesus, and followed by his disciples and countless others in the early church—many Christians have been willing to accept death rather than to stop spreading the Gospel—or, worse, renounce the faith; this was evident in ancient times at the hands of the pagan Roman Empire and in medieval (and modern) times at the hands of Muslims and other persecutors. Practically no other religion encourages its adherents to embrace death rather than abjure the faith. Thus, whereas Christ says “But whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:33; see also Luke 14:33), Islam teaches Muslims to conceal and even publicly renounce Muhammad, rather than die. Moreover, other religions and sects approve of dissimulation to preserve their adherents’ lives. A nineteenth-century missionary observed that in Iran “Bahaism enjoys taqiyya (concealment of faith) as a duty, but Christianity demands public profession; and hence in Persia it is far easier to become a Bahai than to become a Christian.”1
Christianity’s penchant to refuse to toe the line that, from its beginnings till now, has caused fascists and supremacists to persecute Christians Of course, Islam’s oppressive laws target people of all or no religions. Many outspoken Muslim apostates in the West who never converted to Christianity must fear execution should they ever fall into the hands of their former coreligionists. However, they are here now, alive and well in the West and warning us, precisely because they were not challenging the spiritual truths of Islam then, when they were living under its shadow—and why should they have been? If life is limited to the now, as it is in the secular worldview, why risk it, especially when merely not rocking the boat, as many “moderate Muslims” do, will save it? It is in fact Christianity’s penchant to refuse to toe the line that, from its beginnings till now, has caused fascists2 and supremacists of all stripes—from the ancient Roman Empire (whence the word fascist is derived) to modern day North Korea—to persecute Christians. The latter have a long history of refusing to be silent and paying the sort of lip service that everyone else is willing to offer to get by. Just as Jesus irked Pilate by refusing to utter some words to save his life—“Don’t you realize I have the power either to set you free or crucify you?” asked the bewildered procurator (John 19:10)—his disciples and countless other ancient Christians defied the Roman Empire, prompting several emperors to launch what, at least until now, were deemed history’s worst persecutions of Christians; and today, countless modern day Christians continue grieving and thus being punished by their totalitarian and supremacist overlords—from North Korea to every corner of the Muslim world—for the very same reasons. Samuel M. Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam: Answering the Question Why There are So Few Moslem Converts, and Giving Examples of Their Moral Courage and Martyrdom (London: Marshall Brothers, 1916), 25. I use the term “fascist(s)” here in the popular sense – as in a non-Christian regime that “forcibly suppress[es] opposition and criticism” — and not in reference to any particular fascist party or government of history.
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RAYMOND IBRAHIM (RaymondIbrahim.com) is a widely published author, public speaker, and Middle East and Islam expert. His books include Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). His writings, translations, and observations have appeared in a variety of publications, including Fox News, Financial Times, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Syndicate, United Press International, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Weekly Standard; scholarly journals, including the Almanac of Islamism, Chronicle of Higher Education, Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, Middle East Quarterly, and Middle East Review of International Affairs; and popular websites, such as American Thinker, the Blaze, Bloomberg, Christian Post, FrontPage Magazine, Gatestone Institute, the Inquisitr, Jihad Watch, NewsMax, National Review Online, PJ Media, VDH’s Private Papers, and World Magazine. He has contributed chapters to several anthologies and been translated into various languages.
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Mike D'Antoni's candidacy for the Houston Rockets' coaching job is gaining momentum, according to league sources.
Sources told ESPN on Wednesday that D'Antoni has emerged as a leading candidate for the post, having impressed Rockets owner Leslie Alexander in multiple conversations since the search began. Alexander vowed to ESPN last month during the playoffs that he would take a more active role in this coaching search than he has in the past.
The Houston Chronicle on Wednesday labeled D'Antoni as the front-runner for the post. One source close to the process told ESPN that the Rockets' search had not yet progressed to that point but did say D'Antoni was indeed gaining steam in the search for a successor to Kevin McHale and interim replacement J.B. Bickerstaff.
The Rockets will be Mike D'Antoni's fifth head-coaching job after previous stints with the Nuggets, Suns, Knicks and Lakers. Soobum Im/USA TODAY Sports
ESPN reported Tuesday that Jeff Van Gundy has received strong support from Rockets general manager Daryl Morey to make a return to Houston for a second stint as Rockets coach, but sources say Alexander has yet to be sold on a reunion with the ESPN analyst, who has been working in television since the sides parted ways in May 2007.
Sources said Tuesday night that the Rockets would seek to hire a coach with strong defensive credentials, to essentially serve as D'Antoni's defensive coordinator, if talks progress to a serious stage and D'Antoni is the choice to take over.
The offensive-minded D'Antoni, currently serving as associate head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, has previously been a head coach with Denver, Phoenix, New York and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Since its first-round elimination earlier this month, Houston has interviewed D'Antoni, former Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt, former Phoenix Suns coach Jeff Hornacek, Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach Sam Cassell, Charlotte Hornets assistant Stephen Silas, San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina, current Rockets assistant Chris Finch and TNT analyst Kenny Smith.
It emerged Monday that Smith had been informed that he is no longer being considered for the position, with sources saying Houston is focused on hiring a seasoned former head coach. Messina, who has extensive head-coaching experience overseas, interviewed Saturday, sources told The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears.
The Chronicle reported in Tuesday's editions that former Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel remains "part of the process." Vogel interviewed with the Rockets in the 2011 offseason while still the Pacers' interim coach, but the job went to McHale.
ESPN reported Monday the Memphis Grizzlies have registered strong interest in Vogel, who has also interviewed for the Knicks' coaching vacancy and is widely considered a leading candidate for the Orlando Magic's coaching job along with current Magic assistant Adrian Griffin.
The Rockets fired McHale just 11 games into what was the first season of a three-year deal. Houston lost to Golden State in five games in the first round of the playoffs while slipping well off the standard it set in 2014-15, when the club won 56 games and reached the Western Conference finals.
After his own meeting with team officials, Bickerstaff withdrew from consideration early in the search, despite posting a 37-34 record upon succeeding McHale and helping Houston rally into a playoff spot after its seasonlong defensive struggles. |
Foto: Index
VIŠE građana Zagreba posljednjih je dana primilo SMS poruku u kojoj ih se pita za koga će glasati na lokalnim izborima, nepoznati anketar danas je predstavio i rezultate svoje ankete prema kojem je najviše glasova osvojio Milan Bandić. Isto tako objavili su i brojeve telefona građana koji su im odgovarali na sms anketu s njihovim odgovorima. No, krenimo redom.
Objavili odgovore s brojem telefona
S telefonskog broja 0996330278 građani su dobili poruku u kojoj je stajalo: "SMS anketa. Na izborima za gradonačelnika Zagreba glasovat ću za; 1. M. Bandić 2. D. Bernardić 3. A. Mikulić 4. D.Prgomet 5. S. Švaljek 6. A.M. Taritaš". Danas su s mail adrese smsankete@gmail stigli i "rezultati" ankete i to zbog "velikog interesa javnosti".
"Šaljemo vam rezultate sms ankete koja je provedena u subotu i nedjelju", stoji u mail poruci. U dnu email poruke navedeni su odgovori koji su stizali s brojeva mobitela, a nedostaje tek zadnji broj. Tko stoji iza ove ankete te objave brojeva građana koji su u istoj sudjelovali nije poznato. Naime, broj s kojeg se građanima slao upit više nije aktivan, a na s maila [email protected] nismo dobili nikakav odgovor.
Navodno je u anketi sudjelovalo 14491 građana.
HAKOM: Ne odgovarajte na pozive
U HAKOM-u odgovarajući na upit Indexa kažu kako je ovakve poruke najbolje zanemariti.
Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa
"U konkretnom slučaju radi se o anketiranju korisnika koje nije regulirano Zakonom o elektroničkim komunikacijama jer ne predstavlja promidžbu ni prodaju, ali bi se ono moralo provoditi na način da se zna tko provodi anketu, odnosno ne bi se smjelo provoditi s neregistriranih brojeva. U navedenim slučajevima, ako građani ne žele odgovarati na postavljena pitanja, predlažemo da zamole anketare da ih se više ne kontaktira, odnosno takav poziv se može jednostavno prekinuti, a u slučaju zaprimanja SMS poruke istu treba zanemariti", stoji u odgovoru HAKOM-a.
Ukoliko se radi o promidžbenim ili prodajnim porukama uporabom automatskih pozivnih i komunikacijskih sustava bez pribavljene prethodne privole korisnika isto predstavlja kršenje Zakona o elektroničkim komunikacijama, odnosno neželjene elektroničke komunikacije te HAKOM na temelju prijave korisnika o navedenim radnjama donosi mjere kako bi se spriječilo daljnje kršenje Zakona i kažnjava prekršitelja.
Istraga zbog zlouporaba
"Naime, ukoliko se utvrdi da ne postoji prethodna privola korisnika za primanje promidžbenih ili prodajnih poruka, protiv prekršitelja će sukladno Zakonu biti pokrenut odgovarajući postupak, a daljnje slanje takvih poruka zabranjeno i onemogućeno. HAKOM je vezano za političku promidžbu u siječnju i rujnu ove godine pokrenuo inspekcijske nadzore te je utvrđeno kako su poruke ovakvog i sličnog sadržaja dolazile s većeg broja neregistriranih „pre-paid“ brojeva koji su ugašeni od strane operatora zbog zlouporabe", kažu nam na kraju iz HAKOM-a. |
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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged on Thursday sending a drone aircraft into Israel on Saturday which was then shot down by the IDF.
Nasrallah said in a televised speech on the Al- Manar station that the drone was Iranian-made and that it was shot down near the Dimona nuclear reactor.
Tamara Zieve and Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.
“The drone flew over sensitive installations inside southern Palestine,” he said.Nasrallah claimed the Ayoub drone was designed and manufactured in Iran and assembled in Lebanon, denying reports that the drone was a Russian design.The Hezbollah leader said the drone was sent as a response to what he referred to as Israel's violations of Lebanese airspace since 2006."This flight was not our first will not be our last, and we give assurances we can reach any point we want. We have the right to dispatch recon planes over occupied Palestine at any time," Nasrallah said.Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu named Hezbollah as the group behind the drone during a tour of the fence that is being built on the border with Egypt.Netanyahu said Israel would “act with determination to defend its borders at sea, on air and land” just as it had “thwarted Hezbollah’s attempt over the weekend,” to send an unmanned aircraft into Israeli airspace.IAF chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel told a group of about 100 new officers on Thursday that the drone intrusion was part of a daily battle being waged against Israel.“The environment in which we live is changing quickly,” Eshel said. “Part of [the region] rejects our values and our right to exist.Now, too, leaders declare their intention to destroy us, while to our north, tens of thousands of people are being butchered and the world is standing on the sidelines.”Netanyahu praised the IDF for being on pace to complete the fence well ahead of schedule. More than 213 km. of the 242-km. fence has been built.“Two years ago, there was no fence here,” he said. “Three thousand migrants were coming in every month and it could have escalated to a lot more, which could have been fatal for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”In a veiled reference to the January election, Netanyahu vowed to return to the fence in six months when it will be complete.
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CTV Kitchener
A 20-year-old woman and 21-year-old man face charges in connection with an alleged unusual bout of cheating at the University of Waterloo.
The woman, Kaiwen Qian, is a student at the school.
She appeared Wednesday in a Kitchener court on charges of personation and uttering a forged document, and was released on $3,000 bail.
She is accused of getting the man – Longhua Wang, a student at York University – to write an exam for her.
Nick Manning, a spokesperson for the school, says staff were alerted to the possibility one or more students would be cheating during a specific math exam.
“(We) put measures in place to detect that cheating, and we discovered that a male student from a different university had been paid to come and take an exam for one of our students,” he told CTV News.
Wang, Manning said, somehow came into possession of a fake Waterloo student ID containing his picture and Qian’s name.
It’s alleged that Wang was paid more than $900 to write the exam.
Qian returns to court in January.
School officials say they continue to investigate the fake student ID, and whether any others were issued.
“We know that students are under immense pressure to pass exams … and inevitably some will find ways to cheat, which is a great shame,” Manning said.
“We … expect them to uphold very high standards of integrity, which means not cheating.” |
Illustration: The Pew Charitable Trusts
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Global investment in clean energy fell 11 percent in 2013. Despite the downward shift, there are still some bright spots that highlight the future of the world’s clean tech industries.
Investment in solar, wind, biofuels, biomass, energy efficiency and energy storage was US $254 billion in 2013, according to a new report [PDF] from Pew Charitable Trusts.
While the stars of the market, wind and solar, have slipped, the unused kilowatt—aka energy efficiency—saw a 15 percent growth in the past year. Investment might be down overall, but 2013 was still a record setting year that also saw energy storage take a foothold in the market.
Solar and wind, with more than $170 billion in investment combined, still make up the lion’s share of the clean tech industry. But energy efficiency, which includes smart meters and energy storage, was the only sector that saw increased investment, with a total of nearly $4 billion in 2013. Most of the efficiency investment was in the United States, where there is an increased focus on saving energy at the state and federal level.
“While there was an overall decline in investment, there are signs that the sector is reaping the rewards of becoming a more mature industry,” Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's clean energy program, said in a statement. “Prices for technologies continue to drop, making them increasingly competitive with conventional power sources. Key clean energy stock indexes rose significantly in 2013, with public market financing up by 176 percent.”
Although the United States led in energy efficiency, Asia is leading the clean tech charge overall with 10 percent growth. China dominated with more than $54 billion in investments in 2013, including a near four-fold increase in solar growth.
“With extensive manufacturing capacity in the solar and wind sectors, growing domestic markets, and unequaled national targets for renewable energy, China is poised to be a leader in the world’s clean energy marketplace for many years to come,” the report authors wrote. Even so, China’s investment was down 6 percent from 2012.
China’s slight decline was offset by the growth in the Japanese market, which is driven by feed-in tariffs for wind and solar. Those incentives were presented as a way to advance renewables as an alternative to nuclear power that went offline in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japanese clean tech investment was up 80 percent in 2013 to nearly $30 billion, putting it third behind China and the United States.
Overall, the European clean tech market has dropped considerably, driven by tighter investment in Germany and Italy in particular. The U.K. is one bright spot for clean energy in Europe, with 13 percent growth in 2012. Most of the growth came in the wind sector, but the UK is also second in the G-20 in terms of “other renewables” because of its investment in biomass.
In the Americas, Canada jumped ahead with a nearly 50 percent growth in investment, also mostly driven by wind. Ontario, in particular, has a goal of completely shutting down its coal-fired electricity generation. But solar was up too, attracting $2.5 billion of the country’s $6.5 billion investment.
Canada, the U.K., and Japan were the only G-20 countries that saw growth, but non G-20 markets grew by 15 percent overall. “Markets for clean energy technologies in fast-growing developing countries are prospering, because these economies view distributed generation as an opportunity to avoid investments in costly transmission systems,” said Pew's Cuttino.
Distributed solar is expected to keep growing in the United States and Japan. Mexico and Turkey each have legislation that could jump start the clean tech industries, according to the report. South Korea is investing in efficiency to manage peak demand. China will continue to lead, however, with goals of 18 gigawatts of wind and 14 gigawatts of solar in 2014.
“In view of industry maturation,” the Pew authors wrote, “Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects a 2014 rebound in worldwide investment and installation of renewable energy.”
Image: Pew Charitable Trusts |
Alexander said at least ten of the attacks were set to take place in the United States. NSA: PRISM stopped NYSE attack
Recently leaked communication surveillance programs have helped thwart more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world since the Sept. 11 attacks, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said Tuesday.
Alexander said at least 10 of the attacks were set to take place in the United States, suggesting that most of the terrorism disrupted by the program had been set to occur abroad.
Story Continued Below
The NSA also disclosed that counterterrorism officials targeted fewer than 300 phone numbers or other “identifiers” last year in the massive call-tracking database secretly assembled by the U.S. government.
( PHOTOS: Pols, pundits weigh in on NSA report)
Alexander said the programs were subject to “extraordinary oversight.”
”This isn’t some rogue operation that a group of guys up at NSA are running,” the spy agency’s chief added.
The data on use of the call-tracking data came in a fact sheet released to reporters in connection with a public House Intelligence Committee hearing exploring the recently leaked telephone data mining program and another surveillance effort focused on Web traffic generated by foreigners.
( POLITICO Junkies: NSA leaks cause flood of political problems)
Alexander said 90 percent of the potential terrorist incidents were disrupted by the Web traffic program known as PRISM. He was less clear about how many incidents the call-tracking effort had helped to avert.
Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said the Web traffic program had contributed to arrests averting a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange that resulted in criminal charges in 2008.
Joyce also indicated that the PRISM program was essential to disrupting a plot to bomb the New York City subways in 2009. “Without the [Section] 702 tool, we would not have identified Najibullah Zazi,” Joyce said.
However, President Barack Obama acknowledged in an interview aired Monday that it is impossible to know whether the subway plot might have been foiled by other methods.
”We might have caught him some other way. We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was suspicious. Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the bomb didn’t go off. But at the margins we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs,” Obama told Charlie Rose on PBS.
At the hearing, Alexander detailed the scope and safeguards of the programs, while Deputy Attorney General James Cole laid out the legal basis for the surveillance.
“This is not a program that’s off the books, that’s been hidden away,” Cole said of the call-tracking program, which was classified “top secret” prior to recent leaks. He noted that the Patriot Act provision found to authorize it has been twice reauthorized by Congress.
“All of us in the national security [community] are constantly trying to balance protecting public safety with protecting people’s civil liberties,” Cole said.
NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis said a very limited number of individuals are authorized to access the call-tracking database. |
Miss, why haven't you got any clothes on? Curvy school teacher, 26, swaps red pen for saucy knickers to moonlight as plus-size lingerie model by night
Teaches psychology and dance by day
Models underwear for full-figured women by night
Launching search for the next Curvy Kate model
By day, Laura Butler teaches A-level students psychology and dance. But by night, she embarks on her other career as full-figured lingerie model.
The 26-year-old blonde was plucked from obscurity in 2009 after winning underwear firm Curvy Kate's first ever 'Star in a Bra' competition and after finishing her day educating students, she strips off to her to to reveal her shapely curves.
And outgoing Laura, from Kingshurst, West Midlands, isn't embarrassed about her second career and says all her friends, family and pupils are behind her.
Scroll down for video
Model teacher: Laura Butler shows off her curves as the face of underwear firm Curvy Kate while carrying on her career teaching A-level students
Let's hear it for the curves: Laura is proud of her womanly figure and likes to show it off whenever she can
She said: 'It was around this time five years ago that I began modelling for Curvy Kate. This was a few years previous to me wanting to be a teacher.
'I had never wanted to teach so never thought modelling would get in the way. Fortunately, it hasn't - despite my students knowing.'
And now Laura is keen for other wannabe models to follow in her footsteps and is helping launch Birmingham's next Curvy Kate 'Star in a Bra' in a contest.
Like butter wouldn't melt: Teacher Laura shows off a more subdued side on a skiing holiday
She said: 'I think people should enter because everyone should do something extraordinary in their life and this ticks all the boxes. I should know as I have ticked them!
'I am not a shy girl, so confidence was never something I was lacking. But 'Star In A Bra' seemed to cement that confidence and it really shines through now in all I do.'
The annual competition to find full-figure models has proved a massive hit, with thousands applying each year.
Hannah Houston, marketing and PR manager for Curvy Kate - which offers D-K cup bras for more voluptuous women - said: 'We truly believe our customers should model our lingerie as these are the girls who will be buying it.
'Our model search is here to prove how gorgeous a shapely figure looks in lingerie.
'Every single one of the girls bring their own spark and personality to the brand and our customers can see exactly how our lingerie would look on a shape similar to theirs.'
Buxom babe: Teacher Laura perches on the end of a bathtub as she shows off her figure
But while it's worked out well for Laura, the same cannot be said for former Harrow School art teacher Joanne Salley, who learned a hard lesson when revealing photos of her taken by a colleague went viral on the internet.
She said the pictures were taken for a bit of fun but ended up almost ruining her life when they were published in 2011.
VIDEO Excuse me Miss! Laura Butler could prove to be a distracting teacher… |
Rumor: Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite full roster leaked
28 characters at launch. Six additional characters planned.
NeoGAF user Ryce who leaked the existence of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite before its December 2016 announcement in November, as well as provided repeated leaks and hints about the game post-announcement, has posted what he claims is the full roster for the upcoming fighting game.
Here is the list, as provided by Ryce:
Capcom Arthur
Chris
Chun-Li
Dante
Firebrand
Jedah
Monster Hunter
Morrigan
Nemesis
Ryu
Spencer
Strider Hiryu
X
Unknown character (Ryce guesses it’s someone like Frank West) Marvel Ant-Man
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Doctor Strange
Gamora
Hawkeye
Hulk
Iron Man
Nova
Rocket / Groot (Ryces says the character was named to him in this way, and that he’s not sure if it’s just Rocket Raccoon with Groot assists or a redesigned character actually called Rocket / Groot)
Spider-Man
Thanos
Thor
Ultron Downloadable Content Six additional characters planned for first season, including the already confirmed Sigma, and Venom.
Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is due out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on September 19. |
After dinner, we headed out into the street to buy some food for the train ride. We found a stall with freshly prepared sandwiches and bought some stock. A taxi picked us up and drove us to the train station at 6pm. Sintija and Gregor, new friends, which we have met at the hotel in Hanoi went also on this train, however they had a ticket to Hoi An and we had a ticket for Hue. While we had a reserved ticket in a compartment with beds, they had to endure all night in the seat section of the train. When we got to our compartment, we realized that we will share it with Jim from USA and his wife from China. They were a really great company and we quickly fell into a debate. In the late evening we turned out the lights and quickly fell asleep. The ride towards the town of Hue was faster this way. The next day, with a one-hour delay, we arrived at the city of Hue. We said goodbye to our one-night room-mates. At the exit from the train station our ride to the hotel, which we booked beforehand, was already waiting for us. Reviews of the hotel were excellent, however it had a little bit strange name – "Google hotel". Upon arrival at the hotel, it turned out that the hotel has nothing to do with Google. :)
After a late breakfast, we headed out onto the streets. After a few steps we met Olle, a friend, who we met at the one-day trip to Halong Bay a few days earlier. We decided to go on a last drink before he returns home to cold Sweden. I really liked that a person who approaches his seventies still travels and enjoys the hustle and bustle in Vietnam. Most people at that age would probably choose to travel with a group or choose a more serene destination. After a drink, we split up, Olle his way, and we our way.
Vietnamese burn fake money, since they believe their ancestors will receive it.
River Song Huong respectively. translated Parfum river that divides the city.
Hairdresser with an interesting entrance.
The bridge is always full of scooters.
River is also used for transportation.
On the opposite bank they had an exhibition of flowers and bonsai trees.
and fishes... :)
Tools on the ground.
Flowers with a flag tower in background.
…
They had really a lot of flowers...
City of Hue is well known for the fact that it was the capital and also imperial city from 1802 till 1945. Within the city there was a forbidden city where the emperor lived. Access to the city had only concubines and his top officials. Whoever wanted to enter by force was killed on the spot. Today it is under protections of UNESCO and converted into a museum. I really recommend the visit, since the city has wonderful architecture.
The entrance does not disappoint.
There are really many details.
It is also worth to look up as the roofs are also richly decorated.
Even the emperor's premises are, of course, top notch decorated. :)
View at the main square inside the Forbidden City.
Artifacts and shadow play...
Architecture...
Open corridors also make an interesting motif.
Some are also richly decorated.
Around the city leads a walking path. It is also possible to go on a carriage ride.
Transitions between different parts of the city are separated by striking doors.
…
…
The choice of complementary colors is also interesting.
Tea house.
Another passage.
…
Rich decoration.
And the exit from the Forbidden City.
The streets are full as allways.
Waiting for the green light. |
DALLAS -- Hal Mumme joined the staff of SMU coach June Jones on Wednesday, bringing together two men behind some of the most prolific passing offenses in NCAA history.
Mumme, who will be Jones' assistant head coach and passing game coordinator, was head coach at Division II McMurry (Texas) the past four seasons, producing three straight winning seasons for a program that had gone eight years without one. McMurry won its first postseason game since 1949 with a Division III playoff victory in 2011, and went 8-3 as an independent in its first season in Division II last year.
Mumme is a former head coach at Kentucky, where he led the Wildcats to their first win over Alabama in 75 years in his first season in 1997. He finished with a four-year record of 20-26. He also has been head coach at New Mexico State, Southeastern Louisiana, Valdosta State and Iowa Wesleyan.
Three of the top seven quarterbacks in career passing yards per game were coached by Jones or Mumme.
Colt Brennan is No. 2 on the list at 373.5, and he was Jones' starter when Hawaii went undefeated in the regular season and played in the Sugar Bowl after the 2007 season. Hawaii beat Mumme-coached New Mexico State that year.
Chase Holbrook averaged 329.1 yards per game under Mumme at New Mexico State to rank fifth all-time, and Hawaii's Timmy Chang is No. 7 at 322.1.
Mumme's arrival also brings some NCAA baggage to the only school that has received the so-called death penalty for recruiting violations. Mumme resigned under pressure at Kentucky in 2001 amid an investigation that led to a one-year bowl ban and a reduction in scholarships.
Mumme was not individually sanctioned, but his recruiting coordinator, Claude Bassett, was effectively banned from working at an NCAA school for eight years. The NCAA said more than $7,000 was spent by Kentucky, primarily through Bassett, for improper recruiting or gifts of money to high school coaches and prospects.
While at New Mexico State, Mumme was accused in a lawsuit of discriminating against four Muslim players. The lawsuit was settled without the school admitting wrongdoing.
Just a few weeks after he was fired with a four-year record of 11-38 at New Mexico State, Mumme revealed that he was being treated for prostate cancer. He took the McMurry job two months later. |
Plaque marking a London zeppelin raid from 1915 (photograph by Christoph Braun/Wikimedia)
Whether it was the terrifying drone of a German heavy bomber or the near-silent hum of a zeppelin, since the beginning of WWI when bombs fell on civilian targets far from the Front, the threat of death from the skies has been very real during times of war. But the art of war is not just in the power of destruction, it is also in methods of confusion and subterfuge.
From January of 1915 until the end of the First World War, German dirigibles made around 51 bombing runs against Great Britain – which led to more than 500 deaths. Although these bombings are often focused on by historians, the Belgian cities of Leige and Antwerp were both bombed in 1914, as was Paris (although Paris received more than the standard incendiary bombs, they were also bombed with leaflets, demanding the French surrender). Originally the German Kaiser, Willhelm II, forbade bombing strikes against London, as the King and Queen of England were his close relatives (he was the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria), although on seeing the immense psychological damage these raids had on the British, the Kaiser complied with the advice of his generals, and London became a target.
“It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb. Join the army at once and help to stop an air raid. God save the King” (1915 poster) (via Library of Congress)
At first there was little that could be done against the silent menace of dirigibles, as the ground-based anti-aircraft weapons of the time did not have the range required to hit them, and those weapons that could be mounted on interceptor-aircraft had little effect on the flying behemoths.
Alternate methods of defense were required.
Engineers in Britain and France were redirected from the efforts of the land-war, which in itself was a victory for the German High Command, as the damage caused by the dirigible raids was, in fact, negligible. Devices such as the acoustic mirror and incendiary bullets were invented, but it was perhaps the French who came up with the most elaborate solution: an artificial Paris, designed to be built on the city’s northern outskirts.
The town of Maisons-Laffitte north of Paris, was the focal point of the French military’s efforts to protect Paris from German bombing runs, although three more sites were planned, surrounding the capital. It sat on a stretch of the Seine that closely resembles the river as it passes through Paris, some 15 miles to the south. Built mostly of wood and canvas, a team of artists was hired to paint the city, and the electrical engineer Fernand Jacopozzi (famous for first lighting the Eiffel Tower), was brought in to make Faux Paris more appealing to the German bombers.
A map of Faux Paris (via JF Ptak Science Books, which has more images of the “Second Paris” on their site)
Although only a small fraction of the fake city was ever completed, it had running trains, as well as replicas of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées. It had working lights (just dim enough to convince the Germans that the French had closed their curtains to disguise the city), and industrial sectors, with a translucent paint applied to the roofs to mimic dirty glass ceilings. The partly-built city was never attacked, and quickly disassembled at the end of the war. The Germans were, apparently, developing similar plans for their industrial bases, but the war ended before those plans could be put into action.
In the Second World War, German bombing raids on England intensified. Almost nightly, the Luftwaffe’s bombers droned above London, and although the anti-aircraft weapons were much more powerful than during the First World War, so too were the aircraft. The Battle of Britain raged in the skies, with more than 90,000 civilian casualties. The British authorities needed to not only protect their military assets, but also to protect the people from German bombings. They borrowed the plans of the French, whether deliberately or through convergent evolution.
Around the United Kingdom, various potential targets were identified, focused primarily on military hardware, with false tanks, aircraft, and factories constructed to fool German bombing raids. After the bombing of Coventry, however, they expanded this project with the construction of Q-sites.
Q-sites were built within four miles of potential target cities, and were laid out to simulate blacked-out towns, with fires being lit in the Q-sites after the first wave of bombs were dropped on the target towns. It is estimated that more than 900 tons of munitions were wasted on these sites. The concept of blacking-out towns across Britain saved countless lives, as in the days before reliable aircraft navigation aids and techniques, pilots and their crew needed to see their targets or local landmarks. In fact, some of the most lethal German pilots were those who had studied or holidayed in Britain before the war, as they knew both the locations of culturally important sites, and the potential psychological damage that could be inflicted through longterm bombing these places.
It wasn’t only the British who got caught up in the building of fake towns After the raid on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, industrial sites along the West Coast were disguised as non-military sites. Boeing’s B17 Bomber factory in Seattle, for instance, was covered with 26 acres of suburban streets, such as the charmingly named Synthetic Street. Actors were hired to walk on the rooftop, hanging laundry, and engaging in other wholesome 1930s behaviors. (Photographs can be found here.)
A soldier with an inflatable three-ton lorry in WWII (via Imperial War Museums)
An inflatable Sherman tank from WWII (via Imperial War Museums)
During the Second World War, the Allies deployed the so-called Ghost Army to France in the wake of the D-Day invasion. The Ghost Army (or, officially, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops) was an Allied unit that moved through France sowing misinformation and generally confusing the enemy. Made up primarily of actors, artists, engineers, and advertisers, they operated near to enemy lines, and deployed inflatable tanks, dummy airfields, troop emplacements, and artillery formations. Alongside these visual props were recordings of troops and vehicles rumbling, and the Ghost Army filled the airwaves with false radio chatter, as well as imitating other Allied units’ insignia and ranks to further deceive the Germans.
Even earlier in the war, particularly in North Africa, British forces employed deception as a tactic against the famous General Rommel, building fake railway stations and supply columns — these efforts led directly to Operations Bodyguard, Titanic, and Glimmer, which in turn convinced the German military that the Normandy landings were the deception, and diverted a significant portion of German manpower away from the landing sites at Normandy for a staggering seven weeks.
Dummy paratrooper used in D-Day, which included machine gune fire simulators & self-destroying charges (photograph by Pajx/Wikimedia)
During the Vietnam War, fought from the early 1960s until the fall of Saigon in 1973, the Viet Cong were also known to make use of artificial villages to protect their tunnel complexes, and false tunnels, to distract American and Australian soldiers and consume valuable operations time. These tunnel complexes could be, well, incredibly complex, with some of the larger ones not only featuring bunkers and weapons depots, but also political re-education schools, command centers, hospitals, and even theaters (for the production of politically educational plays, no doubt.) The most elaborate of these tunnel systems ran for miles, and often needed to be flushed out by the so-called “tunnel rats,” men who were often the physically smallest soldiers in their units, who crawled through the underground passages armed with only pistols and flashlights.
Although WWI saw the first mass production of artificial cities to confuse the enemy, there are also the (alleged) historical example of Grigory Potemkin, who built artificial villages in the 18th century to fool his Empress. After the Russian conquest of Crimea in the 1780s, Tsarina Catherine the Great appointed Potemkin as the region’s governor, tasked with rebuilding the shattered countryside. Although the story may be apocryphal, it is said that Potemkin’s men assembled villages along the river where Catherine’s barge drifted, and acted out the roles of peasants until the Tsarina passed along. The village would be quickly disassembled, and rebuilt further downstream to continue the deception.
North Korea’s Kijong-dong, aka “Propaganda Village” (photograph by Don Sutherland, U.S. Air Force)
Possibly the most famous “Potemkin village” in the world is that of Kijong-dong, in North Korea, which, according to the North Korean government, is home to a collective-farm, worked by 200 families, as well as the world’s third largest flagpole(!). The rest of the world disagrees, and observation through telescopic lenses reveals that the city is uninhabited, and that none of the buildings are anything more than concrete shells, with automated lighting systems and cultivated fields around the site striving to add to the illusion.
In 2010, it was reported that the Russian government had purchased a large number of inflatable planes and tanks, in order to disguise the deployment of its military hardware. Even though we live now in a world where it seems that everything is observed and under question, at least two countries think we can still be fooled through such simple deceptions. |
Everyone loves an American origin story, especially a complicated one—and there is no more complicated media figure than Hugh Hefner, who died yesterday at the age of 91. The visionary behind Playboy, the magazine, the brand, the lifestyle, it turns out Hefner also introduced the world to Food & Wine magazine in March of 1978.
That’s correct: Food & Wine launched as a supplement in the March 1978 issue of Playboy and then as a stand alone magazine two months later. The original group of five founders, Robert and Lindy Kenyon (parents of newscaster Sandy Kenyon), Michael and Ariane Batterberry (who would later go on to run the much beloved Food Arts) and Peter Jones convinced Playboy there was an opportunity to create a magazine for an emerging passion group: Epicureans. Playboy, and Hef, were in their heyday, as was America. An economic revitalization was leading to the expansion of the middle and upper class and with that came a love of "finer things."
Food & Wine archives
The founders were sure it was time to make a magazine that would celebrate the new American appetite—but investors weren't convinced. According to Ariane Batterberry, who spoke with Food & Wine this morning, it took "seven years" to raise enough money for launch. "Americans would never be interested in food," the finance community told them, so the group set out to cobble together a patchwork of backers—Playboy was one of them.
Believing men—and yes women—would appreciate a "scrupulously honest magazine that cast an appraising eye on everything from cookbooks and kitchen appliances to mail-order houses to Washington lobbyists," Hefner clearly agreed and placed, next to the cover line "Sex Gadgets: The Good, The Bad and The Boring," the announcement of the launch of the The International Review of Food & Wine, called only Food & Wine on the cover.
Food & Wine archives
Batterberry distinctly remembers working with Hefner, whom she says "was wonderful to work with. He was really an editor, he really loved the editorial. And he respected that it was our magazine and left us alone—he really liked Food & Wine." The founders worked most closely with Christie Hefner on the business side, but Batterberry clearly recalls her weekend at the Playboy mansion with Hugh when they struck the deal.
"It was wonderful, but not for the reason you think," Batterberry told Food & Wine. "I didn't see a single bunny the entire time we were there. Two things that did stand out to me were the really beautiful art collection—there was art everywhere—and his amazing menagerie: there were monkeys and peacocks and maybe even big cats, I don't quite remember. I always tell people Playboy wasn't what you think it was."
As for dinner, "I will say they served boy food—steak and lobster, that kind of thing—which I loved," she told us. Most memorably, they broke into the second course (steak) with a tray of chocolate chip cookies. "You see, they had just realized that if you microwaved chocolate chip cookies, the chocolate melted but the cookie stayed crisp—but they must be eaten right away. We had a cookie orgy at dinner—everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing over the cookies, that was it."
Inside, the launch insert is no less astonishing or accomplished. On the cover is a (fully dressed) woman and chef—toque, mustache and all—sipping wine, hanging at the bar of a clearly California restaurant. Its only cover line, a quote from James Beard: "At last, a magazine about food in all its aspects." The cover also debuts our famous "&," a symbol we still use.
Inside you find some of the most accomplished names in food and journalism: George Plimpton, Miriam Ungerer, Jacques Pépin, James Beard, Gael Greene and an ad for Johnny Carson’s clothing line.
Food & Wine archives
Coming as no surprise, we right away find a photo of 007 himself, Roger Moore, tuxedoed and hanging with Michael Caine, dining at London's Intercontinental Hotel on a menu "drawn directly from Ian Fleming’s action fraught pages. Included for the occasion were Turbot Poché, Sauce Mousseline accompanied by a Macon Superieur (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Goldfinger) and Sorbet á la Champagne served with mounds of tropical fruits and torrents of Dom Perignon (Dr. No, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me)."
Food & Wine archives
Other amazing gems: a piece on the return of the at home smoker ("any place suitable for a barbecuing can accommodate a smoker"; a page called "Status Lunch; The Inside Track on Who Eats Where And How Well"—the first item about The Pool Room at The Four Seasons (getting a four fork recommendation); a lesson from Jacques Pépin (a personal chef at the time!) on souffles, including a recipe; a short piece on why it was time to begin gardening for vegetables and herbs from seeds and where to find them; a recipe for "The World’s Great Classics No.1: The Manhattan" (1/3 sweet vermouth; 2/3 rye whiskey, whatever brand preferred; 2 dashes Angostura bitters,optional); an essay on the dinner party meant to kill Rasputin by, casually, George Plimpton
Food & Wine archives
A "Connoisseur’s Forecast on California Wines" including ponderings from James Beard, Gael Greene (identified as New York Magazine’s “’Insatiable Critic’), Sam Aaron (co-author of the Joy of Wine) and Philip Brown; a feature story on Haiti that begins "If you have a soul, you’ll get Haiti" including a guide to Haitian specialties: "'Consomme': Not what you’d expect. In Haiti this usually means a rich, thick puree or soup based on aromatic vegetables, meat, seafood, etc. ‘Marinade’: Again hardly what you’d expect. Deep-fried fritters or croquettes based on anything from breadfruit to salt fish…"
Food & Wine archives
And then the ultimate show stopper, "Verdict: Canned Tuna. Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, Star-Kist and Geisha" judged by a panel of 'notably sensitive and educated palates' which included a hostess/designer, the owner of a cooking school, a former New York Times restaurant critic and the then vice-president of Sherry-Lehmann. (Spoiler alert: they picked Bumble Bee.)
Food & Wine archives
Always ahead of the trend, a feature on tapas described as "free-form party fare, tapas may be consumed in either vast or puckish quantities, indoor or out, by day or by night, with a broad spectrum of drinks" written by James Beard himself.
Food & Wine went on to be sold to American Express publishing in 1983 and then to Time Inc., the current owner, in 2013. We are still devotedly dedicated to the finer things, but we no longer cover "mail-order houses." |
Sean Spicer got asked about the Carl Vinson mystery today. It was … well, it was sad. Spicer basically said ‘Oh, you misunderstood what we meant. Sucks to be you.’ (Actual quotes and more here.) That’s silly. Here’s what happened or rather what I think we can be fairly confident happened based on the totality of evidence and anonymous sources at the Pentagon reported in the press. (TPM’s Matt Shuham is just published a detailed timeline of the events in question here.)
A Carrier Strike Group, an armada of ships lead by an aircraft carrier, the modern capital ship, doesn’t turn around on a dime. I don’t mean that literally. I’m sure the armada of ships can make an immediate shift in direction if necessary. But these are big groups of ships, with thousands of seaman, a schedule of maneuvers, trainings, exercises, ports of call, etc. Changing plans and going somewhere else doesn’t necessarily mean literally turning around immediately and canceling everything that was planned. Making a significant short term scheduling change is a reasonably big deal in itself.
What seems to have happened is that the decision was made to send the carrier group back to waters around the Koreas. They didn’t cancel a planned exercise to the South but scrapped a port of call in Australia to get back to the waters around Korea and Japan more quickly. This was a significant change of plans and would have sent what seems to have been the intended signal – a bit of saber-rattling in the context of the current stand off between North Korea and the United States. My point is that the original Pentagon statements were reasonable descriptions of what was happening.
But then the White House and particularly the President said things that were much more direct and clearly, at best, misleading. What is key is that this does not seem to have been some intentional misdirection or ambiguity. The Korean Peninsula is not a war zone at the moment, thankfully. But there is a stand off and military assets are being used for a tactical-political purpose. Nation states don’t consider themselves bound to strict transparency in such cases, understandably. If we had learned later that the US had said something was happening which was not true to drive anxiety in North Korea, this would not be entirely surprising. But again, that does not seem to be what happened. It seems much more like the White House and the President got sloppy, didn’t know exactly what was happening and through sloppiness and bravado created an impression that simply wasn’t true.
There doesn’t seem to have been any one single misstatement, more a slow process of overstatement that led to erroneous information becoming assumed by everyone. Spicer is now saying it’s the press’s fault they misunderstood. But the publics and press in the region’s seem to have misunderstood too. And it even seems like the governments may have misunderstood. Those are the kinds of misunderstandings which, if not by design, it’s the US government’s responsibility to clarify.
And in fact a key point in the rhetorical escalation seems to have come from Spicer himself. On April 11th, Fox News Kevin Corke had this exchange with Spicer.
Q Putting that strike carrier group in the Sea of Japan, in that region, is that also a messaging circumstance? Or is that simply protective for our allies in Japan and Korea? MR. SPICER: A carrier group is several things. The forward deployment is deterrence, presence. It’s prudent. But it does a lot of things. It ensures our — we have the strategic capabilities, and it gives the President options in the region. But I think when you see a carrier group steaming into an area like that, the forward presence of that is clearly, through almost every instance, a huge deterrence. So I think it serves multiple capabilities.
So Corke asked a question with a factual premise and Spicer seemed to affirm that inaccurate factual premise and escalate it. Did Spicer just not know? It seems like he was simply carried along with the misunderstanding. The following day President Trump addressed the issue. But his statement wasn’t really clearly misleading as to timing. It just pumped up the decision to send the group back to the north. Asked by Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo, “What are we doing right now in terms of North Korea?” Trump answered: “We are sending an armada, very powerful.”
Actually, the back and forth is weirder than that. Bartiromo asks him. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Then he talks about the Middle East. Then he says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Then he talks about it …
BARTIROMO: You redirected navy ships to go toward the Korean Peninsula. What we are doing right now in terms of North Korea? TRUMP: You never know, do you? You never know. BARTIROMO: That’s all (INAUDIBLE)… TRUMP: You know I don’t think about the military. BARTIROMO: Yes. TRUMP: I’m not like Obama, where they talk about in four months we’re waiting — we’re going to hit Mosul. BARTIROMO: Right. TRUMP: And in the meantime, they get ready and like you’ve never seen — look, they’re still fighting. Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died. I don’t want to talk about it. We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you.
Looking at every, most of the escalating statements came from the White House or President Trump. But there’s a key exception. On the same day Spicer got into his exchange, April 11th, Secretary of Defense Mattis gave a briefing at the Pentagon at which he said the decision to send the Vinson Carrier Group north wasn’t tied to any particular event.
“As far as the movement of the (Carl) Vinson, she is stationed there in the Western Pacific for a reason, she operated freely, up and down the Pacific, and she is just on her way up there because that is where we thought it was most prudent to have her at this time.”
Out of context, this is perhaps a bit ambiguous. “She is just on her way up there” can be a general reference to movements in the context of the group routinely moving around the Western Pacific. But notably there’s https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1148604/press-conference-by-secretary-mattis-and-gen-votel-in-the-pentagon-briefing-room/.
