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Why Feral Hogs Are a Deer Hunter's Biggest Competition The booming feral hog population is having a profound impact on whitetail deer populations as well. Whitetail deer are perhaps the most hunted big game animal in North America. Each year millions of Americans take to the woods in order to pursue this iconic and formidable prey. Recently a new competitor for deer has hit the scene; feral hogs. Feral hogs are seeing an epic boom in population in America. More than five million feral hogs are thought to be in the US alone. Most common in the southern United States, these resilient invaders can live as far north as Saskatchewan, Canada. Feral hogs are so abundant for several reasons. One major reason lies in their ability to eat nearly anything. As omnivores, hogs can consume nearly anything as a possible food source. Young deer being on the list. Although not a direct threat to adult deer populations, feral hogs have been known to swoop in on young fawns. In the first few weeks of a fawn's life they are virtually helpless and simply try and hide from threats. When discovered by a large hog its simply the end of the line for the fawn. While only possible for a short period of time each year, hogs add another danger to a fawn's first year of life. Hogs indirectly pose a threat to adult deer populations as well. One major concern is that hogs are known carriers of multiple diseases. Some of these diseases can transfer to deer and humans as well. In addition to predation on fawns and disease, hogs are also incredibly hard on habitat. Louisiana wildlife state veterinarian Jim LaCour has said of hogs, "they're in every habitat in the state...and also highly destructive." When it comes to habitat, hogs are also voracious eaters. They compete with deer for food sources such as acorns, corn, mast, and nearly anything else deer eat. Aggressive eaters by nature, feral hogs can soon scalp an area of food sources. By picking an area clean, hogs reduce a deer's chance at survival through tough winter months and can push them out of an area. Predators such as coyotes, bobcats, and wolves generally garner the most attention when it comes to their negative impact on deer. It is true these predators have a profound impact on populations, but one can't overlook the indirect impact feral hogs have. Competition for food and disease can seriously decrease an area's deer population. Strategies for limiting the population of hogs have been lackluster at best. With sows having two litters a year of six piglets per litter, the population can grow quickly. It is estimated that 75 percent of a hog population must be killed each year in order to maintain a static population. With feral hogs a reality in 39 states, the problem has wildlife officials scratching their heads with what to do next. States have tried ariel hunting, trapping, and unlimited hunting permits. Private outfitters charge people for hog hunts on private ranches and people from all over flock to try and bag one. If there is a way to get rid of feral hogs, you can bet somebody has tried it. One strategy used by Nebraska is designed to take away all incentive for people to hunt feral hogs. In Nebraska it is illegal to hunt feral hogs at all, release feral hogs, own feral hogs, or to charge anyone for a hog hunt feral hogs. By removing the human incentive officials hope to eliminate their feral hog population. One thing is for certain, if your area has feral hogs they will have a negative impact on your deer population. How to best manage hogs is still up in the air, and it may be some time before an answer is reached. WATCH oembed rumble video here SEE MORE
As the Government of Myanmar is yet to take effective steps to drive out the militants taking shelter in that country, the Government of India has decided to take strong steps to squeeze the fund flow to the camps of the ultras to make life miserable for them. Almost all the active militant groups of the Northeast have strong bases in Myanmar and despite repeated assurances, the Government of that country is yet to take strong action against them. Highly placed security sources told The Assam Tribune that the ultras would be crippled if the flow of funds can be squeezed and the police and security forces have managed to do that to a large extent. The worst hit is the National Democratic Front of Boroland (S), while the other militant groups have also been affected as most people are not ready to pay the demanded amounts. Sources pointed out that the movement of the militants with weapons has been restricted to a large extent following the massive crackdown launched after the killing of more than 70 persons by militants belonging to NDFB (S) on December 23, which, in turn, reduced the flow of funds to the coffers of the militants. Sources pointed out that the main source of income of the NDFB (S) was kidnapping and extortions, but in the last four months, the outfit failed to kidnap any person. The security agencies recently received an input that the debt burden of the NDFB(S) has gone up to Rs 60 lakh and the leaders of the outfit staying in Myanmar called up the commander-in-chief G Bidai to urgently send money. But Bidai himself is on the run and is not in a position to launch any extortion drive. During the ongoing operations, police and security forces managed to arrest 148 militants belonging to the outfit along with more than 160 linkmen and couriers. Those linkmen were used by the ultras to collect money on their behalf and they also acted as “spotters” for the outfit. As even the linkmen are now lying low, the militants are finding it hard to collect money. The ULFA (Independent), led by Paresh Barauh, is still getting money in trickles but most people are not ready to pay the demanded amount as was the case in the past. On their part, the ULFA(I) leaders making calls to people with demands for money, are also ready to negotiate the amount, sources added. On the strength of the NDFB (S) sources said, last year, around 120 new recruits including 25 girls were sent to Myanmar in two batches and they are still in that country. Several efforts were made to push them to Assam but only five or six could be sent. Sources further said that the abrogation of the cease-fire agreement on March 27 with NSCN (K) would also affect the movement of the militants from Myanmar. All the militant outfits of North East are using the facilities of NSCN (K). Taking advantage of the cease-fire agreement, the NSKN (K) ultras used to help other militants to move into India along with their cadres. But now the militants will not have that advantage, sources pointed out. -AT
Juliet Jacques is a journalist and critic based in London and author of “Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study” and “Trans: A Memoir.” Hida Viloria was born neither completely male nor completely female — but was raised as a girl. Viloria’s memoir “Born Both” tells the poignant and powerful story of h/er struggle to understand and speak out about gender identity. Calmly and with dignity, Viloria describes h/er experience and how it blossomed from the personal to the political. Today, Viloria is an activist for the intersex community. (“Intersex” refers to a person born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the standard definition of female or male, such as someone who appears to be female on the outside but has a mostly male-typical anatomy inside.) [Intersex applicants face passport discrimination, says lawsuit seeking option other than ‘M’ or ‘F’] “I think we intersex folks are just one of nature’s marvelous variations — like redheads in a world of blondes and brunettes,” Viloria writes. “But each time I out myself publicly I remember that not everyone feels this way, and the fear sets in. I have to remind myself that ultimately it doesn’t matter . . . as much as people may view those who are different in a divisive, us-versus-them way, in actuality we are all fellow human beings who feel and want the same thing.” HANDOUT IMAGE: The author and intersex activist Hida Viloria (Glenn Campbell) Viloria’s awakening emerges out of family trauma, sexual violence and medical intervention. H/er childhood was marked by an abusive father, anti-Hispanic racism and homophobia. Viloria, who was born in 1968 in New York, found solace and connection with androgynous cultural icons — Grace Jones, David Bowie and Prince, and the memoirs of 19th-century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin — who broke the silence around gender nonconformity. (After a long search for an appropriate pronoun, Viloria notes a preference for s/he and h/er.) [‘Darling Days’: His anatomy said girl. His reality said boy.] The book begins with an extraordinary level of violence: from Viloria’s father toward the rest of the family (particularly Viloria’s mother) and from racist bullies at school. Viloria finds that the advice to “ignore them” not only doesn’t work but makes h/er feel powerless. Later, a nightclub rape leads to injuries to h/er female body parts. This sets up the book’s key political issue: the intersex community’s aim to stop doctors from performing nonconsensual genital surgeries on intersex infants and allow them to decide what — if anything — to do with their bodies as adults. Having been spared such invasion as a child (despite her mother saying, in a surprisingly casual aside, that the doctors “thought you were a boy”), Viloria becomes aware that h/er experiences are not like those of many people she meets through the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). Early on, Viloria tells a friend that both male and female “feel right,” and h/er playful humor and sharp observations about gender roles derive from moments when Viloria switches between male and female, or masculine and feminine. Viloria notes the different ways people interact with h/er and the different types (and genders) of people s/he attracts according to h/er presentation. At one point, Viloria, as a man, is arrested for attacking police officers during a protest at the University of California at Berkeley. In court, dressed as a woman, s/he manages to get the charges dropped. “I know getting out of trouble wouldn’t have been so easy if I hadn’t been able to hide behind being a girl,” Viloria writes. “I also find it interesting to consider whether any of this would have happened if the police hadn’t thought I was a guy.” [Author Meredith Russo just wants a book where good things happen to transgender people] As in Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” (2014), Viloria’s experiences of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and erasure of her intersex status form h/er social consciousness and draw h/er into activism. S/he tries to raise awareness through the mainstream media, making a lot of stressful decisions while earning very little. “Born Both” is especially strong on the dilemmas of “respectability politics,” as Viloria details not just the challenges of deciding how to dress for high-profile television appearances (on “Oprah,” “20/20” and elsewhere) and how much of h/erself to give away in pursuit of h/er goals, but also their effects on h/er personal life. S/he splits with other activists over different approaches — for example, when ISNA endorses efforts to replace “intersex” (which denotes a physical status) with “disorders of sex development,” which Viloria fears will be used to facilitate nonconsensual medical treatments. There’s a lot of sadness in this book but no self-pity. The personal is not neglected: Viloria shares deep anguish in struggling to convey exactly what being intersex means to h/er mother, who finds various ways to avoid a full discussion; the relationship collapses in an argument about how Viloria played down h/er father’s abusive behavior during h/er biggest television appearance. Viloria’s difficulties in reconciling h/erself with her family background tie into h/er struggles to find love, coming to a bittersweet conclusion after years of misunderstandings and violations. But the way s/he uses sex and sexuality to comprehend h/erself is rare in memoirs of this type. Viloria refuses to rein in h/er personality to fit some nebulous idea of a “good” intersex role model. The epilogue draws us back into a wider realm, looking at how transgender and intersex activists should support one another, with a brief reference to the Orlando massacre — a chilling reminder of this book’s urgency.
Code S - Ro16 Group D Preview (Season 3) Text by TeamLiquid ESPORTS Graphics by wo1fwood 2013 GSL Season 2 WCS Korea Season 3 GSL Code S Ro16 - Group D Preview Maru, PartinG, Flash, Kangho Brackets and standings on Maru, PartinG, Flash, KanghoBrackets and standings on Liquipedia Ro16 Group D Preview Flash and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week by Waxangel Things still seemed normal when SKT_PartinG picked KT_Flash during the Ro16 group selections. The famously brash PartinG had a long history of making taunting comments, assembling groups of death, and generally embracing the idea of progamer-as-entertainer. His explanation of "I match up well against Flash's style" seemed to be a thin cover for his attempt to once again gather several championship candidates together in a single, explosive group. However, once the other players started talking, it became apparent that something was amiss. With Flash absent due to his flight to DreamHack Bucharest, no one seemed to mind speaking freely about the player called God in Brood War. Super, , and all expressed their disappointment at being unable to play against Flash, without any of them seeming to consider him a particularly difficult opponent. Wait, what? Players who had never gone above the Ro16 in their careers showing absolutely no fear for KT Rolster's ace and Brood War legend? Sure, Flash's showings in the Challenger League and Code S Ro32 weren't spectacular by any means, but they also weren't anything to make you forget that he was the player who won the most Proleague games last season. What the heck was going on? Flash wasn't present in the GomTV studio to comment, but he would have a perfect chance to respond at DreamHack Bucharest. Facing the most difficult line-up of players in DreamHack history, Flash had an opportunity to respond to words with actions, and to make PartinG quickly regret his decision. Unfortunately for Flash, one could say he did the exact opposite of proving his doubters wrong. His very first match was a disaster, suffering a 0 - 2 loss against Challenger Leaguer . Things did not get much better from there, and Flash ended his tournament in the Ro32, being sent out with losses to and . The doubters? They were right. You can imagine the pressure that's on Flash's shoulders going into this group. Not just the pressure coming from the outside, but the pressure of his own expectations. He has settled for nothing less than being the very best for the past five years, and we can only imagine how being merely "good" makes him feel. He may say that seeing his arch-rival Jaedong doing well in international tournaments gives him motivation, but looking at his tournament placements for the last few months should give him a different kind of fire. It's been two weeks since DreamHack Bucharest. Depending on what player you talk to, that's a completely insignificant amount of time, or the time to make all the difference in the world. For a player of Flash's caliber and reputation, we all want to believe that two weeks will be enough. But reality has been harsh for Flash so far, and he may very well find himself falling short again in an extremely difficult group. All that's left for us to do is to wait and see. Quick hits on the rest SKT_PartinG: PartinG is in a surprisingly similar situation to Flash. He hasn't been a championship contender for all of HotS, but his past achievements give him an inflated reputation. It also helps that he's very entertaining and can talk a big game, making sure he's always receiving some kind of attention. While the death of the Soul Train due to the new HotS meta has been quite detrimental to PartinG's PvZ, his PvT has looked very strong on the rare occasions we get to see it. With great high templar positioning, engagement micro, and all-around play in the late-game, it's no surprise he was pleased to get this two-Terran group. MaruPrime: You have to wonder how Maru feels about being duped by PartinG. He couldn't resist PartinG's calculated taunts (it was funny how clearly jjakji saw through PartinG's smack talk in comparison) and brought him over to the group. In return, he gets Flash, which could be a curse or a gift. Flash's TvT is strong when he can establish a macro game, but he seems a bit vulnerable in the early-mid game—perhaps a good match-up for a player with aggressive tendencies like Maru. Then again, who wants to play an angry Flash? All around it's an annoying group for the defending WCS Korea champ to prepare for, having to face opponents from all three races. His deflating performance at the WCS Season 2 Finals means we can't give him as much benefit of the doubt as we would for most other champions, but he should be able to fight evenly with the other players in this group. IM_KangHo: Say hello to KangHo (aka Losira), the winner of the coveted "last player picked in group selections" award. Typically that means you're the scariest opponent left in the Ro16, but forgive me if I say that doesn't seem to be the case this time. The second Losira saw Maru-PartinG-Flash in a group together, he made up his mind that it was the group he wanted to be in. While other players would try to beg and plead to get into the group of their choice, Losira remained stoic and basically demanded that the other players acquiesce to his wishes. Somehow, this approach actually worked, and he got into the group of death. From the outside looking in, it's absolutely baffling as to why Losira would want to play this group. It makes no sense in terms of stats, as Losira's best match-up is ZvZ by a large margin, and there are no Zergs in this group. Perhaps it's one of those cases of live results matching up really poorly with what goes on in practice, and Losira really, really didn't want to play any Zergs. Predictions: PartinG > Maru Flash > Losira PartinG > Flash Maru > Losira Maru > Flash PartinG and Maru advance. Things still seemed normal whenpickedduring the Ro16 group selections. The famously brash PartinG had a long history of making taunting comments, assembling groups of death, and generally embracing the idea of progamer-as-entertainer. His explanation of "I match up well against Flash's style" seemed to be a thin cover for his attempt to once again gather several championship candidates together in a single, explosive group.However, once the other players started talking, it became apparent that something was amiss. With Flash absent due to his flight to DreamHack Bucharest, no one seemed to mind speaking freely about the player called God in Brood War. Trap , and Sleep all expressed their disappointment at being unable to play against Flash, without any of them seeming to consider him a particularly difficult opponent.Wait, what? Players who had never gone above the Ro16 in their careers showing absolutely no fear for KT Rolster's ace and Brood War legend? Sure, Flash's showings in the Challenger League and Code S Ro32 weren't spectacular by any means, but they also weren't anything to make you forget that he was the player who won the most Proleague games last season. What the heck was going on?Flash wasn't present in the GomTV studio to comment, but he would have a perfect chance to respond at DreamHack Bucharest. Facing the most difficult line-up of players in DreamHack history, Flash had an opportunity to respond to words with actions, and to make PartinG quickly regret his decision. Unfortunately for Flash, one could say he did the exact opposite of proving his doubters wrong. His very first match was a disaster, suffering a 0 - 2 loss against Challenger Leaguer DIMAGA . Things did not get much better from there, and Flash ended his tournament in the Ro32, being sent out with losses to MMA and YugiOh . The doubters? They were right.You can imagine the pressure that's on Flash's shoulders going into this group. Not just the pressure coming from the outside, but the pressure of his own expectations. He has settled for nothing less than being the very best for the past five years, and we can only imagine how being merely "good" makes him feel. He may say that seeing his arch-rival Jaedong doing well in international tournaments gives him motivation, but looking at his tournament placements for the last few months should give him a different kind of fire.It's been two weeks since DreamHack Bucharest. Depending on what player you talk to, that's a completely insignificant amount of time, or the time to make all the difference in the world. For a player of Flash's caliber and reputation, we all want to believe that two weeks will be enough. But reality has been harsh for Flash so far, and he may very well find himself falling short again in an extremely difficult group. All that's left for us to do is to wait and see.PartinG is in a surprisingly similar situation to Flash. He hasn't been a championship contender for all of HotS, but his past achievements give him an inflated reputation. It also helps that he's very entertaining and can talk a big game, making sure he's always receiving some kind of attention.While the death of the Soul Train due to the new HotS meta has been quite detrimental to PartinG's PvZ, his PvT has looked very strong on the rare occasions we get to see it. With great high templar positioning, engagement micro, and all-around play in the late-game, it's no surprise he was pleased to get this two-Terran group.You have to wonder how Maru feels about being duped by PartinG. He couldn't resist PartinG's calculated taunts (it was funny how clearly jjakji saw through PartinG's smack talk in comparison) and brought him over to the group. In return, he gets Flash, which could be a curse or a gift. Flash's TvT is strong when he can establish a macro game, but he seems a bit vulnerable in the early-mid game—perhaps a good match-up for a player with aggressive tendencies like Maru. Then again, who wants to play an angry Flash?All around it's an annoying group for the defending WCS Korea champ to prepare for, having to face opponents from all three races. His deflating performance at the WCS Season 2 Finals means we can't give him as much benefit of the doubt as we would for most other champions, but he should be able to fight evenly with the other players in this group.Say hello to KangHo (aka Losira), the winner of the coveted "last player picked in group selections" award. Typically that means you're the scariest opponent left in the Ro16, but forgive me if I say that doesn't seem to be the case this time. The second Losira saw Maru-PartinG-Flash in a group together, he made up his mind that it was the group he wanted to be in. While other players would try to beg and plead to get into the group of their choice, Losira remained stoic and basicallythat the other players acquiesce to his wishes. Somehow, this approach actually worked, and he got into the group of death.From the outside looking in, it's absolutely baffling as to why Losira would want to play this group. It makes no sense in terms of stats, as Losira's best match-up is ZvZ by a large margin, and there are no Zergs in this group. Perhaps it's one of those cases of live results matching up really poorly with what goes on in practice, and Losira really, really didn't want to play any Zergs.> Maru> Losira> Flash> Losira> Flash
His arm thrown out in the signature ‘lightning bolt’ pose of the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt, Prince Harry was at his most relaxed as he clowned around with the Olympic champion. His visit to Jamaica in 2012, where he and the athlete staged a mock race, cemented his reputation as the most personable member of the Royal Family. Here was someone who wore his reputation as the world’s most eligible bachelor easily, and with none of the introspection that so affected his older brother William. This was the happy-go-lucky Prince, whose popularity was undented — indeed it seemed to be enhanced — by every scrape he found himself in, from falling out of nightclubs the worse for wear to swinging a punch at a paparazzo. That’s my boy: Harry is cuddled in his mother Princess Diana’s loving arms just short of his third birthday Even the emergence of pictures of him naked while playing a game of ‘strip billiards’ in a Las Vegas hotel in 2012 did little to damage his image. This was a young man who was neither overwhelmed by royal privilege nor consumed by the responsibilities of royal duty This image of him walking behind his mother’s coffin between his father Prince Charles and his uncle Earl Spencer, with William and their grandfather Prince Philip, was the most poignant moment of Diana’s funeral Even the emergence of pictures of him naked while playing a game of ‘strip billiards’ in a Las Vegas hotel in 2012 did little to damage his image. This was a young man who was neither overwhelmed by royal privilege nor consumed by the responsibilities of royal duty. So it was nothing short of a seismic shock yesterday to learn, thanks to his candid interview, that behind this playful image, Harry was at this time a deeply troubled young man still struggling to come to terms with the death of his mother, Princess Diana. Princess Diana with Harry in Majorca in 1987 He had, he confessed, been ‘very close’ to a complete mental breakdown on numerous occasions. The turmoil over his emotions saw him endure two years of what he described as ‘total chaos’ before seeking professional counselling on the advice of Prince William. He disclosed that he had only begun to address this grief when, at the age of 28, he had felt himself to be ‘on the verge of punching someone’ while also facing anxiety when carrying out official engagements. Ironically, it was during that period that the Prince was transforming from party-loving playboy to a fully paid up member of the royal ‘firm’. As someone who has watched Harry from nursery school toddler to accomplished soldier and much-loved Prince, his frank admission revealing how he has coped — or rather not coped — since his mother’s death in Paris in 1997, is startling. His words are shatteringly honest. ‘I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all my emotions for the past 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life, but my work as well,’ he said. Yet how well he has bottled up all this sorrow over the past two decades. Only those closest to him have ever known the extent of the anguish he carried inside. A pivotal figure in his life was former royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who was especially close to Harry. They are pictured here together in 1999 Harry pictured at his passing out parade at Sandhurst with Tiggy in April 2006. Tiggy was key in the first two years after Diana’s death and until after Harry was at Eton College That image of him walking behind his mother’s coffin between his father Prince Charles and his uncle Earl Spencer, with William and their grandfather Prince Philip, was the most poignant moment of Diana’s funeral. All the advantages of his privileged birth were cruelly counterbalanced by the disadvantages of losing his mother just two weeks short of his 13th birthday. For any young child, losing a parent is profoundly shocking. When that parent is the most famous woman on the planet, the distress must be endless. Because for Harry, there was never any danger of his mother being too easily forgotten. Far from it, Diana was simply too big a figure for that. Her influence, not just on William and Harry, but on the whole of the Royal Family, has simply never gone away. Two days before the Princess’s funeral, the brothers went with their father to see the lake of flowers placed in tribute to their mother at Kensington Palace and then went inside to the apartment where they had lived. Instantly, Harry burst into tears and fell into the arms of Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell. The boy was inconsolable. For two years afterwards, Harry would weep for his mother. He was still tearful about her absence during a family summer holiday aboard the late Greek shipping tycoon John Latsis’s yacht, Alexander, in August 1999. So how did his father and other members of the Royal Family help Harry come to terms with his loss? Certainly, the way in which the Prince of Wales set aside his own unhappy experiences of his life with Diana, and filled Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, with photographs and mementoes of the marriage, helped. ‘He arranged to have lots of framed pictures of the Princess dotted around the house,’ recalls an aide. ‘Despite his own personal feelings, he knew that Diana had been a brilliant mother, and he wanted to ensure there were plenty of reminders of her that the boys could see every day. ‘Old wedding presents were dusted off, anything for which there could be a common talking point.’ Prince Harry with his mother enjoying the rides at Thorpe Park in August, 1997 Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Charles look at the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales, during her funeral in London in September 1997 It was an act all the more extraordinary when you consider that, not long before, as the couple were divorcing, Charles did all he could to eradicate Diana’s memory by redecorating the house. Charles also encouraged his sons to talk about their mother around the dining table, for example, and asked his friends to share their memories of her with them. This cannot have been easy, for many of these friends had sided with the Prince when the royal marriage was breaking up. In the very masculine atmosphere of Highgrove and St James’s Palace, where Charles then had his office, there were few female role models on his father’s staff whom Harry could confide in, should he have wished to. Two who did help him were former Press secretary Sandy Henney and her successor Colleen Harris. Both provided a shoulder for him to lean on. The pivotal figure at this time, however, was former royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who was especially close to Harry. The Prince is godfather to her elder son Fred, now 15 — younger son Tom has William as a godparent. Tiggy was key in the first two years after Diana’s death and until after Harry was at Eton College. Unlike William, who flourished at the school, Harry was less successful there, making fewer friends and finding the work hard. Had he got his way, it is quite possible that he would have gone somewhere less academic, but Charles was convinced he needed to be close to his brother. By the time Harry was 16, it was clear that all this mentoring was not necessarily working. Eton scholar: Unlike William, who flourished at the school, Harry was less successful, making fewer friends and finding the work hard Charles encouraged his sons to talk about their mother around the dining table and asked his friends to share their memories of her with them It emerged that during a two-month period when William was away on his gap year and Charles was distant and busy with royal engagements — and his romance with Camilla Parker Bowles — Harry was often to be found in country pubs near Highgrove, where he was exposed to a dangerous cocktail of underage drinking and the illegal drug cannabis. Looking back now, it is clear this must have been a critical moment. He missed his mother terribly, his father and brother were not always around — and he was easily led astray. If ever there was a moment for his mother’s family, the Spencers, to become involved, it was then. At her funeral, Diana’s brother Lord Spencer had famously, and very publicly, pledged to play his part in William and Harry’s upbringing. Perhaps the only certainty in Harry’s decision to speak out is that he is very much his mother’s son But the fact is his contact had been minimal, not least because with a young family then based in South Africa, Spencer simply was not around enough. In truth, Harry was closer to Diana’s sisters, Sarah and Jane, and their children. The cousins had often holidayed together and those bonds remained. Lady Sarah, for example, made sure that Harry received the 13th birthday present Diana had intended him to have, and tried to attend sporting fixtures when he was still at Ludgrove prep school in Berkshire. One is entitled to wonder what part, if any, the Princess’s friends played. The answer, sadly, is not very much. Several of her close friends wrote to the boys offering to share their memories of Diana, only to receive a brush off from an aide. One told me: ‘One can’t blame the boys, they were only young, but the only conclusion you are left with is that the people around them didn’t really want us involved. Perhaps it was all too uncomfortable.’ Another said: ‘Rightly or wrongly the Royal Family seem to typify the stiff-upper-lip approach, but Diana was not like that and it now seems that Harry isn’t either.’ As the world knows, for the past nine months Harry has been dating Californian-born actress Meghan Markle whose own mother, intriguingly, is a therapist Prince William and Prince Harry bowing their heads as their mother's coffin is taken out of Westminster Abbey following her funeral service Over the 20 years since her death, Diana’s reputation has suffered damage; revisionist writers have denigrated her memory while there have been few to champion her. It was against this backdrop that Harry tried to ignore his grief. As he put it in the interview: ‘My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help? It’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back.’ According to Harry’s timescale, his years of turmoil occurred towards the end of his 20s, and yet it was in the early part of that decade that he was attracting the wrong kind of attention. In 2004, he got into an altercation with paparazzi after a scuffle outside a London nightclub. That incident takes on more significance now in light of his comments about his suppressed emotions and his desire to ‘punch’ someone. Boxing, he said, provided an outlet for his frustration. (This, presumably, was when he was still in the Army and able to use a gym away from prying eyes.) The following year he had to issue an apology after being photographed wearing a swastika armband to a fancy dress party. Aged 26, he was reported to have been seen taking ‘hippy crack’ (nitrous oxide or laughing gas) from filled balloons being sold at £1.50 a time. And then, of course, there were his Las Vegas frolics which he later admitted had let himself and his family down. All this, of course, could be filed neatly under the heading of youthful indiscretion. After all, many a young man eager to kick over the traces has done far worse than Harry. So a clue, perhaps, lies in his remark that shutting away his emotions has played havoc with his personal life. During the period of turmoil Harry appears to be talking about, he had two significant romances, one with Zimbabwe-born Chelsy Davy, and the other with actress Cressida Bonas. He did not mention either girlfriend in the interview, but was widely reported to have been in love with both of them. The relationships ended because neither woman felt they could adjust to the extraordinary pressures of being a royal wife. Was he blaming himself for the failure of these romances? It certainly seems so. His mother's son: Harry jokes around with three-year-old orphan Lerato during a visit to Phelisanong Children's Home in Maseru, Lesoth As the world knows, for the past nine months Harry has been dating Californian-born actress Meghan Markle whose own mother, intriguingly, is a therapist. One theory doing the rounds in royal circles last night is that this connection might have been behind Harry’s decision to speak so honestly, and movingly, about his life and problems. Such openness among the royals is rarely seen. Earlier this month, biographer Sally Bedell Smith claimed in a new a book about the Prince of Wales that Diana’s emotional instability sent Charles into therapy for 14 years. If so, the Prince of Wales has said nothing about it. Princess Diana did talk about her battles with bulimia, the eating disorder which cast such a shadow over her marriage. She also consulted psychotherapist Susie Orbach and took up kickboxing as a way of dealing with her anger. Perhaps the only certainty in Harry’s decision to speak out is that he is very much his mother’s son.
1. Make the street easy to use . The idea here is to reduce the complexity of a given intersection in the eyes of all travelers. A safer city street will trade long, indirect crosswalks for shorter crossings and pedestrian islands. Removing low-volume legs from the traffic cycle will reduce wait times for everyone and eliminate complicated (read: dangerous) turns. Clearer lane designations — for left-turns and through traffic alike — make the whole intersection more predictable. Last month, the New York City Department of Transportation released a brief-but-handy guide [ PDF ] that uses before-and-after design renderings to illustrate five basic rules for street safety. The report calls its comparisons "the largest examination of the safety effects of innovative roadway engineering conducted in a major American city, or perhaps any city globally." That's a tall claim, but there's no question that the five lessons embedded in these images merit notice from urban communities near and far. In the past decade or so, New York has seen a considerable decline in traffic fatalities (30 percent since 2001) and an even more dramatic decrease in the risk of serious injury among cyclists (72 percent since 2000). At the heart of these public safety achievements is better street design. City streets are far from perfect, but as officials have reduced space for cars, they've improved mobility for everyone. (For all image sets, the top image represents a "before" scenario and the bottom an "after.") 2. Create safety in numbers. Counter-intuitive as it can seem, the safety-in-numbers effect suggests that more pedestrians and bike riders actually make streets less dangerous. Bike lanes are the obvious way to bring riders to an intersection, while islands, mid-block crossings, and direct pedestrian routes can do the same for walkers. Giving signal priority to pedestrians gets platoons of people in the streets before cars have the chance to turn. 3. Make the invisible visible. Clear sight lines can improve a street's safety significantly. Curbs lined with parked cars can make it hard for a turning vehicle to see what's in another part of the street. That problem can be addressed by removing some of the parking spaces closest to the corner — a process called "daylighting," which increases visibility considerably (so long as parking enforcement is strict). Curb extensions that bring pedestrians further into the street have a similar effect. 4. Quality over quantity. Street engineers like to give cars as much space as possible, but removing lanes to reduce the complexity of an intersection can actually improve traffic flow. A jumble of un-designated lanes with competing signals has the potential to become much more congested than an intersection that bans complex turns and creates right-angle corners. Pedestrian plazas that take the place of former lanes can enhance visibility and the safety-in-numbers effect. 5. Look beyond the problem. Expanding the area of traffic analysis can unlock solutions across a wider wedge of the street system. Redirecting traffic to another part of the local network, for instance, can help decongest crowded intersections without eliminating important routes. Sometimes the best street design is really a corridor design. All images courtesy of the New York City Department of Transportation [PDF].
I ran LINT version 9, configured to report the violations of the rules in the MISRA C++ 2008 coding standard, on a C++ source file. LINT is perhaps the most famous tool for statically checking C and C++ source code. MISRA stands for the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association, mandating adherence to its coding standards throughout the automotive industry. The source file I tried has several KLOC worth of code, and the output of the preprocessor takes about 1M – pretty normal for C++ where a "Hello, world!" program generates 3/4M of preprocessed output. The output of LINT takes 38M. That's 38x more errors than code. We're not finished parsing this output so I'm not sure which rules cause most violations and whether they can be clustered somehow to compress the 38M into something resembling comprehensible narrative in contents and size. The only thing basic attempts at parsing revealed at this point is that the distribution of the violations is roughly geometric, with the majority of the errors reporting violations of a minority of the rules. Therefore, my only way of conveying some insight into the MISRA rules enforced by LINT is to look at a toy example. My example will be a Hello, world program – 2 LOC or 3/4M worth of code depending on your perspective. I'll assume LINT is told to ignore standard libraries, so it will actually be closer to 2 LOC. #include <iostream> int main() { std::cout << "Hello, world" << std::endl; } From this program, LINT will produce 4 error messages when configured to enforce MISRA C++ 2008: The "int" in "int main" violates an advisory rule to avoid using built-in types and instead use typedefs indicating the size and signedness of the type, such as int32_t, INT or signed32T. Many an automotive project use a mixture of 2 or 3 of these conventions, which is compliant with the MISRA guidelines and presumably results from the history of merging or integrating code bases and/or teams. (I believe that in the particular case of main, the C and C++ standards both mandate the use of int; I didn't check if you can use a typedef to spell int but I'm certain that you can't have main() return an int32_t on a platform where int is 16b. Anyway, it appears that LINT doesn't bother to special-case main() – but you can do that yourself in its configuration file or right there in the source code, as you will have to do in many other cases.) The first left shift operator violates a MISRA rule disallowing the use of bitwise shift on signed types, or so it does according to LINT, which presumably checks whether the operands are of an unsigned integral type and reports an error if they are not (the other option is that it figures an output stream or a literal character array are "signed", but I can't see how they can be unless it's a signature we're talking about rather than signedness). The MISRA rule is based on the fact that the behavior of bitwise shift is implementation-defined and thus not portable. I do believe that there does not exist a 32b machine which does not use the 2's complement representation for integers and is a target of an automotive application. A notable share of automotive applications use signed integers to represent fixed point numbers, and I believe all of them rely on the 2's complement semantics of bitwise shifts to emulate multiplication and division. The second left shift operator is reported as violating the same rule. The two left shift operators as a whole are reported to violate the rule disallowing dependence on C operator precedence. That is, in order to correctly understand this program, a reader would have to know that (std::cout << "Hello, world!") would be evaluated first and then its output would be shifted to the left by std::endl. MISRA strives to prevent confusion, based on a well-founded assumption that few programmers know the rules of operator precedence and evaluation order, and LINT enforces the rules defined based on these premises. I hope this gives some insight on the general code/errors ratio.
Meat could once again be fed to animals under plans to relax rules introduced to prevent the transmission of BSE more than 20 years after the emergence of "mad cow disease" caused a public health and political crisis. The European Commission has published proposals to reduce the cost of guarding against BSE and its human form, new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which has claimed the lives of 169 British people. In a consultation document, Brussels said any changes would be based on sound science but acknowledged it was "impossible" to remove all risk of the disease entering the food chain. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Since 1986, 181,114 cattle have been confirmed with BSE, resulting in the culling of four million cattle, but in recent years it has been in sharp decline. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of annual cases in Britain fell from 53 to nine. The European Commission said it wished to downgrade rules because of the disease's decline, and so it could concentrate on other conditions such as a salmonella and antimicrobial resistance that posed a greater threat to human health. Among the proposals floated by Brussels include relaxing a wide ban on the feeding of meat to animals and ending the requirement for mass slaughter in herds with infected cows. The plans are set out in a document circulated to EU states, TSE Roadmap 2 – named after Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, the group of brain diseases that includes bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Although tentative, an end to the feed ban could be controversial because feed was the source of the crisis: cattle contracted BSE after consuming infected proteins from sheep that had died of a related disease, scrapie. Because of concerns that the disease could have made further "intraspecies" leaps, a ban on feeding mammalian meat and bonemeal to cattle, sheep and goats was introduced by the EU in 1994. The EU later banned the feeding to farm animals of proteins from almost all animals with the exception of fish. In TSE Roadmap 2, the EC said it was awaiting new scientific advice on a tolerable level of animal proteins in feed from the European Food Safety Authority later this year. The EC said it might then be possible to feed meat and bonemeal (MBM) from non-ruminants such as pigs and chickens to other non-ruminants. As such, bits of ground-up pigs could be fed to poultry and vice versa. "Considering that the transmission risk of BSE from non-ruminants to non-ruminants is very unlikely, a lifting of the ban on the use of Processed Animal Protein from non-ruminants in non-ruminant feed could be considered, but without lifting the existing prohibition on intraspecies recycling [poultry MBM could only be fed to pigs and pig MBM to poultry]," the EC said. It added that the reintroduction of animal feed would reduce the EU's dependence on other sources of proteins. Foreign-grown soya and other crops used in animal feed are in high demand globally and their price is volatile. Also under discussion is whether the "specified risk material" (SRM) such as brain, skull and spinal cord should continue to be removed from animals before they enter the food chain. Any such change "should be based on new evolving scientific knowledge while maintaining the existing high level of consumer protection", the EC said. It added: "However, the list of SRM to be removed from the food and feed chains should also take into account the epidemiological situation based on the data gained from BSE surveillance." Rules requiring the slaughter of all animals in a herd aged within one year of any infected cow might also be eased. Instead of culling all those animals, meat from this "cohort" group could enter shops after being tested. The European Commission said the prevention of risk should be maintained or increased under the changes. It added: "It is impossible, however, to consider the complete elimination of risk as a realistic objective for any risk management decision in matters regarding food safety, where the cost and benefits of risk-reducing measures have to be carefully weighed in order to ensure the measure's proportionality." Sue Davies, of the consumer group Which? said: "We consider a very cautious approach should be taken to any revision of the feed ban given animal feed was responsible for BSE's spread and there were problems with lack of compliance and cross-contamination when controls were introduced."
Though the definition of self help may change slightly depending on who you’re asking, the best ways of pursuing it are uniform. The advice and techniques listed in this article give a look at effective methods to pursue self help and develop a sustainable, calculated self help strategy for anyone. A fantastic tip that can help you with personal development is to enroll in some classes. There are many different classes you can take if you’re looking to better your life in some way. Browse online or take a look at your newspaper to see if there are any near you. Try to always make every day better than the one before. Strive for constant and unceasing improvement. Push yourself to do something better today than you did the day before. If you focus on improving the little things day by day, before long you’ll realize how much progress you’ve made towards your larger goals. Make sure that you set up action areas in your home or office. These are places that are designated to one action each so that you can perform this action and then move onto the next one. For example, you can set up an area for filling orders, an area for boxes that need to be shipped, etc. Personal development can be a life long journey. If you are feeling overwhelmed you an set goals that are small and reach smaller goals first and move onto larger goals. A simple example, when setting a goal to clean the house do not tell yourself that you have to clean the house. Start with one goal as doing a load of laundry and when you accomplish this, move onto the next goal! Value all of the choices that you make. Turn those choices into chances to improve who you are. The more we value, the more we will achieve. If something is valuable to you, you will be willing to do everything you can to make sure you keep that in your life. It is a psychological fact that we gradually become more and more like that which we look upon continually. In other words, your obsession soon becomes your reality. If you allow yourself to dwell on your failures and depressions, the chains binding you will only grow firmer and tighter. If you dwell on future success, however–and capable role models–you can transform into the person you want to be. Mindset is crucial to success. Increasing the good in your life is often a matter of willpower, meaning that what you wish on others can also be wrought upon yourself. In this sense, you should only wish the best for other people. By keeping your emotional energy positive, you will be less likely to be pulled down and burdened by negative feelings. To achieve success make sure that you set goals that are just out of reach. If you reach one goal, raise the bar and achieve more. Goals that are slightly out of reach challenge you to do more. When you properly challenge yourself, you will be able to achieve more than you ever thought possible. It can be tempting to vow that we will never do _____ (insert bad habit here!) again, but such a mentality can often set us up to fail. Rather than vowing never again to engage in your bad habit, vow not to engage in it for the next 24 hours. On a daily basis, consider asking yourself each morning what is important for you to accomplish during the day. This will help you determine the ways you can spend your free moments and maximize your time through multitasking. Make a list, prioritize it and tell yourself that you will accomplish the things on your list. A good way to achieve personal development is to practice selflessness. As you sacrifice the things that are important to you by helping others, you will begin to notice your true self. Caring and helping others makes you understand your true self and the more you sacrifice, the more you will realize yourself. If you are going to build a self confidence in your self, you should begin to sit in the front row. When you sit in the back, you are showing that you are timid and afraid. By sitting in the front row, you get over irrational fears and begin to establish self confidence. When it comes to personal development be sure that you have a good background on the laws of nature. This is important because in order to fully appreciate everything around you, you need to understand it and respect it. In order to fully learn about yourself, you must know the laws that your body surrenders to. Exercise is often used as a way to get help. This isn’t for the purpose of feeling better about yourself or even to lose weight. However, going to the gym or running, can let off a lot of stress and frustration, which could otherwise build up and turn you into a very bitter person. You should commit what you learn to heart by repeating new ideas to yourself. Positive, inspiration affirmations in your day to day life should be repeated to yourself as a way of making them stick. If you can get a great idea to stick, it might plant the seed for even better things to blossom. Make your ideology work in your day-to-day life by applying its concepts to everything that happens. If you believe in the power of positive energy, be sure to note where you believe the magic is working in your life. Likewise, this will help you identify when something is throwing your balance off. The most effective self help process is one that is organized and well-thought-out. The tips and advice provided in this article will help you develop this type of effective self help process, pushing you to fulfill your potential. By following the advice in this article you empower yourself to move your life and career in a significantly positive direction. VN:F [1.9.22_1171] please wait... Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast) VN:F [1.9.22_1171] Rating: +3 (from 3 votes)
"Date your spouse!" the experts always say. "Just because you're married with a family doesn't mean the spark has to die down. Flirt with each other! Keep the romance alive!" That's great advice. Really, it is. It sounds fantastic... in theory. Kind of like before you have kids when you swear you're never going to feed them processed food or let them play with your phone to keep them quiet for 10 minutes. But when you try to put it into practice? Well, sometimes it just isn't practical. I mean, I'm pretty sure that when I'm brushing my teeth while wearing food-encrusted pajamas and telling my husband how I accidentally got poop under my fingernail while changing a diaper and oh by the way did we pay the sewer bill last month?, I'm the last person he wants to flirt with. I'm not saying it isn't important to try to keep a connection as a couple -- it is. And relationships take work. But so do kids, and all the obligations that come with them. And when you're trying to juggle all of that, it's not usually the children who are shoved to the back burner. Even when you try to keep the spark burning, it's a whole different ball game when you're married with kids. Going on a date, for example, only remotely resembles the dates you used to go on. Let's break it down. GETTING READY Non-parents: Take a leisurely stroll around the mall because you'd like to pick up a new outfit for tonight. Oh, and maybe a new eyeliner or something at the department store. Throw in a manicure if you've got time. Arrive home, soak in a tub, deep-condition and exfoliate and moisturize, shave every shave-able body part while blasting your favorite music. It's like a spa up in here. Spend ample time perfecting your makeup, hair, and outfit. Put on cute underwear. Be excited because tonight is going to be awesome. Parents: Rummage through your closet to find something flattering that you don't wear every day. Get pissed off. Settle for something. Wish you could take a leisurely stroll around the mall to buy a new outfit. Realize the kids have used your eyeliner as a crayon; make a mad dash to Target. Arrive home, look at the clock, freak out because the trip to Target seriously ate into your time budget. Shower quickly, swiping over your legs with a razor, hitting up your pits and bikini line if you have a couple extra seconds. Ignore kids pounding on door. Decide whether to blow-dry your hair or just put it up wet. Slap on some makeup. Squeeze into some sort of fat-reducing underwear. Hope you don't sweat through your blouse with all this dashing around. Be excited because as soon as you're able to leave the house, tonight is going to be awesome. LEAVING THE HOUSE Non-parents: Grab purse, cell phone, keys. One last quick mirror check. Open door. Exit. Parents: Make sure the kids are fed and the kitchen isn't a wreck. Leave emergency numbers and special instructions for the sitter. Tell the kids goodbye. Wonder why the hell they're acting like you're about to permanently abandon them. Give hugs and kisses and try not to get food or snot all over your decent outfit. Pry clingy children from legs. Slip out the door. Realize you forgot your phone. Come back in and repeat clingy-children debacle. THE DATE Non-parents: Go to a high-end restaurant or an upscale bar. Order without looking at prices. Enjoy laughs and animated conversation about movies and current events. Check your phone periodically to see if anyone has "liked" your check-in on Facebook. Discuss where to go next; the night is young and the options are endless! Parents: Go to a chain restaurant because you have a coupon (or go to a high-end restaurant, but order the chicken because it's cheap). Feel frivolous because you order an apple-tini with your meal. Rejoice in the fact that you don't actually have to cut up anybody's food, or tell anyone to get out from under the table or stop blowing bubbles in their chocolate milk. Check your phone periodically to make sure the sitter hasn't called. Promise you won't talk about the kids. End up talking about the kids. Keep checking the time because you're paying the sitter by the hour, and anyway, you're getting tired because 11:00 is way past your bedtime and the kids woke you up at six this morning. AFTER THE DATE Non-parents: Return home; decide whether to end the date or take it further. If it ends there, go inside, remove makeup, put on comfy clothes, let out the fart you've been holding in. Go to bed. Sleep peacefully. Wake up whenever. If it goes further... light candles, pour wine, put on soft music, and reveal that cute underwear and those nicely shaved legs. Bow chicka wow wow! Parents: Return home. Fork over cash to sitter, trying not to cringe about how much money you've spent on this date in total. Look at children sleeping and marvel that you missed them, even though you were excited to be away. Remove makeup, peel yourself out of fat-reducing underwear, put on comfy clothes. Yawn. Decide whether or not to devote a few minutes to "spousal intimacy" or just go right to sleep. Drool all over pillow until child wakes you up in the middle of the night for a drink/to tell you about a nightmare/to tell you there's pee in the bed. Wake up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast for hungry children because, duh, who else is going to do it? So you see? Bringing romance into your relationship is important, but becomes slightly tricky when kids -- and everything attached to having them -- are thrown into the mix. I think until they're older, I'll just be thankful for Netflix and popcorn, and the fact that my husband doesn't care so much if my legs are stubbly or my outfit is old. Just as long as there's no poop under my fingernails. Also on HuffPost:
The tournament which put Hong Kong on the cricket map returned after a five-year hiatus, as HKSixes found its way back into Kowloon Cricket Club during the Halloween weekend. While HK has been steadily climbing the ladder of international cricket, with participation in the Asia Cup and two World T20s, the Sixes’ absence has left many-a-fan holding onto only memories. So, special thanks go out to the sponsors for ensuring a gallery full of returning fans and newbies learning the ropes of the game… …the ropes themselves were unable to contain the new orange balls – with over 200 of them smacked outside the stadium – making great souvenirs for youngsters falling in love with the game. Furthering the game in Hong Kong and China was the goal of this HKSixes as the guardians of the game, Marleybone Cricket Club (MCC), made their debut in the format. Fittingly MCC, which sets the laws of the game and plays around 480 matches every year, battled Hong Kong in the Plate Final. To the raucous delight of the home crowd, the apprentices upended the oldest cricket club, thanks to the heroics of Nizakat Khan and Ehsan Khan – who finished as the top run-scorer and wicket-taker of the tournament, respectively. Hong Kong and MCC were joined in the fun by six other returning teams – Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka, all of whom enjoyed brilliant support. While Pakistan’s fans were unmissable in their green and white, Sri Lanka’s supporters came out with their songs, drums and dances. Local fans also made their presence felt donning the HK Jersey, to compete with the beer-drinking Australian and Kiwi fans, while enjoying the samosas and chicken tikkas being served. Though India’s superstars were conspicuous by their absence, the gallery was treated to superb performances by international superstars like John Hastings and Nathan Reardon (AUS), Peter Fulton (NZ), Farveez Maharoof (SRL) and Samit Patel (MCC), many of whom also held a cricket clinic for over 50 kids a day prior to the tournament. Also looking to make their name were under-19 stars of Bangladesh, including Saif Hasan and Afif Hossain, who scripted a remarkable victory against Australia, and South Africa’s Sarel Erwee, who was a top all-rounder in the tournament. In the absence of India, the biggest cheers were reserved for HKSixes’ most successful team, 9-time finalists and 5-time winners, Pakistan. Led by Sohail Tanvir, Pakistan, were the strongest team given their array of international pedigreed stars including Mohd. Sami, Sohail Khan and Anwar Ali. They justified their favourites tag by squashing every opponent in their path to storm into the finals against a young inexperienced South African team, devoid of any stars, but coached by ex-South African international, Ashwell Prince. The final was one for the ages – with South Africa requiring 4 off the last ball – against Sohail Khan’s bowling and a hostile crowd. But, a new hero was born as Afrikaans’ captain Aubrey Swanepoel drilled a yorker to the boundary, sparking amazing scenes of joy on the ground, and appreciated by the 1000s present. As the fans slowly exited into Cox’s Road, there was a sense that HK cricket’s fairy-tale had added another unforgivable chapter to the growth of the game. Did you like the article? Leave a comment below.