Q: (Inaudible) unusual for us to know about a ship movement in advance. That was sort of what — what got everyone’s attention. So why was that? I mean, why was it put out in advance? Was it just to signal to North Korea that there would be a show of presence there? SEC. MATTIS: I believe it’s because she was originally headed in one direction for an exercise, and we canceled our role in that exercise, and that’s what became public. We had to explain why she wasn’t in that exercise. [Sic: The ship’s port visit to Fremantle, Australia, was cancelled; the exercise with the Royal Australian navy is proceeding as planned.]
The paranthetical correction is from the Pentagon. But it’s from yesterday, according to a DOD spokesman – so after the news stories confirming that there had been confusion about the location of the carrier group.
Mattis’s references here make it clear there was at least some level of confusion from Mattis himself. It seems like he may have been unclear in his own mind whether or how much of the exercises were curtailed or canceled altogether. At a minimum, his comments were misleading. But again, they were mainly misleading in the context of inflated comments from the White House and the President.
At this point, what seems to have happened is that people at the planning and operational level started realizing that what was being discussed in the news (and maybe even privately with US allies) in the US and the region wasn’t really true. But they seem to have refrained from clarifying or contradicting these erroneous reports thinking that these public declarations were political decisions that weren’t which it wasn’t their place to contradict. So they didn’t.
Here’s a key passage from the story in Defense News that first reported that carrier group’s real whereabouts.
U.S. Navy officials in Pearl Harbor and Washington declined to comment on the ship’s movements, other than to confirm the April 15 movement through the Sunda Strait. Off the record, several officials expressed wonderment at the persistent reports that the Vinson was already nearing Korea. “We’ve made no such statement,” said one official.
Not contradicting what the White House was saying might make sense if it seemed like the White House was being deliberately misleading. It seems more like they were confused. At a minimum it seems clear that people at the operational level were quite aware that people on both sides of the Pacific were assuming something was true that was not true. At the end of the day, this looks like the product of confusion and miscommunication within the administration. That’s a problem. It didn’t have any cataclysmic effect in this case. But in a high stakes stand off mixed with gunboat diplomacy, it could have. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Maryland, Delaware and Louisiana on Monday joined a growing number of U.S. states that have refused to hand over voter data to a commission established by President Donald Trump to investigate possible voting fraud.
FILE PHOTO: A ballot is placed into a locked ballot box by a poll worker as people line-up to vote early at the San Diego County Elections Office in San Diego, California, U.S., November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
More than 20 states, including Virginia, Kentucky, California, New York and Massachusetts, have declined to provide some or all of the information that the panel requested, saying it was unnecessary and violated privacy.
Republican Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after making unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in last November’s election.
Calling the request “repugnant,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said in a statement that his office had advised the State Board of Elections that the commission’s request was illegal.
The request “appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote,” Frosh said.
The commission sent a letter to the 50 states asking them to turn over voter information including names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliations, felony convictions and voting histories.
Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said the presidential commission could purchase the limited information legally available to candidates running for office.
“You’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data,” he said in a statement.
Delaware Elections Commissioner Elaine Manlove said in an interview with Milford’s WXDE-FM radio that her office would not comply since some of the information was confidential. Manlove said she was working with the attorney general’s office to see if the request could be denied completely.
Trump has blasted the states who have refused to turn over the data. He said in a tweet on Saturday, “What are they trying to hide?”
Trump won the White House through victory in the Electoral College, which tallies wins in states, but he lost the popular vote to Clinton by some 3 million votes. He has claimed he would have won the popular vote had it not been for voter fraud.
Civil rights activists say the commission will encourage voter suppression by justifying new barriers to voting, such as requiring identity cards to vote. |
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Nepalese sherpas have closed Everest to commercial climbing amid mounting anger over pay and conditions following the deaths of 13 colleagues.
The strike by sherpas has stranded more than 330 foreign climbers at Base Camp at the start of the six-week climbing season, most of whom have paid $50,000 (£30,000) to scale the peak.
There is growing tension between the wealthy climbers and sherpas, who feel they are being exploited to work in extremely dangerous conditions for relatively low pay.
Their colleagues had been fixing routes and carrying equipment for climbers through the ice fall above Base Camp for the spring climbing window when an avalanche swept them away.
At a tense meeting held at Everest Base Camp on Sunday night, about 300 sherpas and… |
On Sunday, Daesh recruiters dispatched text messages to young men in Brussels’ Muslim-dominated district of Molenbeek, calling on them to "make the right choice" and "fight the westerners."
The texts, according to a recent statement from Belgium’s health minister, were sent from an untraceable prepaid account and followed the distribution of a Facebook video showing Molenbeek youth celebrating last week’s terror attacks in Brussels that left at least 35 dead.
The SMS text message, written in French, says: "My brother, why not fight the westerners? Make the right choice in your life."
The use of mass, targeted online communication via social networks to distribute propaganda has heightened tensions in Brussels following the attacks, and has seen ever more strident calls for crackdowns against the Muslim community and barring entry for refugees. Officials fear that in the wake of the tragic attacks, disillusioned Muslim youth who face increased persecution may respond to Daesh’s call for violent extremism.
"These people are trying to take our youth by storm," said Jamal Ikazban, a local Socialist MP. "It is like having a big-time drug dealer outside the school gates. We feel the same. They have to be taken off the streets. They are predators and our youths are the victims."
The move by jihadists, dispatching call-to-arms text messages during a police lockdown, could incite tensions in Brussels and potentially leaves the recipients subject to investigation by Belgian authorities.
Community leaders are stepping up to try to reduce the risk of radicalization among Molenbeek’s Muslim youth population and to prevent increased turbulence from the region’s far-right. One such leader seeking to calm to turbid waters is Jamal Zaria, an imam at Molenbeek’s Arafat mosque who is meeting with community parents to come up with strategies to render terrorist propaganda ineffective.
© REUTERS / Chris Keane Trump Campaign Manager Charged With Assaulting Reporter – Reports
"Our kids are being exposed to something like cancer at a metastasic stage," said Zaria, "It is really spreading very quickly. We have to race against time to develop an immune system for the children in our community so they reject the message of Daesh."
Notwithstanding efforts within the Islamic community to counter terror propaganda and to inoculate the community’s children against extremism, the polarization between Belgium’s Muslim and Christian communities has been amplified by new calls to expel Muslims.
© REUTERS / Vincent Kessler Belgian Lower House Committee Approves Night Police Anti-Terror Raids
One ultraconservative group will attempt to hold an “expel the Islamists” demonstration in Molenbeek on Saturday. The march has been banned due to fears that it will incite violence, but Belgian nationalists have successfully defied previous march prohibitions. |
Parents mourning the loss of their six-year-old son discovered the boy had penned a heartbreaking goodbye letter.
After Leland Shoemake passed away from a rare brain infection, his parents, Tim and Amber, returned to their Pike County, Georgia home to select clothes for him to be buried in.
Read: This 6-Year-Old With Leukemia Became 'Spider-Mable' and Heroically Saved A Hockey Star
Entering the home for the first time since he had been hospitalized, they discovered a piece of paper with a note written in red marker on their living room table.
“Still with you,” read the handwritten note in red marker. “Thank you mom & dad.”
Below, Leland had drawn a red heart with the words “mom,” “dad” and “love” written inside. “Good day,” he added in purple marker.
“We have no idea when he wrote it but you can tell he was always a special child. We will love you forever Leland,” wrote Amber, who shared the photo and note on Facebook.
Little Leland was hospitalized after he contracted balamuthia mandrillaris, a rare and deadly amoebic infection, his mother said.
“I was over protective of Leland and tried my best to keep him safe. The one thing he loved most was playing in the dirt. I never imagined that would be the thing that would take him from me. He was my world. He made me a mother,” the heartbroken woman wrote, calling the boy that she and her husband had struggled to have “perfect.”
“He was smart from day one. He knew his abc's, numbers, colors, shapes and 20 sight words by the time he was a year old. He was our little nerd and we loved that about him. He loved school and loved to learn,” Amber noted, going on to detail his hobbies and interests. “He was the smartest, most caring, loving little boy there ever was. He was taken from us too soon.”
Read: Homeless Brothers Land Apartment After Kind-Hearted Cop Paid For Their Hotel Stay
Leland lost his battle with the disease on September 25.
“Today sweet Leland went to be with the Lord. He fought so hard, but ultimately the sickness was too much for his body to handle,” read an update at the time on the Facebook page ‘Prayers for Leland.’
On Wednesday, Leland’s parents picked out their child’s headstone, his family wrote on the page.
“Reality still hasn't set in that he's not here with us. We miss him terribly. I'm not ready for this either. I'm not sure how I'm going to go on without him. How do you not only say goodbye to a child but your best friend.”
Watch Below: Bride Reads Touching Note Her Mom Wrote After Adopting Her 20 Years Ago
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SAN JOSE — A two-hour discussion by the police union about whether to admonish their boss waffled briefly before ending with an “overwhelming” decision against such a move Tuesday, with leaders saying it would have been an unnecessary distraction from more pressing issues.
Although Chief Chris Moore avoids a dreaded “no confidence” vote, union officials stressed their decision should not be viewed as support for Moore’s leadership or the City Council they’ve clashed with over layoffs, cuts and officer pay and benefits.
“There isn’t a lot of confidence in Chief Moore and his leadership style,” said Jim Unland, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association. “But we think (a no-confidence vote) is a distraction from the real issues that need to be addressed in City Hall.”
Unland acknowledged that Moore doesn’t have control over the budget crises that have led to the elimination of divisions such as a dedicated gang-suppression unit and proposed reductions in the fraud/burglary unit and traffic-enforcement teams. But he said the chief of the 1,060-officer force is not fully using his platform as the city’s top cop.
“What isn’t beyond his control is being vocal,” Unland said. “We’re telling him to get off the bench and into the game.”
Moore responded to the morning’s developments by pledging to more effectively communicate the ways he advocates for his rank and file.
“I completely understand and share the frustrations of our officers,” Moore said. “The sentiment is clear: I need to spend more time working with them explaining the steps I’m taking to support them.”
Upward of 300 members attended the morning general meeting — widely acknowledged as heavier-than-usual turnout — following news coverage of the potential symbolic slap of Moore. Word got out last week that Officer Howard Johnson Jr., a union board member, placed an item on the meeting agenda to spark a discussion about a no-confidence vote.
“I’m not disappointed,” Johnson said after the meeting. “The message is here. The message is being brought out to the public.”
Staff writer John Woolfolk contributed to this story. Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga. |
by Coleen Van Der Watt, August 29, 2013
www.stankovuniversallaw.com
Preface
by Georgi Stankov
It may take some time before we comprehend exactly what has happened yesterday and this night. But there is no doubt that a major final decision has been made to begin with the detonation of the PAT Supernova independently of what will happen on the ground – what crimes the dark cabal intend to perpetrate on humanity. It is a predetermined outcome that they will fail and drop out from this reality, so that this final outburst of dark energies will only fuel our ascension, which is overdue long time ago.
The report of Coleen from South Africa as of today is another powerful confirmation that the ascension process has begun.
Carla had yesterday another important ascension journey to the 5th dimension, but she still needs to discuss its ramifications with the Elohim before we know exactly what she has accomplished during this visit. At the same time I was also retrieved from this reality and dwelled for almost two hours in the higher realms, where some important decisions were made as reported this night. As soon as I have more information on these recent energetic events, I will publish it immediately.
It is also important to note that yesterday there was another huge shift to higher dimensions and now, while I am writing this preface, a second powerful surge of source energies is coming. There is no doubt that the dramatics of the ascension process is now peaking parallel to the beginning of the anticipated atrocities of the dark Western cabal in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. This is all part and parcel of the last act of this cosmic human drama before the curtain falls for this reality and the New Earth is unveiled.
______________________________ ______________________
Coleen’s Energy Report – August 29th, 2013
From South Africa
Dear Georgi
the last email I sent was really quick, my Internet is almost finished, so wanted to let you know. but here I am going to try and explain how I felt, hopefully the email will get to you.
Last night I could feel the energy’s soaring. I kept refreshing your site as I knew I would hear from you. It smacked me of my chair when my HS told me “No”, not the Internet. I tried to listen what she was going to say. To my surprise it was you. You told me that you were in 5D and that you needed my help in sending as much light as I could to the 5D and the PAT.
I immediately went to lie down this was at 9:00 pm and started sending out my light with the help of HS as you told me. I felt all the angels and light beings around me feeling their love and peace. and if I should ascend, they are there with me. I took your hand and Carla’s and could see all the PAT standing in huge circles holding hands with each shinning their light so bright.
I could feel in body that I could dissolve any moment. after an hour (although it felt much less) I opened my eyes, feeling disorientated as if I was in the wrong place. but I was in my room and all felt different but everything I was seeing was the same. I am truly still feeling like “where am I ?” I asked HS what this was all about. and she told me that there was a huge shift. I only slept for 2 hours at night and slept the whole morning. really tired. But had a dream about the Supernova.
I know you don’t reply to any emails but would like to hear from you.
Love and light
Coleen
______________________________ ___________
Dear Coleen,
I am very obliged for sending me this comprehensive account on what has happened yesterday evening and in the night. Carla had also a remarkable experience yesterday, but she still needs some validation from the Elohim what exactly took place.
I will publish your report as a confirmation of the beginning of the ascension process.
With love and light
George |
This game was eerily similar in the way that it ended, minus the helmet catch, that it almost seemed like you were watching a replay of the Super Bowl from 2007. Brady led the Patriots to a late touchdown to put them up 20-17 with only 1:36 remaining on the clock. "I'd rather be down three with a minute thirty (left) than up by four with a minute-thirty with Tom Brady, with their offense on the field." Giants quarterback Eli Manning said. "You like those opportunities to go win the game."
The game was a back and forth battle all day long, with not much in the way of offensive playmaking to be seen for most of the day as it was only 10-3 entering the fourth quarter. That's when things started to get exciting. The Patriots had started their drive in the third quarter, and finished it with a 5 yard TD pass to Aaron Hernandez to tie the game at 10 less than a minute into the final period. New England then got the ball back and took the lead on a 45 yard Gostkowski field goal.
The fourth quarter made up for all of the rest of this game. The Giants then go on a drive of their own that climaxed with a 10 yard TD pass to Mario Manningham. Brady took it back, and then leda final charge down the field, and celebrated as they thought they were up for good as Brady threw to TE Rob Gronkowski on three straight plays before falling down in the end zone with a 20-17 lead.
The final drive did have some similarities to the Super Bowl winning drive. Manning threw another heave down the middle of the field, and it was again caught for a 28 yard gainer by another guy wearing #85. This time it wasn't "Helmet Catch" hero David Tyree, it was big TE Jake Ballard who was thought to be only good for blocking. After a pass interference call in the end zone on Patriots corner Sergio Brown that gave the Giants the ball at the 1 yard line. It took them three plays, but on the third he hit Ballard again for the winning score with just 15 ticks left on the clock.
The Giants players were feeling a bit euphoric back in the locker room as the lifted up coach Tom Coughlin on their shoulders. "We got a little carried away,' Justin Tuck said about it afterwards. "Considering how good that team is and what they've done here in the last 20 games, it was a big win, and to win it in the fashion that we won it, it brings back memories."
The Giants can't get too caught up in the feeling because they have to travel to the west coast this week to play, who some pundits think, the second best team in the NFC right now, the San Francisco 49ers. They've also got a daunting schedule left after that game as well as they will face off against Philadelphia, New Orleans, Green Bay and then Dallas again, with the Saints and Cowboys being road games.
The Patriots while suffering they're second straight defeat are still in pretty good position. "We've got half a season to go," Brady said. "We'll see what our team's made of this week." As they are sitting in a three way tie for first place at 5-3 with the Bills and Jets, they arepreparing toface a stiff test this week as they travel to New York to face the Jets. Theschedule eases up for the most part as their most challenging game will be at Philly in late November, then a Buffalo rematch on New Year's Day. If they can find a way to beat the Jets, the division is theirs for the taking. |
Obama stressed the need to build "trust between police officers and departments in the communities that they serve.” | Getty Obama huddles with top law enforcement aides on policing
CLEVELAND — President Barack Obama met with his top law enforcement aides at the White House to discuss more ways to help police on Tuesday evening, even as Republicans continued attacking the president for stoking tensions over policing.
The Oval Office meeting wrapped up just as news broke that an officer had been shot and succumbed to his wounds in Kansas City. It also followed an open letter Obama penned to police forces on Monday in which the president sought to bolster his support for law enforcement after several days of criticism that his responses to the attacks on police in Dallas and Baton Rouge were insufficient.
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“I strongly believe that there is no contradiction between us protecting our officers, honoring our officers, making sure that they have all the tools they need to do their job safely, and building trust between police officers and departments in the communities that they serve,” Obama told reporters at the end of the private meeting on Tuesday. “In fact, those things are complementary and not contradictory.”
The meeting included Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and White House Counsel Neil Eggleston.
But Republicans continued their rhetorical assault on Obama. “He blamed the police” for the latest round of violence, said Sen. Jeff Sessions in remarks formally nominating Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday night.
“Tensions have been very high, and I blame the president. He has the bully pulpit,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. In an interview with POLITICO in Cleveland on Tuesday, the Republican repeated his call for Obama to light the White House in blue to commemorate police. “Eight police officers killed in two weeks and he won’t turn on the blue lights.”
Patrick added, “It’s the president being stubborn, and while he’s being stubborn, people are getting killed, and the public is very concerned.”
Obama said on Tuesday, as he has before, that he wants the federal government to do more to help the 18,000 law enforcement agencies around the country to work together. And he acknowledged that local departments don’t have enough money to provide things like bullet-proof vests for their entire forces.
“My intention over the next several months, as long as I'm in this office, is to continue to look at best practices, figure out what’s working well; listen to our police departments in how we can help them; engage the community; build up trust. What kind of equipment do they need? What kind of training do they need? What kind of recruitment strategies do they need? And then to do everything we can to convene all parties concerned, including Congress, to make sure that they can get those resources,” Obama said.
Obama has been meeting with activists and police officials in the wake of not only the attacks on police, but the deaths of two black men at the hands of police earlier this month. Obama has frequently spoken of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and his administration has driven a sweeping effort intended to improve community policing. But rank-and-file officers have bristled at his messages, and his perceived slights of the police have become a major theme of the Republican National Convention.
Even as Obama has worked to offer unequivocal support to police, they’ve also asked him to take specific steps. The National Sheriffs' Association and the Fraternal Order of Police have called on him to reconsider the administration’s new restrictions on military equipment for local police, for example. While the White House has been noncommittal on that front, Obama said Tuesday that over the past few weeks, there have been “much more constructive conversations and the offering up of very concrete recommendations and suggestions for how we can do better.”
Obama concluded, “This is not going to be something we can do just from this office, or from the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security. This is something that is going to have to be bottom-up.” |
"Anorak" redirects here. For other uses, see Anorak (disambiguation)
parkas An Inuit family wearing traditional Caribou
A parka or anorak is a type of coat with a hood, often lined with fur or faux fur. The Caribou Inuit invented this kind of garment, originally made from caribou or seal skin, for hunting and kayaking in the frigid Arctic. Some Inuit anoraks require regular coating with fish oil to retain their water resistance.
The words anorak and parka have been used interchangeably, but they are somewhat different garments. Strictly speaking, an anorak is a waterproof, hooded, pull-over jacket without a front opening, and sometimes drawstrings at the waist and cuffs, and a parka is a hip-length cold-weather coat, typically stuffed with down or very warm synthetic fiber, and with a fur-lined hood.
Etymology [ edit ]
The word anorak comes from the Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) word annoraaq. It did not appear in English until 1924; an early definition is "a beaded item worn by Greenland women or brides in the 1930s". In the early 1950s it was made from nylon, but changed to poplin by 1959, when it was featured in Vogue magazine as a fashion item. In 1984, The Observer used the term to refer to the type of people who wore it and subsequently, in the United Kingdom, it is sometimes used as a mildly derogatory term.[1]
The word parka is derived from the Nenets language.[2] In the Aleutian Islands the word simply means "animal skin".[3] It first entered the English written record in a 1625 work by Samuel Purchas.
The Inuit who speak Inuktitut use parkas and have various terms related to them as follows:
Inuktitut terminology[4] English Inuktitut syllabics Roman Inuktitut IPA woman's parka ᐊᕐᓇᐅᑎ irnauti [iʁ.na.u.ˈti] parka tail ᓂᖏᒻᓇᖅᑐᖅ ningimnaqtuq [ni.ŋim.naq.ˈtuq] parka hood ᐊᒪᐅᑦ amaut [a.ma.ˈut] parka decoration ᑰᑦᓯᓂᕈᑎ kuutsinaruti [kuːt.si.na.ʁu.ˈti] parka material ᐊᑎᒋᑦᓴᖅ atigitsaq [a.ti.ɣit.ˈsaq] parka button ᓇᑦᑐᕋᖅ naturaq [nat.tu.ˈʁaq] parka belt ᑕᑦᓯ tatsi [tat.ˈsi]
Amauti [ edit ]
The amauti (also amaut or amautik, plural amautiit)[5] is the parka worn by Inuit women of the eastern area of Northern Canada.[6] Up until about two years of age, the child nestles against the mother's back in the amaut, the built-in baby pouch just below the hood. The pouch is large and comfortable for the baby. The mother can bring the child from back to front for breastfeeding or for eliminatory functions without exposure to the elements.[6] This traditional eastern Arctic Inuit parka, designed to keep the child warm and safe from frostbite, wind and cold, also helps to develop bonding between mother and child.[7]
N-3B ("scrub snorkel" or "snorkel") parka [ edit ]
A civilian snorkel parka manufactured in the 1980s by Lord Anthony.