Not to be outdone by those 73 Democrats who told the Federal Communications Commission this week not to go forward with its plan to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, over twice that number of Republicans have sent the agency a letter on Friday with the same message. "We write to encourage you not to proceed down your announced path to reclassify broadband service as phone service under Title II of the Communications Act," they wrote. That sort of move "should be made by Congress." The letter is signed by Joe Barton (R-TX), ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Cliff Sterns (R-FL), ranking member of that committee's subcommittee on the Internet. 169 more Republicans co-signed the missive. The statement notes that in the past, the agency has defined broadband as an "information" rather than a "telecommunications" service, "outside the reach of the Title II common carrier rules." It adds that Section 230 of the Communications Act declares it the policy of the United States "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation." "Whether the country should stray from that legislative posture—which has produced 200 million broadband subscribers over the last ten years, is a matter best left to Congress," the letter concludes. Whether a "legislative posture" produced all those broadband lines is another interesting question to ponder. In any event, now both Democratic and Republican foes of net neutrality rules insist that it is Capitol Hill's job to make this call, rather than the FCC's. So be it, declared four top-ranking Congressional Democrats on Monday—they announced hearings to consider proposals to rewrite the Communications Act. Congress "will invite stakeholders to participate in a series of bipartisan, issue-focused meetings beginning in June," they promise.
the ring of fire // photography technique In late 2014 I was given a few pieces of piping. What you might call trash, but I call the ring of fire. It ended up being an incredibly useful tool in my photography. I quickly decided to add it to my (now literal) bag of tricks along with Prisming, Lens Chimping, my Broken Freelens, Anamorphics, etc). These days camera lenses are designed so well that they’ll nearly never create a flare. The coatings are so incredible that even against the brightest, harshest sunlight they will not flare at all. This is a good thing! It’s really hard to recover from blown contrast in post processing, and flare is often unpredictable and difficult to compose with. But what if you could make real in camera flare on command with the ability to transform it and shape it into anything you want? How on earth am I making the flare in these images? I give you – the ring of fire! Now, this is just a 1″ long and 1″ wide piece of aluminum pipe. But, held in front of your camera lens and given the right mix of direct/harsh sunlight plus handy live view – you have on demand, real, in camera flare. From virtually any lens no matter how new or old. Incredible photographer Daniel Araiza has a super helpful video published to help you visualize what the heck is going on here. Of course, with any new technique it’s probably best used in moderation. It’s a little too easy to get image takeover using this tool, but with enough practice you’ll surely get the hang of it. My favorite lens of choice to use it with is the Nikon 58 1.4 – per my review here. The flare can range from being be more subtle and bokeh-like in shape, or it can be very defined and circular. The shape, color, and texture of the pipe will all play into how your flare looks. That’s one of my favorite things about this ring of fire flare technique – everyone’s will look different! I’ll leave you with some more of my favorite ring of fire images and I suggest you get out there and experiment. Hit up your local hardware store and see what you can find. If you’ve found this interesting then wander on over to my other technical write-ups, and as always – enjoy!
"Nick Kyrgios breaks rule" is hardly much of a story any more, but you have to admire the creativity of his latest transgression. With Court 14 full to bursting as the doubles match featuring Lleyton Hewitt and Thanasi Kokkinakis reached a nail-biting five-set conclusion, who was that tall figure climbing onto a railing so he could watch the match over the fence? None other than fellow Aussie - and good friend of Kokkinakis - Kyrgios, keeping a low profile in a bright blue top and an enormous pair of pink Beats by Dr Dre headphones. Unfortunately, Kyrgios was promptly ordered off the railing by an officious Wimbledon steward, who decided it posed a health and safety risk. True to form, Kyrgios waited until the steward had gone, and then climbed back on. The Telegraph, London
Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, MI) is teaming up with Jose Cuervo (Tequila, Mexico) to explore the use of the tequila maker’s agave plant byproduct to develop more sustainable bioplastics for use in Ford vehicles. Ford and Jose Cuervo are testing the bioplastic to employ in vehicle interior and exterior components such as wiring harnesses, HVAC units and storage bins. Initial assessments suggest the material has great potential for durability and aesthetic qualities. Success in developing a sustainable composite could reduce vehicle weight and cut back energy consumption, while paring the use of petrochemicals and the impact of vehicle production on the environment. “At Ford, we aim to reduce our impact on the environment,” said Debbie Mielewski, Ford Senior Technical Leader, Sustainability Research Department. “As a leader in the sustainability space, we are developing new technologies to efficiently employ discarded materials and fibers, while potentially reducing the use of petrochemicals and light-weighting our vehicles for desired fuel economy.” It takes up to a minimum of seven years for an agave plant to reach maturity. Once harvested, the heart of the plant is roasted, before grinding and extracting its juices for distillation. Jose Cuervo uses a portion of the remaining agave fibers as compost for its farms, and local artisans make crafts and agave paper from the remnants. Jose Cuervo has broadened its sustainability plan by joining forces with the automaker to develop a new way to use its remnant fibers. “Jose Cuervo is proud to be working with Ford to further develop our agave sustainability plan,” said Sonia Espinola, Director of Heritage for Cuervo Foundation and master tequilera. “As the world’s No. 1-selling tequila, we could never have imagined the hundreds of agave plants we were cultivating as a small family business would eventually multiply to millions. This collaboration brings two great companies together to develop innovative, earth-conscious materials.” Like Ford, Jose Cuervo is family-owned and operated. The spirits brand was founded in 1795 and has been making tequila for more than 220 years with the same experience, craftsmanship and recipes that have been handed down generation through generation. The collaboration with Jose Cuervo is the latest testament of Ford’s innovative approach to product and environmental stewardship through the use of biomaterials. Ford began researching the use of sustainable materials in its vehicles in 2000. Today, the automaker uses eight sustainable-based materials in its vehicles including soy foam, castor oil, wheat straw, kenaf fiber, cellulose, wood, coconut fiber and rice hulls. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, five billion metric tons of agricultural biomass waste is produced annually. A byproduct of agriculture, the supply of materials is abundant and often underutilized. Yet, the materials can be relatively low cost, and can help manufacturers to offset the use of glass fibers and talc for more sustainable, lightweight products. “There are about 400 pounds of plastic on a typical car,” said Mielewski. “Our job is to find the right place for a green composite like this to help our impact on the planet. It is work that I’m really proud of, and it could have broad impact across numerous industries.”
Hello. Welcome. 👋 This is React Native 101: A post to help you build your first mobile app, even if all you've ever done is write JavaScript. Especially if all you've ever done is JavaScript. If you know all about mobile apps, this article might not be for you. I’m a frontend engineer; I don’t know mobile. I built an app once, but it was terrible and ugly and some people downloaded it, but they didn’t know my email address, thank god. I’d never hear the end of it 😳 That’s the perspective I’m writing from. If you’re a mobile engineer, my perspective might look odd. You will learn the basics of React Native anyway. If you’re an engineer who doesn’t know JavaScript, this article is probably not for you. Sorry. If you’re a JavaScript engineer thinking about mobile apps, this article is for you 🙂 If you’ve never used React before, awesome! I’ll explain. This article is about the basics. There’s enough to get your feet wet and see what React Native is all about. We’re going to cover the rest in future articles. You’ll get two articles per month. Just subscribe to get updates by email. Today’s app is not the best app in the world. No, it’s just a tribute. A taste of what React Native can do for you. I was going to lead with a Why React Native and a Why React section, but you know what, screw that. Let’s build stuff! In 46 lines of code, you’ll have an app: 6 of the cutest pictures ever with AI-generated captions. Your first app We’re building a cute image clicker. Tap on the right to go forward, tap on the left to go back. Remember: I know it’s not the best app in the world; it’s a tribute. Now, I’m going to say things in this guide, and they might confuse you, especially if you’re new to React. Don’t worry, that’s normal! I’m confused all the time. Follow along, try things out. Play. You will have a small working app when we’re through. Then I’m going to explain everything in future articles. Savvy? You can see the final code on Github here. Commits follow this article. I’m assuming you have a Mac with Xcode installed. That’s what I have. Let’s also assume that we’re building for iOS. That’s the phone OS I use 🙂 You need Xcode for the iPhone simulator so that you can run apps locally on your machine. You’ll never have to open Xcode. Unless you want to, I guess. I hear its text editor is pretty good. Unfortunately, you can’t build iOS apps on Linux or Windows. Those are Apple’s rules 😞 But you can build for Android! To work with Android, you’ll need Android Studio. Again, just for the simulator. Facebook’s official docs have a great guide for all 5 dev OS/app OS combinations. I shan’t repeat here. Once you have node.js and a simulator, you should install react-native-cli : The suite of tools that compiles and runs your app. $ npm install -g react-native-cli You’re ready to build an app! 🎉 PS: npm is the node.js package manager. We’ll use it to handle dependencies throughout this React Native School. /aside Start a new project The easiest way to start a new React Native project is with the react-native utility. $ react-native init JustATributeApp react-native init creates a new JustATtributeApp directory, installs the necessary dependencies in JustATributeApp/node_modules/ , sets up a JavaScript compilation pipeline using Babel, and creates two index.js files: One for Android, and one for iOS. It also puts some native app stuff in JustATtributeApp/android and in JustATributeApp/ios . Looks like the basic setup for an Android/iOS native app, but I can’t read that code. I’m a JavaScript guy. The point is, you don’t need to know, and that’s great. The fewer details you have to worry about, the more time you have to build cool apps. We need two index.js files because most apps offer a different experience on Android and iOS. You can share code between them and you should, but you’ll want to put it together differently. The easiest way to do that is to use a different index file. Run & debug your app locally There are two ways to run your app. You can open JustATributeApp/ios/JustATributeApp.xcodeproj in Xcode and hit the run button. But then you’re in Xcode, and you might get tempted to fiddle with things that don’t need fiddling. I know I would. My favorite approach is to run a command: $ cd JustATributeApp $ react-native run-ios Replace run-ios with run-android if you’re building for Android. Or if you just want to see what Android looks like. I imagine it’s much the same at this point. No, I haven’t tried yet. 😇 When you do that, react-native does a couple of things for you. It runs the simulator, compiles your app, starts a dev server, and sets up hot loading. I don’t know the details, but I imagine it’s similar to how it works on the web. A local server serves compiled JavaScript files, and a client loads and runs them to build an interface. On the web, it builds HTML; on mobile, it builds a native interface. PS: you can see what the compiled code looks like, if you open http://localhost:8081/index.ios.bundle?platform=ios&dev=true&minify=false in a browser. It’s not very useful, but proves that there is indeed a server involved /aside The result is a Hello World app. Welcome! 😍 Much like on the web, Cmd+R restarts the app from scratch. That part is familiar. Cmd+D opens a dev menu. That part is new. We have many options. I suggest enabling either Live Reload or Hot Reloading while you work. Live reload restarts your app every time it sees you’ve changed a file so that you’re always running fresh code. It’s reliable and works every time. Hot reload achieves the same result, but it tries to swap components with their new versions without reloading. This is great for complex apps because you don’t have to keep navigating your interface, but it often leads to strange corner cases. Use with caution. Another great option is Debug JS Remotely. It opens a browser window on http://localhost:8081/debugger-ui , which takes over running your JavaScript code. This slows down the app but lets you use your favorite browser-based debugging tools. Yes, it’s the very same JavaScript console you’re used to. Although React Developer Tools for Chrome don’t load up because there’re no React elements on the page. That’s a shame 😕 Then again, using the Inspector gives you all the same options. Click a thing and see how its styled and what it does. It’s got more fun debugging tools like a network monitor, performance analyzers, and such. We’ll explore them while we build more serious stuff. Build your first mobile UI Ok, you know how to start a project, run your app, and some debugging basics. Let’s fire up the editor and write some code. Use whichever text editor you’re used to. I like Emacs; many people use WebStorm. I’ve heard Atom is great for JavaScript and Sublime looks like a popular default. Make sure syntax highlighting and code indentation work for JSX. /aside We’re building a small app, so all of our code goes into index.ios.js (or index.android.js if you’re building for Android). react-native has set up some code for us already. It comes in 3 sections: imports to load React and some React Native components the JustATributeApp component with a render method style definitions because React Native doesn’t use CSS We’re using modern JavaScript by the way: ES6. If you’re not used to the syntax, you’re not alone. I’ve built an interactive ES6 cheatsheet to help you out. import React, { Component } from 'react'; import { AppRegistry, StyleSheet, Text, View } from 'react-native'; export default class JustATributeApp extends Component { render() { return ( // JSX stuff ); } } const styles = StyleSheet.create({ // style stuff }); Like that. Some Constants Let’s define the 6 cute images and add an import for Image (the component for rendering images) and an import for TouchableHighlight . We’ll use it to make the image clickable. import React, { Component } from 'react'; import { AppRegistry, StyleSheet, Text, View, Image, TouchableHighlight } from 'react-native'; const Images = [ { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/mxgtWKt.jpg", label: "Cat on a blue blanket" }, { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/XCRnNWn.jpg", label: "A cat toy" }, { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/dqQX1K0.jpg", label: "A close up of a dog" }, { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/nZXbSbh.jpg", label: "Sheep next to a cat" }, { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/mXCjefR.jpg", label: "Cat laying on the grass" }, { uri: "https://i.imgur.com/AGyxRcc.jpg", label: "Bird sitting on a railing" } ]; You didn’t think we were going to build an image search client and AI image captioner in 46 lines of code, did you? Don’t be silly. That would take at least 47 lines. If you refresh the simulator, your app will look the same as before. Let’s fix that. Styles We need to expand the default style definitions. It’s easier to explain if we do it before rendering components. Plus it looks magical when they immediately look perfect. No designers were involved in the making of these stylesheets. const styles = StyleSheet.create({ container: { flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center', alignItems: 'center', backgroundColor: '#abcdef', }, image: { flex: 2, width: 320, justifyContent: 'flex-end', alignItems: 'center' }, imageLabel: { textAlign: 'center', backgroundColor: 'rgba(100, 100, 100, 0.5)', color: 'white', width: 320 }, empty: { flex: 1 } }); React Native uses JavaScript to define stylesheets. It looks like CSS because it’s meant to. You can think of each key in the main dictionary as a CSS class, and each child key as a CSS property. They use camelCase instead of dash-case. Is that what it’s called? background-color becomes backgroundColor , text-align is textAlign and so on. You get the idea. There’s no nesting unless you use extensions. We’ll explore those later. We changed container.backgroundColor because we could, removed welcome and instructions because we’ll get rid of them, and added image , imageLabel , and empty . React Native uses flexbox to layout boxes on screen. We use flex: 1 and flex: 2 to specify how high a priority something should get. This will make more sense when we put images on screen. Generally speaking, you should never define fixed widths or heights in React Native. Let the layouting engine do that for you. Your job is to define proportions. The style update made our tribute app look like crap. 💩 I do like the new blue. Rendering images with captions Great. We have the styles and the image definitions. Let’s make that render method. That’s how React renders UI, by the way. You build components with one render method each. It defines what a component looks like, which child elements it uses and such. We’re using JSX, which looks like HTML in your JavaScript. This makes it familiar and easy to use. But it’s not HTML; it’s JavaScript behind the scenes, which makes it efficient to render and totally awesome to use. One of my favorite features is that you can put any JavaScript object or function in what looks like an HTML attribute. We’ll use this a lot. export default class JustATributeApp extends Component { state = { index: 0, } render() { const image = Images[this.state.index]; return ( <View style={styles.container}> <View style={styles.empty} /> <Image source={{uri: image.uri}} style={styles.image}> <Text style={styles.imageLabel}>{image.label}</Text> </Image> <View style={styles.empty} /> </View> ); } } We gutted the entire render method that react-native initialized for us. We don’t need it 🙂 Okay, we kept the main <View> component. It’s analogous to a <div> in HTML. We use two <View> s with the empty style – flex 1 – and an <Image> with an image style – flex 2. This combination vertically centers our image and gives it a height of 50%. We had to fix width at 320px because React Native doesn’t understand 100% sizing. Inside the Image , we put a <Text> element that renders our caption. It gets a partially transparent grey background and centers white text. To get the image URL, we used a combination of this.state and the Images constant. State is a React thing that stores… state. You can think of it as a magic property that triggers re-renders when it’schanged. Our app now renders a kitten. Make it interactive One kitten is great. Let’s render more 🙂 Click on the right side of the image for next, left for previous. To do that, we wrap our image in a <TouchableHighlight> component and add some logic that manipulates this.state . export default class JustATributeApp extends Component { state = { index: 0, imageWidth: null } nextImage(event) { const { index, imageWidth } = this.state, X = event.nativeEvent.locationX, delta = (X < imageWidth/2) ? -1 : +1; let newIndex = (index + delta) % Images.length; if (newIndex < 0) { newIndex = Images.length - Math.abs(newIndex); } this.setState({ index: newIndex }); } onImageLayout(event) { this.setState({ imageWidth: event.nativeEvent.layout.width }); } render() { const image = Images[this.state.index]; return ( <View style={styles.container}> <View style={styles.empty} /> <TouchableHighlight onPress={this.nextImage.bind(this)} style={styles.image}> <Image source={{uri: image.uri}} style={styles.image} onLayout={this.onImageLayout.bind(this)}> <Text style={styles.imageLabel}>{image.label}</Text> </Image> </TouchableHighlight> <View style={styles.empty} /> </View> ); } } Wow, more code 😳 But it’s okay. It’s not difficult code. We added imageWidth to state because React Native can’t detect how wide a component is on the fly. You need to hook into the layouting engine and save that info for later. This might be an antipattern. I wanted flexible logic so I can make the image 100% wide when I figure out how. Mobile devices change dimensions. Especially when you rotate them. Then we have nextImage . It’s an onPress callback that triggers when our user taps the cute kitten. When that happens, we calculate whether the press was left or right of center, calculate the new image index, and make sure it doesn’t reach for undefined images. We use this.setState to update the index in state. This triggers a component re-render, which sees the new index, and renders a new image. Nifty, isn’t it? The onImageLayout function helps us set state.imageWidth . It’s an onLayout callback event for the <Image> component. One thing to keep in mind with React Native is that you can’t attach click/touch events to random components. You have to use TouchableHighlight to wrap touchable areas. I imagine this can get unruly, but it makes sense. I like that TouchableHighlight takes care of giving UI touch feedback to the user as well. You now have an interactive cute image clicker. Congratz, you’ve built your first mobile app! 👏👏👏 If it didn’t work, consult the Github project. Commits follow steps in this article. What’s next You now know the very basics of React Native: How to set up a project, how to run the app locally, and tools to use when debugging. And you’ve built your first app! That means you know roughly how React components work, how to style them, and some caveats that make mobile different than the web. Over the next 23 articles, I’m going to show you all the bells and whistles. You’ll be a pro mobile developer when we’re done. This is the start of something beautiful. ❤️
Every schoolboy learns that, to reach a true conclusion, one must start with true premises and use valid logic. The lesson, unfortunately, is largely forgotten later in life. Most lack the intelligence, interest, or courage to apply the lesson rigorously. Many break or bend the rules to further their own agendas or careers. Others can only muster the will to follow the rules in some part or in some cases. Rare is the person who masters the lesson. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has demonstrated the intellectual heights that can be reached by employing the lesson with a brilliant mind, fervent devotion to the truth, and unflagging moral courage. What follows is a brief account of how he set right the entire field of welfare economics. Old-welfare economics attempted to overturn the laissez-faire conclusions of the Classical school on the basis of the theory of marginal utility ushered in by the marginalist revolution. If utility can be compared interpersonally, by various assumptions such as cardinal utility or identical utility schedules or utility of money among people, the old-welfare economists argued that diminishing marginal utility implied a social-welfare gain from, among other interventions of the state, redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. This line of argument was brought up short by the demonstration that the subjectivity of value precludes interpersonal-utility comparisons. Therefore, social welfare can only be said to unambiguously improve from a change if it makes at least one person better off and no one else worse off. This Pareto rule forbade economists from claiming social-welfare improvements from state interventions since they do make some better off and others worse off. New-welfare economics tried to weave a case for state intervention within the constraints of the Pareto rule. The conclusions of new-welfare economics can be drawn from its main theorems. The first welfare theorem states that a perfectly competitive general equilibrium is Pareto optimal. From this theorem, the new-welfare economists conclude that a divergence of the real economy from this hypothetical condition justifies state intervention to improve social welfare. Economics journals are replete with cases demonstrating how the market economy fails to achieve a perfectly competitive general equilibrium and what interventions the state should make to remove the market's inefficiency. The second-welfare theorem states that any Pareto-optimal solution can be brought about by a perfectly competitive general equilibrium. For each pattern of initial endowments of income among persons, the perfectly functioning market economy would reach a different Pareto-optimal outcome of production and exchange. From this theorem, new-welfare economists conclude that the state can distribute income, in whatever pattern it wants, e.g., to achieve a particular conception of equity, without impairing the social-welfare-maximizing property of the perfectly functioning market economy. In his article on utility and welfare economics in 1956, Murray Rothbard demonstrated that new-welfare economists were wrong to think that a case against laissez-faire could be constructed on the ground of the subjectivity of value. He argued that new-welfare economists were correct to infer the impossibility of interpersonal-utility comparisons from the subjectivity of value. Value is a state of mind without an extensive property that could be objectively analyzed. As such, no common unit of value exists among persons in which their mental states could be measured and, thus, compared. Having accepted the subjectivity of value as the reason for the impossibility of interpersonal-utility comparisons, which they made a pillar of their welfare economics, new-welfare economists commit themselves to other corollaries of subjective value. In particular, Rothbard contended, they must embrace the concept of demonstrated preference. Because preferences exist solely in a person's mind, another person can acquire objective knowledge about them only by inferring them from his actions. Since no other objective knowledge of a person's preferences exists, only demonstrated preference can be used in the analysis of welfare economics. Both the impossibility of interpersonal-utility comparisons and demonstrated preference are deduced directly from the subjectivity of value, and therefore, new-welfare economists cannot, validly, accept one and reject the other. The impossibility of interpersonal-utility comparisons constrains welfare economics by the Pareto rule, making it harder to justify state intervention than otherwise, but demonstrated preference raises the bar for justifying state intervention that much higher. According to new-welfare economists, the level set by the Pareto rule is determined by the market's deviation from the optimal result of a perfectly competitive, general-equilibrium model, but demonstrated preference eliminates any use of hypothetical values, including the utility functions of economic agents that underlie such models. To be scientific, welfare economics must confine itself to statements about preferences that actual persons demonstrate in their actions. Rothbard wrote, Demonstrated preference, as we remember, eliminates hypothetical imaginings about individual value scales. Welfare economics has until now always considered values as hypothetical valuations of hypothetical "social states." But demonstrated preference only treats values as revealed through chosen action. The first welfare theorem, reconstituted along Rothbardian lines, does not refer to the general equilibrium state of models invented by economists. It refers to the actual economy, for which it is more difficult to demonstrate social-welfare improvements from state intervention. If market outcomes are compared to other realizable conditions reached in actual economic systems, instead of unrealizable outcomes of perfectly functioning, fictitious models, then market failure seems unlikely. And, as Rothbard showed, the market does surpass the levels of social welfare reached in other, actual economic systems. The second welfare theorem, however, seemed unscathed by Rothbard's critique. New-welfare economists could still advocate one intervention of the state. Without impairing the efficiency of the market in bringing about a Pareto-optimal point, the state could still distribute income to achieve its conception of equity. Rothbard responded that private property was the proper initial distribution of wealth from which market activity renders a Pareto-optimal outcome. And, because the initial distribution of private property is not arbitrary, but follows the lines of self-ownership of labor, homesteader ownership of land, and producer ownership of goods, state intervention in property ownership could not produce an outcome commensurate in social welfare with the Pareto-optimal outcome of laissez-faire. New welfare economists, however, not being adherents to Rothbard's natural-rights theory of property, denied that state distribution of property ownership would lead to a market outcome inferior in social welfare to that of the unhampered market. Even some economists who favored laissez-faire agreed that the pattern of property ownership in society is arbitrary with respect to the market achieving a Pareto-optimal outcome, and hence, the state can rearrange it without detrimental consequences on social welfare. It was left to Hoppe to work out the logic of Rothbard's argument and reach a definitive conclusion about the effect on social welfare of state distribution of property ownership. In so doing, he reoriented welfare economics to its true course. Although latent in Rothbard's analysis, Hoppe was the one who demonstrated that the Pareto-rule approach to social-welfare economics leads, not to an optimization end point, but to a step-by-step Pareto-superior process with an objective starting point. As Rothbard had done before him, Hoppe confronted new-welfare economists with a logical inconsistency in their argument. They had accepted a basic principle, this time self-ownership, from which they inferred social-welfare consequences of voluntary exchange, i.e., they pronounced on the social-welfare consequences of voluntary exchange from the viewpoint of the traders themselves. But, in embracing self-ownership, they must also accept its logical corollary, namely Lockean property acquisition. Hoppe pointed out that self-ownership is a necessary precondition to all acquisition and use of property and not just voluntary exchange. Therefore, it is the starting point for each succeeding step of social interaction. In critiquing Kirzner's view of welfare economics, Hoppe writes, If, however, the Pareto criterion is firmly wedded to the notion of demonstrated preference, it in fact can be employed to yield such a starting point and serve, then, as a perfectly unobjectionable welfare criterion: a person's original appropriation of unowned resources, as demonstrated by this very action, increases his utility (at least ex ante). At the same time, it makes no one worse off, because in appropriating them he takes nothing away from others. For obviously, others could have homesteaded these resources, too, if only they had perceived them as scarce. But they did not actually do so, which demonstrates that they attached no value to them whatsoever, and hence they cannot be said to have lost any utility on account of this act. Proceeding from this Pareto-optimal basis, then, any further act of production, utilizing homesteaded resources, is equally Pareto-optimal on demonstrated preference grounds, provided only that it does not uninvitedly impair the physical integrity of the resources homesteaded, or produced with homesteaded means by others. And finally, every voluntary exchange starting from this basis must also be regarded as a Pareto-optimal change, because it can only take place if both parties expect to benefit from it. Thus, contrary to Kirzner, Pareto-optimality is not only compatible with methodological individualism; together with the notion of demonstrated preference, it also provides the key to (Austrian) welfare economics and its proof that the free market, operating according to the rules just described, always, and invariably so, increases social utility, while each deviation from it decreases it. Hoppe showed that the Pareto rule needed to be applied to the social-welfare consequences of the acquisition of property and not just its use. Self-ownership is the immutable starting point for the process of acquiring and then using property. State distribution of income to achieve an ostensibly more equitable "initial" endowment of income among persons fails to satisfy the Pareto rule. In other words, the second welfare theorem, reconstituted along Hoppean lines, is false. Only one initial endowment, the Lockean one, is capable of producing a Pareto-optimal outcome. Moreover, Hoppe's argument dispatches entirely the notion of Pareto optimality as a social-welfare-maximizing end state. Welfare economics starts with the objective fact of self-ownership and then demonstrates that each step of voluntary acquisition and use of property satisfies the Pareto rule and thereby, improves social welfare. Moreover, each instance of state intervention into the voluntary acquisition or use of property benefits some and harms others and, thereby, fails to improve social welfare. The actual market, then, is not compared to some end point it may eventually reach but has not yet achieved. If that were the case, it might be claimed that some interventions of the state could facilitate the actual market in achieving the higher level of social welfare at its end point. Instead, welfare economics is constrained to comparing the actual market to actual state intervention. No room is left for the claim that the market fails to attain some ideal which might be used to justify state intervention. Hoppe definitively established that the unhampered market is superior in improving social welfare. Welfare economics is arguably the least of Hoppe's accomplishments in employing the lesson. In every field that has drawn his attention, he has, like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard before him, exemplified sound reasoning in social analysis. He improved the edifice they constructed by clarifying first principles and relentlessly and fearlessly tracing out the logical implications of these premises to their conclusions. He is an exemplar for all those who love the truth.
Santa Baron and Fluffy Poro View All 4 Images A few years ago, we replaced Summoner’s Rift’s copypasta of textures and landscapes with hand-painted pixels, transforming the outdated environment into a modernized battleground. Because the new map was basically an oversized piece of art, implementing map skins instantly became more difficult. In the past, Winter Summoner’s Rift was generated using the traditional approach of tiling textures, but on the new Rift, this yielded inconsistent (or low-quality) results. In order to really convert the Rift into a winter wonderland, artists would have to spend months painting the Freljordian conditions by hand, only to watch the snow evaporate within weeks. For a while, the resources required to temporarily bring frost to the Rift didn’t seem worth cutting into development resources for other features. A fiendishly friendly Yordle helped change everything. Teemo Saves the Holiday Doom Bots of Doom was revamped for The Teemoing event, but the Rift wasn’t nearly spooky enough to be the summoning grounds for the Little Devil. Halfway through the game mode’s development, artists started experimenting with the lighting on the Rift to try and create an eerie atmosphere. With a few candles and mysterious incantation books, things began to feel much more ominous. Summoner’s Rift: The Teemoing Edition The reimagined map had a few flaws, partially because it was created in a couple weeks, but it still helped deepen The Teemoing experience. This also marked the first time any changes were made to the Rift since its update. “Until then, Summoner’s Rift was like a sacred baby,” technical artist Brendon “RiotVitzkrieg” Vitz says, “It was so carefully designed—there was no way we could touch it.” But Doom Bots of Doom’s positive reception led to quiet whispers: If we can make a spooky Rift, then maybe we can summon a snowstorm, too. Winter is Coming The original idea for Season 6’s Snowdown maps was to boost holiday cheer on the Howling Abyss and add festive designs to the lanes of Summoner’s Rift, but environment artist Max “Beezul” Gonzalez suggested they recreate Winter Summoner’s Rift instead—it would be just as time-consuming as designing new lane patterns. The artists on this project knew first-hand how big of an undertaking revamping Summoner’s Rift was, so they were a bit uncertain. Environment artist Jeremy “Redondo” Page says, “This suggestion was actually terrifying to hear because it was like, ‘Oh boy, what are we getting ourselves into?’” Still, the artists started experimenting on a small corner of the Rift using a new filtering process that was prototyped just months earlier. The technique involved isolating the lightest and darkest tones of all the textures on Summoner’s Rift. With the light, dark, and midtones separated, they could be individually altered using layers and filters in Photoshop. When the modified textures were laid back over the Rift, it created a cold, wintry hue. Every tree, stone and blade of grass maintained the its structural base, but the effect was an illusion of snow. During development, this work-in-progress image was shared with other Rioters, and their hyped response encouraged the team to keep moving forward. RiotVitzkrieg explains, “We were building off of really high-quality textures, so they held up, even after we started mucking around with them.” In other words, the Rift’s foundation was detailed enough to still look good, even after the alterations. After the new textures were completed and applied to the Rift, artists smoothed out any rough seams and edges by hand. This new rendering system allowed a frosty Rift to be created within weeks, an endeavor which if done by manual painting (like the updated Rift itself) would have taken the better part of a year. Stages of creating a wintery Rift: change textures, add items, add particle effects, add animated props Festive items and visual effects were later added to buff the Rift’s holly jolly holiday vibes. Some things were created from scratch, such as Baron’s long-lost Santa hat, but many were commandeered from existing materials. Santa Braum lived up to his name and helped deliver presents to the Rift; after muting the colors of Winter’s Bite, the gifts blended right in. A flulft of poros also migrated to the Rift, where animators helped to assemble them into snowmen. Early in development, artists copied items from the first winter map and placed them in the new one, but the colors were too bright and noisy for the upgraded landscapes. What’s Next? During the last year, our mindset shifted from from, “Map skins should be held to the same quality bar as Summoner’s Rift,” to, “Temporary skins don’t necessarily need to be artistically flawless to be exciting or worthwhile.” This change in perspective, coupled with new rendering techniques, means we are working to deliver more thematic maps in the future. We can’t promise the moon just yet, but there may be something just over the horizon.
Posted 8 years ago / Views: 8,894 And that’s how you do it, see? Now, time to lick it up! There are those times when your dog doesn't eat what's in his/her bowl, right? This might be because they want to try and prepare it themselves. Here, for an example, take a look at this dog giving a final touch to his paw-made cake. Oh yeah, the recipe, he doesn't like sharing it, sorry! Click "READ" or "READ MORE" to keep reading the article, and "NEXT" or "NEXT PAGE" for every next page, or click "One Page Article" button to see whole article on one page. If you like our post, please like/share it on social networks listed bellow. You can also like our FB page in right up corner of the page for desktop and tablet users, or just bellow comment section for mobile users. Thank you <3
At a recent Mecum Auctions event, the exact Toyota Supra used in the final drag race by Paul Walker The Fast and the Furious managed to sell for $185,000. Pre-auction estimates suggested it would fetch between $150,000 and $200,000. The car itself features a completely stock 3.0-litre inline-six cylinder engine delivering a total of 220 hp. The Supra does however feature a custom roll cage as well as a custom suspension setup designed with high-octane stunts in mind. Other features of the car include a five-speed manual transmission alongside two unconnected Holley Performance nitrous oxide bottles. The interior has also been comprehensively stripped. Of course the most eye-catching element of the Japanese sports car is its custom Bomex bodykit incorporating new front and rear bumpers and different side skirts. A large APR wing has also been installed as have Dazz alloy wheels and Yokohama tyres.
BSIP/UIG via Getty Images Vaccines tailored to match a person’s particular constellation of cancer mutations seem to have fended off tumours in a handful of patients, two small clinical trials show. The vaccines are described in papers published in Nature on 5 July1, 2. The studies are the first to report that the approach — which is gaining support in academia and industry — could combat cancer in humans. They also provide hints about ways to boost the vaccines' power by combining them with treatments that target the immune system, called immunotherapies. “It’s potentially a game changer,” says Cornelis Melief, a cancer immunologist at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, and author of a commentary accompanying the papers. “The two papers really strongly indicate that the patients experienced clinical benefit.” In principle, the vaccines are similar to those used against infectious diseases: unique components of a foreign invader — cancer cells, in this case — are mixed with agents that stimulate an immune response. The mixture is injected into the patient, in the hope of triggering an immune attack strong enough to vanquish the invader. But for personalized cancer vaccines, the components are tailored to each patient and are administered after the cancer has already appeared — rather than aiming to prevent occurrence. Looking for a response In the studies, researchers began by sequencing the genes that encode proteins in each patient’s tumour. They selected mutant proteins that were most likely to generate an immune response and used these as the basis for their vaccines. One group, led by Catherine Wu at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, treated six people with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. For each person, they formulated a vaccine that contained up to 20 protein fragments corresponding to the mutations in their tumours1. The participants, who received surgery to remove their tumours, had been deemed at high risk for cancer recurrence. But they were not due to receive further treatment unless their cancer came back. Recurrence typically occurs in about half of all such melanoma patients, says Wu. Two years later, four of those patients had not seen their tumours return. And although tumours did grow in the remaining two participants, both experienced a complete remission when subsequently treated with a drug that rouses the immune system by blocking a protein called PD-1. The second group, led by Ugur Sahin, a physician who studies tumour immunology and cancer genomics at the University of Mainz in Germany, treated 13 melanoma patients with vaccines that contained RNA encoding up to 10 mutated proteins in each patient2. The eight patients who had no visible tumours at the time of vaccination remained tumour-free more than a year later. The remaining five participants' tumours had spread by the time they received the vaccine. Tumours shrank in two of them, but later resurged in one patient. A third experienced a complete remission after subsequent treatment with a PD-1 inhibitor. Challenges ahead Personalized cancer vaccines had already been shown to provoke immune responses in humans3. But the new trials are the first to evaluate whether these immune responses can successfully battle tumours. The numbers are small and the trials lacked a control group, but the results are encouraging, says Robert Schreiber, a cancer immunologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Larger trials in academia and industry are ongoing, he notes, and researchers are particularly interested in combining the vaccines with PD-1 inhibitors. “I’m convinced that personalized vaccines are a way to go,” he says. The field still faces challenges. It took both teams about three months to formulate and manufacture their vaccines — too long to delay treatment for many cancers. But both groups say they could accelerate the process as they scale it up. Wu estimates that she could get the lag down to six weeks. It is also unclear how many types of cancer will respond to the approach. Cancer vaccines may work best if they target several different cancer mutations, to lessen the chance of a tumour becoming resistant to the vaccine by shedding any one particular mutation. The genomes of melanoma cells tend to carry many mutations, giving researchers a host of options when designing the vaccines. But some cancers will present fewer avenues for attack. “We have to think about how we can launch a multipronged attack,” says Wu. “How many prongs do you need? We don’t know.” With a wave of clinical trials in the pipeline, researchers will gradually work out which cancers are suited to the approach, and how best to combine the vaccines with other treatments, says Sahin. “We are entering the next phase of rational cancer immunotherapy,” he says.
WASHINGTON – Was the Saudi government, seen by US diplomats as a crucial partner in the war on terror, involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001? According to two former senators who were privy to top secret information on the Saudis’ activities said they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the terrorist attacks. Related stories: "I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, was quoted by the New York Times as saying in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. Graham led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks. 'Findings not an exoneration.' Twin Towers attack (Archive photo: AFP) According to the NYT report, published Wednesday, former Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat who served on the separate 9/11 Commission, said in a sworn affidavit of his own in the case that “significant questions remain unanswered” about the role of Saudi institutions. “Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued,” Kerrey said. According to NYT, the Saudis are seeking to have the case dismissed in part because they say American inquiries — including those in which Graham and Kerrey took part — have essentially exonerated them. A recent court filing by the Saudis prominently cited the 9/11 Commission’s “exhaustive” final report, which “found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi individuals funded” al-Qaeda, the report stated. However, the report said, Kerrey and Graham said that the findings should not be seen as an exoneration and that many important questions about the Saudis’ role had never been fully examined, partly because their panels simply did not have the time or resources given their wider scope. According to NYT, Graham said in his affidavit that unanswered questions include the work of a number of Saudi-sponsored charities with financial links to al-Qaeda, as well as the role of a Saudi citizen living in San Diego at the time of the attacks, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had ties to two of the hijackers and to Saudi officials. • Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter
Our First Cannabis Car Wash Posted on: August 29, 2012 Since we were rained out last Sunday 9/16, we’ve taken a rain check for our Cannabis Car Wash to this Sunday 9/23 at America’s Best Coffee! It’s still being held in Arlington to raise funds for upcoming events and new merchandise. Special thanks to Rachel from ABC for helping to make this happen on such short notice. America’s Best Coffee 3751 Matlock Rd Ste 103 Arlington, Texas 76015-4342 — Serious about ending marijuana prohibition? Then it’s time to prove it! Join us this Sunday from 2-7pm for our first ever Cannabis Car Wash. This is a fundraising event for DFW NORML, meant to help cover the costs of upcoming events & new merchandise. We’ll be offering free car washes for donations and need your help! There are three main jobs that we’ll alternate people in and out of so no one gets too burned out. #1 – Washers – You’ll be getting wet and soapy for the cause. Your tools are sponges, water hoses, buckets and shammy cloths. #2 – Advertisers – Your job is to stand near the street, holding signs, dancing and anything else that’ll get people to stop and check us out. #3 – Greeters – While people are getting their cars washed, we have their undivided attention. It’s up to you to have a meaningful conversation about our organization and our mission. Talk about past and upcoming events. Talk about why you’re volunteering today for DFW NORML. Talk about how they should get involved starting today. We’ll be there from 2pm – 7pm, so join us for a NORML day of sunshine, clean cars & good friends. Help us promote the event by making a post on your Facebook page or inviting friends, and together we’ll continue ending cannabis prohibition one Texan at a time.
Campgrounds can ask them to cover up but can't ban Wicked Campers. A mysterious spray-painting vigilante is covering up offensive slogans on Wicked Campers vehicles. The undercover cover-ups have seen at least four of the controversial company's campervans sprayed over as they travelled up the West Coast. Murchison's Riverside Holiday Park, leaseholder Robin Sandford said the last four Wicked Campers vehicles that had stayed at his park were spray-painted over. FIONA GOODALL/GETTY IMAGES The Tasman District Council recently discovered it could not ban Wicked Campers from its four campgrounds. "Somebody has been painting them up and most of them have been coming from the West Coast. The last one said it was done in the parking lot of the Swing Bridge in the Buller Gorge and another one in the New World in Westport," he said. READ MORE: * Wicked Campers banned at Kaiteriteri * Wicked ban boosts business * Tasman District Council looks into banning Wicked * Wicked Campers could face big company wrath * 'Bit of sexual violence never hurt anyone' * Wicked Campers draw heat in Taupo "It's not the owner, it's somebody else from the general public and they're getting grey spray-paint — it's not messy, like a kid would do it — it's over the offensive words. I could tell what was greyed out and it was bad." Getty Images One motor camp manager uses tape to cover over any offensive material. However, Sandford, who leases the park from the TDC, thought the issue wasn't as big as it was made out to be. "I think it's offensive, for children for sure but I think it's a little bit of a storm in a teacup. With all the other problems we have with freedom camping right now, I think there's other issues that should be addressed." The cover-ups have emerged as the Tasman District Council discovered it could not ban Wicked Campers vehicles from its four campgrounds. GETTY IMAGES Vans at Wicked Campers depot in Penrose, Auckland. Deputy mayor Tim King said the council's legal advice suggested it would be difficult to enforce a ban against a single campervan company, and the council would need to change the lease agreements with its private camping operators to enforce a ban. However, at a council meeting last week he said that stance was unnecessary, as operators were refusing to admit vans with offensive signage already, or insisting any distasteful slogans were covered up.. Outside the meeting, King said he supported how the operators had decided to address the matter. "I think it's an appropriate way to deal with the issue really, not over the top and doesn't require any specific rule changes or anything. It's just them using their discretion to decide what they want in and out of their camps." Golden Bay's Collingwood Motor Camp manager Chrissy Clements said she and her husband Gary had been policing the vans "pretty much since we started". This was before the council had asked for a ban on the controversial campers. "It's the really offensive ones, ones that are derogatory against women. Guests have complained about it before," she said. "We know that Wicked won't do anything about it, so it's up to us." Clements uses tape to cover over any offensive material, if tourists with Wicked Campers want to stay with them. "Reactions haven't been too bad, it's not the campers fault that they have that van, sometimes that's the only van left and it's either that or nothing," she said. Although the motor camp only sees "about half a dozen a month", they are in full support of the council. "We aren't keen to have that sort of carry on about that sort of thing [the offensive slogans], we're a family park. It's not on," she said. The Kaiteriteri Beach Motor Camp banned Wicked Campers from their grounds in March, which received a positive response, manager Dennis Petch said. "We're probably getting more [business] from campers coming in just to support us than the ones we've lost, but that's not why we did it." King believed change would only happen if tourists stopped using the vans. "At some point the only thing that is likely to change is the market so if people stop hiring them, they'll probably change," he said.