The original snorkel parka (USAF N-3B parka, which is 3/4 length and has a full, attached hood; the similar N-2B parka is waist-length and has an attached split hood) was developed in the United States during the early 1950s for military use, mainly for flight crews stationed in extremely cold areas. It was designed for use in areas with temperatures as low as −60 °F (−51 °C). Originally made with a sage green DuPont flight silk nylon outer and lining it was padded with a wool blanket type material until the mid-1970s when the padding was changed to polyester wadding making the jacket both lighter and warmer. The outer shell material also was changed to a sage green cotton-nylon blend, with respective percentages 80–20, 65–35, and 50–50 being used at various times.
It gained the common name of "snorkel parka" because the hood can be zipped right up leaving only a small tunnel (or snorkel) for the wearer to look out of. This is particularly effective in very cold, windy weather although it has the added liabilities of seriously limiting the field of vision and hearing. Earlier Vietnam-era hoods had genuine fur ruffs; later versions used synthetic furs. Original manufacturers of this parka for the government included Skyline, Southern Athletic, Lancer, Greenbrier, Workroom For Designers, Alpha, and Avirex.
The basic N-3B parka design was copied and sold to the civilian market by many manufacturers with varying degrees of quality and faithfulness to the original government specifications. Surplus military parkas are often available for relatively low prices online and in surplus stores; they compare quite favorably with civilian extreme-cold parkas of all types due to their robust construction, designed for combat conditions, and warmth.
The 1970s–1980s civilian version of the parka was made in many colors – navy blue, green, brown, black, maroon, grey, royal blue, sky blue and bright orange. Most had an orange diamond quilted nylon lining, although a very small number did have alternative colored linings such as yellow, pale blue, and green. While still manufacturing parkas to the military standard, Alpha Industries have more recently[when?] adopted the orange lining and a slimmer fit when producing their VF59 model parka which is now more popular than the military version.
In the late 1980s the snorkel parka came to be associated in the UK with trainspotters, who would supposedly wear them, giving birth to the slang term there anorak.
In Europe the snorkel parka started to regain popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Fishtail parka [ edit ]
M-51 fishtail parka. This was a favorite among the mod subculture
The fishtail parka was first used by the United States Army in 1950 during the Korean War. Following the end of the Second World War the US army recognized the need for a new cold weather combat system, resulting in four main styles of fishtail parka: the EX-48, M-48, M-51 and the M-65. The M stands for military, and the number is the year it was standardized. The EX-48 model was the first prototype or "experimental" precursor to all of them. The M-48 then being the first actual production model fishtail parka after the pattern being standardized on December 24, 1948.
The name fishtail comes from the fish tail extension at the back that could be folded up between the legs, much like a Knochensack, and fixed using snap connectors to add wind-proofing. The fishtail was fixed at the front for warmth or folded away at the back to improve freedom of movement when needed.
The EX-48 parka is distinctive as it has a left sleeve pocket and is made of thin poplin, only the later production M-48 parkas are made of the heavier sateen canvas type cotton. The EX-48 also has a thin fibre glass based liner that is very light and warm, the M-48 has a thicker wool pile liner with an integral hood liner made of wool. Both are distinguishable from any other type of parka by having the sleeve pocket. This was dropped for the M-51 onward. The fur ruff on the hood is also fixed to the shell of an EX-48/M-48 and is of wolf, coyote or often wolverine. The M-48 parka was costly to produce and therefore only in production for around one year. The pockets were wool lined both inside and out. The cuffs had two buttons for securing tightly around a wearer's wrist. The later more mass-produced M-51 parka had just the one cuff button. The liner had a built in chest pocket which again was unique to the M-48 parka.
The next revision was the M-51, made because the M48 was so good and of such high quality it was just too expensive to mass-produce.
The outer hood of the M-51 Fishtail Parka is integral to the parka shell, an added hood liner as well as a button in main liner make the M-51 a versatile 3 piece parka. The idea behind this 3 part system was to enable a more customisable parka that allowed for easier cleaning of the shell as the hood fur was on the detachable hood liner, not fixed to the shell as in the M-48. It also allowed for both liners to be buttoned in or our depending on the temperature and hence warmth required. It was also cheaper than the M-48 to mass-produce The early M-51 was made of heavy sateen cotton, the same material as the M-48. Later revisions of the M-51 were poplin based. The later liners were also revised from the "heavy when wet" wool pile to a lighter woolen loop or frieze wool design that dried easier and were far lighter. The frieze liners were constructed of mohair and were designed using a double loop system which repelled cold weather.
The M-65 fishtail parka has a detachable hood and was the last revision. It features a removable quilted liner made of light nylon / polyester batting which are modern synthetic materials. The M-65 fishtail parka first came into production in 1968. These parkas featured synthetic fur on the hoods after an outcry from the fur lobby. As a result, only hoods for these parkas made in 1972 and for one year later have real fur.
Designed primarily for combat arms forces such as infantry, they are to be worn over other layers of clothing; alone, the fishtail parka is insufficient to protect against "dry cold" conditions (i.e. below about -10 °C). As such all fishtail parkas are big as they were designed to be worn over battle dress and other layers.
In the 1960s UK, the fishtail parka became a symbol of the mod subculture. Because of their practicality, cheapness and availability from military surplus shops, the parka was seen as the ideal garment for fending off the elements and protecting smarter clothes underneath from grease and dirt when on the mod's vehicle of choice, the scooter. Its place in popular culture was assured by newspaper pictures of parka-clad mods during the Bank Holiday riots of the 1960s.
Cagoule [ edit ]
A cagoule is the British English term for a lightweight, weatherproof anorak or parka, usually unlined and sometimes knee-length.[8] A cagoule could be rolled up into a very compact package and carried in a bag or pocket. It was invented by Noel Bibby of Peter Storm Ltd. in the early 1960s.[9] It may have a full-zippered front opening, or pull over the head like an original anorak and close with snaps or a short zipper, has an integral hood, and elasticated or drawstring cuffs. In some versions, when rolled up, the hood doubles as a bag into which the rest of the coat is pushed. It became very popular in the United Kingdom during the 1970s.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Rashid Rauf escaped from police custody in Pakistan in 2007 A fugitive British militant linked to an alleged UK plot to use liquid bombs to blow up transatlantic airliners has been killed in Pakistan, reports say. Pakistani media said Rashid Rauf, born in Birmingham, was killed in a US air strike in North Waziristan, a haven for militants and the Taleban. Mr Rauf, on the run after escaping from Pakistani custody, was seen as a link between the UK plotters and Pakistan. Three men were convicted in the UK in September of conspiracy to murder. News of the liquid bomb plot paralysed global air travel, prompting authorities to implement stringent security measures at airports around the world. Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan on 9 August 2006, at the request of US authorities, who feared he was about to disappear into the remote north-west of the country. ALLEGED LIQUID BOMB PLOT Group accused of plotting to carry liquid explosives onto planes at London Heathrow Airport Arrests in August 2006, after Rashid Rauf detained in Pakistan Move prompted increased security at UK and US airports At trial, three men convicted of conspiracy to murder None found guilty of conspiring to target passenger aircraft
Profile: Rashid Rauf One day later authorities in the UK and the US implemented strict security measures at airports, fearing possible bomb attacks. Hundreds of flights were delayed at airports around the world with massive disruption at major UK terminals and in the US, amid security service fears that militants were planning to mix liquids into lethal explosives. Terrorism charges against the Briton were eventually dropped but he remained under detention in Pakistan as a "preventative measure". Mr Rauf, who is thought to have Pakistani citizenship through his family connections, then escaped custody in December 2007 while on his way to an extradition hearing under police guard. West Midlands Police in the UK were seeking his extradition from Pakistan as a suspect in the murder of his uncle, who was killed six years ago. 'Safe haven' Several Pakistani TV channels reported that Mr Rauf was one of five people killed on Saturday by a presumed US attack in the country's remote north-western region. Unnamed Pakistani intelligence sources said that a wanted Egyptian militant, Abu Zubair al-Masri, was among the others killed. However, the BBC has so far been unable to independently confirm the news. A young Asian woman at the Rauf family home in the Ward End area of Birmingham said they had had no confirmation of his death, and no contact from Britain's Foreign Office. She said the family wanted to be left alone "to deal with this". Islamist militants use the mountainous tribal areas along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan as a safe haven for training and resupply. The US regularly uses pilotless drones to attack militant targets in the region, a tactic that has caused growing resentment among Pakistan's leaders. On Thursday the government summoned the US ambassador in Islamabad to protest one day after an attack deep inside Pakistani territory killed five people - including at least one alleged militant. Pakistan says the constant missile strikes infringe its sovereignty. The BBC's Barbara Plett, in Islamabad, says the attacks spark widespread anger in Pakistan - especially among tribal figures. In that context, Saturday's attack will be reported in Pakistan as another violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and not for the possible killing of Rashid Rauf, our correspondent says. The US says the insurgents use the territory to launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. Islamabad has been pursuing a policy of ad-hoc peace deals with local Taleban commanders.
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Cosmo Scharf is a film student and co-founder of VRLA. He talks about some of the challenges of VR storytelling and the differences between a free-will VR environment vs. a traditional 2D film. Film has a series of tools to direct attention such as depth of field, camera direction, cues to look to left or right, contrasting colors or movement in the frame. Some of these translate over to VR, but you can’t use all of them since there’s no camera movement, focus or framing in VR.
He talks about the process of starting a meet up in Los Angeles called VRLA, and that a lot of people in the film industry are seeing VR as the future of storytelling and entertainment.
Cosmo also sees that VR experiences are a spectrum from ranging from completely interactive like a video game, semi-interactive cinematic experience, and the completely passive. There’s not a whole lot of people are looking into the completely passive experiences yet, but that’s what he’s interested in exploring as a film student.
He strongly believes it’s the future of storytelling, video games, computing as well as disseminating information in general, and he’s very excited to get more involved in the VR industry
Reddit discussion here.
TOPICS
0:00 – Founder of VR LA. Initially interested in VR after hearing about Valve’s involvement in VR. Reading /r/oculus and listening to podcasts and heard a podcast about starting a meet up.
1:44 – Film industry’s involvement and how many were new to VR? Weeks after the Facebook acquisition, and so there were over 200 people who came out.
2:34 – What type of feedback did you receive? A lot of people in the movie industry are seeing VR as the future of storytelling. Cosmo wants to provide emotionally-engaging experiences.
3:22 – What type of story things are interesting to you. Not a lot of storytelling in VR happening yet. VR is early. Differences between film and VR. Filmmaking rules and practices to use 4 frames for 100 years. VR is a new medium. How do you effectively tell a story without relying upon the same filmmaking techniques.
4:36 – What are some of the open problems in VR storytelling? How to direct someone’s attention. With filmmaking you can use depth of field, camera direction, cues to look to left or right, colors or movement in the frame. Some of the cues in real life are if others are looking in a direction and which direction sounds are coming from. Passive vs. Interactive VR: completely interactive like a video game, semi-interactive cinematic experience, and the completely passive. Not a whole lot of people are looking at the third way.
6:22 – Familiar with Nonny de la Pena’s work. She attended VRLA #1. It’s interesting in terms of VR as a tool for building empathy. When you’re placed virtually in someone else’s shoes, you’ll feel what they’re going to feel. You can connect to people via a 2D screen, but you know that there’s a distance. With VR, you’re in it and completely immersed and engaged.
7:31 – What about choose your own adventure vs. a linear film: VR experience similar to Mass Effect where you have different options to say to characters. Your response will change how the story unfolds. Would like to see a natural feedback between you and the AI characters
8:22 – Where would like to see VR going? We’re still very early with VR, no consumer product is out yet and that will determine if VR is a real thing. Strongly believes it’s the future of storytelling, video games, computing & disseminating information in general. HMDs will be portable. Convergence of augmented reality with VR. Hard to determine how the industry will evolve within the next month, but most exciting industry to be a part of. All of the leaders of the consumer VR space are at SVVRCon.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio |
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The US President Donald Trump signed a bill to speed up the issuance of permits for construction of motorways, bridges and other major construction projects. The bill is part from his 1 trillion USD investment plan to modernize outdated infrastructure in the country. The decree text was not available immediately after signing. Earlier sources have indicated that it repeals a decree by former President Barack Obama imposing rigorous building standards for government-funded projects to reduce the possible impact of external factors such as floods as a result of sea level rise and other climate change effects.
“We will no longer allow our magnificent country’s infrastructure to collapse and destroy”, said Trump at a press conference in Trump Tower. “While we are protecting the environment, we will build brilliant new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways. We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum and American steel”, said the US President.
By abolishing Obama’s standards, Trump hopes to speed up infrastructure project procedures.
Separately, a White House spokesman said that the Decree sets a two-year deadline for completing authorization procedures for major infrastructure plans and creates a protocol for a “federal level decision” for major projects.
Trump reminded that for the construction of the 103-storey skyscraper Empire State Building in New York were needed only 11 months, and now permission for major construction projects takes years. |
Texas pilot Theodore R. Wright III emerged from the Gulf of Mexico in 2012 with a story to tell.
Pilot Theodore R. Wright III, right, and passenger Raymond Fosdick were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after ditching in the Gulf of Mexico in September 2012. Both men now stand accused of fraud. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
He had ditched a Beechcraft Baron; filmed himself and his passenger treading water while awaiting rescue; and soon made the rounds on television with his video and harrowing tale of a cockpit fire, emergency descent, and water landing. Federal prosecutors say that was actually the first in a series of acts in a conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and arson by destroying two airplanes, a sports car, and a yacht.
Wright and his passenger from the 2012 Baron ditching, Raymond Fosdick, are among four men who now face decades in federal prison if convicted of all charges in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler. Wright was arrested June 28, posted bond, then lost his freedom again July 5 when U.S. District Court Judge Ron Clark ordered Wright to be remanded to custody pending a trial scheduled to begin in October.
Once all four accused conspirators had been arrested by late July, the court unsealed the 25-page indictment detailing accusations against the quartet, with much of that case focused on Wright. Fosdick, who was arrested in South Carolina July 21, and Shane Gordon, who was associated with Wright in a variety of business ventures, as well as a registered charity Wright created, are accused of conspiring in various ways. Alleged conspirator Edward Delima was taken into custody in Hawaii, where prosecutors say he insured a 1998 Hunter Passage yacht (which Wright had purchased for $50,150) for $195,000, a few months before it sank at the dock.
Fosdick stands accused of participating in the first act of fraud, the Gulf of Mexico ditching, though Wright alone is named in conjunction with each overt act alleged in the federal grand jury’s indictment. According to that indictment, signed about a month before Wright's arrest, Wright prepared himself to ditch the 1966 Baron, N265Q, attending “water-landing training” in Alabama on three occasions prior to the Baron’s final flight: in April 2012, August 2012, and September 2012.
On Sept. 20, 2012, Wright and Fosdick departed Baytown, Texas, bound for Bradenton, Florida, a flight that ended in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, from which the aircraft was never recovered. Wright had purchased the Baron in March 2012 for $46,000, insured it for $85,000 in April 2012, and collected an $84,000 insurance payout Oct. 3, 2012.
“Hopefully we never have to do that again,” Wright told AOPA in a telephone interview on Oct. 9, 2012, offering an account of the experience coping with a purported in-flight fire that had transformed him, if briefly, into a media celebrity. His version of events at the time contrasts sharply with the version put forward more recently by federal prosecutors. According to federal court documents, Fosdick went on to sue Wright for $1 million for injuries and damages sustained in the September ditching. Fosdick settled his claim against Wright's insurance company for $100,000 in December 2013, and the proceeds were eventually divided between the two men and their lawyers.
A month later, Wright bought a 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo with a salvage title for $76,000, insured it, and then drove it into a ditch full of water on March 9, 2014. Wright went on to collect $169,554.83 from the insurance company, a check deposited by Gordon.
Five days after the Lamborghini was flooded, Wright purchased a 1971 Cessna Citation for $190,000, and subsequently insured it for $440,000 through one of several companies Wright and Gordon were involved in as listed corporate officers. Prosecutors say Fosdick flew to Athens, Texas, to destroy the jet on Aug. 29, 2014. Excerpts from a text message conversation between Wright and Fosdick are included in the grand jury indictment:
“Just don’t look suspicious there,” Wright warned in an iMessage exchange. He offered advice to Fosdick, who reported trouble with engine start. Later, Fosdick advised he had company:
“Old man just showed up,” Fosdick wrote, drawing an expletive from Wright in reply.
Prosecutors say Fosdick left the Citation at the airport on Aug. 30, 2014, and returned Sept. 12, 2014, to finish the job. Wright offered advice on vehicle “switcheroos:”
“Do not get made in that car or it will sink us,” Wright wrote in a text conversation.
Prosecutors say Gordon communicated via phone and email with the fire marshal in Athens, making false representations about the ownership of the aircraft, along with an unmanned “co-conspirator” who came forward to claim ownership. Gordon would later file the insurance claim, and Wright and his alleged co-conspirators received a $440,000 insurance settlement for the destroyed Citation. The check was deposited Feb. 11, 2015, and endorsed by Gordon, prosecutors said. Gordon and Wright then purchased a Gates Learjet Model 35A, serial number 476, on Feb. 27, 2015.
Also in February 2015, the sailboat sank. Wright had purchased the 1998 Hunter Passage in October 2014, and, according to the indictment, “'loaned'” Delima $193,500 to buy the vessel. Delima insured it for $195,000, and Wright paid the premiums, according to court documents. On Feb. 20, 2015, “the vessel was extensively damaged due to partially sinking in a marina in Ko Olina, Hawaii,” the indictment states.
A week later, Delima and Wright had a Facebook chat, also recorded in the indictment, regarding the insurance claim for the sailboat:
“I think you and I should be on the phone together for the claim call, I pretend to be you and give them all the info, then you will hear everything so you know what to say later, and we will be on messenger if we need to communicate while we are on the phone with them,” Wright wrote.
Prosecutors say the insurance company (not named in the indictment) issued a check for $180,023.80 on July 3, 2015.
Federal prosecutors have sought the forfeiture of the Learjet and $938,554.80 in known proceeds from the various crimes. The indictment was signed May 17.
Wright has apparently deleted Facebook and Instagram accounts for which he developed a following, sharing photos and anecdotes of aeronautical exploits. The last remaining trace of the online life Wright presented to the world is a Facebook page for his purported charity, Around the World for Life, which he claimed to have created to inspire children to fly in the October 2012 telephone interview with AOPA. That interview followed appearances on Inside Edition and with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Wright said at the time that his sudden celebrity should be leveraged to help spread good words about general aviation.
“Let’s get what benefit we can out of this thing,” Wright said.
Wright’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment on behalf of his client, who, along with his alleged conspirators, faces a potential prison term of up to 90 years and up to $1 million in fines if convicted. |
A memorial sponsored by the College Republicans club at a small, liberal arts college in California was repeatedly vandalized on the 15th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Nearly 3,000 flags at Occidental College were crushed and trashed.
“Today is meant to be a day of respect and remembrance for all the victims and heroes of 9/11,” the Occidental College Republicans wrote in a Facebook post. The 2,997 American flags the club sponsored were planted by “students of all backgrounds” to represent the people who died in the terrorist attacks.
However, the memorial was destroyed in the overnight hours ahead of the anniversary.
“At midnight early this morning, vandals crushed, snapped, and threw in the garbage every single flag,” the club wrote on Sunday. “Not one was left in the ground. Not only did they destroy the memorial, they put posters and flyers up that shamed the victims of 9/11.”
Those makeshift flyers were taped to benches and other surfaces. Many of them read: “R.I.P. The 2,996 Americans who died in 9/11. R.I.P. the 1,455,590 innocent Iraqis who died during the U.S. invasion for something they didn’t do.”
A group of 15 students pulled the flags out of the trash and replaced them on the quad. But the vandalism wasn’t finished. Despite having a few students who “stood guard at the memorial” in the early hours of Sunday morning, “[f]our Occidental students came up and snapped a few flags right in our faces. When we confronted them, those cowards got away as fast as they possibly could.”
Later in the morning, the club said, there was “another lazy attempt at vandalism,” with hundreds of the flags “kicked and smashed,” and about 50 were again thrown out.
“This is beyond politics, this is about those lives that were so tragically taken,” the Occidental College Republicans wrote. “We ask that all students respect the memorial for the remainder of its time in the quad. If you try to destroy it, we will rebuild it.”
The school itself is looking into the vandalism.
“We don't yet know who is responsible for this incident, but the college is investigating and will take appropriate disciplinary action,” Occidental said in a statement. “If you have any information about this incident, please share that information with us at [email protected]."
President Barack Obama attended the small, left-leaning liberal arts school in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University to finish his undergraduate degree.
Occidental’s 9/11 memorial wasn’t the only one that was vandalized ahead of the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. On Friday, Emergency Medical Veterans Response in Phoenix, Arizona discovered that the specially designed memorial wrap on its ambulance was torn and burned beyond repair. The company’s owner, Trinidy Currier, found the damage as he was heading to Arizona State University to provide medical aid at the school’s 9/11 Tribute Run.
"It was a very stupid move. It was very inconsiderate and thoughtless," Currier, an Army veteran, told KSAZ. “A lot of us are firefighters, a lot of are veterans, so it's kind of like having 911 on site."
"There's a lot of different emotions going on right now. I've got the anger, I've got the sadness, I've got the where do we go from here," he added.
A local sign company has stepped up to donate a new wrap, which is expected to cost between $4,500 and $5,500. |
Just a few years ago the common perception was that we were in an AI winter.
Although there were lots of narrow AI applications running in the background of our daily lives, there wasn’t much enthusiasm.
But quietly in the background, a revolution was building thanks to progress across a few key areas. These areas would soon converge to produce breakthrough after breakthrough and put us on the verge of what many believe to be the most important event in human history.
Key Advance 1) More Data
Andrew Ng of Baidu explains that a massive amount of data is needed. If you put 10x the data in many of these algorithms they work, put 1/10th in and they don’t.
Previously it was very difficult to get hold of the massive amounts of data required to feed the AI systems, but thanks to the internet researchers have tonnes of data to train their neural nets.
Key Advance 2) More Computing Power
If you only have the computational power to build a small neural network it doesn’t work. But computer power has continued to increase and prices have dropped.
Moore’s Law may be stalling, but the Law of Accelerating Returns is not.
The Law of Accelerating Returns. What Steve Jurvetson calls “the most important graph ever”.
GPUs are much better for training neural networks than CPUs and have provided the computer power needed for these algorithms to function.
Infrastructure has also improved. Today it’s possible for anyone to rent a massive amount of GPU power on cloud computing platforms (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud).
Key Advance 3) Better Algorithms
Neural networks have been known about for decades, but most researchers had given up on them
Geoffrey Hinton of Google is one of the few who stuck with it. Despite his peers calling it a dead end, he believed that it was the right approach. It turned out he was right.
Hinton learned how to stack neural networks dozens of layers deep (deep learning) which enabled vastly more calculations and now he is considered “the godfather of neural networks”.
With these 3 breakthroughs in place neural networks finally began to work. And they worked better than almost anyone expected.
The Tipping Point: ImageNet 2012
The ImageNet project was created in 2009 to judge how well computers can see.
In 2011 computers had a 26% error rate when trying to label images. Humans only had a 5% error rate.
But in 2012, Hinton’s team made a breakthrough and reduced the error rate to 16% using deep learning.
This made everyone sit up and take notice. Massive research began in deep learning, and just a few years later in 2015 computers actually beat humans with an error rate of just 4%.
Today, just 5 years after Hinton’s breakthrough, the error rate for AI is 3%.
The portion of evolution in which animals developed eyes was a big development. Now computers have eyes. – Jeff Dean, Google Brain
Governments, the academic world, big corporations, and startups became obsessed with neural networks and AI in general.
Tech companies began spending billions to make progress as fast as possible and a massive recruiting war began for anybody with relevant skills.
As everybody raced to develop these deep neural networks breakthrough after breakthrough occurred and it was clear that something very special was happening.
Self-Driving cars became a reality
Computers became as good as or better than humans at many types of medical diagnosis
Voice recognition accuracy skyrocketed
High accuracy language translation (for text and audio) became accessible
Autonomous drones were built
A Computer beat humans at Go, a milestone thought to be decades away.
Today the pace of funding and development of AI is faster than ever and we are still in the very early stages of exploring what these neural nets and AI systems can help us do.
The Next Decade (2017 – 2020s)
The Dream Is Finally Arriving. This Is What It Was All Leading Up To. – Bill Gates
WIDESPREAD OPTIMIZATION
Better optimized logistics, supply chain management, back office processes, and communication will speed up many of our daily processes.
Productivity gains and reduced friction will occur across all industries.
These behind the scenes advances might be incremental and seemingly boring, but when combined and compounded will free up so much wealth and resources.
A lot of experts are going to be surprised at how inefficient their best efforts have been.
Google Turns on DeepMind AI, Cuts Cooling Energy Bill by 40%
We used a similar system to AlphaGo, but instead of playing Go we applied it to the cooling systems in the data centers to try and increase their energy efficiency. We managed to save 40% of the energy that was used by the cooling systems. The whole data center now has 15% less power usage. That’s worth tens of millions of dollars per year. What we’re thinking now is, why don’t we optimize something like the energy grid at national scale? There’s no need to just think about data centers, there must be huge inefficiencies even at grid scale. – Demis Hassibis, Google DeepMind
This alone probably pays for the Deepmind acquisition. Shows how far below Pareto optimal limits even Google was. – Balaji S. Srinivasan
I don’t think most grasp the significance of this. Oil companies have similar systems they pay billions trying to optimize. – iandanforth It’s all about optimization. It can be used in supply logistics, shipping logistics and dynamic pricing in addition to keeping an industrial area at the right temperature. We’ll be seeing AI being applied to a lot more areas. – Dave Schubmehl
Honestly, I’m skeptical a generalized AI will go fully conscious in my lifetime. But these specialized AI? These things are going to start changing our lives over the next ten years in unimaginable ways. The energy savings alone is incredible. – tendimensions
ENERGY AND COMMODITIES WILL GET CHEAPER
Long term Industrial commodity price decline
AI is very effective at figuring out where resources might be and where to drill. It can also optimize business processes, design better equipment, and suggest better techniques.
This will drive the oil price down even further, making it cheaper for all of us to power our businesses and lives.
Travel will become cheaper. Airline ticket prices will fall.
As more efficient production methods are discovered productivity will rise, pushing costs down and enabling prices to fall.
This will occur across a range of commodities from food to energy.
MASSIVE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES
The event horizon of a coming economic singularity where all prices drop down an asymptote toward zero as technology advances exponentially. – James C. Townsend
Optimization and cheaper commodity prices will produce tremendous deflationary pressures.
Productivity gains should be higher than the rate of money printing. This means that prices will fall.
As things get easier to produce they become less scarce. Lower costs for producers means they can cut prices to gain more customers and sell to a larger market.
We’ve already seen this with electronics such as smartphones.
The components of the phones keep reducing in price, and supply chains and operations get more efficient, allowing the companies to expand their market to billions of people instead of a much smaller market of wealthy people.
Hundreds of years ago, light was very expensive. Clean water was very expensive. As those things became easier to produce and deliver to people (electricity and modern plumbing systems) the price dropped down an asymptote towards zero.
Nowadays those things are so cheap and easy to obtain that most people take them completely for granted.
The internet revolution has already delivered this in many ways. Entertainment is practically free now with youtube videos, file sharing, and the ability to access any song, movie, book or picture instantly.
Every industry will have costs lowered by AI bringing more efficient systems and production methods.
The path we are on is to use our knowledge and tools to drive costs down and make systems and processes more efficient.
This will result in things that were previously scarce becoming abundant. Deflation is the reward we get for improving our methods.
SMART MANUFACTURING
Fortunes will be made acquiring analogue manufacturers and digitizing them. Comparable to Russian privatization. – Pierre Rochard
The global manufacturing sector generates about $12 trillion in annual revenue.
Industrial robotics equipped with better than human image recognition will use data from sensors to optimize how they function.
Imagine the cost savings with even just small incremental productivity gains.
TRANSPORT WILL BECOME SAFER, CHEAPER, AND LESS TIME CONSUMING
This is already well underway.
Transport costs will continue to be driven down as ride sharing companies offer self-driving rides.
Car ownership rates will plummet. Vehicles will be massively more utilized (at the moment they’re idle 95% of the time). City streets will open up to be used in different ways.
It will save millions of lives and free up an uncountable number of hours.
I never thought I’d see autonomous automobiles driving on the freeways. It wasn’t many years ago [they] put out a request to see who could build a car that could go across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas from a place in Southern California, and several engineering teams across the country set out to do this. Nobody got more than about 300 yards before there was a problem. Two years later, they made the full 25-mile trip across this desert track, which I thought was a huge achievement, and from that it was just a blink before they were driving on the freeways.” – Gordon Moore
LANUAGE BARRIERS WILL FALL
Language, even more than religion, is humanity’s central point of division. Finally technology is overcoming this. – Jeffrey Tucker
I used to believe that it would take a couple of decades to get a babel fish type of device. I now believe we will have languages solved within 10 years at most.
Google Translate is amazing. The recent conversion to an AI system resulted in huge improvements. I’m in awe at how accurate it can instantly translate foreign text.
Google also have a new feature to use your phone’s camera to translate text in the world around you (like on signs or on a menu).
Skype translator converts instant messages with a very low error rate. This has been available for a while and now audio translation is being rolled out.
I recently tried French – English which was flawed but good enough if you talk clearly. It’s obviously going to improve exponentially with more training.
Breaking these language barriers will reduce friction and speed up processes all over the world. It will allow much greater integration of the 7 billion minds on the planet.
WE’LL HAVE EVEN BETTER ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE
Personal assistants can finally understand you and start to do useful things. That’s a watershed moment. – David Hanson, Jan 2017
Speech Recognition for under $1 in every product. That’s coming within 2 years. Imagine what we see today with Amazon Alexa, that can be in every Roomba, every little consumer product, and it’s cheaper than putting buttons on a product. That’s obvious. – Steve Jurvetson, 2016
Personal AI assistants similar to what is portrayed in the movie Her will be increasingly prominent on our desktops and smartphones (and devices beyond that like virtual and augmented reality glasses and lenses).
Siri – Apple
Viv, Bixby – Samsung
Google Now – Google
Amazon Echo – Amazon
Cortana – Microsoft
M – Facebook
Personal assistants, along with household robots, will be one of the first things that triggers a realization among the general public that a major transition is happening.
WE’LL LIVE LONGER
I think AI’s effect on healthcare will be far more pervasive and far quicker than anyone anticipates. Even today, AI/Machine Learning is being used in oncology to identify optimal treatment patterns. – Stephen Gold, IBM Watson
Diagnosis
AI is already diagnosing people better than humans and saving lives.
We think that its no longer necessary for humans to spend time reviewing text reports to determine if cancer is present or not. We have come to the point in time that technology can handle this. A human’s time is better spent helping other humans by providing them with better clinical care. Everything — physician practices, health care systems, health information exchanges, insurers, as well as public health departments — are awash in oceans of data. How can we hope to make sense of this deluge of data? Humans can’t do it — but computers can.” This is a major infrastructure advance — we have the technology, we have the data, we have the software from which we saw accurate, rapid review of vast amounts of data without human oversight or supervision. – Shaun Grannis
Genomics
Deep learning is helping us to make sense of the human genome and know what to do with it. It’s just too complicated for us to make fast progress without AI.
Life Extension
Ben Goertzel of Hanson Robotics and OpenCog says it’s inevitable that we will learn enough through AI systems to be able to indefinitely extend our lifespan.
OUR ENGINEERING CAPABILITIES WILL IMPROVE
The greatest achievement of our technology may well be the creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering – that allow us to create more than we can understand. – Danny Hillis, 1998
An area I find particularly interesting is evolutionary/iterative algorithms. Deep Learning is part of a larger family of these type of algorithms (where the AI system does something over and over again in an evolutionary manner and somehow get the best result).
These designs often end up looking completely alien and counter-intuitive.
Example 1 – Satellite Antennas
NASA has no idea why their satellite antennas are best shaped like this.
Example 2 = Jet Engines
A jet engine is far too complicated for an unaided human to design so General Electric use evolutionary algorithms.
Example 3 – Structural Nodes
3 structural nodes to hold cables.
On the left is a human design, the right is a machine learning design.
The AI design results in a 40% overall weight reduction of the total structure.
Example 4 – Producing Entangled Photons
Melvin, an algorithm designed at the University of Vienna, works by taking the building blocks of a quantum experiment (lasers and mirrors) and the quantum state desired as an outcome and running through different setups at random.
If the random setup results in the desired outcome, Melvin will simplify it. It can also learn from experience, remembering which configurations result in which outcomes, so it can use those and build on them as needed.
So far, the team says, it has devised experiments that humans were unlikely to have conceived. Some that work in ways that are difficult to understand. They look very different from human-devised experiments.
“I still find it quite difficult to understand intuitively what exactly is going on,” said team member Mario Krenn
– Physics.org
AlphaGo is a similar example of how AI makes decisions that are completely different to what a human would come up with.
This was best displayed in the legendary game 37 when AlphaGo made a move that humans had unanimously dismissed as stupid for 3,000 year, yet turned out to be brilliant.
After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong. I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go. – Ke Jie, Go World Champion
Colonizing mars, mining asteroids, and building a space economy in the decades ahead will need much better engineering than we’ve so far come up with so far, but these algorithms will help us design it.
At some point AI may take us over the threshold of knowledge required to build some of the other most important paradigm shifting technologies speculated about such as large-scale quantum computers or Drexlerian Molecular Assemblers.
HUMANITY’S SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE BASE WILL INCREASE
Deep neural nets will process the big data that we don’t know what to do with. This will provide insights in fields such as physics, biology, and chemistry.
Research breakthroughs at CERN’s particle collider or with the James Webb Space telescope project would give us a better ontological understanding of the nature of reality.
GLOBAL WEALTH WILL KEEP INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY
World GDP in Trillions $
We are already in the Singularity.
At this scale we can see it began sometime around the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s and really took off in the industrial revolution of the 1800s.
What those eras brought will pale in comparison to what comes next.
COMPANIES BRINGING AI TO THE WORLD
PUBLIC COMPANIES
These companies trade on the stock market so are available for the public to become owners of them.
I’ve listed them in order of market cap so it’s easier to get some perspective over who are the most valued companies and who has more room to grow relative to their competitors.
1) Apple
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $711 Billion
Personal assistant – Siri
Self-driving cars
Massive proprietary data to feed into AI training sets and improve systems
2) Google
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $582 Billion
DeepMind
AlphaGo
RankBrain – AI Search
Personal assistant – Google Now
Optimization Services (DeepMind in energy)
Google Cloud Computing (Google Cloud Platform)
Hardware –TPUs new deep learning chips (Tensor Processing Chips)
DeepMind Wavenet –The best text to speech system in the world (50% better than traditional systems)
Owns D-Wave “quantum computers” for quantum machine learning
The Google Quantum AI Lab (Quantum Machine Learning – Hartmut Neven, John Martinis)
Massive proprietary data to feed into AI training sets and improve systems
Self-Driving Cars – Waymo
Robotics – Boston Dynamics
Google Brain Project
Google Translate
Google Inbox Smart Reply
Google Home (Competitor to Amazon Alexa)
Nest (Home automation)
Wearables – Smart contact lens (long-term project)
Languages: “In few years time we will put it on a chip that fits into someone’s ear and have an English-decoding chip that’s just like a real Babel fish.” – Geoffrey Hinton
Key Talent – Geoffrey Hinton, Jeff Dean, Ray Kurzweil, John Martinis, Demis Hassibis, Mustafa Suleyman (DeepMind)
3) Microsoft
Seattle, USA
Market Cap = $499 Billion
Languages – Skype Translator
AI Personal Assistant – Cortana
Search – Bing
Speech Recognition
Cloud computing provider (Microsoft Azure)
Researching deep learning with FPGAs. Possibly better result than GPUs
Researching quantum computers
Massive proprietary data to feed into AI training sets and improve systems
Key Talent – Jian Sun, Li Deng, Matthias Troyer.
4) Amazon
Seattle, USA
Market Cap = $404 Billion
Cloud computing provider (AWS)
Amazon AI Services
Open sourced their Deep Scalable Sparse Tensor Network Engine (DSSTNE)
Personal Assistant – Amazon Alexa
Autonomous Drones
Investing significantly in robotics to improve their processes, reduce costs and increase profits.
Massive amounts of difficult to obtain proprietary data.
5) Facebook
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $387 Billion
Big data – Training AI on it.
AI Personal Assistant – M
Oculus – Integrating AI into this. (Long term)
Acquired voice-recognition AI startup Wit.ai
Key Talent – Yann LeCun
6) General Electric
Fairfield, USA
Market Cap = $270 Billion
Using AI to improve engineering
7) Samsung
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $259 Billion
Acquired much hyped AI assistant Viv Labs (Siri cofounders new company)
The next Samsung phone will come with a digital assistant called Bixby.
Wearables – Smart contact lens (long term)
Part of a $3 billion public/private research centre with, LG, telecom giant KT, SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor, and internet portal Naver.
Pumping Millions into Artificial Intelligence startups
Deep learning to detect cancer – Samsung Medison
8) Alibaba
Hangzhou, China
Market Cap = $253 Billion
Cloud Computing AI Platform
9) Intel
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $175 Billion
Nervana Systems is a deep learning chip set company recently bought by Intel for around $400 mill which accelerates algorithms.
Intel FPGAs Break Record for Deep Learning Facial Recognition
10) Oracle
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $172 Billion
Lots of data
AI Cloud Apps
11) IBM
New York, USA
Market Cap = $171 Billion
Cloud computing provider (IBM Cloud)
IBM Watson – a tool for doctors, business people, and scientists.
IBM Watson making inroads into the $3.8 trillion healthcare industry
IBM Watson -Diagnosis greatly in demand
FPGA – Neuromorphic Chips
12) SAP
Walldorf, Germany
Market Cap = $106 Billion
Access to lots of data
Cloud computing platform
Sells AI services
SAP believes the next technology adoption phase for businesses will be around how they can use intelligent applications to assist them with their operations.
13) Qualcomm
San Diego, USA
Market Cap = $84 Billion
Competes with Nvidia in the GPU market
Neuromorphic Chips
The Internet of Things
14) Softbank
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $82 Billion
$32 billion acquisition of ARM (makes GPUs)
Robotics
Pepper, customer service robot
“Nao,” a customer service robot that answers basic questions and is designed to speak 19 languages
Masayoshi Son (Chairman) – “ARM will play a key role in bringing about advanced artificial intelligence. I have unfinished business with the Singularity.”
15) Daimler AG
Stuttgart, Germany
Market Cap = $72 Billion
Mercedes-Benz, one of the leaders in self-driving cars
Mercedes and Uber plan network of self-driving cars
16) Baidu
Beijing, China
Market Cap = $65 Billion
Baidu AI Lab
AI Cloud Services
2 nd largest search engine in the world.
largest search engine in the world. 4 th most visited website in the world (behind Google, Youtube, and Facebook)
most visited website in the world (behind Google, Youtube, and Facebook) Baidu’s AI Supercomputer Beats Google at Image Recognition
Key Talent – Andrew Ng
17) Nvidia
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $56 Billion
Nvidia have 70% of the GPU market and will try to defend that.
They have a huge head start over their competitors by investing in a $2 billion R&D program before anyone else.
18) Salesforce
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $56 Billion
Salesforce Einstein is artificial intelligence (AI) built into the core of the Salesforce Platform
Bought deep learning startup Metamind
19) General Motors
Detroit, USA
Market Cap = $54 Billion
Self-Driving Cars
20) ABB Group
Market Cap = $50 Billion
Zurich, Switzerland
Industrial robots and robot software.
21) Ford
Detroit, USA
Market Cap = $50 Billion
Putting $1 billion into an AI startup, Detroit’s biggest investment yet in self-driving car tech
22) Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd
Taipei, Taiwan
Market Cap = $50 Billion
Apple’s Supplier
Industrial Robotics
Already had a fully automated factory that can run 24 hours a day with the lights off
23) Keyence Corp
Osaka, Japan
Market Cap = $48 Billion
Develops and manufactures automation sensors, vision systems, barcode readers, laser markers, measuring instruments
24) Tesla Inc
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $42 Billion
Self-Driving cars
Plans be able to add your self-driving car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation.
25) Fanuc Corp
Oshino-mura, Japan
Market Cap = $41 Billion
One of the largest makers of industrial robots in the world
26) Hyundai Motor Co
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $32 Billion
Part of a $3 billion public/private AI research centre.
Self-Driving Cars.
27) Mitsubishi Electric Corp
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $32 Billion
Self-Driving Cars
28) HP
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $28 Billion
Venture Fund that invests in AI
29) Nidec Corp
Kyoto, Japan
Market Cap = $27 Billion
Manufactures electric motors
30) Intuitive Surgical
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $27 Billion
The Da Vinci, a flagship robot performs surgical operations
31) Illumnia Inc
San Diego, USA
Market Cap = $24 Billion
Applying Deep learning to healthcare
32) Naver Corp
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $22 Billion
Korea’s biggest search engine
Lots of data
33) Delphi Automotive
Gillingham, England
Market Cap = $20 Billion
Built 1st driverless car to travel across the USA
34) SMC Corp
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $19 Billion
Industrial robotics
35) SK Telecom
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $16 Billion
Part of a $3 billion public/private AI research centre.
36) Tencent
Shenzhen, China
Market Cap = $15 Billion
Tencent AI Lab
37) Twitter
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $14 Billion
Lots of data
38) AMD
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $12 Billion
Competes with Nvidia in the GPU industry.
Investing heavily in AI markets
39) Mobileye
Jerusalem, Israel
Market Cap = $10 Billion
Self-Driving Cars
40) LG Electronics
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $9 Billion
Part of a $3 billion public/private research centre with, Samsung, telecom giant KT, SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor, and internet portal Naver.
41) Omron Corp
Kyoto, Japan
Market Cap = $9 Billion
Japanese electronics company.
Bought Adept technologies which focuses on industrial automation and robotics in 2015
42) Toshiba Corp
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $9 Billion
Robotics
Toshiba receives bid as high as $3.6 billion for chip business stake
Toshiba gets on the starting blocks for its latest NAND fab
43) Trimble Navigation
Silicon Valley, USA
Market Cap = $8 Billion
Makes Global Positioning System receivers, laser rangefinders, unmanned aerial vehicles, inertial navigation systems and a variety of software processing tools
44) KT Corp
Seoul, South Korea
Market Cap = $7 Billion
Part of a $3 billion public/private research centre with, Samsung, LG, SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor, and internet portal Naver.
45) NEC
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $6 Billion
Internet of Things
46) Nuance Communications
Boston, USA
Market Cap = $5 Billion
Provides speech and imaging applications
47) Yaskawa Electric Corp
Kitakyushu, Japan
Market Cap = $5 Billion
Industrial robots
48) Cyberdyne Inc
Tsukuba, Japan
Market Cap = $3 Billion
Robotics company
Introducing ‘service’ robots with artificial intelligence
49) iRobot
Boston, USA
Market Cap = $1.7 Billion
The Roomba, the floor cleaning robot from my previous company, iRobot, is perhaps the robot with the most volition and intention of any robots out there in the world. Most others are working in completely repetitive environments, or have a human operator providing the second by second volition for what they should do next – Rodney A. Brooks, 2014
50) Pacific Industrial Co
Nagoya, Japan
Market Cap = $0.7 Billion
Robotics
51) Nippon Cermaic Co
Tottori, Japan
Market Cap = $0.5 Billion
Robotics
Sells various types of sensors
52) Kawada Technologies Inc
Tokyo, Japan
Market Cap = $0.4 Billion
Industrial Robotics
Its robot is designed to work alongside humans, and can be taught new tasks without the need for programming expertise.