GNBs on diamond A consequence of graphene being a soft membrane is that it can be strain-engineered to become highly corrugated by modifying its adhesion to the substrate. A CVD-grown graphene monolayer sheet was transferred onto a diamond (100) crystal. After annealing the graphene–diamond interface at 1,275 K for 45 min in ultrahigh vacuum, GNBs with a density of ~8 × 1010 cm−2 (Fig. 1) appear. Each GNB measures about ~2 nm in height and has diameters that range from 5 to 30 nm (Fig. 1c). The annealing temperature of 1,275 K causes the dehydrogenation of the hydrogen-terminated diamond (100). Dangling bonds, which are created during dehydrogenation, bond instantaneously with graphene sheet, and the non-bonded part of the graphene sheet buckles to relieve the compressive stress arising from the interfacial bonding. This reconstruction process happens spontaneously once the interface is activated thermally, as can be seen from the molecular dynamic (MD) simulations presented later (Fig. 4). We have carried out control studies on mechanically exfoliated graphene and found that GNBs of similar size and density can be generated for wet-transferred exfoliated graphene sheet on diamond, thus the bubble formation is not specifically influenced by the grain boundaries because the sizes of crystalline domains are expected to be quite different in CVD and exfoliated graphene (Supplementary Fig. S1). Valence band spectroscopy in Fig. 2a revealed that the intensity of the characteristic p orbital peak in graphene was reduced with the formation of GNBs; we deduce that this is due to partial re-hybridization of its molecular orbitals following interfacial bonding with diamond. Figure 1: AFM images of GNBs. (a) Topography of G on diamond after transfer. (b) Topography of GNBs on diamond. Scale bar, 500 nm (a and b). (c) Histogram of the diameter and height distribution of GNBs and (d) High-resolution three-dimensional topography representation of GNBs on diamond. Scale bar, 100 nm. Full size image Figure 2: Probing the electronic structure and properties before and after the formation of GNBs. (a) Valence bands of flat G and GNB on diamond. (b) Electrochemical cyclic voltammetry of diamond, graphene-on-diamond and GNBs-on-diamond using 1.0 mM Fe(CN) 6 3−/4− in 1 M KCl. (c) C12 Raman spectra of (i) flat graphene-on-diamond before GNB formation, (ii) GNBs on diamond and (d) C13 Raman spectra of (i) flat graphene-on-diamond before GNB formation and (ii) GNBs on diamond. Full size image Strained GNBs Strain, which affects the phonon frequency and which depends on the anharmonicity of the interatomic potentials, can be studied using Raman spectroscopy12. Sp2-hybridized CVD graphene layer is characterized by its G, D and 2D (second-order D peak) peaks, which reside at 1,580, 1,360 and 2,680 cm−1, respectively17. G peak corresponds to the doubly degenerated E 2g phonon at the Brillouin zone centre. The 2D peak originates from a scattering process where momentum conservation is obtained by the participation of two phonons with opposite wavevectors (q and −q). The D peak is usually selection-rule forbidden but is activated by lattice defects. Raman spectrum was recorded using a scanning atomic force microscope (AFM)-Raman probe so that the Raman features collected from a region that is covered densely by the GNB can be contrasted with another region where the graphene is relatively flat. Figure 2c shows that the Raman spectrum collected from the GNB-covered region is red-shifted as compared with spectrum recorded at the flat regions. This can be explained by the elongation of C–C bonds in the tensile strained GNB. In particular, the G-peak position decreases from 1,586 to 1,525 cm−1, whereas the 2D band shifts from 2,678 to 2,553 cm−1 when moving from the flat to curved regions. The full-width at half-maximum of the 2D peak remains unchanged at about 30 cm−1. These observations suggest that the lattice of graphene is biaxially strained18. Using dω/dε, where ω is the Raman frequency and ε is the % strain applied to CVD graphene19, the Grüneisen parameter γ was calculated to be γ=1.30 using the equation20 γ=−1/ω o (dω/dε), where ω o is the Raman frequency with no applied strain. The strain value experienced by GNBs is then calculated to be ~1.5%. However, the strain value probed by Raman spectroscopy here is underestimated because of the large laser spot size of the Raman probe relative to individual nanobubbles. Alternatively, the strain quantification of each individual GNB can be judged from its physical parameters. Because σ=pr2/2th, strain is related to stress by ε=(1−ν2)/E)σ, where σ is the stress experienced at the apex of the graphene bubble, P is the differential pressure across the membrane responsible for the magnitude of deflection, r is the radius of the GNB, t is the thickness of graphene and h is the height of GNB. Using AFM to determine the mean r and h of the bubbles, ε was estimated to be ~6% for the GNB. Besides the commonly observed G and 2D bands in pristine graphene, an unusual peak residing at ~1,150 cm−1 is observed to emerge upon the formation of GNBs (Fig. 2c). This peak is often recognized as the fingerprint band of nanocrystalline diamond crystals. Ferrari et al21 assigned it to mixed sp3−sp2 bonded phases and trans-polyacetylene groups present on the surface and grain boundaries of nanocrystalline diamond. One possibility is the bonding of diamond to graphene breaks the honeycomb sheet into mixed sp3−sp2 bonded phases, and trans-polyacetylene domains appear on the modified graphene, which is bonded to diamond. At the same time, a widening of the full-width at half-maximum of the 1,332 cm−1 peak (Fig. 2c) is observed with the growth of GNBs, and this can be attributed to the increased density of defects following interfacial bonding. To avoid the overlap between the defect peak of graphene and the first-order phonon peak of single-crystal diamond (situated at 1,332 cm−1), the Raman spectrum of C13-enriched graphene was recorded. The D peak of graphene, which is defect-related, is observed to increase with the formation of GNBs (Fig. 2d) and similar downshifting of the G and 2D peaks is also observed for the curved regions of the GNBs. Unique properites of GNBs Pristine graphene shows excellent in-plane electrical conductivity. However, because of the anisotropic nature of its electron delocalization, it is known to be electrochemically sluggish for charge transfer in the direction normal to its basal plane22. An exception is found, however, in the case of GNB, because its strained surfaces means that the flat-lying 2p orbitals are distorted, and midgap states will be created to which enhanced charge transfer can occur. The curvature in GNB also causes an asymmetric distribution of π electrons outside and inside graphene sheet23, bestowing greater electrochemical reactivity on its exterior. Cyclic voltammetry of Fe(CN) 6 3−/4− redox couple was selected to examine the heterogenous charge-transfer mechanism before and after the formation of GNBs. In this case, the graphene sheet is transferred to a conducting, boron-doped diamond crystal. Using an inner sphere redox couple, which is sensitive to both the density of electronic states and surface microstructure, charge-transfer kinetics can be calculated from the peak-to-peak separation in the voltammograms (Fig. 2b). The results show that the charge-transfer rate follows the order of: GNBs on diamond>diamond>flat G on diamond, as summarized in Table 1. The cathodic and anodic currents of GNBs on boron-doped diamond electrode (Supplementary Fig. S2) show a linear relationship with the square root of the scan rated ranging from 25 to 125 mV s−1, which is in good agreement with the Randles Sevcik equation describing reversible reactions controlled by semi-infinite linear diffusion. Boron-doped diamond is known to be a good electrode for electrochemistry, but what is striking here is the enhanced electrochemical response when its surface is modified by GNBs. Table 1: Calculated apparent heterogeneous electron-transfer rate constants and capacitances. Full size table Insights into the formation of GNBs The GNB-on-diamond sample was introduced into a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in-situ cell evacuated to 1 × 10−4 Torr. FTIR measurements reveal that residual water from the graphene-transfer process is trapped at the GNB–diamond interface because of the impermeability of graphene24 (Fig.3d). Surface-physisorbed water typically desorbs readily in vacuum once the sample is heated slightly due to its weak adsorption energies on hydrophobic surface. However, we observed that the water-related OH vibrational bands persist up to the highest heating temperature in GNB-on-diamond (>773 K); this is possible only if the water molecules are trapped at the GNB–diamond interface. The observation of trapped water echoes a recent study that demonstrated the imaging of trapped water between two graphene membranes using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy25. It is worth mentioning that the impermeability of the graphene membrane to atoms and molecules has been predicted by Leenaerts et al26 using first-principles density functional theory investigation. Figure 3: Schematic diagram and vibrational spectroscopy of graphene and diamond. (a) Schematic representation showing water cluster in GNB and weakly interacted water molecules underneath flat G graphene on diamond (top panel). Etching of diamond by supercritical water (bottom panel). FTIR spectra showing OH-stretching peak of water measured on (b) diamond, where raising temperature to 373 K results in the desorption of water (c) Flat G on diamond showing peak at 3,650 cm−1 due to the presence of trapped, weakly bonded water molecules; (d) (i) Flat G on diamond; (ii)–(vi) After formation of GNBs on diamond and heating the GNB at a range of temperatures and (vii) Cooling down to room temperature. Full size image The OH stretch of water presents an extremely broad band between 3,000 and 3,700 cm−1, which is usually described by the four state model27 in terms of the strength of hydrogen bonding. The intra-molecular OH stretch is highly dependent on the hydrogen-bond coordination of the proton28. A strong hydrogen bonding results in a weakening of the OH oscillator, a red shift in energy and a broadening of the spectral peak. As shown in Fig. 3d, a relatively sharp peak labelled as P1 at ~3,650 cm−1, which is characteristic of free OH bond of water molecules, is observed at the bare diamond surface but this peak vanishes upon slight heating, and only the intrinsic 3 phonon absorption peaks of diamond29 (Fig. 3b) remain. Thus, we can conclude that physisorbed water desorbs completely from the surface at elevated temperatures. Peak P1 is also observed at diamond surface encapsulated by flat graphene sheet (Fig. 3c), but in this case, it survives even after high-temperature annealing, suggesting that the water is trapped at the graphene–diamond interface. The persistence of P1 as temperature increases suggests that a large body of water molecules adsorbing on hydrophobic surface have weak hydrogen-bonding interactions. For GNB–diamond, it is noteworthy that in addition to P1, a red-shifted broad band (P3) at ~3,220 cm−1, which is characteristic of strong hydrogen bonding, is present at room temperature. P3 can be assigned to the condensation of water inside the bubbles. When the GNB–diamond sample is heated to increasingly higher temperature, another red-shifted P4 peak at 2,967 cm−1 emerges, which is indicative of increased clustering. At 673 K, the intensity of the 3,220 cm−1 peak is observed to weaken, and a blue shifted sharp peak P2 appears at 3,510 cm−1. At this point, the weakening of the hydrogen bonding can be interpreted as the emergence of supercritical phase in some of the bubbles30,31,32. Previously, Tassaing et al31 observed a broadening of vibrational bands, leading to a broad band with two maxima at about 3,650 and 3,550 cm−1 and a shoulder at 3,250 cm−1 as water approaches critical conditions. The critical temperature of water is 647 K, and the properties of water >674 K and at pressures higher than 2.21 MPa (critical pressure) differ significantly from those of ambient water. Supercritical water has a density between that of water vapour and liquid at standard conditions, reduced intermolecular bonding and exhibits high gas-like diffusion rates along with high liquid-like collision rates. A significantly reduced dielectric constant33 (~20) allows it to act as an aggressive solvent for organic material. From the infrared spectra, it can be inferred that the trapped water molecules are rather inhomogeneous in its bonding environment; some water molecules trapped in the bubble undergoes clustering as pressure (temperature) increases, as reflected from increasingly stronger hydrogen-bonding environment (P4 and P5), whereas other water molecules, possibly trapped under flat part of the graphene sheet, do not cluster, as judged from the persistence of peak P1. It must be pointed out that peaks P2, P4 and P5 are dynamic features that are observed only at high temperatures; they decrease in intensities once the sample is cooled to room temperature (Fig. 3d (vii)). GNBs as high-pressure reactors for etching of diamond After heating the GNB–diamond sample over 1 h at 1,375 K, numerous nanometer-sized square voids appear on the diamond surface with a density of 9 × 109 cm−2. Figure 4e shows the scanning electron microscope image of these nanovoids, which have an average width of ~40 nm The square etched pits follow the crystallographic expectation of the 100-faceted diamond. The occurrence of etched pits is intriguing as vigorous chemical or physical treatments, in the presence of transition metal catalysts, are usually needed to etch diamond. Control studies where the diamond crystal was heated alone in air or in vacuum at the same temperature failed to reproduce the etched pits that were observed when the diamond crystal was encapsulated by graphene membrane. At elevated temperatures, GNBs can be transformed into a hydrothermal reactor because of its impermeability21,34. Trapped water molecules inside can be transformed into supercritical fluid, which is highly corrosive to organic medium. For example, supercritical water has been used in the oxidation of methane to produce CO and CO 2 at 25 MPa and temperature >773 K35. Figure 4: GNB formation, growth and void generation on diamond. (a) Density functional theory simulation of ground electronic states of flat and curved graphene at B3LYP/6-31 G* level. (b,c) MD simulation of the buckling of graphene on diamond (b) Graphene on C(100)−(2 × 1). (c) Graphene on dihydride-terminated diamond (denoted as 2 H C(100)−(2 × 1), where bubble formation can be seen after heating. (d) AFM topography image of voids generated on diamond and (e) Scanning electron microscope image of etched diamond, inset is image zoomed in by 20 times. Scale bar, 0.3, 1 and 0.05 μm (d,e and inset of e, respectively). Full size image The pressure inside a GNB can be estimated from its deformation from a flat membrane using Hencky’s solution for the geometrically nonlinear response of an isotropic elastic membrane subjected to a pressure difference Δp across the membrane. This solution provides the membrane profile in the form of an infinite series in radial position, and also the relationship between the pressure difference and bubble height, Δp=K(ν) (Eth3)/r4. Here E is the Young’s modulus, ν is Poisson ratio, t is the membrane thickness, r is the radius of the bubble and K(ν) is the coefficient that is dependent on the Poisson ratio. For graphene, we take ν=0.16, and so K(ν=0.16)=3.09 (ref. 36). The mean h and r values derived from AFM imaging are employed for estimation of pressure difference across a typical GNB. The pressure that is built up in a typical GNB of 2 nm in height and 10 nm in radius is calculated to be approximately 1 GPa. Alternatively, by considering a monolayer of water adsorbed on the surface of diamond and trapped within the GNB, the pressure estimated in the bubble using ideal gas law also arrived at a value of ca. 1 GPa. This value obtained lies within the pressure–temperature regime where etching of diamond is possible37. The etching of diamond octahedrons at 1,375 K and 109 Pa has been previously reported with water and oxygen acting as etchants37,38. Inside the bubbles, the superheated water is known to have enhanced solubility for non-polar organic materials. It is interesting to reflect on the chemical robustness of the GNB relative to the diamond that is encapsulating. Figure 4a shows the p z orbital isosurface wavefunction (isoval=0.02 A.U.) of flat and curved graphene calculated using density functional theory (at B3LYP/6-31G*). In contrast to the evenly distributed electronic density of a flat graphene plane, the curvature in GNB produces an asymmetric distribution of π electrons on its outer and inner surface. Outward rotation of orbitals enhances local density of states and bestows higher reactivity on the outer surface of the GNB. In contrast, orbitals at the inner surface of the GNB (Fig. 4a) are rotated inwards to result in a diminished electron cloud, thus resulting in reduced reactivity of concaved graphene surface39. With increasing temperature, the GNB bursts finally, and remnants of the torn graphene sheets can be observed using AFM imaging (Fig. 4d). Raman spectroscopy of the surface at this point reveals poly-acetylene-like fragments on the pit-covered diamond (Supplementary Fig. S3). To obtain an atomistic insight into the formation mechanism of GNBs on diamond, we carried out classical MD simulations using reactive empirical bond-order potential40,41 and reactive force field42. Diamond (100) slab with an atom density of 1.56 × 1015 cm−2 atoms and a size of 35 × 35 × 0.45 nm2 was built by six layers of atoms, each containing 20 000 atoms. Graphene (C(0001) sheet with a surface atom density of 3.65 × 1015 atoms cm−2 and containing 48 720 atoms was placed Z=2.5 Å away from the surface of diamond to ensure that graphene and diamond are not covalently bonded at first. We first test the possibility of bonding interactions between graphene and a bare diamond surface. The bare diamond surface is a reconstructed (100)−(2 × 1) surface truncated by dimer row formation. No interfacial bonding between diamond and graphene is observed when the system is heated to 700 K, and only a minor rippling of graphene is observed (see Fig. 4b at 700 K). The reason of the rippling is the lattice mismatch between diamond (100) and graphene. The amplitude of rippling increases with the heating temperature; however, even at 2000 K, the height of the ripples does not exceed 5 Å (Fig. 4b at 2,000 K). A different situation exists when a dihydride-terminated (denoted as 2H: C(100)−(2 × 1)) diamond surface interacts with graphene (Fig. 4c). Upon desorption of hydrogen atoms at 1,100 K, our MD simulation shows clearly that graphene–diamond bonding occurs instantaneously (Fig. 4c). The graphene–diamond bonding produces ripples on graphene sheet. At ≥1,500 K, part of graphene sheet erupts into bubbles (Fig. 4c at 1,500 K) due to pressure created by desorbing hydrogen molecules. At even higher temperature, breakage of interfacial C–C bonds between graphene and diamond resulted in the delamination of GNB from diamond surface.
Sol 1460: Preparing to drill 13 September 2016 Yesterday was sol 2 of the drill campaign at “Quela” and we did a lot of great remote sensing, contact science and wheel imaging (see the above RMI image showing fine lamination in some pebbles, and the MAHLI image of the wheels to monitor their health). Today’s plan includes a science block and cross-contamination experiment to prepare for the drill sample. Science activities include a Mastcam multispectral observation of a block of Stimson sandstone, ChemCam RMI images of the layering in the butte, and ChemCam LIBS to assess the composition of the pebbles. If all goes well we should be ready to go for the full drill hole tomorrow! By Lauren Edgar --Lauren is a Research Geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and a member of the MSL science team.
Hello Evolve fans! I wanted to share something new to Thunderchild that I thought you guys would find super interesting: DOME HEATMAPS! #Cool! What are heatmaps? Heatmaps are a graphical representation of data, in this case data related to Evolve maps. We can take mass amounts of data and place it on an image and see some interesting things. #Spectacular! What can heatmaps be used for? The short answer is a lot. I started typing out a wall of information and examples but decided to let some screenshots and photoshop do most the talking instead. Technical notes for those interested - A dome coordinate is where the dome spawns (10m in front of the trapper when the dome is thrown) - Data only shows the top 50%+ of domes thrown in a specific area. Anything below the 50% margin is either black/transparent. Simply put: if there is an uncommon dome spot, you won’t see it, where the most common areas will be red. Below are the specific colors found in the heatmaps: - Red: 97-100% - Orange: 85% - Dark Yellow Orange: 75% - Black: 0-50% (0% is completely transparent) - Every instance of a heatmap is percentage based given the applied filters. It grabs the highest valued coordinate (usually around the Power Relay) and will show that area as red. For example let’s use two hypothetical coordinates: 100x100 and 200x200. We’ll say 100x100 has 30 domes thrown, and 200x200 only has 24 domes thrown. The coordinate 100x100 will be a solid red, while the 200x200 coordinate is only 80% of the max value (24/30), and will be half “Orange” and half “Dark Yellow Orange”. Shows how accurate the heatmap correlates to the map geometry. You can see that the most fights happen at the power relay, with two other red areas that are common dome locations every round. Let’s take out monsters who got to stage 3 and see how it affects things. As we expected, much less action going on around the power relay and more in those two areas previously mentioned. Both of these charts show off insight on where our high and low traffic areas are. Knowing this gives us a good starting point when focusing on balance, optimization, scenery, … whatever the situation may be. Let’s take it a step further and use it for something character related. Behemoth excels in tight close-quarter areas, right? Let’s see if we can verify this. Below is a picture of The Dam with non-Behemoth monsters and winning team being monster. Again, as expected the majority of the domes are thrown at the power relay since almost every game will have a dome at the power relay. Ignoring the power relay we can see some lighter yellow areas where there is common traffic between all non-Behemoth games. Since we’re not looking at a specific monster only common areas between all monsters (excluding Behemoth) are showing up. Now let’s look at Behemoth-only games and see how it changes. With Behemoth we can see much more activity in the “Main Caves” towards the top left, and even in the “Plateau” towards the bottom right of the map. There is even a little color in the “Center Caves” which was not on the non-Behemoth heatmap. I took these two heatmaps a step further and exaggerated the differences between the non-Behemoth heatmap and the Behemoth-only heatmap and applied some photoshop magic: The bright yellow is where there was more Behemoth-only action that didn’t exist for non-Behemoth domes. Looking closely at it we can see for the most part it takes place in caves, choke points (for example cave entrances/exits, and areas where Behemoth takes the high ground; all scenarios where Behemoth arguably is more dangerous compared to other areas on the map that are more open. #Amazing! What other heatmap related things do you plan on for the future of Thunderchild? Right now we have round-based filters for determining what happened in the overall round for just about any graph in Thunderchild. These filters include, but are not limited to Date, Player Rank, Round Length, Monster Stage Reached, Monster/Hunter characters, Winning Team, … (that’s about half) and can be applied to all charts and graphs current in Thunderchild. We also plan to extend the dome heatmaps so we can filter dome-related data such as monster-favored or hunter-favored domes. We need some extra logic in order to make this happen which doesn’t exist in the live build, so it’s another reason why I’m looking forward to the summer update We are also thinking about other ways to utilize heatmaps like these. We are talking about starting to collect coordinates for things like food being eaten and other core mechanics like monsters stage up locations. With food eating areas we could potentially make a heatmap showing feeding routes and common feeding areas.
Have you ever wanted to test the behaviour of a method, without making it part of your public API? Have you ever been forced to choose between compromising on the encapsulation of your business logic, and ensuring that it behaves as expected? Allow me to introduce the InternalsVisibleTo attribute! In this post, we’ll look at what this lets you do, but we’ll also touch briefly on the debate surrounding its use. InternalsVisibleTo is one of those lesser known features of .NET, but it’s been available since .NET 2.0, which was released 15 years ago. So what does InternalsVisibleTo actually do? Exactly what it says on the tin: it allows you to delegate access to objects marked internal to other assemblies. As you’ll remember, internal is an access modifier which ordinarily restricts access to callers within the same assembly. By including an InternalsVisibleTo attribute in our AssemblyInfo.cs file, we can allow code in specific external assemblies to access internal members as if they were actually located in the same assembly. InternalsVisibleTo in AssemblyInfo.cs [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("TestProjectWithInternalsVisible")] 1 [ assembly : InternalsVisibleTo ( "TestProjectWithInternalsVisible" ) ] This might seem like an esoteric piece of .NET functionality but is a godsend when it comes to testing. How many times have we wanted to test something that we don’t want to make public to every consumer of our code? Using InternalsVisibleTo means that we can keep our public API clean, whilst retaining the ability to test some of our encapsulated logic. Black box vs white box Now, there is a school of thought that says that only the public API should be tested. The thought process is that only your outputs to the rest of the world matter: as long as the externally observable behaviour of your code matches the behaviour described in the specification, you’ve done your job. The other side of this coin is that testing implementation details can lead to brittle tests, which mean you may spend too long maintaining them. Two excellent cases for “black box testing” – treating your code as a singular mechanism for translating inputs into outputs. On the other hand, I often find myself encapsulating such complex functionality that testing the publicly available API is unhelpful. For instance, I may only expose a few top-level methods that each call a number of internal methods to perform the “heavy lifting”. A pure black box approach may mean that test failures are hard to trace back to the underlying regression, so at times like these, I like to indulge in a little bit of “white box” testing. “White box” testing is simply the testing of logic normally contained within a library, invisible to consumers of your code. If used sparingly, on key methods used within your projects, a spot of white box testing can be a lifesaver. Don’t be tempted to start testing all your internal methods though, as this can quickly lead to unpleasantly tightly coupled tests that break whenever you refactor your code. Peeking inside Besides InternalsVisibleTo , there are a couple of other ways to conduct white box testing. The first (alluded to above) is to compromise on the encapsulation of your code and simply make everything you want to test public. This can lead to a very confusing experience for consumers of your code, which may include your colleagues or even your future self. How will they know what they’re supposed (or allowed) to do when presented with 101 methods? The other approach is to use reflection. Essentially, this involves querying your assembly to work out what it contains. Once we know the contents of an assembly, we can invoke whatever we like: Invoking a method with reflection var instance = new ClassWithMethods(); BindingFlags bf = BindingFlags.NonPublic \| BindingFlags.Instance; MethodInfo mi = instance.GetType().GetMethod("InternalMethod", bf); var result = (string)mi.Invoke(instance, new object[] { "human" }); 1 2 3 4 var instance = new ClassWithMethods ( ) ; BindingFlags bf = BindingFlags . NonPublic \| BindingFlags . Instance ; MethodInfo mi = instance . GetType ( ) . GetMethod ( "InternalMethod" , bf ) ; var result = ( string ) mi . Invoke ( instance , new object [ ] { "human" } ) ; Whilst this works, it’s a bit verbose for my taste. With the internals visible to the caller, four lines of pretty idiosyncratic code can become two lines that even a Java developer would understand: Invoking the normal way var instance = new ClassWithMethods(); var greeting = instance.InternalMethod("human"); 1 2 var instance = new ClassWithMethods ( ) ; var greeting = instance . InternalMethod ( "human" ) ; Yes, I really did just include that code… Summary If you’d like to see InternalsVisibleTo in action, check out my demo repo. It contains two test projects that target a single library project, which itself contains one public method and one internal method. Each test project tests both methods, but only one has access to the internal method directly. Try downloading the code and running the tests. Note the AssemblyInfo.cs file in the library project and the reflection example in the test without access. For me, InternalsVisibleTo is a pragmatic answer to a problem that attracts dogma. Yes, there are good reasons to limit the amount of “white box” testing. Sometimes, however, it’s the sensible thing to do. Yes, there are other ways to access the internal (or even private) members of an object. Reflection even makes this possible whilst retaining a cleanly encapsulated API. But why choose verbosity when InternalsVisibleTo offers simplicity? Finally, I should probably acknowledge that there is nothing limiting your use of InternalsVisibleTo to your unit tests. If you’ve got an example of its use for something other than testing, let me know in the comments. Futher reading
At $7 million, 'Collateral Beauty' marks a career-worst for Will Smith; 'La La Land' zooms into the top 10 despite playing in only 200 theaters. The rebellion has succeeded. Stand-alone film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story captured $155 million in its domestic debut from 4,157 theaters and $135.5 million internationally for a global launch of $290.5 million — the second-best showing of all time for the month of December behind last year's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Overseas, the film debuted No. 1 everywhere and posted the top opening of the year to date in a slew of countries, including the U.K. with $21 million including previews. It has yet to open in China and South Korea. The movie's opening performance is a key victory for Lucasfilm and Disney as they look to expand the Star Wars franchise beyond the core episodic films. Critics have generally embraced Rogue One, while the film earned an A CinemaScore from U.S. audiences. Males made up between 59 percent and 64 percent of the audience, according to various polling services. Mid-December has never been known for huge openings, since many consumers are distracted by holiday preparations and parties; instead, titles can enjoy huge multiples. Force Awakens changed all of that when launching to $247.9 million, the top domestic bow of all time for any month of the year. (Previously, no December event film, including 2009's Avatar, had taken in north of $85 million.) Rogue One — which doesn't have the same nostalgia factor as Force Awakens — cost $200 million to make and was directed by Gareth Edwards. The story is set before the events in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope and follows a group of rebels, led by Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), who obtain the plans for the Death Star, which are later given to Princess Leia. Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker also star. "This is a massive opening and the second-best by a wide margin. And it sets us up in a perfect way for the lucrative holiday period ahead," said Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis. "It is a litmus test for what these stand-alone movies can be, both from a story perspective and a commercial perspective." Rogue One did robust business in Imax and premium large-format theaters. Globally, Imax locations took in $29.2 million, including $19 million in North America, where Rogue One was the first movie to be released on more than 400 screens. And 550 PLF screens accounted for $17.9 million of the total North American gross. Elsewhere, New Line and Village Roadshow's star-studded ensemble drama Collateral Beauty bombed with $7 million from 3,028 theaters in a career-worst for Will Smith. In the $36 million film, Smith plays a successful New York advertising executive struck by tragedy who writes letters to love, time and death — and gets a response. Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Edward Norton, Michael Pena and Naomie Harris co-star in the movie, which was savaged by critics but nabbed an A- CinemaScore from audiences. Collateral Beauty looked to serve as counterprogramming to Rogue One. Females made up nearly 60 percent of the audience, with 58 percent of all ticket buyers over the age of 35. "The attendance was much lower than what we wanted and of course we’re disappointed," said Warner Bros. domestic distribution president Jeff Goldstein. "I’m hopeful that the older audience this was made for will turn out come Christmas Day." Overseas, Collateral Beauty opened to $4.6 million from 16 markets, led by Mexico ($1.6 million) and Russia ($1.4 million), for a global bow of $11.6 million. At the specialty box office, Manchester by the Sea expanded nationwide after nabbing a slew of Globe Globe and SAG Award nominations earlier in the week. The Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions release earned $4.2 million from 1,208 theaters for a domestic total of $14 million. Manchester narrowly beat awards rival La La Land to place No. 6. From Lionsgate, La La Land dazzled in grossing $4 million from only 200 cinemas for a 10-day domestic total of $5.3 million. The musical earned seven Golden Globe noms, the most of any film. Offshore, La La Land earned another $4.7 million from 14 markets for a foreign total of $11.3 million, including an impressive $9.5 million in South Korea. New specialty openings in the U.S. included Paramount's Fences, directed by and starring Denzel Washington opposite Viola Davis. The drama opened to $128,000 from four theaters in Los Angeles and New York for a screen average of $32,000. Fences, which cost north of $20 million to produce, expands nationwide on Christmas Day. After Rogue One, the other big player internationally was Legendary Entertainment's period monster epic The Great Wall, which opened to $67.4 million in China. The high-profile China-U.S. production stars Matt Damon and was directed by Zhang Yimou. Also overseas this weekend, Illumination Entertainment and Universal's Sing took in $6.6 million from 15 markets for an early foreign total of $17.4 million. The animated tentpole bows in the U.S. on Wednesday.
When former Artforum co-publisher Knight Landesman was accused of sexual misconduct last week, his fellow publishers responded with a statement that was rapidly, and roundly, criticized. They called the allegations against Landesman “unfounded” and characterized a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former employee Amanda Schmitt as “an attempt to exploit a relationship that she herself worked hard to create and maintain.” Landesman resigned the next day and Artforum‘s staff responded to the publishers’ statement with an open letter posted on the magazine’s website saying that they “repudiate the statements that have been issued to represent us so far.” Now the magazine’s current contributing editors, who include high-profile figures like Greil Marcus, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yve-Alain Bois, Molly Nesbit, and others, have followed suit, issuing a statement this afternoon that similarly condemns the co-publishers’—Tony Korner, Charles Guarino, and Danielle McConnell—response to the allegations. They also praised former editor Michelle Kuo for her “principled” decision to resign. Read the full statement below: We, the undersigned contributing editors of Artforum, stand with the magazine’s current and former staff in condemning the publishers’ handling of the allegation of Knight Landesman’s sexual misconduct—as reflected in their original statement, from October 24, denigrating the actions of the woman who first brought this situation to light, as “an attempt to exploit a relationship that she herself worked hard to create and maintain.” Both the alleged behavior and the response to it are deplorable. We are united in our belief that everyone should be able to live and work free from all forms of unwanted contact, intimidation, or coercion for any reason, whether rooted in gender, sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, weight, ability, or class. Indeed, our engagement with the magazine has been predicated on a shared investment in this fundamental principle, as emblematized by Michelle Kuo’s recent principled resignation as editor. We express our deep respect for her decision as well as our full support for David Velasco, who is taking her place in this contentious and uncertain time. In the weeks and months to come, we expect the magazine’s publishers both to assume responsibility and to take all action necessary, in coordination with the staff, to ensure a transparent, equitable professional environment free of harassment and discrimination. Given the magazine’s history and longstanding commitments, Artforum’s communities of writers and readers deserve no less. Jan Avgikos Daniel Birnbaum Yve-Alain Bois Dennis Cooper Huey Copeland Thomas Crow David Frankel Tim Griffin Joan Kee John Kelsey Donald Kuspit Rhonda Lieberman Greil Marcus James Meyer Molly Nesbit Hans Ulrich Obrist Ida Panicelli Robert Pincus-Witten John Rajchman David Rimanelli Katy Siegel Amy Taubin Tom Vanderbilt Anne M. Wagner Follow artnet News on Facebook:
When Nintendo announced the Wii U there was a lot of interest in its hardware specs. The new console could very well end up the fastest kid on the block thanks to the sheer age of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I wasn't all that interested in the Wii U, but I did want to get a look at the silicon inside so I grabbed a unit and went into teardown mode. The Wii U is available in two versions: the basic and deluxe kits. The basic kit comes in white, while the deluxe is black. Both are glossy. The deluxe console gives you 32GB of on-board storage (eMMC NAND) vs. 8GB for the standard model. The deluxe kit also includes a stand and cradle for the Wii U tablet GamePad as well as a stand for the console itself. The two kits retail for $299.99 and $349.99, respectively. The Wii U hardware itself looks a lot like a larger Wii. Getting inside the chassis is also quite similar. The CMOS battery door is the first thing you'll have to remove, followed by 8 more screws (a mixture of philips head and tri-wing). The bulk of these screws are behind console-colored stickers, be sure to peel them all off. With all 8 (9 including the CMOS battery door) screws removed, you can slide the left side of the Wii U away from the front of the console, and off all together. This reveals the final three tri-wing screws that you'll need to remove to get inside the chassis (the gallery of all of this is at the bottom of the article). With all 12 screws removed, pry the top of the Wii U up and away from the body until it separates from the rest of the frame revealing the console's fairly compact internals: The Wii U optical drive uses a custom format for game storage, but offers a very Blu-ray-like 25GB capacity per disc. Max sequential read speeds are pretty high compared to the current gen consoles at 22MB/s. Two screws hold the front cover in place, followed by four screws that hold the optical drive in place. Be careful when removing the optical drive as there's a ribbon cable attached to the motherboard for power/data. The same goes for the front cover, although its ribbon cable is really only on light/switch duty. With the optical drive removed, next up is removing the shielding on the top and bottom of the motherboard and the shround on top of the heatsink. Just go around the perimeter of the motherboard removing screws (you'll be able to remove all but two easily). Once you've done this, the motherboard will be able to separate from the Wii U's lower tray. Removing the shielding itself requires carefully moving the antenna cables out of the way. As these wires are soldered to the Wii U chassis on one end, be very careful not to pull too hard otherwise you run the risk of needing to break out the soldering iron. If you've removed all of the screws and freed the antenna wires from their guides a bit, you should be able to pull back the plastic heatsink shroud, revealing...more shielding: With no screws left to hold it in place however, the shielding is easily dealt with (again pay close attention to the antenna wires). The same is true for the bottom of the PCB. The two sets of antenna wires go to two independent wireless controllers: one for 802.11b/g/n WiFi, the other to a dedicated 802.11n controller to handle Miracast display streaming between the Wii U and the GamePad display. Thanks to Ryan Shrout over at PC Per for figuring this one out! Once you've removed all shielding you're left with a pretty clean looking motherboard: On the top side of the board you'll see the eMMC/NAND package, in this case it's a dual-die Samsung eMMC solution (there's another Toshiba NAND device on the back of the board, not for user storage): There are four 4Gb (512MB) Hynix DDR3-1600 devices surrounding the Wii U's MCM (Multi Chip Module). Memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, and if I'm decoding the DRAM part numbers correctly it looks like these are 16-bit devices giving the Wii U a total of 12.8GB/s of peak memory bandwidth. (Corrected from earlier, I decoded the Hynix part numbers incorrectly). Our own Ryan Smith found a great reference for the original Wii so we can compare memory frequencies. It looks like the original Wii had a 32-bit wide GDDR3 memory interface running at a max datarate of 1.4GHz for a total of 5.6GB/s of bandwidth (excluding eDRAM). That doesn't sound like a lot (it's the same amount of memory bandwidth on the Nexus 10 and iPad 3/4), but the Wii U is supposed to have a good amount of eDRAM for both the CPU and GPU to use. Also keep in mind that the Nexus 10 and iPad 3/4 have to drive much higher resolutions than the Wii U does. The Wii U's MCM is unfortunately covered by a heatspreader, but given that I went through all of this to look at the console's silicon, I was going to look at the console's silicon. Normally to remove an integrated heat spreader (IHS) you grab a sharp blade and go around cutting the (hopefully) glue around the perimeter of the chip. In the case of the Wii U's MCM, the blades I'd normally use were too thick. A few years ago I decided to give shaving with a double edge safety razor a try. My attempts failed poorly, but I had a stack of unused DE razor blades that were thin enough to get the IHS off. The trick here is to apply enough pressure to the blade to cut through the glue, as simply trying to saw through the glue will take forever. There are two blobs of glue per side, but if you're trying to remove the IHS be careful not to cut through the glue and scrape any of the actual exposed silicon...like I did. With the IHS off, we have the Wii U's MCM in all of its glory: There are actually three components on this single package, made in at least two different microprocessor fabs. The multicore PowerPC based CPU is the smaller of the two larger chips. This die is made on IBM's 45nm SOI process. The RV7xx derived GPU is the biggest die on the package, and I'm presuming it was made on a 40nm process. I'm assuming the very tiny die in the corner is actually some off-chip memory. Both the CPU and GPU in the Wii U are supposed to have some eDRAM, although the bulk of it is likely dedicated for the GPU. Clockwise from the top: CPU, GPU, off-chip memory? The approximate die sizes for all components on the MCM are in the table below: Wii U Silicon Analysis Dimensions Approximate Die Size CPU 5.2mm x 6.3mm 32.76mm2 GPU 12.3mm x 12.7mm 156.21mm2 3rd die (memory?) 1.79mm x 1.48mm 2.65mm2 If we assume a 40nm process for the GPU, then we're looking at something a bit larger than the RV740. The Wii U does boast backwards compatibility with games made for the original Wii, which is made possible thanks to a shared ISA with the original PowerPC based Wii. The size comparison between CPU and GPU die shouldn't be too much of a surprise. When building a dedicated gaming machine it always makes sense to throw more transistors at your GPU. The nearly 5x ratio of GPU to CPU die size here is a bit on the extreme side though. I suspect many of the current generation consoles, including the Wii U, suffered from a lack of a powerful yet affordable CPU solution that could be easily implemented. I also took some power measurements on the Wii U. The system is powered by a 75W external power supply, but total system power consumption doesn't even hit half of that (at least with the games I tried): Wii U Power Consumption System Power Consumption in Watts Standby (Power Off) 0.22W Wii U Menu (No Disc in Drive) 31.2W Wii U Menu (Disc in Drive) 32.8W Super Mario U 33.0W Netflix Playback 28.5W Rendering the Wii U menu actually consumes almost as much power as playing Super Mario U. Watching a movie on Netflix consumes a bit less power, my guess is a lot of the 3D blocks are power gated leaving only the CPU cores and video decode hardware active. The Wii U ships with its own web browser based on webkit, the user agent string for the latest version of the Wii U's software is: Mozilla/5.0 (Nintendo WiiU) AppleWebKit/534.52 (KHTML, like Gecko) NX/2.1.0.8.21 NintendoBrowser/1.0.0.7494.US. Pages load quickly and compatibility is surprisingly decent (HTML5 test: 258 + 4 bonus points). By default you control and view the browser on the GamePad, but you can also choose to display the content on your TV via the console. Scrolling is very smooth and the overall experience is way better than what you'd normally expect from a web browser on what's primarily a game console. It's not quite as good as using a modern tablet, but still usable. And where there is a browser, we will run SunSpider on it: The browser is using an older version of WebKit, which is likely responsible for some of the not absolutely stellar performance here.
Jack Luden (February 8, 1902 – February 15, 1951) was an American film actor. Early life [ edit ] Luden grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. His uncle was confectioner William H. Luden, who developed the menthol cough drop.[1] His passion as a young man had been athletics. While studying at the New York Military Academy, he had participated in trials for the 1920 Summer Olympics. During the trials, he broke his leg, preventing him from pursuing an athletic career.[2] Film career [ edit ] In 1925, Luden joined the Paramount Pictures School, a newly established acting school founded by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. There were 17 other members of the school when it opened, including Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Thelma Todd.[1] The work of the school's students was highlighted in the 1926 film Fascinating Youth. In October 1926, the number of students at the school was reduced to six; Luden was one of the actors who remained.[2] After his time at the school, Luden had an initially successful career. After appearing in a number of FBO Pictures Corporation short films, he played major roles in a series of silent feature films produced by Paramount Pictures. This included appearing as the lead actor in the 1927 Western Shootin' Irons.[2] Within a year, his career began to decline, and he was relegated to smaller supporting roles. His speech impediment made him a less desirable choice when Paramount increasingly produced sound films. His roles included Young Eagles (1930).[2] In the late 1930s, Luden appeared in a series of low-budget Westerns produced by Columbia Pictures. These were commercially unsuccessful, and Luden's acting career ended.[2] Later life [ edit ] In 1950, he was convicted for issuing checks with insufficient funds and for possessing heroin, and imprisoned in San Quentin State Prison, California. He died there the following year, at the age of 49.[2][3] Partial filmography [ edit ] References [ edit ]
Last night, after I got home from a concert, I saw that I got my Arbitrary Day PLUS package - so even though it was nearly 2am, I had to see what I received! I mentioned to my Santa that I loved music and I loved to craft, so imagine my delight when I saw that I was the recipient of a DIY Ukulele Kit! While opening the wonderfully wrapped package and examining the contents, I noted that the fingerboard of the ukulele kit got damaged. At this point I would like to commend my Santa for not only picking the perfect arbitrary gift for me, but also for ordering from a company with excellent customer service. I just got off the phone with Bonnie from the Spoon Sisters and not only was I delighted that I was able to speak to a person about the gift but that she was willing to work with me to getting a new fingerboard for me. Never mind the fact that it was the weekend, Ms. Bonnie emailed me to make sure I got my email address so that I could email her the photo she can sent to the manufacturer first thing Monday. So thank you Santa Rekm Robot - not only for your thoughtfulness and generosity for the arbitrary gift, but also for ordering from a company that I never heard of, with EXCELLENT customer service, that I plan to consider for Arbitrary Day 2013. :D
Bob Herbert: Doubling troops in Afghanistan a 'terrible idea' David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Wednesday January 14, 2009 Print This Email This With Barack Obama signaling his intention to keep much of Bush's war team in place, observers like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow are starting to wonder whether anything is really likely to change. In Afghanistan, Obama is planning to nearly double the number of US ground troops but, says, Maddow, "It is unclear exactly why he is doing that -- and what his long-term intentions are." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert also believes that widening the war in Afghanistan as the US hovers on the brink of depression is a terrible idea. Herbert wrote last week, "What Mr. Obama doesnt need, and what the U.S. cannot under any circumstances afford, is any more unnecessary warfare. And yet, while we havent even figured out how to extricate ourselves from the disaster in Iraq, Mr. Obama is planning to commit thousands of additional American troops to the war in Afghanistan, which is already more than seven years old and which long ago turned into a quagmire." "Get out of it as quickly as you can," Herbert told Maddow on Tuesday when asked how you deal with a quagmire. "I think this is a terrible idea, doubling the troops in Afghanistan," Herbert went on. "It reminds me very much of Jack Kennedy coming into office in 1961 and we had advisers in Vietnam. We should have learned the lesson of the French in Indo-China -- we didn't. We should have learned the lesson, in this case, of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- we apparently haven't." "How are we going to pay for this escalation?" Herbert asked. "Who's going to fight this war? The troops who are going to be going into Afghanistan in many cases have already served two, three, four, or more tours in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq." Herbert acknowledged that the US still has an interest in preventing terrorists from establishing a safe haven in Afghanistan, but he insisted, "We need to expand our intelligence efforts and we need to focus on not allowing terrorists to develop plans to attack the United States -- not on nation-building." "At some point, we have to get over this idea of these foreign military adventures," Herbert concluded. "We have to wind it down in Iraq. ... We need to wind it down in Afghanistan. ... We've got to bring it down and then have a discussion on how to go forward -- not ratchet it up and then decide what we're going to do." This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Jan. 13, 2009. Download video via RawReplay.com