NOTABLE PRIVATE COMPANIES
At the moment the public cannot buy stock in these companies.
Some might IPO soon or be bought up by one of the large public companies.
1) Uber
Acquired self-driving truck company Otto.
Uber AI Research Labs
AI Labs at Uber, which is using AI in everything from self-driving cars to dynamic ride scheduling
Transitioning to self-driving ride shares
Massive amounts of proprietary data.
2) Human Longevity Inc
Creating the largest database of human genotypic phenotypic and microbiology data ever assembled and using machine learning to analyze it
3) Hanson Robotics
Create life-like robots.
These robots are infused with OpenCog’s opensource artificial intelligence to “think”.
4) Rethink Robotics
Sells “Baxter” Industrial robot.
5) Kernel
Building advanced neural interfaces to treat disease and extend cognition.
6) Vicarious
Working on artificial intelligence; replicating the human visual cortex and creating machines with human-level intelligence in vision, language and motor control.
Funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Jeff Bezos
7) Berg Pharmaceutical
Uses machine learning, to learn the various health associations and correlations. This led to the development of Berg’s first drug, BPM 31510, which is in clinical trials.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It’s probably smart to be an owner of Artificial Intelligence.
The large public companies are spending billions.
Private companies and startups getting involved.
Lots of theoretical research is taking place in academia (especially in Canada).
Governments and militaries are inevitably involved. Some of these projects are public knowledge, for example the Chinese government have pledged to invest $15 billion by 2018 and South Korea has a $3 billion project. Most likely there are classified projects already well underway.
There are several opensource AI projects such as OpenCog and OpenAI. Maybe some mindblowing unforeseeable opportunity to invest in AI will emerge from a project similar to these the same way Bitcoin came out of nowhere and changed everything.
Some random kid in the middle China could come up with something amazing. History shows that no matter how impressive a big company’s projects look, it’s nothing compared to the guys working out of their garage.
At this stage though, the easiest way to become an owner is to buy shares on the stock market of the companies most prominently involved and likely to succeed.
I laugh when people say tech is a bubble. The establishment is the bubble. Who’s around in 2025 – Google or the EU? – Balaji S. Srinivasan
Of the public companies heavily involved, the one that stands out head and shoulders above the others is Google.
Google snaps up every machine-learning or robotics company it likes the look of. They have supposedly the greatest Artificial Intelligence Lab in the world. They even managed to convince the neural network godfather Geoffrey Hinton to join them.
Google never pays a dividend or does stock buybacks because they aggressively reinvest cash into long-term projects such as DeepMind who they bought for $400mill (a bargain in hindsight). Founder Demis Hassibis describes it as “the Manhattan Project of AI” with hundreds of the best minds working on it.
The scope of their focus is breathtaking and they are clearly the front-runners to make major breakthroughs or even develop General AI.
Kevin Kelly tells the story below of when he realized Google have knowingly been building an AI from day one:
Around 2002 I attended a small party for Google—before its IPO, when it only focused on search. I struck up a conversation with Larry Page, Google’s brilliant co-founder, who became the company’s CEO in 2011. “Larry, I still don’t get it. There are so many search companies. Web search, for free? Where does that get you?”
My unimaginative blindness is solid evidence that predicting is hard, especially about the future, but in my defense this was before Google had ramped up its ad-auction scheme to generate real income, long before YouTube or any other major acquisitions.
I was not the only avid user of its search site who thought it would not last long. But Page’s reply has always stuck with me: “Oh, we’re really making an AI.”
I’ve thought a lot about that conversation over the past few years as Google has bought 14 AI and robotics companies.
At first glance, you might think that Google is beefing up its AI portfolio to improve its search capabilities, since search contributes 80 percent of its revenue. But I think that’s backward. Rather than use AI to make its search better, Google is using search to make its AI better. Every time you type a query, click on a search-generated link, or create a link on the web, you are training the Google AI.
When you type “Easter Bunny” into the image search bar and then click on the most Easter Bunny-looking image, you are teaching the AI what an Easter bunny looks like. Each of the 12.1 billion queries that Google’s 1.2 billion searchers conduct each day tutor the deep-learning AI over and over again.
With another 10 years of steady improvements to its AI algorithms, plus a thousand-fold more data and 100 times more computing resources, Google will have an unrivaled AI. My prediction: By 2024, Google’s main product will not be search but AI
Nvidia are also a very exciting company with massive demand for their products.
The shares are worth picking up because if they do hold on to their position as the best chips to use for AI over the next few years their sales and opportunities to expand into other interesting areas are going to be staggering.
If We Were a Hedge Fund We’d Put All Our Money Into Nvidia – Marc Andreessen
For somebody who wants general exposure to AI, but doesn’t want to pick a winner, investing across a basket of shares by building a portfolio of the best stocks is a good idea.
The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF is an actively managed AI fund with a management fee of 0.68%. It trades under the stock symbol “BOTZ”.
The 10 biggest positions in this portfolio are:
Mitsubishi Electic Corp Fanuc Corp ABB Keyence Corp SMC Corp Intuitive Surgical Yaskawa Electric Corp Omron Corp Trimble Navigation Ltd Mobileye.
Personally, I think the 10 stocks below would make a better AI fund.
Google (GOOGL:NASDAQ) – $846 per share – $582 billion marketcap Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ) – $107 – $56 bill Tesla (TSLA:NASDAQ) – $272 – $42 bill IBM (IBM:US) – $181 – $171 bill Microsoft (MSFT:US) – $65 – $499 bill Samsung (005930:KS) – 1.9 million KRW – $259 bill Amazon (AMZN:NASDAQ) – $845 – $404 bill AMD (AMD:US) – $13 – $12 bill Facebook (FB:NASDAQ) $134 – $387 bill Baidu (BIDU:NASDAQ) – $185 – $65 bill
OTHER INVESTMENT IDEAS
Short WTI Crude Oil (Currently $53 per barrel)
Short the Bloomberg Commodity Index (Currently at 88)
Short the First Trust NASDAQ Global Auto Index Fund (Currently at 36)
OUTLOOK FOR THE MEDIUM TO LONG TERM
The hard part was getting the neural nets to work. This took decades but now we’re there we will see years of easy gains as different industries and people roll them out into every product and service they can think of.
Is there a risk of another AI winter and we’ll be disappointed again?
It’s unlikely at this stage. Computer Science just overtook Economics as the most popular class at Harvard and more and more people are going into machine learning, so better talent is going to be coming through over the next few years.
Companies are spending billions of dollars, and there’s so much low hanging fruit just from applying the current deep learning techniques we already have.
Key Area 1) Data
The amount of data is growing at an exponential rate, doubling every two years.
While a lot of data remains proprietary (which gives companies like Google their edge) there are more and more public data sets becoming available for anyone to use and train their neural nets on.
With more sensors, the internet of things, and more companies willing to launch services which actually lose money just to get data for training AI, this area is going to keep growing exponentially.
Key Area 2) Computing Power and Infrastructure
We’ll soon see the power of computing increase way more than any other period. There will be trillions of products with tiny neural networks inside. – Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA
Hardware is something we have a very good track record on. It’s extremely unlikely that this will be a limiting factor in the decades ahead.
Ray Kurzweil says there’s general agreement that we’re close to the hardware requirements of strong AI. He believes that we’ll be at the human brain of 10^14 calculations per second for $1,000 in the early 2020s.
Hardware costs are coming down as competition increases and chip companies are racing to compete with Nvida in the GPU area.
Every company is thinking about how to run AI faster to enable larger neural nets. Similar to the bitcoin hardware race, there’s a range of hardware, from GPUs to FPGAs to ASICS.
Deep learning ASICs are a very interesting area with some huge engineering efforts going on in the space of neuromorphic chips, Google’s TPUs, and quantum computers.
FPGAs
Microsoft has done research to show you can do better than GPUs with these.
Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)
Google are building their own machine learning ASICS known as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
Quantum Deep Learning
I would predict that in 10 years there’s nothing but quantum machine learning–you don’t do the conventional way anymore – Google’s Hartmut Neven
We actually think quantum machine learning may provide the most creative problem-solving process under the known laws of physics – Google
The Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab was set up to investigate how quantum computing might help with machine learning
Hartmut Neven leads the team and is known for developing the first image recognition system based on quantum algorithms using a D-Wave quantum computer.
Google have bought every model D-Wave has ever produced (at around $15mill each) and has signed a contract to buy all of their machines for the next 5 years.
Lockheed Martin also bought a D-Wave quantum computer to help train a deep neural network.
Google just keeps saying breathless things about D-Wave. I don’t know why Google’s competitors don’t wake up and say “God, what if Google’s right?… What if this is actually gonna knock the socks off everything else.. Maybe we’d want to buy one. Strangely it’s only Google who’s actually buying them, at least to date in this category. Microsoft or Apple haven’t bought one, but we’ll see. – Steve Jurvetson, 2016
Google’s Quantum AI Lab also has John Martinis who is regarded as one of the leading experts.
Martinis is part of Google’s effort to build a quantum computer and his qubits are widely regarded as way higher quality than D-Waves.
Building a quantum computer is a massively ambitious goal, although progress appears to be going much better than most expected. Martinis is confident that Google can demonstrate “quantum supremacy” within the next 1-3 years.
They are definitely the world leaders now, there is no doubt about it. It’s Google’s to lose. If Google’s not the group that does it, then something has gone wrong. – Simon Devitt, 2016
Other Efforts in Quantum Deep Learning
IBM and Microsoft are also investing massive resources to develop their own quantum computers that can be applied to AI.
In 2014 a team of Chinese physicists demonstrated ‘quantum artificial intelligence” by training a quantum computer to recognize handwritten characters.
There are still massive challenges, but even if quantum machine learning turns out to to be too difficult to scale and fully implement over the next couple of decades it’s inevitable we’re going to get exponentially better hardware for machine learning which will allow much deeper neural nets.
Key Area 3) Better Platforms and Algorithms
This is an unprecedented time in openness. All of the big companies are openly publishing their work, although they keep their data-sets proprietary and build better systems than their competitors by exploiting their data edge.
It’s easier than ever to build machine learning systems, especially with opensource platforms like OpenAI’s Universe and Google’s Tensorflow. Start ups can use these to create an AI product that solves a business problem.
As more money and talent comes into the space, better ways of building AI will inevitably emerge.
Most exciting is AI systems working on better ways to build AI systems.
This is already happening.
1) AI Designing deep neural nets
2) Machine learning system writes machine learning software.
Building Stronger More General AI
The big moment is when AIs become general in their abilities and have an almost human-like level ability to generally figure things out, to switch from context to context and remember skills applied in different areas.
General AI is hard, and we’re not there yet.
Most of the magic produced by AI today comes from a surprisingly simple technique called supervised learning.
Most researchers believe the next big breakthrough will come from unsupervised learning.
Unsupervised learning involves learning from unlabeled data. We’ll probably need a lot more progress in unsupervised learning to get to General AI.
In the brain, synapses adjust themselves but we don’t have a clear picture for what the algorithm of the cortex is. We know the ultimate answer is unsupervised learning, but we don’t have the answer yet. – Yann LeCun, Facebook AI Research
In 2013, hundreds of experts were asked when they thought AGI may arrive. The median prediction was 2040.
In “Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Poll Among Experts” by Bostrom and Vincent C. Müller, the authors come to this conclusion: AI systems will probably (over 50%) reach overall human ability by 2040-50, and very likely (with 90% probability) by 2075.
As AI matches the range of tasks a human can do and switch between them, improvements will take it far beyond a current humans capabilities in similar situations.
How long would it take for a general AI to go from unenhanced human level abilities to superintelligence?
Nick Bostrom has a great slide showing how long it took AlphaGo to progress from a beginner human level of Go to crushing one of the world’s best players.
Lee Sedol v AlphaGO
October 2015: “Based on its level seen in the match (against Fan), I think I will win the game by a near landslide”
February 2016: “I have heard that Google DeepMind’s AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win at least this time”
March 9th 2016: “I was very surprised because I didn’t think I would lose”
March 10th 2016: “I’m quite speechless… I am in shock. I can admit that… the third game is not going to be easy for me”
Mar 12th 2016: “I kind of felt powerless.”
Consciousness
A general AI doesn’t have to be self-aware, or conscious. There’s a big debate over what consciousness even means. An AI could have general abilities even if the lights aren’t on.
It is a huge leap to go from something as unalive as a microwave or iphone to something which has the ability to be self-aware and have subjective experiences.
In a report to the Pentagon, JASON claim that current neural network architecture is completely unrelated to consciousness and not even close to the right path to replicating human like self-awareness.
Andrew Ng of Baidu agrees and says “there is no clear path to how AI can become sentient. Part of me hopes there will be a technological breakthrough that enables AI to become sentient, but I just don’t see it happening. That breakthrough might happen in decades, hundreds, or thousands of year from now. I really don’t know.”
We know creating consciousness is possible because we have it, so there must be a way, but how to do it we still don’t know.
David Deutsche feels that current models are a dead end to creating consciousness but “it is plausible that just a single idea stands between us and the breakthrough. But it will have to be one of the best ideas ever.”
INTEGRATING AI
Smartphones and the internet gives us so much opportunity for more knowledge, more intelligence. I’m really looking forward to AI giving us more of that in 10 years or so when everyone is wearing augmented reality glasses with deep learning built into it. Then beyond that somehow integrating AI into my brain processes. – David Chalmers
A common theme is us against the AI but I think this is about us and the AI.
We are not facing an invasion of intelligent machines from Alpha Centauri. These are our tools, an extension of us. Our devices will get smaller and more embedded into us through wearables, VR/AR glasses, VR/AR contact lenses.
Once nonbiological intelligence gets a foothold in the human brain (this has already started with computerized neural implants), the machine intelligence in our brains will grow exponentially – Ray Kurzweil
Obviously there are massive dangers involved, but that’s where this is leading. It will be a very incremental process. Bit by bit the technology will become more and more a physical part of us rather than an extension.
This seems ridiculously science fiction, but breakthroughs are becoming common in neuroprosthetics and implantable electronics.
Can we inject electronic circuits into the brain, then connect & monitor it?
Yes,we can, & that’s where we are today
Charles Lieber’s team at Harvard is making good progress by implanting electronics in mice. Lieber commented by saying “In science, I’ve been disappointed at times, and this is a case where we’ve been more than pleasantly surprised,”
Elon Musk has spoken at length how a “neural lace” is essential. Neuroprosthetic startup Kernel is employing top neuroscientists to build an implantable chip in the hope that eventually it will be able to enhance intelligence.
THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY
The road ahead might seem outrageous, or too dangerous and difficult from where we sit today.
But in all likelihood, when the time passes and we get to that stage, many will take the accomplishments for granted. The goalposts always move on what seems impressive.
An often repeated quote is “AI will be the last invention we ever make”. But what seems to us today like the hardest challenge possible might seem relatively trivial compared to what we will face after this.
Who knows what kind of journeys, adventures, and problems we’ll be enabled to overcome when there is no distinction between us and our most advanced technology.
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Cyprus is Turkish, after all. Turks can do whatever they want there. They can even celebrate dropping napalm on Greeks and slaughtering them.
Uzay Bulut The writer is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara. She now lives in the United States. More from the author ► The writer is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara. She now lives in the United States.
On August 8, Muslim Turkish Cypriots and illegal settlers from Turkey celebrated the 53rd anniversary of Turkey’s napalm bombing of Greek Cypriot civilians in the Turkish-occupied enclave of Kokkina in Cyprus. Mustafa Akıncı, the president of the self-styled “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, also participated in the celebrations.
In August 1964, Turkish warplanes dropped napalm bombs on Kokkina in the Tillyria peninsula, hitting residential areas and a hospital, and killing more than 50 people, including 19 civilians. Ten years later, in 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and has occupied almost 40 percent of the island ever since.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece issued a note of condemnation regarding the celebrations:
“We are dismayed to note the celebrations of the Turkish Cypriot leadership, including Mr. Akinci himself, of the 53rd anniversary of the use of chemical weapons and dropping of napalm bombs by the Turkish air force on the Tillyria peninsula. This was the first use of banned chemical weapons in the history of our planet.
“Today, when the whole planet bows to the victims of wars and such hostile acts, the holding of and participation in such celebrations is an affront to international law, to the memory of the fallen, and to the whole of humanity.”
The Republic of Cyprus declared independence in 1960. Afterwards, Turkey escalated its preparations to invade the island, which included but were not limited to establishing a bridgehead at Kokkina in 1964 and smuggling arms and fighters from Turkey into the area in order to strengthen Turkish positions there.
According to the High Commission of the Republic of Cyprus in London,
“When in August 1964 the [Cypriot] Government attempted to contain the Kokkina bridgehead, Turkey's air force bombed the National Guard and neighboring Greek villages with napalm and threatened to invade. The other major purpose served by the enclaves was the political and physical separation of the two communities.”
Another preparation for the occupation by Turkey was its disguised violent attacks against Turkish Cypriots to further escalate inter-communal conflicts and alienate Turkish-speaking Cypriots from Greek Cypriots.
General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, a Turkish army officer, for example, said in televised comments in 2010 that Turkey burned a mosque during the Cyprus conflict “in order to foster civil resistance” against Greeks on the islandand that “The Turkish special warfare department has a rule to engage in acts of sabotage against respected values [of Turks] made to look as if they were carried out by the enemy.”
The deadly military assault against Kokkina in 1964 is celebrated by many Turkish Cypriots and settlers from Turkey as the “8 August Erenköy Resistance Day.” Turks now call Kokkina “Erenköy,” Turkish for “the village of the [Islamic] saints.”
In 2014, for example, the community leader of Kato Pyrgos, Costas Michaelides, condemned the formal Turkish celebrations in Kokkina, describing them as a “disgrace.” “The memories are alive because the victims, those who survived, are here. The crosses [on the graves] are here. However, many years pass, 50 or 150, we will see this in our daily lives, because they remind us of this cowardly attack against the unarmed people of Tylliria,” he said.
The Turkish narrative does not deny the smuggling of arms and fighters to Cyprus in 1964; the problem is Turks do not view these acts as illegal activities or crimes against the Republic of Cyprus. They see them as “heroism.”
During the celebrations on August 8, Mehmet Kadı, the mayor of Yeni Erenköy (Yialousa), said:
“53 days ago, today, in August 1964, the villagers, students and our mujahedeen [jihadists] struggled together, fought for this land and did not allow the enemy to enter here.”
The enemy that Kadı referred to is the Republic of Cyprus and Greek Cypriots, the natives of the island who still comprised the majority in the northern part of Cyprus back then.
The Turkish Cypriot Minister of Economy and Energy, Sunat Atun, also issued a statement regarding “the Erenkoy resistance” and referred to it as “an act of heroism.”
“Turkish Cypriot people engaged in powerful and honorable resistance in the face of the inhumane attacks by the dual of the Rum [ethnic Greeks] and Greece. About 500 students from Anatolia and a group of Turkish Cypriots from Britain started landing in Cyprus to defend their homeland when attacks against Turkish Cypriots escalated in 1964.”
Mustafa Arıkan, the head of the Erenköy Mujahedeen [Jihadists] Association, also announced that during the commemoration, “for the first time, family members of 28 martyrs were given plaques.”
On July 20, 1974, Turkey mounted a bloody invasion of the island. The second Turkish offensive, codenamed Attila 2, took place between August 14-18. The invasion was accompanied by the mass murder of Greek Cypriot civilians, including women, and infants, unlawful arrests and torture of Greek Cypriots, and rapes of Greek Cypriot children and women, among other atrocities.
Zenon Rossides, the then-Cyprus representative to the United Nations, sent a letter on 6 December 1974 to the UN Secretary General, which said in part that Turkey “launched a full scale aggressive attack against Cyprus, a small non-aligned and virtually defenseless country, possessing no air force, no navy and no army except for a small national guard. Thus, Turkey's overwhelming military machine embarked upon an armed attack including napalm bombing of open towns and villages, wreaking destruction, setting forests on fire and spreading indiscriminate death and human suffering to the civilian population of the island.”
The greatest consequence of the invasion was that Turkey changed the demographic structure of the northern part of the island, terrorizing around 200,000 indigenous Greek Cypriot majority population (more than one-third of the population) into fleeing to the southern part of the island. It is estimated that more than 100,000 Turkish settlers have been implanted in northern Cyprus since then. Lands and houses belonging to Greek Cypriots were then distributed to Turkish Cypriots and to Turks brought from Turkey to settle in those areas.
According to the official website of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Cyprus has never been a Greek Island
Turkish supremacists act so blatantly in Cyprus because they claim Cyprus is a Turkish island. Thus, bringing in Turkish fighters to Cyprus to kill Greek Cypriots, importing tens of thousands of settlers from Turkey, deploying around 40,000 Turkish soldiers there, forcibly changing the demographics of the island, seizing the homes and other property of Greek Cypriots, and wiping out the island’s historic Hellenic and Christian identity through the destruction of its cultural heritage are all legitimate acts according to the Turkish narrative.
Cyprus is Turkish, after all. Turks can do whatever they want there. They can even celebrate dropping napalm on and slaughtering Greeks.
Employing Orwellian rhetoric, Turkey calls the military invasion of Cyprus “a peace operation.” In 1974, Kemalists and Islamists of all political parties supported the invasion of Cyprus. Moreover, Turkey does not recognize Cyprus as a Greek island or even as “a nation.”