Mansfield Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith, the youngest in the family of five sons and eight daughters of Colonel John Thomas Smith of the Royal Engineers, and his wife, Maria Sarah Tyser, was born on 1st April 1859. He came from a moderately prosperous landed and professional family. After attending Dartmouth Royal Naval College, he served as sub-lieutenant in HMS Bellerophon. Smith saw action in the East Indies and was decorated for his role in the Egyptian campaign of 1882. Smith suffered from poor health and in 1885 was placed on the retired list as "unfit for service". He married the extremely rich May Cumming and as part of the marriage settlement changed his name to Smith-Cumming. In 1898, while still on the Royal Navy retired list, he was recruited by the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau. This organization had responsibility for supplying intelligence to the Admiralty and to the War Office. In 1907 Major Vernon Kell become Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau with responsibility of investigating espionage, sabotage and subversion within and without Britain. In 1909, a new section, headed by Cumming became responsible for for secret operations outside Britain. This organisation eventually became known as MI6. Keith Jeffery, the author of MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (2010), argues: "Cumming was an inspired choice. Not only did he grasp the essentials of secret service work from the very beginning, but he proved to be sufficiently robust and independent-minded to ensure the continued autonomy of the fledgling service." Vernon Kell was appointed as head of MI5, investigating espionage, sabotage and subversion in Britain. Cumming feared that Kell would eventually become head of a unified intelligence unit. On 1st November 1909 he wrote: "I am firmly convinced that Kell will oust me altogether before long. He will have quantities of work to show, while I shall have nothing. It will transpire that I am not a linguist, and he will then be given the whole job with a subordinate, while I am retired - more or less discredited." The historian, Christopher Andrew, has pointed out: "Between 1909 and 1914 he recruited part-time casual agents in the shipping and arms business to keep track of naval construction in German shipyards and acquire other technical intelligence. He also had agents collecting German intelligence in Brussels, Rotterdam, and St Petersburg." Cumming worked long hours. He wrote in his diary in August 1910 that he worked from "9.30 am to 11.30 pm, with 2 hours off, say 12 hours (a day), but I get very short Saturday afternoon and no Sunday. It is bound to continue for a year or two, but after that should settle down." Initially, Cumming's main task was to collect evidence of German planning for a war against Britain. Without the resources to employ full-time agents, Cumming was unable to find any evidence of such a plan. His most important agent was Sidney Reilly based in St Petersburg. Mansfield Smith-Cumming In the summer of 1914 Smith-Cumming and his only son, Alastair, were on a driving holiday in Europe. They were driving at high speed through woodland in Northern France when Alistair lost control of the wheel. The car spun into a roadside tree and flipped upside down. Alistair was flung from the vehicle and landed on his head whereas Smith-Cumming was trapped by his leg. Compton Mackenzie later explained: "The boy was fatally injured and his father, hearing him moan something about the cold, tried to extricate himself from the wreck of the car in order to put a coat over him; but struggle as he might, he could not free his smashed leg." Smith-Cumming then used his pocket knife to hack away at his mangled limb "until he had cut it off, after which he had crawled over to the son and spread a coat over him." Nine hours later, Smith-Cumming was found lying unconscious next to his son's dead body. Keith Jeffery points out "he was back to work at his office in London within about six weeks testifies to very considerable powers of resilience and fortitude." Edward Knoblock, who worked for Smith-Cumming, recalls that after he acquired a prosthetic limb made of wood, he used it to theatrical effect during interviews with potential agents. "He would terrify potential recruits by reaching for his sharp letter knife and raising it high in the air. He would then slam it through his trousers and into his wooden leg." According to Knoblock, if the candidate winced, Smith-Cumming told him, "well, I am afraid you won't do." Working closely with Vernon Kell of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson of the Special Branch, Smith-Cumming helped to arrange on the outbreak of the First World War the arrest of 22 German agents. Eleven men were executed, as was Sir Roger Casement, who was also found guilty of treason. The government was so pleased with the work of Cumming that on 17th November 1915, he was given the title "Chief of the Secret Service" and was given "sole control" of "all espionage and counter-espionage agents abroad" and of "all matters connected with the expenditure of Secret Service funds". Smith-Cumming employed a highly skilled team of cipher men in London who were constantly changing the codes in order to minimise the chance of them being decrypted. George Alexander Hill explained in Go Spy the Land (1933) that he used one of these codes while an agent in Russia: "It had been invented by a genius at the Secret Service headquarters in London and of the many I have seen it was the easiest and safest for a secret service man to carry." Hill said that Smith-Cumming had an extensive range of gadgets available to his agents: "Secret inks, tiny cameras the size of half a crown and not much thicker, photographs reduced so that their films can be concealed in a cigarette." Edward Knoblock wrote in Round the Room: An Autobiography (1939): "He (Smith-Cumming) had a passion for inventions of all sorts and being a rich man, he often bought the rights to them, such as strange telescopes, mysterious mechanism with which to signal in the dark.... rockets, bombs etc." Smith-Cumming had a particular fascination for invisible inks. He hired the services of the distinguished physicist, Thomas R. Merton, who conducted ink experiments with many different chemical solutions. These included potassium permanganate, antipyrine and sodium nitrate. Spies were also advised to make invisible ink from semen. However, this was eventually abandoned because of complaints about the smell from those receiving the letters. In 1916 Samuel Hoare was assigned to the British intelligence mission with the Russian general staff. Soon afterwards he was given the rank of lieutenant-colonel and Mansfield Smith-Cumming appointed him as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Petrograd. Other members of the unit included Oswald Rayner, Cudbert Thornhill, John Scale and Stephen Alley. During the war Smith-Cumming's unit became known as MI6. Agents who worked for the unit during the war included John Buchan, Valentine Williams, Edward Knoblock, Paul Dukes, Compton Mackenzie, George Alexander Hill and Somerset Maugham. Knoblock later commented: "He (Cumming) did us all almost endless kindnesses, as not only the men but the girls who worked for him will remember to this day." Williams was also complimentary, claiming he "had nerves of steel... In the darkest moments, it was a tonic to his staff to see him at his desk, calm, affable, humorous, unafraid". When the Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 13th March, a Provisional Government, headed by Prince George Lvov, was formed. Alexander Kerensky was appointed as Minister of Justice in the new government and immediately introduced a series of reforms including the abolition of capital punishment. He also announced basic civil liberties such as freedom of the press, the abolition of ethnic and religious discrimination and made plans for the introduction of universal suffrage. This made Kerensky very popular and Smith-Cumming decided that MI6 should do what it could to ensure he gained power. On 5th May, Pavel Milyukov and Alexander Guchkov, the two most conservative members of the Provisional Government, were forced to resign. Guchkov was now replaced as Minister of War by Kerensky. He toured the Eastern Front where he made a series of emotional speeches where he appealed to the troops to continue fighting. Kerensky argued that: "There is no Russian front. There is only one united Allied front." Kerensky now appointed General Alexei Brusilov as the Commander in Chief of the Russian Army. On 18th June, Kerensky announced a new war offensive. The Provisional Government made no real attempt to seek an armistice with the Central Powers. Lvov's unwillingness to withdraw Russia from the First World War made him unpopular with the people and on 8th July, 1917, he resigned and was replaced by Kerensky. Ariadna Tyrkova, a member of the Constitutional Democrat Party, commented: "Kerensky was perhaps the only member of the Government who knew how to deal with the masses, since he instinctively understood the psychology of the mob. Therein lay his power and the main source of his popularity in the streets, in the Soviet, and in the Government." The British ambassador, George Buchanan welcomed the appointment and reported back to London: "From the very first Kerensky had been the central figure of the revolutionary drama and had, alone among his colleagues, acquired a sensible hold on the masses. An ardent patriot, he desired to see Russia carry on the war till a democratic peace had been won; while he wanted to combat the forces of disorder so that his country should not fall a prey to anarchy. In the early stages of the revolution he displayed an energy and courage which marked him out as the one man capable of securing the attainment of these ends." Smith-Cumming contacted William Wiseman, MI6's man in New York City. He supplied Wiseman with $75,000 (approximately $1.2 million in modern prices) for Kerensky's Provisional Government. A similar sum was received from the Americans. Wiseman now approached Somerset Maugham (to whom he was related by marriage) in June 1917, to go to Russia. Maugham was "staggered" by the proposition: "The long and short of it was that I should go to Russia and keep the Russians in the war." Maugham, who could speak Russian, was asked by Wiseman to "guide the storm". Maugham told Wiseman: "I was staggered by the proposition. I told Wiseman that I did not think I was competent to do that sort of thing that was expected of me." He asked for forty-eight hours to think it over. He was in the early stages of tuberculosis, had a high fever and was coughing up blood. Maugham later wrote: "An X-ray photograph showed clearly that I had tuberculosis of the lungs. But I could not miss the opportunity of spending certainly a considerable time in the country of Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, and Chekov; I had a notion that in the intervals of the work I was being sent to do I could get something for myself that would be of value; so I set my foot hard on the loud pedal of patriotism and persuaded the physician I consulted that under the tragic circumstances of the moment I was taking no undue risk." Maugham was supplied with $21,000 (worth approximately $350,000 today) for expenses and travelling from the west coast of the United States, through Japan and Vladivostok, Maugham reached Petrograd in early September 1917. With him went a group of four Czechoslovak refugees headed by Emanuel Voska, Director of the Slav Press Bureau in New York City. Maugham described Voska as the perfect spy: "Ruthless, wise, prudent and absolutely indifferent to the means by which he reached his ends... There was something terrifying about him... he was capable of killing a fellow creature without a trace of ill-feeling." Voska made contact with Tomáš Masaryk in the hope of mobilizing Czech and Slovak elements in Russia to work for the Allied cause. Maugham was impressed by his "good sense and determination" and helped set up a press bureau to disseminate anti-German propaganda. While in Petrograd Maugham met a former mistress, Sasha Kropotkin, the daughter of Peter Kropotkin, who had a good relationship with Alexander Kerensky and the Provisional Government. Maugham entertained Kerensky or his ministers once a week at the Medvied, the best restaurant in Petrograd, paying for the finest vodka and caviar from the funds supplied by Wiseman. Maugham later recalled "I think Kerensky must have supposed that I was more important than I really was for he came to Sasha's apartment on several occasions and, walking up and down the room, harangued me as though I were at a public meeting for two hours at a time". Somerset Maugham worked closely with Major Stephen Alley, the MI1(c) station chief in Petrograd. On 16th October Maugham telegraphed Wiseman recommending a programme of propaganda and covert action. He said that Voska and Masaryk could both conduct "legitimate propaganda" and act as a cover for "other activities" in support of the Mensheviks and against the Bolsheviks. He also proposed setting up a "special secret organisations" recruited from Poles, Czechs and Cossacks with the main aim of "unmasking... German plots and propaganda in Russia". On 31st October 1917 Maugham was summoned by Kerensky and asked to take an urgent secret message to David Lloyd George appealing for guns and amununition. Without that help, said Kerensky, "I don't see how we can go on. Of course, I don't say that to the people. I always say that to the people. I always say that we shall continue whatever happens, but unless I have something to tell my army it's impossible". Maugham left the same evening for Oslo to board a British destroyer which, after a stormy passage across the North Sea, landed him in the north of Scotland. Next morning he saw Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street. After the agent told the Prime Minister what Kerensky wanted, he replied: "I can't do that. I'm afraid I must bring this conversation to an end. I have a cabinet meeting I must go to." On 7th November, 1917, Kerensky was overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution. Maugham later recalled: "Perhaps if I had been sent to Russia six months sooner... I might have been able to do something." The author of MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (2010) has argued: "A large part of Cumming's success stemmed from his cheerful and equable personality. Whatever professional disagreements he may have had with fellow officers, he always seems to have been able to maintain good relationships on a personal level." Another agent, Paul Dukes, later recalled "woe betide the unfortunate individual who ever incurred his ire... but the stern countenance could melt into the kindliest of smiles, and the softened eyes and lips revealed a heart that was big and generous". In July 1919 Cumming was awarded a KCMG, in the prestigious Order of St Michael and St George, normally reserved for ambassadors and colonial governors. This was a clear public recognition of the high esteem in which he was held and the service he provided during the First World War. Despite this acceptance of the important work of MI6 during the war, the government cut back on expenditure on the Secret Service and as a result Cumming lost stations in Madrid, Lisbon, Zurich and Luxembourg. Christopher Andrew has pointed out: "Like the rest of the British intelligence community, the post-war SIS was drastically cut back. Cumming succeeded, however, in gaining a monopoly of espionage and counter-intelligence outside Britain and the empire. He also established a network of SIS station commanders operating overseas under diplomatic cover. To the end of his life Cumming retained an infectious, if sometimes eccentric, enthusiasm for the tradecraft and mystification of espionage, experimenting personally with disguises, mechanical gadgets, and secret inks in his own laboratory." In 1919 the War Office suggested that MI6 should amalgamate with MI5. Cumming argued strongly against this proposal. As Keith Jeffery has argued: "He saw clearly... the absolute necessity of keeping domestic and foreign intelligence work separate. Anticipating the possibility of a Labour government, and managing to do so in an admirably unhysterical way, Cumming asserted that combining his organisation with M15 and getting involved in secret service against domestic political targets could jeopardise the effectiveness of foreign intelligence work by prompting public and parliamentary attacks on the intelligence machine as a whole.... Or he may simply have appreciated that the active espousal of anti-left-wing politics could damage the work of his beloved Bureau. Whatever the reason, his decision to distance the Bureau from domestic security and intelligence work was absolutely sound." Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming died suddenly at his home in Kensington on 14th June 1923, shortly before he was due to retire.
Pakistan PM visits teen shot by Taliban gunmen Pakistan's Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, center, flanked by leaders of allied parties in government, talks to reporters at a military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where he visited a 14-year-old girl who was shot by Taliban gunmen. (Photo11: B.K. Bangash, AP) Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf today visited the bedside of a 14-year-old girl who was shot by Taliban gunmen for her outspoken work on behalf of girls' education. He was accompanied to a military hospital in Rawalpindi by leaders of allied parties in a show of support for Malala Yousafzai, who was shot Tuesday along with two classmates outside her school in Mingora in the volatile Swat Valley region. "It was not a crime against an individual, but a crime against humanity and an attack on our national and social values," he says, The Guardian reports. Malala, who was shot in the head, is being kept unconscious and on a ventilator. Meanwhile, a group of 50 Islamic clerics issued a "fatwa" against the Taliban gunmen,The Guardian reports. The sharp move by the clerics comes as police in Mingora say they have arrested two suspects in the shooting of Malala and two classmates and are looking for a third who is being called the mastermind of the attack, NBC News reports. Update at 1:38 p.m. ET: The "fatwa" was issued by Islamic scholars from the Sunni Ittehad Council and represents the sharpest backlash yet to attempts by the Taliban to justify its attack. A "fatwa" is a ruling grounded in Islamic law that is issued by an Islamic scholar, but is non-binding for Sunnis. Contrary to popular belief, a "fatwa" is not a death sentence, although it can be. However, it is important in that it represents a finding from a religious perspective and can influence debate on a controversial subject. A Taliban spokesman has said in a statement that the militant group was obligated to kill anyone "leading a campaign" against Islamic law. It vowed to try again to kill Malala if she survives. Hamid Saeed Kazmi, a former religious affairs minister, countered the Taliban position by saying that Islam "holds the killing of one innocent person as killing the entirety of humanity," The Guardian reports. NBC News quotes police in the volatile Swat Valley area as saying they have arrested two suspects, ages 17 and 22. The pair claim that a man named "Attaulah" is the mastermind of the attack and remains at large. Update at 11:08 a.m. ET: The Associated Press also reports the arrest of suspects, quoting Mingora police chief Afzal Khan Afridi. But the AP says the police would not provide any details on the number of people detained or what role they allegedly played. In another development, Taliban spokesman Sirajuddin Ahmad says Malala and her family had been warned three times -- as recently as last week -- before the militants took a decision to try to execute the 14-year-old, the AP reports. Ahmad says local Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah and his deputies selected three attackers, including two trained snipers, who carefully studied the girl's route home from school. Original post: The BBC reports that local officials have offered a $105,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers. Malala was shot by Taliban gunmen angry over her outspoken support for the rights of women and girls, particularly regarding education. Two other girls were injured in the shooting. Malala, who has been transferred to the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology in Rawalpindi, is being kept unconscious and on a ventilator, says Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the Associated Press reports. "Her blood pressure is normal. Heartbeat is normal, and thanks to God, her condition is satisfactory," Bajwa says. He says a bullet entered her head and went into her neck toward her spine, but it was too soon to say whether she had any significant head injury. READ: Excerpt from Malala's blog on the Taliban Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan's foreign minister, says Malala's shooting -- and the Taliban's justification for it -- has been "rejected by all Pakistanis," CNN reports. At age 11, Malala drew international attention for writing a blog for the BBC Urdu service in which she described life under the Taliban, which took over Mingora and ordered girls' schools closed in 2007. Her articles also led to her nomination for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011. Meanwhile, her school, which is owned and operated by her father, reopened today under heavy police presence, the AP reports, but many students stayed away. Zafar Ali Kahn, one of the teachers, says the staff decided to open the school "to overcome the fear among our students that gripped them due to the attack." Khan says they did not resume regular teaching, rather they chose to hold an assembly to pray for Malala and two other girls injured in the attack. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/UV2vOK
A 26-year-old Marine Corps Vet has a plan to liberate Trump’s tax returns. Let’s help him succeed! Reid Hoffman Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 12, 2016 In 2012, Donald Trump called President Obama “the least transparent president in the history of this country.” Then he offered to donate $5 million to charity if President Obama would release “his college records and applications” and his “passport applications and records.” Now, in 2016, Trump is facing a similar challenge from a 26-year-old Marine Corps veteran named Pete Kiernan. On Crowdpac.com, Kiernan hopes to raise at least $25,000. Then, if Trump releases his tax returns by October 19 (the final debate), Kiernan will donate the money he has raised to non-profit organizations that assist veterans, including Team Rubicon, the Special Ops Warrior Foundation, and the Yellow Ribbon Fund. For a complete list, visit the campaign’s main page. (Disclosure: In April 2016, I made a personal, impact-driven investment in Crowdpac.com’s Series A financing round.) Given Trump’s vocal support of veterans, I imagine he will recognize the great good that can come from Kiernan’s proposal. But taking Trump’s own 2012 offer to President Obama into account, I’d like to assist Kiernan in his campaign. If Kiernan’s campaign hits or exceeds its target, I will match the total amount he reaches with a 5x contribution, up to $5 million. In other words, if Kiernan raises $200,000 on Crowdpac.com, I’ll contribute $1 million to the campaign. If he raises $1 million, I’ll contribute $5 million. When Kiernan deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 as a Marine Corp Raider, he put his life on the line in the service of his country and his fellow citizens. He knows first-hand that a life of service comes with risk and sacrifice. He has the moral authority to challenge Trump to demonstrate his own commitment to the core American values of transparency and accountability. As Kiernan writes on his Crowdpac.com campaign page, “All military recruits make required disclosures before we are declared fit to serve. As a man who claims to be a big supporter of veterans like me, I’m hoping this message will encourage Mr. Trump to meet our standard and show us what kind of leader he would be by finally making his tax returns public.” In adding an explicitly financial incentive to his challenge, Kiernan sheds light on a glaring but under-acknowledged truth: For quite some time now, Trump has been treating his tax returns as an asset to leverage, on his own timetable, for his own gain. Trump often says he needs to keep his tax returns private until the IRS finishes auditing him. But the IRS itself has said this isn’t necessary. And recently Trump changed his tune, saying he’ll release his returns as soon as Hillary Clinton releases the 33,000 emails she deleted from her email server. What this means, of course, is that there’s no real reason that Trump is keeping his returns secret, except that he sees them as a bargaining chip to utilize. This isn’t a new position! In 2011, Trump told ABC News that if he ran for president in 2012 he would likely only release his tax returns if President Obama released his birth certificate. In 2012, Trump exclaimed that Mitt Romney should do a “swap” with President Obama — with the former disclosing his tax returns only if the latter shared his “college records” and “passport applications.” In a functioning democracy, the public shouldn’t be forced to bargain with a major presidential candidate to obtain access to his tax returns. And for the last 40 years, it hasn’t had to. With the exception of Gerald Ford, every major candidate has shared this information with voters. Recognizing that they have an obligation to the citizens they hope to serve, they engage in this simple act of transparency and accountability, in the hope that it will help voters make more informed choices on Election Day. Hillary Clinton released eight years of tax returns in 2015. Last month, she released her 2015 returns. And Trump? While he dubbed President Obama the least transparent president in history, he himself seems determined to earn the consolation prize of “least transparent presidential candidate.” The great irony, of course, is that the obligation toward transparency should be especially high for Donald Trump. After all, he’s promising to reform a “rigged system” where insiders trade influence for their own personal gain. To credibly combat this system, Trump should be leading by example and setting the highest possible standard for transparency and accountability. Trump’s business interests are also more complex and far-reaching than any other presidential nominee in history. They’re global, they span many different industries, and according to the McClatchy news service, they “cross or have crossed paths with at least 16 federal agencies.” Because of how often Donald Trump’s decisions as president could potentially impact his business interests, it has in fact never been more necessary for a candidate to release tax returns than it is for him. While Trump often talks about all he is going to do for the American people on Day 1 of his presidency, engaging in this simple act of accountability and transparency is something he could do right now — today — to demonstrate his commitment to the public interest. Instead, we get all talk and no action. “I would release tax returns,” Trump promised in February 2015, months before he declared his candidacy. “So, the answer is, I’ll release. Hopefully before the election I’ll release. And I’d like to release,” he claimed in May 2016. “I don’t think anyone cares [about my tax returns],” he said earlier this month. It’s like his record of service in the Vietnam War all over again: Deferral. Deferral. Deferral. But as Trump skirts his obligation to the American people, we must show him that we do value accountability and transparency. One way to do this is to support Kiernan’s campaign. The ingenuity of Kiernan’s proposal is how it gives Trump a strong incentive to act but doesn’t reward him directly for something he should have already done. Instead, men and women to whom all Americans owe a great debt of gratitude will benefit from any positive action he takes. As part of LinkedIn for Good, my colleagues and I work to assist veterans transitioning to new phases in their careers. Since 2014, we’ve helped more than 95,000 service members and veterans with free access to LinkedIn’s Jobseeker Premium service and more recently, free training on Lynda.com. We also engage in significant outreach to employers, recruiters, and hiring managers, educating them on the skills and attributes that make veterans so valuable as private-sector professionals after their military careers end. It’s some of the most rewarding work we do. But there’s always more that all of us can do to support our veterans, who set the standard for selfless service and help maintain the security and stability that democracy needs to thrive. That’s why I believe veterans’ organizations are the ideal beneficiaries of Pete Kiernan’s challenge to Donald Trump, and why I’m supporting this campaign. In the end, it’s a rare opportunity where all American citizens, including Donald Trump, can work together to achieve great public good on two dimensions at once. By releasing his tax returns by the third and final debate (October 19), Trump can help voters make more informed decisions on Election Day and support many worthy veterans’ organizations at the same time. For Trump, the reasons to release his tax returns have always been compelling. Doing so would show the American people he doesn’t just talk about accountability and transparency, but also walks the walk. It would show the American people that he understands that committing to serve them comes with special obligations and responsibilities that don’t exist for private citizens. But Pete Kiernan’s campaign gives Trump even more incentive to finally take action on this matter. So I ask you to support this campaign and spread the word to others. The American people deserve to know what’s on Trump’s tax returns. And Trump must show that he truly embraces accountability and transparency, and understands what it means to work on behalf of the public interest. — — UPDATE: This article has been updated to note my status as a Crowdpac.com investor.
Some Louisiana residents have recently been attending firearms training sessions so they can carry concealed weapons into churches, in accordance with a law passed over last summer. Back in July, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a law that allows churches, mosques, and synagogues in Louisiana to establish a “security plan” for their constituents, permitting members of the congregation with concealed weapons permits to carry guns during services. Part of the law requires eight hours of tactical training with local law enforcement before someone can begin carrying inside a house of worship. And now, it seems, members of Bossier Parish churches have begun to take up the state on its offer, purportedly so they can protect their fellow churchgoers in the event of some kind of an attack.Last weekend, 20 people attended the first of multiple Church Security Training Sessions at the Bossier Sheriff’s gun range, Adam Duvernay of the Shreveport Times reports. There were several hours of classroom training before the group hit the gun range: The class included lessons on physiological changes during violent encounters, lessons on control tactics like pressure points and take-downs and the justifications for a physical response to dangerous situations. On the range, they practiced controlled shooting, reload drills, drawing techniques and speed drills. As Zachary Roth reported, Bossier Parish is home to Sheriff Larry Deen, who last year launched “Operation Exodus” — an effort to arm volunteers with “shotguns, riot shields, batons, and a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a ‘war wagon.'” Deen explained at the time that “recent terror threats” have shown that there are “homegrown terrorists are in our midst.” “Over the past several years, the violence has gotten worse and worse” said Jim Middleton, one current trainee. “I’d rather be proactive than working after the fact. We’re all in God’s army, and you don’t see any army going to war unarmed.” Louisiana State Rep. Henry Burns (R), who wrote the original legislation, visited the class, and told the trainees that “each and every one of you here are patriots because you care to provide protection to the innocent. We should be able to worship our Lord without fear.” Burns told TPM last May, after the legislation passed the state House, that the law was for “those unique situations where maybe a church can’t afford law enforcement,” but churchgoers want to protect themselves. A church is “really no safe haven,” he said.