According to the official website of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Cyprus has never been a Greek Island. It is both useful and important to keep in mind that there has never been in Cyprus a ‘Cypriot nation’ due to the distinct national, religious and cultural characteristics of each ethnic people who, in addition, speak different languages.”
The Turkish ministry cannot be more wrong. Never until the Turkish invasion in 1974 did the northern part of the island have a Turkish majority. Both the north and south of the island were majority-Greek and majority-Christian until 1974. “Cyprus has been a part of the Greek world as far back as can be attested by recorded history,” writes the author Constantine Tzanos.
“After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the defeat of the Venetians, it fell to Ottoman rule from 1571 to 1878. In 1878 it was placed under British administration, was annexed by Britain in 1914, and in 1925 became a British colony.”
However, the Cyprus question has been one of the key aspects of the Turkish foreign policy for a very long time. Actually, Cyprus has never ceased to be a “national cause” for Turks ever since the Ottomans first invaded it in 1571. A Muslim sovereign is not allowed to relinquish land once it has been conquered. And they can even celebrate their war crimes and murders.
Showing no regard for the sufferings of Greek Cypriots, many Turkish Cypriots and their leaders – including Mustafa Akıncı – have celebrated the deadly assaults on their Greek neighbors. But a community leader who genuinely aims for a peaceful resolution and coexistence in Cyprus would condemn the use of napalm bombs on unarmed civilians and the destruction of that part of the island, and would commemorate the Greek Cypriot victims as well.
Sadly, Turkish Cypriots’ celebrations of the brutal warfare against Greek Cypriot civilians have discredited all of their erstwhile statements that they support a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the island and justice for all its inhabitants. |
MIAMI, FL - FEBRUARY 04: Carolina Villar pumps gas on February 4, 2013 in Miami, Florida. Reports indicate that gas pump prices are at their highest level on record for this period of the year and may be an indication that the year ahead may see even higher records. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
CHICAGO (CBS) — Repairs at BP’s Whiting, Ind., refinery sent gasoline prices plunging last week across Chicago and nationwide, the biggest single-week drop this year.
In Chicago, the average price for a gallon stood at $3.03 on Sunday, which was down 28.7 cents compared with last week, according to GasBuddy.
One year ago, the average gasoline price was $3.70 a gallon.
The national average is $2.47/gallon–nearly a dollar cheaper than last year.
“Nationally, gas prices saw their largest weekly drop of the year,” said Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst.
“Prices moved lower in all but one state, Utah, with plunges at the pump throughout the Great Lakes as a result of BP’s Whiting, Indiana refinery coming back online.
“The national average now stands at its lowest point since April, a fitting way to close out the summer driving season with Labor Day approaching.”
DeHaan said prices should continue to fall in the next week as the cost at the pump has not fallen in concert with lower oil prices over the summer. |
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The BattleFrog west coast expansion tour travelled north from LA to San Francisco (sort of) this past weekend. While some folks were less than pleased by the distance that the venue was from San Francisco itself (roughly 75 miles), Sonoma County residents such as myself were incredibly excited to finally have a large-scale OCR event in our own backyard.
The event was held in the rolling hills surrounding Lake Sonoma, in the small town of Geyserville. Ultra-runners know this location well, as it annually hosts the Lake Sonoma 50 miler. Saturday morning brought clear skies, and temps in the low 50’s; this was in stark contrast to the three days prior to the event, which saw nothing but rain. As a result, the athletes were in for a very slick and muddy course. Oh yeah….and hills…lots of hills.
BattleFrog spread 29 obstacles across the 8k course (which measured as long as 7.2 miles depending upon whose GPS you believe). This was my first attempt at an OCR event that wasn’t a Tough Mudder, so I was anxious to see how I’d fare on some of the tougher obstacles.
As is the case with most BattleFrog events, the Elite and Masters male and female waves all launched at around 7:30am. The BattleFrog Xtreme folks (those who attempt to complete as many laps as possible during the day) were up next. If you ever attend a BF event, be sure to catch the briefing for the Xtreme heat. Chris Acord (aka The Beard) spells out the rules and dishes out a little pre-race punishment; and for those who miss the briefing – well, some special punishment (and public shaming) awaits them at the start line.
Once the Xtreme athletes were gone, it was time for the first Open wave of the day. This included yours truly. Coach Pain DeWayne lined us up in rows of 10 to 12 and then provided us with his signature motivational speech. He then sent us on our way, launching row after row every 15 seconds or so.
The course started off with a fairly steep downhill section. This would later be looked upon as a luxury, as they managed (or at least it seemed) to make a majority of this course uphill.
One thing was certain from the get go….BattleFrog loves walls. You name it, they’ve got it. We started with an Under/Over/Through set, and then came upon a 12-foot ladder wall shortly after that. Throughout the course, there were many more. There were straight walls of different heights (8 foot, 6 foot, 4 foot). There were walls angled in various directions (Inverted wall, Ramp wall, Wedge wall). They also threw in a challenging rope wall right near the end, just in case you had any grip strength left.
One of my favorite things about the course was the way they used the natural terrain against you. As a local who has run the trails in this area before, I thought I’d have a bit of an advantage. That would have been the case, had we actually stuck to the trails. To loosely paraphrase Doc Brown, “Trails? Where we’re going, we don’t need trails”. Where we did go was straight up the side of the mountain. A lot. The “Hill Scramble” was the 4th obstacle of the course, and it was hardly a scramble at all. It was a very long and very steep climb through some low grass. I don’t know the actual length of the climb, but my calves tell me it was 17 miles. These types of climbs occurred multiple times, this one just happened to have a title.
Since the event was held near a lake, I figured we’d end up in the lake at some point…and we did…although it was just a short trudge through the shallows, no more than thigh deep. Later, there was a really fun technical part of the course called Frog Falls, where we basically hiked and climbed our way through a deep creek bed for a while. The recent rains made climbing out of this area particularly slippery.
There were two “carry” obstacles on this course. The Wreck Bag Carry (50lb sandbag) and the Jerry Can Carry (one for each hand. 44lbs for the men and 22lbs for the women). If you are guessing that most of the carrying was done going uphill, you’d be correct.
As for the “tougher” obstacles that I mentioned earlier? The first to show up was called Weaver. This is a shallow A-frame structure with wide parallel bars across it. As you go through it, you must “weave” over a bar and then under a bar (and so on) until you reach the end. For me, the transition from over to under was particularly painful, and I have the bruises to prove it.
A bit further down the trail (mostly uphill, of course) was Tip of the Spear. This obstacle combines two grip strength sapping elements, both of which take place against steep A-frame walls. The first section had 6 ropes lying side by side, which you had to use to traverse the wall from right to left. This was made more difficult thanks to the wall being covered in a slippery plastic. A 4×4 balance beam lead you to the middle wall. This one had 2×4’s secured toward the top of the walls, angled upward in a chevron shape. There were two of these set-ups on the wall, with a small ledge to rest your feet after you completed the first one. A second balance beam lead you to the final wall, which was a repeat of the rope wall. The only catch here is that at the top of the last rope there is a bell that you must ring.
The Rope Climb was the 22nd obstacle of the day, and one that I had never attempted before. It was not as tall as I had expected, which artificially boosted my confidence. A quick attempt to muscle up the rope using only my arms was quickly met with defeat. As I waited for the feeling to return to my hands, I watched a few other athletes come through. By mimicking their cross footed, thigh squeezing technique, I was able to ring the bell on my second attempt.
Anyone who has heard of BattleFrog, has heard of the Platinum Rig. I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know exactly when. After yet another climb, as you’re approached the apex of the hill…you could hear the commotion. Lots of cheering, lots of grunting, and a few expletives being shouted. There is was, in all its lime green glory. As luck would have it, we were treated to back-to-back rigs. This would be my only failed obstacle of the day, which coincided with my first time ever doing 8-count body builders. Hats off to anyone who was able to complete this bad boy, I look forward to the day that I do.
Following the rig, you were actually able to get a glimpse of the finish line. With the “tough” obstacles behind me, this put a little boost in my gait. But our BattleFrog friends weren’t done messing with us just yet. After a short distance through relatively flat terrain, the Monkey Bars appeared. The big difference with these Monkey Bars is that the bars aren’t fixed. So they roll as you grip them. This added an extra degree of difficulty. It was a nice twist on an otherwise standard obstacle.
With the finish line now in clear site (up one more hill, of course), there was one more wall to conquer (of course there was). This was a 12-foot rope wall. This obstacle is basically a 12-foot wall with a rope hanging off the top, and a horizontal 2×4 about half way up. Because this obstacle was placed so late in the course, and grip strength was exhausted, it was quite challenging. I was fortunate to clear it, but my decsent from the top could best be described as “controlled falling”.
The signature Delta Cargo obstacle was the final of the day. After clearing that, my first BattleFrog was officially in the books. I received my finisher medal and headed to the beer tent.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed up for this event. Like any OCR company, there are fans and detractors of them all. Personally, I came away from this event incredibly impressed. Parking at this venue is incredibly sparse, but I feel they did a good job with the shuttle bus system that they employed. Registration was seamless for me, and the staff and volunteers were knowledgeable and friendly. I would definitely consider myself a fan of this series, and look forward to attending the one in San Jose in August.
*Photo credits to David Bird, Joe Forney, Rachelanne Gladden, and Christopher Thomas |
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to meet with Barack Obama. McCain is winning — in Israel
While the European leg of Barack Obama’s much-touted overseas trip will take him to nations where he’s vastly more popular than John McCain, Obama is not nearly as well-liked in Israel. Polls there show Israelis prefer John McCain by as much as 20 percentage points.
Obama’s Middle Eastern swing will also take him to Jordan and possibly to Iraq, but the electoral stakes may be highest in Israel, which has long played a prominent role in American foreign policy and domestic politics.
Story Continued Below
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor downplayed the electoral significance of the senator’s Israel visit, saying the purpose is “to convey to Israeli leaders and the Israeli people his commitment to the special U.S.-Israel relationship and his strong personal feelings of friendship. He is deeply committed to Israel's security.”
If Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, impresses in his visit, it could help him close the international affairs experience gap with his Republican rival, and also solidify his support among Jews and evangelicals skeptical of Obama’s expressed commitment to Israel.
Israelis appear to share those concerns. In the past month, one poll found 36 percent of Israelis preferred McCain, versus 27 percent for Obama, while in another, 46 percent of respondents said a McCain presidency “would be better for Israel,” compared to 20 percent who said the same about Obama.
Those results stand in stark contrast to public surveys conducted in most other nations. A spring Pew Global Attitudes Project poll of 23 foreign nations — not including Israel — on six continents found respondents in all but two countries had more confidence in Obama than McCain to do the right thing in world affairs, often by wide margins. (In the two outlying countries, Jordan and Pakistan, few people expressed confidence in either candidate.)
Obama’s support tended to track fairly closely with widespread distaste for President Bush’s foreign policy — which includes strong support for Israel in its conflicts with the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors.
But that foreign policy has been embraced in Israel, where Bush remains a popular figure.
“Israelis see Bush as having been better to Israel than almost any president before has been,” said Albert Baumgarten, a Jewish history professor at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel. Israelis, he said, “feel almost as if he’s their president.”
Baumgarten, a dual Israeli-U.S. citizen who’s supporting Obama, said Israelis believe McCain is more likely to continue pursuing the Bush administration’s foreign policy agenda.
McCain has received mostly positive coverage in Israel, both for his hard line on Iran and for his military service, including his time as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. That’s an experience valued by Israelis, who are required to serve in the country’s armed forces.
He’s also benefited from the support of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the former-Democrat-turned-independent, whose Orthodox Judaism and staunch support of Israel make him a popular figure in Israel. Some Israelis, said Jerusalem-based pollster Mitchell Barak, count against Obama “that the Democratic Party is not a welcome place for Joe Lieberman.”
But McCain’s edge in the Jewish state seems to stem in large part from an antipathy toward Obama. In May, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, then seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, outpolled McCain in a head-to-head matchup by a margin of 57 percent to 18 percent. The same poll, conducted by Barak’s firm, showed McCain with a 43 percent to 20 percent edge over Obama among Israeli voters. |
Full text of "Coming test with Russia"
!i:;«;y'-?' 3'^7 73 .7GGcom c,3 :<.'!,;;•:</:-■ UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES COLLEGE LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/comingtestwithruOOIipp The Coming Tests with Russia Books by Walter Lippmann A PREFACE TO POLITICS DRIFT AND MASTERY THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY THE POLITICAL SCENE LIBERTY AND THE NEWS PUBLIC OPINION THE PHANTOM PUBLIC MEN OF DESTINY AMERICAN INQUISITORS A PREFACE TO MORALS INTERPRETATIONS 1931-1932 INTERPRETATIONS I933-I935 THE METHOD OF FREEDOM THE NEW IMPERATIVE THE GOOD SOCIETY U. S. FOREIGN POLICY: SHIELD OF THE REPUBLIC U. S. WAR AIMS THE COLD war: A STUDY IN U. S. FOREIGN POLICY ISOLATION AND ALLIANCES: AN AMERICAN SPEAKS TO THE BRITISH THE PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY THE COMMUNIST WORLD AND OURS THE COMING TESTS WITH RUSSIA With William O. Scroggs THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS I93I THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS I932 The Coming Tests with Russia by WALTER LIPPMANN An Atlantic Monthly Press Book BOSTON • Little, Brown and Company • Toronto COPYRIGHT © 1961 BY WALTER LIPPMANN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRO- DUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PAS- SAGES IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTED IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. 61-I495O FIRST EDITION ATLANTIC-LITTLE, BROWN BOOKS ARE PUBLISHED BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown 6 Company {Canada) Limited PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Editor's Note MR. LIPPMANN had his first meeting with Mr. Khrushchev in the autumn of 1958, and at the conclusion he drew up a penetrating analysis of the Communist objectives as he had seen them emerge in their two-hour discussion. He emphasized that one of the fundamental differences between ourselves and the Russians is in our inter- pretation of ''the status quo." "Whereas we think of the status quo as the situation as it exists at the moment, [Mr. Khrushchev] thinks of it as the proc- ess of revolutionary change which is in progress. He wants us to recognize the revolution not only as it is but as it is going to be." That is a hard truth which we must keep in mind as we prepare for the coming tests with Russia. The second meeting of the two men took place [V] Editor's Note on April 10, 1961, at the Russian Premier's dacha at Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea. It was some- thing of a family affair, beginning with a long pri- vate talk at 11:30 in the morning, at which Mr. Khrushchev, the official interpreter, and Mr. and Mrs. Lippmann were present, and running on for eight hours with time out for eating, drinking, and a game of badminton. (Mr. and Mrs. Lippmann played against Mr. Khrushchev and the woman in- terpreter.) Fateful events were impending, for this was on the eve of the launching of the Russian astro- naut (of which Mr. Khrushchev said nothing); and the eve of the ill-judged invasion of Cuba, of which Mr. Khrushchev had been forewarned: he told Mr. Lippmann that it would be carried out by Cubans supplied with American arms, and that it would fail. In the opening talk, which lasted until nearly three o'clock, and intermittently thereafter, Mr, BChrushchev opened his mind more freely and for- cibly than he has to any other correspondent from the West. He spoke of disarmament, and dismissed the value for Russia of small nuclear weapons. He spoke of neutrality, and the inference to be drawn is that the Soviet Union will never again trust to [vi] i Editor's Note "the neutrality" of an individual, such as Secretary General Hammarskjold. ("You have not been troubled about this as long as you had the majority," Mr. Lippmann recalled his saying afterwards, "but when you lose the majority in the United Nations, as you will, the veto power will mean as much to you as it does to us.") The discussion ranged widely over the uncommitted nations, with Mr. Khrush- chev specifying those which would be in a rebellious state, and quite confident that the revolution would succeed. But the most serious part of the confronta- tion centered in the discussion of the future of Ger- many, which Mr. Khrushchev clearly regards as the most sensitive issue between the East and the West. In realistic detail he looked ahead to the solution which he declares must be found in the near future. This is an uncensored account of a vital and il- luminating exchange. It was written down, the first part of it, on the plane flying the Lippmanns from Moscow to London and the balance in the English capital. It is a sobering blueprint of the designs of our greatest adversary which we will do well to keep in mind in the tense months ahead. Edward Weeks [vii] i Face to Face: I 3 Face to Face: II 13 Face to Face: III 21 Postscript: To Ourselves Be True 31 The Coming Tests with Russia Face to Face: I ON THIS, our second visit, my wife and I were taken on a long journey by plane and auto to Mr. Khrushchev's country place in Sochi on the Black Sea. Before we left Moscow, accompanied by two interpreters and an oflEcial of the Press Depart- ment, there was much mystery about all the details of the coming visit, such as when and where we were to see the great man. In fact, as it turned out, he had no other appointments after half past eleven in the morning, when he met us in the pine woods near the entrance of his place. Eight hours later, a bit worn by much talk and two large meals, we in- sisted on leaving in order to go to bed. I would not like to leave the impression that all eight hours were devoted to great affairs of the world. Perhaps, all told, three and a half hours were spent in serious talk. The rest of the time went into [5] The Coming Tests the two prolonged meals at which Mr. Khrushchev, who is on what appears to be a nonfattening diet, broke the rules, saying joyously that the doctor had gone to Moscow for a day or two. The talk was largely banter between Mr. Khrushchev and Miko- yan (First Deputy Premier), who joined us for lunch, and the banter turned chiefly on Armenian food and Armenian wine and Armenian customs, which include the compulsion to drink all glasses to the end at each toast. Though we all drank a bit more than we wanted, Mikoyan chose to regard us as American ascetics who only sipped their wine. Finally Mr. Khrushchev took pity on us by provid- ing a bowl into which we could pour the wine as fast as Mikoyan filled our glasses. Between this heroic eating and drinking we walked around the place, which is large, met Mr. Khrushchev's grandson and Mikoyan's granddaugh- ter, inspected the new and very gadgety swimming pool and, believe it or not, played badminton with Mr. Khrushchev. In the serious talks, I might say that my wife made fairly full notes, I made a few jottings, but [6] with Russia there was no transcript and the translation was done very ably by Mr. Victor M. Sukhodrev, who is an official in the Foreign Ministry. It was understood that I was free to write what I liked when I had left Russia and to quote Mr. Khrushchev or not to quote him as seemed desirable. I shall set down my own understanding and interpretation of the most important and interesting points that he made. For an opening I reminded him that we had last seen him in October, 1958, nearly a year before his visit to the United States. Much has happened in these two and a half years and would he tell me what seemed to him the most important events for good or evil? After a moment or two of hesitation, he replied that during this period the two main forces in the world — the Capitalist and the Socialist — have concluded that it was useless to "test" one another by military means. I took him to mean by "test" the backing of their political aims by the threat of war. In contrast with 1958, when he professed to be- lieve that the United States and Germany might at- tack him, he spoke with confidence that, because of [7] The Coming Tests the growing strength of the Communist orbit, the threat of war from our side was dying down. As a re- sult, the United States was abandoning the "Dulles doctrine" that the neutrality of small states is "im- moral." He himself welcomed President Kennedy's proposals for a neutral Laos. You think then, I asked him, that there has been a change in United States policy? To this he replied that while there were some signs of a change, as for example in Laos, it was not a "radical" change, as could be seen in the United States attitude toward disarmament. What, I asked him, is wrong with the United States attitude? We cannot see, he replied, that any change is imminent when the subject of dis- armament is put in the hands of such a believer in armaments as Mr. McCloy. We think well of Mr. McCloy and during his time in Germany we had good relations with him. But asking him to deal with disarmament is a case of asking the goat to look after the cabbage patch. I interjected the remark that the final decisions would be made by the President. But Mr. Khrush- [8] with Russia chev insisted that the forces behind the President would determine his pohcy. These forces behind the Kennedy administration he summed up in the one word "Rockefeller." The view that he is running the Kennedy administration will be news to Gover- nor Rockefeller. I should add that Mr. Khrushchev considers me a Republican, which will be news to Mr. Nixon. Then we got onto the subject of nuclear testing. He said that the Western powers were not ready to conclude an agreement, and that this was shown, among other things, by the demand for twenty-one or perhaps nineteen inspections a year. He had been led personally to believe that the West would be satisfied with about three "sym- bolic" inspections. Nineteen inspections, our pres- ent demand, were nothing but a demand for the right to conduct complete reconnaissance of the Soviet Union. I asked him about his attitude towards under- ground testing. He replied that the U. S. S. R. has never done any underground testing and never will. [9] The Coming Tests I asked why? Because, he said, we do not see any value in small, tactical atomic weapons. If it comes to war, we shall use only the biggest weapons. The smaller ones are very expensive and they can decide nothing. The fact that they are expensive doesn't bother you because you don't care what you spend, and what is more many of your generals are con- nected with big business. But in the U. S. S. R. we have to economize, and tactical weapons are a waste. I report this without having the technical expertise to comment on it. Then he went on to say that the second reason why he had no great hopes of an agreement was that the French are now testing and are unlikely to sign the agreement. It is obvious, he said, that if the French are not in the agreement, they will do the testing for the Americans. To which I said, and the Chinese will do the testing for you. He paused and then said that this was a fair remark. But, he added, while China is moving in the direction where she will be able to make tests, she is not yet able to make them. When the time comes that she can, there will be a new problem. We would like all states to sign a nuclear agreement. [10] with Russia Finally, he came to his third reason why an agree- ment may not be possible. It turns on the problem of the administrator of the agreement. Here, he was vehement and unqualified. He would never accept a single neutral administrator. Why? Because, he said, while there are neutral countries, there are no neutral men. You would not accept a Communist administrator and I cannot accept a non-Commu- nist administrator. I will never entrust the security of the Soviet Union to any foreigner. We cannot have another Hammarskjold, no matter where he comes from among the neutral countries. I found this enlightening. It was plain to me that here is a new dogma, that there are no neutral men. After all, the Soviet Union had accepted Trygve Lie and Hammarskjold. The Soviet Government has now come to the conclusion that there can be no such thing as an impartial civil servant in this deeply divided world, and that the kind of political celibacy which the British theory of the civil service calls for is in international affairs a fiction. This new dogma has long consequences. It means that there can be international co-operation only if, in the ad- The Coming Tests ministration as well as in the policy-making, the Soviet Union has a veto. Our talk went on to Cuba, Iran, revolutionary movements in general and finally to Germany. I shall report on these topics in subsequent articles. [12] Face to Face: 11 IN THIS article I shall put together those parts of the talk which dealt with the revolutionary movements among small nations. Mr. Khrushchev spoke specifically of three of them — Laos, Cuba and Iran. But for him these three are merely ex- amples of what he regards as a worldwide and his- toric revolutionary movement — akin to the change from feudalism to capitalism — which is surely des- tined to bring the old colonial countries into the Communist orbit. I could detect no doubt or reser- vation in his mind that this will surely happen, that there is no alternative, that while he will help this manifest destiny and while we will oppose it, the destiny would be realized no matter what either of us did. Speaking of Iran, which he did without my rais- ['5] The Coming Tests ing the subject, he said that Iran had a very weak Communist party but that nevertheless the misery of the masses and the corruption of the government was surely producing a revolution. "You will assert/' he said, "that the Shah has been overthrown by the Communists, and we shall be very glad to have it thought in the world that all the progressive people in Iran recognize that we are the leaders of the progress of mankind." Judging by the general tenor of what he said about Iran, it would be fair to conclude that he is not contemplating military intervention and occu- pation — "Iran is a poor country which is of no use to the Soviet Union" — but that he will do all he can by propaganda and indirect intervention to bring down the Shah. In his mind, Iran is the most immediate example of the inevitable movement of history in which he believes so completely. He would not admit that we can divert this historic movement by championing liberal democratic reforms. Nothing that any of us can say can change his mind, which is that of a true believer, except a demonstration in some country that we can promote deep democratic reforms. [16] with Russia His attitude towards Cuba is based on this same dogma. Castro's revolution is inevitable and prede- termined. It was not made by the Soviet Union but by the history of Cuba, and the Soviet Union is in- volved because Castro appealed for economic help when the United States tried to strangle the revolu- tion with an embargo. He said flatly, but not, I thought, with much passion, that we were preparing a landing in Cuba, a landing not with American troops but with Cu- bans armed and supported by the United States. He said that if this happened, the Soviet Union would "oppose" the United States. I hope I was not misled in understanding him to mean that he would oppose us by propaganda and diplomacy, and that he did not have in mind mili- tary intervention. I would in fact go a bit further, based not on what he said but on the general tone of his remarks, that in his book it is normal for a great power to undermine an unfriendly govern- ment within its own sphere of interest. He has been doing this himself in Laos and Iran and his feeling about the American support of subversion in Cuba is altogether different in quality from his feeling [17] The Coming Tests about the encouragement of resistance in the satel- Hte states of Europe. Mr. Khrushchev thinks much more hke Richeheu and Metternich than hke Woodrow Wilson. I had an over-all impression that his primary in- terest is not in the cold war about the small and underdeveloped countries. The support of the revo- lutionary movements among these countries is for him an interesting, hopeful, agreeable opportunity, but it is not a vital interest in the sense that he would go to war about it. He is quite sure that he will win this cold war without military force be- cause he is on the side of history, and because he has the military power to deter us from a serious military intervention. His primary concern is with the strong countries, especially with the United States, Germany, and China. I could not ask him direct questions about China. But there is no doubt that in his calculations of world power, China is a major factor. I felt that he thought of China as a problem of the future, and that may be one of the reasons why for him the immediate and passionate questions have to do with with Russia Germany and disarmament. In my next article, I shall deal with what he had to say about Germany, which he discussed at some length. For the present I should add a few miscellaneous impressions. During our walk after lunch, Mikoyan (First Deputy Premier) being with us then, I tried to find out what they thought of President Ken- nedy's purpose to bring the American economy not only out of the current recession but out of its chronic sluggishness. For quite evidently, much of his buoyant confidence in the historic destiny of the Soviet Union is based on the undoubted material progress of Soviet industry as compared with our slow rate of growth. I had put the question to Mikoyan, assuming that he was the economic expert, but he deferred at once to Mr. Khrushchev. To Mr. Khrushchev it was certain that President Kennedy cannot succeed in accelerating American economic growth. He had, he told me, explained that to Mrs. Roosevelt when he was in New York during the American election. Why can't President Kennedy succeed? Because, he said, of "Rockefeller," and then added "Du Pont." [19J The Coming Tests They will not let him. This was, it appears, one of those truths that cannot be doubted by any sane man. None of this, however, was said with any personal animus against President Kennedy. Rather it was said as one might speak of the seasons and the tides and about mortality, about natural events which man does not control. While he has no confidence in the New Frontier, he has obvious respect for the President personally, though he confessed he could hardly understand how any man who had not been in a big government for a long time could suddenly become the head of it. Moreover, as I shall report tomorrow in talking about the German question, it is clear, I think, that he looks forward to another round of international negotiations before he pre- cipitates a crisis over Berlin. [20] Face to Face: III IT WAS clear to me at the end of a long talk that in Mr. Khrushchev's mind the future of Ger- many is the key question. I sought first to under- stand why he thinks the German problem is so urgent, and so I asked him whether, since agree- ment was so far off, a standstill of five or ten years might not be desirable. He said this was impossible. Why? Because there must be a German solution before ''Hitler's generals with their twelve NATO divisions" get atomic weapons from France and the United States. Before this happens there must be a peace treaty defining the frontiers of Poland and Czechoslovakia and stabilizing the existence of the East German State. Otherwise, West Germany will drag NATO into a war for the unification of Ger- many and the restoration of the old eastern frontier. His feeling of urgency, then, springs from two [^3l The Coming Tests causes: his need to consolidate the Communist East German state, the German Democratic Republic — known for short as the GDR — and second, his need to do this before West Germany is rearmed. He said several times that he would soon bring the German question to a head. Quite evidently, the possibility of nuclear arms for West Germany is not immediate. Bonn does not now have the weapons and although the possibility of it is real enough, the threat is not so urgent as to be a matter of a few months. The more immediately urgent considera- tion is, no doubt, the need to stabilize the East Ger- man regime, particularly in view of the flow of refugees. My general impression was that he was firmly re- solved, perhaps irretrievably committed, to a show- down on the German question. But it was evident also that he dreaded the tension — he referred to this several times — and is still looking for a ne- gotiation which will work out a postponement and an accommodation. In talks it transpired that he is thinking of the problem as having three phases. with Russia The first is what he considers the real and also the eventual solution. He has no hope, however, that the West will now accept it. His thesis is as follows: The two Germanys cannot be reunited. The West will not agree to a unified Communist Germany and the Soviet Union will not agree to the absorption and destruction of the GDR by West Germany. There are in fact two Germanys. The way to proceed is, then, to "codify" the status quo in the form of peace treaties with what he called the three elements of Germany. These three elements are West Germany, East Germany, and West Berlin. This codification would require de facto but not diplomatic recognition of the GDR. It would fix by international statute the position of West Berlin as "a free city," with its rights of access and its in- ternal liberty guaranteed by the presence of "sym- bolic contingents" of French, British, American and Russian troops, by neutral troops under the aegis of the United Nations, and by the signatures of the two Germanys and the four occupying powers. As I said above, Mr. Khrushchev does not expect [25] The Coming Tests at this time to reach this solution. He has, there- fore, a second position which he called a "fallback" position. This is essentially that of the Soviets at the last Geneva conference of the foreign ministers. It would call for a temporary agreement. In the Russian view but not in our view this temporary agreement would have a short and fixed time limit of perhaps two to three years. During this time the two German states would be invited to negotiate on a form of unification — perhaps, though he did not say so specifically in this talk, a kind of loose con- federation. At the end of the fixed period of time, if a new agreement about West Berlin along the lines I have outlined previously was reached, it would be embodied in a treaty. If no agreement was reached, the legal rights of occupation would lapse. This German solution was, as we know, refused by the West. But if there is to be another round of negotiation, variants on it are likely to be the sub- stance of the bargaining. If this fails, Mr. Khrushchev's third position is that he will sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. Then the GDR will in the Soviet view [26] with Russia be sovereign over the rights of access to West Ber- hn. If the Western powers refuse to do business v^ith the GDR and use force to enter West Berhn, then the Soviet government will use the Red Army to blockade West Berlin. Though it would be foolish to undervalue his determination, the threat is not quite so fierce as it sounds. For he most certainly does not want a mili- tary showdown, and "doing business" with the GDR is a flexible and not a rigid conception. I have confined myself strictly to reporting my understanding of the Soviet policy on Germany. If I may venture an opinion of my own, I would make these points. First, Mr. Khrushchev will not precipitate a crisis until he has had a chance to talk face to face with President Kennedy.* Second, he will surely sign a separate peace treaty if he cannot negotiate a temporary accommodation, which is described under his "second position." * During the interview Mr. Khrushchev told me that there was the possibihty of a meeting with the President early in June either in Vienna or Stockholm, and asked me to keep this news confidential except from the United States Ambassador. [^'Tl The Coming Tests Third, the crucial points which will determine whether the German question is resolved by nego- tiation or goes to a showdown are whether the pros- pect of nuclear arms for Germany increases or diminishes, and whether or not we say that the freedom of West Berlin, to which we are pledged, can be maintained only by a refusal to negotiate about this future. I have been asked many times since we left the Soviet Union to come to London whether I found the whole interview encouraging or depressing. I found it sobering. On the one hand, the evidence was convincing that the U. S. S. R, is not contem- plating war and is genuinely concerned to prevent any crisis, be it in Laos, in Cuba, or in Germany, from becoming uncontrollable. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Soviet Government has a relentless determination to foster the revolutionary movement in the underdeveloped countries. This relentless determination springs from an unqualified faith in the predestined acceptance of Communism by the underdeveloped countries. The Soviet Gov- ernment has great confidence in its own military [28] with Russia forces. But it regards them not as an instrument of world conquest, but as the guardian against Ameri- can interference with the predestined world revo- lution. I was sobered by all this because I do not think there is any bluff in it. [29] POSTSCRIPT May g, 1961 To Ourselves Be True WE HAVE been forced to ask ourselves re- cently how a free and open society can compete with a totalitarian state. This is a crucial question. Can our Western society survive and flourish if it remains true to its own faith and prin- ciples? Or must it abandon them in order to fight fire with fire? There are those who believe that in Cuba the attempt to fight fire with fire would have succeeded if only the President had been more ruthless and had had no scruples about using American forces. I think they are wrong. I think that success for the Cuban adventure was impossible. In a free society like ours a policy is bound to fail which deliberately violates our pledges and our principles, our treaties and our laws. It is not possible for a free and open [33I The Coming Tests society to organize successfully a spectacular con- spiracy. The United States, like every other government, must employ secret agents. But the United States cannot successfully conduct large secret conspira- cies. It is impossible to keep them secret. It is im- possible for everybody concerned, beginning with the President himself, to be sufficiently ruthless and unscrupulous. The American conscience is a reality. It will make hesitant and ineffectual, even if it does not prevent, an un-American policy. The ultimate reason why the Cuban affair was incompetent is that it was out of character, like a cow that tried to fly or a fish that tried to walk. It follows that in the great struggle with Com- munism, we must find our strength by developing and applying our own principles, not in abandoning them. Before anyone tells me that this is sissy, I should like to say why I believe it, especially after listening carefully and at some length to Mr. Khrushchev. I am very certain that we shall have the answer to Mr. Khrushchev if, but only if, we stop being fascinated by the cloak and dagger busi- [34] with Russia ness and, being true to ourselves, take our own prin- ciples seriously. Mr. K. is a true believer that Communism is destined to supplant capitalism as capitalism sup- planted feudalism. For him this is an absolute dogma, and he will tell you that while he intends to do what he can to assist the inevitable, knowing that we will do what we can to oppose the inevi- table, what he does and what we do will not be decisive. Destiny will be realized no matter what men do. The dogma of inevitability not only gives him the self-assurance of a man who has no doubts but is a most powerful ingredient of the Communist propa- ganda. What do we say to him, we who believe in a certain freedom of the human will and in the ca- pacity of men to affect the course of history by their discoveries, their wisdom and their courage? We can say that in Mr. K.'s dogma there is an unexamined premise. It is that the capitalist society is static, that it is and always will be what it was [35] The Coming Tests when Marx described it a hundred years ago, that — to use Mr. K.'s own Hngo — there is no difference between Governor Rockefeller and his grandfather. Because a capitalist society cannot change, in its dealings with the underdeveloped countries it can only dominate and exploit. It cannot emancipate and help. If it could emancipate and help, the in- evitability of Communism would evaporate. I venture to argue from this analysis that the rea- son we are on the defensive in so many places is that for some ten years we have been doing exactly what Mr. K. expects us to do. We have used money and arms in a long losing attempt to stabilize native governments which, in the name of anti-Commu- nism, are opposed to all important social change. This has been exactly what Mr. K.'s dogma calls for — that Communism should be the only alternative to the status quo with its immemorial poverty and privilege. We cannot compete with Communism in Asia, Africa, or Latin America if we go on doing what we have done so often and so widely — which is to place the weak countries in a dilemma where they [36] with Russia must stand still with us and our client rulers or start moving with the Communists. This dilemma can- not be dissolved unless it is our central and persist- ent and unswerving policy to offer these unhappy countries a third option, which is economic develop- ment and social improvement without the totali- tarian discipline of Communism, For the only real alternative to Communism is a liberal and progressive society. 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There was some talk about the elusive Great ___s found in the Shin Megami Tensei games, so I figured I’d share some small (linguistic) explanations for the three we know.
- Shin Megami Tensei II has YHVH mention what we call The Great Will aka 大いなる意志 [ooinaru ishi]
- Shin Megami Tensei III brings into discussion The Great Will once more, this time with a slightly different kanji 大いなる意思 [ooinaru ishi]
- Shin Megami Tensei IV FINAL offers us a change, with The Great Will becoming The Great Reason/Truth (depending on how you want to read it, they function on the same principle) 大いなる理 [ooinaru ri/kotowari]
Both 意志 and 意思 are read the same and generally denote the same thing: intention. In fact, I’ve noticed that Japanese players use them interchangeably, with an overwhelming preference for 意思 (probably because Nocturne’s the more recent game).
All right, so what’s different? There’s actually a very interesting difference between them. 意志 signifies the determination to do something, a proactive state of mind [from 志 kokorozashi - will, intention, motive]. On the other hand, 意思 refers to one’s thoughts and feelings because of 思 shi - to think.
Basically it’s like the difference between ‘I want to do thing’ and ‘I’m thinking of doing thing’. The intention is there, but with a different nuance for each word.
Now, on to 大いなる理. The second kanji can be read either ri or kotowari. The dictionary tells us it means reason, truth, the natural order of things, fundamental truth, etc. Fun fact: if kotowari sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the Reasons of Nocturne (which only had the katakana version コトワリ).
Japanese players have also noticed the difference and look like they have decided that The Great Reason is the equivalent of The Great Will in the SMT4 universe. I figure the official translation will maintain the terminology of the previous games, but knowing some details never hurts. c:
(Source: manapedia.jp) |
M A I N N E W S Beijing plays down row over disputed map in its e-passport
Ashok Tuteja/TNS
Tribune News Service New Delhi, December 7
China continues to indulge in double-speak in the latest map row with India, Vietnam and the Philippines, refusing to budge from its position that the move was purely a security measure and not aimed against any country. Chinese sources sought to play down the concerns raised by India and some East Asian countries over Chinas new e-passport, the latest bone of contention between Beijing and its neighbours. This is not targeted at any particular country, they told The Tribune. Map of discontent * India noticed that Beijing had started issuing new biometric passports depicting two areas along the 4,000-km border as part of China * One of the areas was Arunachal Pradesh while the other was Aksai Chin, a remote part of Jammu and Kashmir that Beijing had occupied after the 1962 war * Beijing had informed all countries in advance about the proposed changes in the e-passport as is the general practice under the regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, Chinese sources said * They explained that the move followed a suggestion from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security that the introduction of e-passport would help improve security effectively, preventing counterfeiting Sources pointed out that Beijing had informed all countries in advance about the proposed changes in the e-passport as is the general practice under the regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. They explained that the move followed a suggestion from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security that the introduction of e-passport would help improve security effectively, preventing counterfeiting. The controversy erupted a few weeks back when India noticed that Beijing had started issuing new biometric passports depicting two areas along the 4,000-km border as part of China. One of the areas was Arunachal Pradesh while the other was Aksai Chin, a remote part of Jammu and Kashmir that Beijing had occupied after the 1962 war. Much to the consternation of Vietnam and the Philippines, the e-passport also shows shoals and archipelagos in the South China Sea that Beijing claims almost entirely, but which is contested and, in some areas, patrolled by a number of other Southeast Asian nations. The move was interpreted as yet another crude attempt by China to keep its neighbours on tenterhooks and aggressively display its hegemonistic designs. Officials in New Delhi swiftly got into action, considering ways and means to counter the Chinese move. Though technically it was an issue concerning the Chinese passport, New Delhi felt that stamping visas to its holders could amount to endorsing Chinas stand. When New Delhi complained to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in this regard, it got no response. Left with no choice, India went in for a tit-for-tat response, covering up the controversial map that appears as a watermark on the pages of the latest Chinese passports with a specially redesigned visa that displays Indias version of the border. The redesigned visa depicts the two Himalayan regions as a part of India. Asked if the redesigned visa had annoyed the Chinese, an official source said, We are not concerned about how they react because they are the ones who started it. In response to a question, the source said there was no need for a Parliamentary approval for the redesigned visa. Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines have also found ways to deal with the situation. Vietnam is now issuing visas to Chinese nationals on separate slips of paper rather than stamps affixed to passport pages to avoid approving Beijings action. Similarly, the Philippine visas will be stamped on a separate visa form for Chinese applicants. |
Even though Google's Android handily tops Apple's iOS in terms of overall smartphone market share, a new report suggests that Apple still wallops it when counting dollars spent on apps.
In a note sent to investors this morning, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster says Google's Android Market has pulled in about 7 percent of the raw sales that Apple's had since it launched the App Store, with Apple continuing to mop up about 85-90 percent of money spent on mobile apps.
Munster offers that Google is on track to eat into that hefty lead over the "next 3-4" years, with Apple's lead on dollars spent slipping down in the the "70 percent plus" percent range. To validate this, Munster points to a mix of sources, mainly third-party app tracker AndroLib and Apple's disclosures (presumably apps downloaded, and developer payouts--two numbers Apple frequently touts).
So how much does that work out to for Google in terms of app sales? Munster offers a ballpark estimate of about $330 million since the launch of Google's Android Market. That's from 90 million paid app downloads out of Google's 6.75 billion total registered downloads, which means that 1.3 percent of its downloads were paid apps.
Crunching the numbers, Munster has Apple Apple considerably higher with 13.5 percent of its downloads being for paid applications, with Apple pulling in about $4.9 billion in cumulative sales since launching the App Store in 2008.
Piper Jaffray
One area where Google has Apple handily beat, according to Munster's figures, is on the average sale price of its apps, with Google pulling in more per paid app than Apple. For Google that works out to be $3.79 an app, with Apple coming in at a lesser $2.01. Apple's still got Google beat in terms of the number of apps users have installed on their devices, with the average iOS user downloading about 71 apps, versus Android's 34.
Piper Jaffray's report follow's last week's third quarter smartphone market share analysis from Gartner, where the firm noted that Google's Android secured 52.5 percent, more than doubling in the course of a year. That same report had Apple's 16.6 percent share from last year, scaling back to an even 15 percent, and behind Symbian for third place. |
Gov. Bobby Jindal's voucher program that uses tax dollars to send students to private schools was ruled unconstitutional Friday by a state judge who said it's improperly funded through the public school financing formula.
Judge Tim Kelley sided with arguments presented by teacher unions and school boards seeking to shut down the voucher program and other changes that would funnel more money away from traditional public schools.
More than 4,900 students are enrolled in 117 private schools with taxpayer dollars, in one of the largest voucher programs in the nation.
The judge said the method the Jindal administration, state education leaders and lawmakers used to pay for the voucher program violates state constitutional provisions governing the annual education funding formula, called the Minimum Foundation Program or MFP.
"The MFP was set up for students attending public elementary and secondary schools and was never meant to be diverted to private educational providers," Kelley wrote in a 39-page ruling.
Superintendent of Education John White and Jindal said the state will appeal.
Jindal called the judge's ruling "a travesty for parents across Louisiana who want nothing more than for their children to have an equal opportunity at receiving a great education."
"On behalf of the citizens that cast their votes for reform, the parents who want more choices, and the kids who deserve a chance, we will appeal today's decision, and I'm confident we will prevail," the governor said in a statement.
Bill Maurer, a lawyer representing two parents with children in the voucher program and two pro-voucher groups, said he believes the decision is "not consistent with the interpretation of the Louisiana Constitution."
Maurer said he didn't expect Kelley's ruling to immediately force voucher students from their private schools, because Kelley didn't issue an injunction against the program.
It was the second legal setback this week for the voucher program that Jindal pushed through the Legislature this year as part of a sweeping education system overhaul. On Monday, a federal judge halted the voucher program in one Louisiana parish, saying it conflicts with a decades-old desegregation case.
"The political rhetoric of 'pro-reform' vs. 'anti-reform' hopefully is over," said Scott Richard, head of the Louisiana School Boards Association. "We're not anti-reform. We just want the political shell game to stop with public funding for public education." |
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