With the news that Sesame Street is moving from publicly funded PBS to HBO, some social media users wonder whether Mitt Romney has been vindicated. During the 2012 presidential campaign, GOP nominee Romney suggested that the very successful Sesame Street franchise could thrive in the media industry marketplace without relying on the taxpayer’s dime to stay on the air. He was widely ridiculed and criticized in particular for insisting that Sesame Street character Big Bird “is going to be just fine” even if public broadcasting itself received a far smaller share of federal government appropriation pie. The businessman and former Massachusetts governor was alluding to that cable networks like Discovery, Animal Planet, NatGeo, and many other outlets (plus subscription channels like HBO) have managed to survive and become successful in the private sector without a direct subsidy from Uncle Sam. Sesame Street has been the go-to program for teaching children the alphabet, numbers, and commonly accepted morality for 45 years. From 2003 to 2006 alone, Sesame Street reportedly banked more than $200 million in merchandise sales alone. PBS and NPR (National Public Radio) receive about $400 million in government funding every year. It turns out that Sesame Street will air for the next five years on HBO in an expanded format, with new episodes to appear on PBS stations after a nine-month period of HBO exclusivity, the New York Times reported. Edited reruns will appear on PBS this fall during the transition. “Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit group behind the children’s television program, has struck a deal with HBO, the premium cable network, that will bring the next five seasons of Sesame Street to HBO and its streaming outlets starting this fall. The partnership will allow Sesame Workshop to significantly increase its production of Sesame Street episodes and other new programming. The group will produce 35 new Sesame Street episodes a year, up from the 18 it produces now. Sesame Workshop also will create a spinoff series based on the Sesame Street Muppets and another new educational series for children.” Reacting to the Sesame Street switch to cable, Jonathan S. Tobin of Commentary asserted that “Mitt Romney was dogged by liberal demonstrators during his 2012 campaign by people in Big Bird costumes because of his belief that PBS no longer deserved funding…The notion that Sesame Street needed government handouts was always ridiculous since it was, on it’s own, profitable enough to support itself or, as has happened, be lured to a new spot where it could better flourish.” null null null null Mitt Romney also may have been prophetic when he declared, again to much disdain including from Barak Obama in the October 2012 presidential debate, that Russia is America’s primary geo-political foe. Considering the mischief that Russian President Vladimir Putin has orchestrated in Ukraine and elsewhere across the globe, and the failed “reset button” in U.S.-Russian relations, Mitt Romney’s prognostication may have been correct. At the time, he also described Iran as the greatest national security threat. In a briefing yesterday, General Ray Ordierno, the retiring U.S. Army chief of staff, warned about the military threat that Russia poses to the U.S. as well as the Baltic States, The Hill reported. “I believe Russia is the most dangerous. First, they are more mature than some of our other potential adversaries, and I think they have stated some intents that concern me, in terms of how the Cold War ended. And they have shown some significant ability in Ukraine to do operations that are fairly sophisticated, and so for me, I think we should pay a lot of attention to that.” Defense Department officials suspect Russia may be behind the recent hacking of a high-level military server, The Hill added. In testimony last month before the U.S. Senate, Marine Corps. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained that “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia. If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.” With regard to the Sesame Street/HBO deal, or Russia’s expansionist ambitions, do you think that Mitt Romney was a prophet? [Photo by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images Entertainment]
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump did three rallies on Sunday, October 30. He said 27 false things: Las Vegas, Nevada Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a rally in Albuquerque that he's tied with Hillary Clinton in New Mexico. In fact, Clinton leads by an average of nine points in New Mexico polls. ( CARLO ALLEGRI / REUTERS ) 1. Falsely said, “We’re winning many national polls.” (Repeated at both rallies later in the day. At the time he spoke in Las Vegas, Trump was only leading in the Los Angeles Times tracking poll that has been consistently most favourable to him. He was tied in one other poll, by Rasmussen, and trailing in all the others.) 2. Falsely said, “We’re ahead in many states, including your great state and North Carolina.” (The North Carolina claim was repeated at a rally later in the day. Trump is trailing in both Nevada and North Carolina.) 3. Falsely said of Clinton’s email deletion, “Did anybody ever hear of bleaching? You know why? It’s such an expensive process.” (Trump uses “bleaching” to refer to Clinton aides’ use of a software program called BleachBit, which is free.) Article Continued Below 4. Falsely said, “It was publicly reported that sources close to Hillary Clinton said, and she actually I think said it to the papers, that she was thinking of reappointing Attorney General Lynch. She was thinking. She said it. I mean, it was a statement she made . . . she said it publicly, I believe.” (The first part is true — a Times story in July said that “Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch” — but the second part is not. Clinton did not say this publicly; it was not a “statement she made.”) 5. Falsely said of Iran, “Their $150 billion payment started the next day.” (Said at another rally later in the day: “We can’t continue to make deals like that horrible Iran deal where we give them $150 billion back.” The nuclear deal with Iran did not involve a $150 billion payment; rather, a smaller amount of Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran would get about $55 billion.) 6. Falsely said of Frank Sinatra, “When he originally heard and sang for the first ‘My Way’ . . . he didn’t like it. But then he sang it a couple times and then it went to No. 1 and all of a sudden he loved it.” (Sinatra did not actually come to like the song. His daughter Tina said in 2000, “He always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent. He didn’t like it. That song stuck and he couldn’t get it off his shoe.”) 7. Falsely said, “We have a trade deficit with China (of) almost $500 billion a year.” (Even excluding services trade, the trade deficit with China was $367 billion last year. This year, it was $225 billion through August.) 8. Falsely said of the illegal immigrant who killed Nevada teenager Rene Angulo, “Everybody said we must get him out of our country. We must incarcerate him. This guy was brutal . . . He had a record as long as your arm, but the Obama administration didn’t want to put him out.” (There is no evidence that the Obama administration made any decision about this man. He had been deported twice in the past.) 9. Falsely said of illegal immigrants, “This crime wave will end.” (Repeated at another rally later in the day. There is no wave of crime by illegal immigrants. Trump merely cited two anecdotes.) 10. Falsely said, “We owe China $1.5 trillion.” (This is an exaggeration; it is closer to $1.1 trillion. “The biggest foreign holder of U.S. government debt had $1.19 trillion in bonds, notes and bills in August, down $33.7 billion from the prior month, the biggest drop since 2013,” Bloomberg reported in October.) Article Continued Below 11. Falsely said of Hillary Clinton’s handling of convicted illegal immigrants whose home countries would not accept their return: “She would always let them come back (to America). She didn’t want to make waves.” (These immigrants were not actually sent to their refusing home countries; they were simply released from prison in the U.S. This was not Clinton’s personal choice: a 2001 Supreme Court decision requires their eventual release if they can’t be deported.) 12. “Murder is — in 45 years, right now, the rates are the highest they’ve been . . . and they don’t want to talk about it.” (Repeated at another rally later in the day. The murder rate is among the lowest of the past 45 years. While it rose more than 10 per cent between 2014 and 2015 — the biggest spike in 45 years — it was still near historic lows at 4.9 per 100,000 people in 2015; 45 years prior, in 1970, it was 7.9 per 100,000 people.) Greeley, Colorado 13. Falsely said of Florida’s early voting, “They’ve never had lines before (the Trump campaign came along).” (Florida has indeed had long lines for early voting in past elections. One 2012 headline read, “Florida Early Voting Fiasco: Voters Wait For Hours At Polls As Rick Scott Refuses To Budge.”) 14. Falsely said Clinton wants “virtually unlimited immigration from the most dangerous regions in the world.” (Clinton is calling for no such thing.) 15. Falsely said, “She also wants to raise your taxes through the roof.” (This would only be a fair argument if he was speaking to an audience of rich people. Clinton is only raising taxes on the highest earners. The Tax Policy Center says most residents below the top 1 per cent will receive minor tax cuts under her plan, and even most of the highest earners will not see a doubling.) 16. Falsely said, “Hillary wants to raise your taxes to almost 50 per cent.” (Again, this is only close to true for rich people. Under Clinton’s plan, only people making more than $5 million a year would face a top marginal rate of, effectively, 44 per cent. People below the top 1 per cent will see only minor changes.) 17. Falsely said, “We take care, in many cases, of illegal immigrants more so than we take care of our great veterans.” (Every news outlet that has examined this claim has found it ridiculous.) 18. Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton said the veterans’ administration is doing just fine.” (This is an exaggeration. Clinton said the problems at the VA had “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be,” but she did not say it was “fine.” She went on in the same interview to acknowledge problems and suggest how to improve them.) 19. Falsely said under Clinton’s plan, “We could have 600 million people pour into our country.” (While anything “could” happen, there is no basis for this huge number, nearly double the current U.S. population.) Albuquerque, New Mexico 20. Falsely said, “We’re tied in New Mexico.” (Clinton leads by an average of nine points in New Mexico polls.) 21. “Hillary Clinton on the other hand is going to raise your taxes by almost 50 per cent.” (There is no basis for this claim.) 22. Falsely said, “Think of this: we’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (The U.S. does not even have the highest corporate taxes, though it is near the top. Where all taxes are concerned, the U.S. is below the average for OECD industrialized nations.) 23. Falsely said, “We’ve received the first-ever endorsement from ICE.” (ICE, a government agency called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, does not endorse candidates. Trump received an endorsement from a union of ICE employees, not the agency itself.) 24. “You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing . . . that’s what could happen. You could triple the size of our country in one week.” (While anything “could” happen, there is no basis for this huge number, nearly double the current U.S. population.) 25. Falsely said, “The Cubans gave me their most coveted award, and it was a great honour.” (Trump received an endorsement last week from the Cuban-American Bay of Pigs Veterans Association in Miami. It was not an award, nor from “the Cubans” or even the broader Cuban-American community more broadly.) 26. Falsely said of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, “It left a vacuum, and from that vacuum, ISIS formed.” (The complete troop withdrawal happened in 2011. The group has roots as far back as 1999, and it was already using the name Islamic State by 2006.) Twitter 27. Falsely said, “Wow, Twitter, Google and Facebook are burying the FBI criminal investigation of Clinton.” (There is no good evidence for this claim.)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Memphis announced Wednesday night that defensive back Reggis Ball has been removed from the team for his actions after he made two interceptions in Wednesday's Birmingham Bowl. Ball ran over to the Auburn Tigers sideline after the game and attempted to take two footballs before a member of the Auburn equipment staff came over to stop him. A Facebook video from an Auburn fan later surfaced showing Ball and an Auburn equipment staffer getting into a physical altercation in which Ball came away with a football and ran toward the locker room. "We're embarrassed about the actions that occurred after the game, and that is definitely not the standards or expectations the Memphis football program stands for," Memphis athletic director Tom Bowen said in a statement. "Even though Mr. Ball's football career has ended, he will no longer be a part of the Memphis program because of these actions." Ball is a redshirt senior. According to The Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Georgia), the Auburn equipment staff was warned that if Ball were to get an interception, he has a history of attempting to steal a ball from the opponent after the game. As for the game itself, Ball's two interceptions weren't enough. Auburn overpowered Memphis in the second half, winning 31-10.
U.S. Government Sanctioned Gold Price Manipulation The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency just released its Q3/08 Quarterly Derivatives Fact Sheet today. Here is one of the highlights: Take a look at J.P. Morgan's gold derivatives [futures] position, paying particular attention to how the < 1 yr. position changed from the end of Q2/08 to the end of Q3/08: source: Office of the Comptroller of The Currency pg. 30 source: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pg. 31 And here's what J.P. Morgan's 15 billion “addition” to their < 1 yr. gold derivatives book did to the price of gold as illustrated using GLD as a proxy for the POG: That such a blatantly egregious act can be committed by the chief agent of the Federal Reserve, with what appears to be the complicity of regulators is a heinous pox on humanity. Subscribers to Kirbyanalytics.com are profiting from paid in-depth research reports, analysis and commentary on rapidly unfolding economic developments. Subscribe here . By Rob Kirby http://www.kirbyanalytics.com/ Rob Kirby is the editor of the Kirby Analytics Bi-weekly Online Newsletter, which provides proprietry Macroeconomic Research. Subscribers to Kirbyanalytics.com are benefiting from paid in-depth research reports, analysis and commentary on rapidly unfolding economic developments as well as recommendations on courses of action to profit from chaos. Subscribe here . Copyright © 2008 Rob Kirby - All rights reserved. Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any trading losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors before engaging in any trading activities. Rob Kirby Archive © 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Comments Theramus 30 Dec 08, 21:08 Please explain what has happened here in lay terms Please explain what has happened here in lay terms ? Nadeem_Walayat 31 Dec 08, 01:34 Gold Manipulation The Fed is using JP as a proxy to keep the gold price down to prevent hyperinflationary concerns. I.e. the $15 billion surge in JP's gold derivatives position implies JP shorted gold futures to drive the price lower, it is a continuation of central bank actions of selling physical gold to supress the gold price, as it is a credible alternative currency to fiat currencies. Albert 01 Jan 09, 09:34 The fed is the market... I'm willing to bet if gold took off it would have been tough to push treasury yields down so the FED can sell long term bonds at insane rates (and a strong dollar, which they can then use to stimulate the economy/pay off debt. At this point they dollar will begin to fall, and people who bought the long bonds will sell them because they are going to realize that getting paid back 2% of devalued paper. Treasuries will sell off, gold/commodities will skyrocket.
The movie studio responsible for the award-winning, German-Austrian film Downfall (German: Der Untergang) has asked YouTube to take down several videos from the massively popular subtitled "Hitler finds out..." meme, and the site has complied. Search YouTube and you'll still find hundreds of Downfall parodies, but click through to some of the bigger ones and you'll now get the message, "This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." According to TechCrunch, the first Downfall parody to be taken down was the one about the iPhone 4G leak, but other popular parodies followed. At four million views, "Hitler Gets Banned from Xbox Live" was one of the most watched and thus among the casualties. The remaining videos might get taken down soon as well. Each parody video takes a scene from Downfall in which Hitler throws a tantrum when he learns that he cannot win the war. Fake subtitles are then applied to make it appear as if he's having a tantrum about something else. The topics have ranged from Michael Jackson's death to Hitler learning that he's the subject of an out-of-control YouTube video meme. Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel told New York Magazine that he laughs at the parodies. "You couldn't get a better compliment as a director," he said. Unfortunately, Constantin Film's legal team isn't as easygoing about it. For more web video coverage, follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook
Catholic World News Controversial Argentine archbishop drafted Amoris Laetitia, Vatican journalist writes May 25, 2016 An influential Italian journalist has identified an Argentine cleric as the principal author of Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation with which Pope Francis concluded the work of the Synod on the Family. Sandro Magister of L'Espresso writes that passages in the papal document bear a striking resemblance to essays written by Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the rector of the Pontifical Catholic University in Argentina. Magister notes in particular that the controversial Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, which treats the question of whether divorced-and-remarried Catholics should receive Communion, reflect the prior published thoughts of the Argentine archbishop. Archbishop Fernandez has long been recognized as an important ally of Pope Francis, and Vatican-watchers had agreed months ago that he would have a hand in drafting the papal document. He was also acknowledged in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, as an important influence on the papal encyclical Laudato Si'. In addition to showing the similarity between the writings of Archbishop Fernandez and the papal document, Magister also recounts a history of clashes between the Argentine archbishop and the Vatican, during the pontificate of Benedict XVI, on the question of "situation ethics." For all current news, visit our News home page.
Sony Mobile has finally confirmed that Android 6.0 Marshmallow update is coming to Xperia Z3 Compact devices. The good news prompted reports that the much-anticipated update will begin to roll out to the device before the year ends. Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is confirmed to receive the official over-the-air release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow update as the mobile department of Sony revealed last week a list outlining Sony's plans for the update. Sony Mobile revealed 14 lucky smartphones and tablets including Xperia Z3 Compact. In a post on Sony Mobile's official blog site, the brand expressed its excitement for the new Sony features and functionality and the improvements it made to the use experience. The article came after the fuss and frenzy about the string of exposés from a mobile carrier and device manufacturers. Samsung, LG, HTC and Google have been revealed to release the Android 6.0 Marshmallow to its devices. However, exact release date has not been detailed by the giant. Sony fans can be assured that their phones will be getting the update very soon or before the year ends and this is what fans should be looking after. Meanwhile, some unfortunate Xperia devices are doomed to Android update's end of journey as they were excluded from the list, like Xperia Z1, Xperia Z1 Compact and Z Ultra. According to tech analysts, the roadmap list unveiled by Sony Mobile is just initial to give privilege to newer devices. It is subject to additions. In fact, Sony Mobile stated that that the company is working hard to take along the major Android software update to as many of its devices as possible and as quickly as it can. Android 6.0 Marshmallow brings in key features, allowing users to work out greater control over app permissions; purchase easily and securely with fingerprint support and Android Pay; experience enhanced battery-life through Doze; and redesigned App Drawer. Google Now becomes smarter. It recognizes diverse contexts, offers answers and aids users take action. Apps Permissions provides users better control of the permissions of downloaded apps. Users are given the choice to assent to or reject permissions entirely. It is important to take note that Permissions are required the first time users try to use a feature, not at the point of installation. App drawer has an all-new design. It now scrolls vertically instead of horizontally against white background. It also shows four most recently used apps across the top of the menu. Fingerprint support brings device uniform support for fingerprint scanners devices running Marshmallow. Fingerprint functions to check purchases, unlock phones and purchase and shop in real-life or in the Play Store. Mobile payments like American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover are now supported. The update also brings Google Pay. With Marshmallow, power and charging expands device up to two times longer standby time using Doze. It makes use of motion detectors to control device when not in use. It also diminishes background processes, while begins alarms and informs users of priority notifications even when using Doze.
Sometimes the fuzziness on details is on Brazile’s part. For example, she makes this claim: “The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt. ...On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.” But Brazile is almost certainly mistaken about the loan. The DNC did have $2 million in debt on its books, but that loan dated to 2014—before the Clinton campaign existed, meaning the campaign couldn’t have arranged it. It was with the DNC’s usual bank. And despite Brazile’s statement that then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz hadn’t informed party officers like her, the loan was disclosed in FEC filings that Brazile (and anyone else) could view. There are several other curious things about the book, including her peculiar, though evidently heartfelt, fixation with the case of Seth Rich, the DNC employee whose unsolved murder has become a focus for conspiracy theorists, much to his family’s dismay. (Rich is also one of the book’s dedicatees.) Brazile seems to have harbored unrealistic expectations about the DNC’s independence. By the time Brazile was named interim chair in July 2016, Clinton was already the de facto nominee, days away from formal nomination. It’s customary for the nominee to effectively control the party apparatus from that point, but Brazile repeatedly bridled at directives from Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn. One is sympathetic to Brooklyn: No one wants a DNC chair offering conflicting messages from the campaign, as happened after James Comey’s October 28 letter about the FBI investigation. One is also sympathetic to Brazile: She is a boisterous, vivacious presence, and Clinton’s campaign was cool and clinical to a fault. Conflict between the two was practically inevitable. And while Brazile’s critique of the Clinton team as overly dispassionate is widely held now, her own instincts were also questionable, as in her demand that money be spent in major cities to drive up turnout due to a fear that Clinton would win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote. But more than anything else, the book has kicked off a battle over the question of whether the primary process was in fact rigged in Clinton’s favor. In particular, that debate has focused on some pretty arcane stuff—the joint-fundraising agreement that the Clinton campaign struck with the DNC in August 2015. While the details are somewhat confusing, the discussion crystallizes the differences between Clinton and Sanders neatly: one the unshakeable party woman, fiercely devoted to institutions and willing to bend the rules a little to get what she felt needed to be done done; the other an outsider, with no strong attachment to the party but a fierce sense of principle and propriety.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton walks in a Memorial Day parade in Chappaqua, N.Y. (Mel Evans/AP) NEW CASTLE, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton marched in the New Castle Memorial Day parade on Monday morning, an event that has become an annual tradition in the town that she and former president Bill Clinton now call their home. The hamlet of Chappaqua welcomed Clinton, the former president and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo with signs and cheers as they walked briskly through town on a muggy and gray day. “Love it!” Clinton told a woman who asked whether she was enjoying being a part of the quaint festivities. “It's my favorite parade." The bagpipes played and the band marched. Children in soccer jerseys waited on the sidewalks waving American flags. Teens scrambled to snap selfies as the former first family walked by. As they marched, the Clintons waved and smiled but did not stop for passersby. In the midst of a sea of blue Hillary for America signs, at least one man proudly trailed the parade decked out from head to toe in Donald Trump memorabilia. Nevertheless, John Nadler, 63, seemed to be eager to take photos of the Clintons and was un-fazed as Clinton fans frowned. "It's Hillary country," Maxine Margo, 61, called out to Nadler. "Sorry. No room for Trump dudes in this area. Although it's a free country." "I'm a Hillary fan,” she added. “It's in the middle of this whole thing, but I'm just encouraged and hopeful that she will be madam president.” "She's the only adult in the room. Seriously. The only adult in the room,” Margo added.
Recently, Valve did a presentation about Steam during Indigo 2017 which took place in June. The interesting and not surprising thing here is that Steam just keeps on growing.I knew Steam would be growing, but I didn't think it would be growing that quickly. By the looks of it, since 2015 they're about 2.4 million away from doubling the concurrent users record. It might sound like a lot, but they've already gone from 8.4 to 14 million.I believe that the decline of Linux in the Steam survey is partly due to the rise of Steam in other markets, where Linux just isn't really popular. According to one of their slides, sales in Asia accounted for 17% total Steam sales for 2017 so far, that's pretty huge, when you consider say Western Europe is only 29% so far this year. From what I remember, Asia has been growing as a market for Steam for the past few years and quite quickly by the looks of it.When looking at those sorts of percentages, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that growth in markets where Windows is more prevalent will shrink the Linux market share.They do confirm that a UI update is coming as well, which will update a lot of ways you interact with Steam. This will affect curators, developers and normal users, like this slide gives you an idea of:You can check out this post with many more slide pictures.It's also interesting to see this page that Steam has, showing the number of support requests sent them in the last 24 hours. Over 200K of them were for refunds, wow! Surprising to see the technical support requests being so low as well at under 4K.
One of the policy positions that Bernie Sanders successfully pushed Hillary Clinton to embrace was his plan for free college tuition. However that plan has a potential downside: It could wipe out hundreds of small, private colleges around the country. Politico reports: Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, is a Clinton supporter who’s now concerned about her school’s survival. McGuire runs a private women’s college and complained that Clinton’s revised college affordability plan — eliminating public college tuition for families making up to $125,000 — puts small institutions like hers “gravely at risk.” … There are about 1,600 private colleges across the U.S., and they enroll about one in five college students. Private colleges compete directly with public colleges for students and that competition would get a lot harder if public schools are suddenly free… Elite private colleges such as Ivy League schools aren’t at risk. But some other types of private colleges — including women’s colleges, religiously affiliated institutions, and historically black colleges and universities — rely heavily on tuition. If Congress were to enact the free public college proposal, a sudden, steep drop in enrollment could put private schools like that out of business, McGuire said. And a wounded private college sector could mean fewer choices. The private college presidents Politico spoke to are not necessarily against the idea of government involvement in student tuition. No doubt many, like McGuire, are Clinton supporters. What they want is some leeway to make any tuition grant applicable to private colleges as well as public ones. Where the private colleges run into trouble is that they tend to have much higher tuition rates than public schools. Politico notes the average public school tuition (in-state) was just shy of $10,000 a year while private school tuition averages above $30,000 per year. Politically, that difference could make it more difficult for private colleges to make a claim on public money. The only upside at the moment is that Clinton’s plan is unlikely to happen anytime soon. A massive outlay of money for college tuition necessarily involves congress and, at least for the moment, Republicans are in control. The fact that the GOP held congress stands between these private colleges and potential calamity must be galling to the left-leaning staff and administrators at these institutions.
California's failed video game censorship law is headed to the Supreme Court. The bill, which was passed by the state assembly in 2005 with the support of Governor Schwarzenegger, aimed to criminalize the sale of violent video games to minors. It was promptly challenged in court by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a video game industry trade group. After the US District Court threw it out Governor Schwarzenegger sought an appeal, which was rejected by the 9th Circuit. Schwarzenegger announced on Wednesday that he won't back down and intends to take it to the Supreme Court. The courts have consistently rejected laws that restrict video game sales. Such laws are fundamentally in conflict with the First Amendment rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution. Despite the evident futility of defending these laws in court, states have attempted to do so and have paid the price. When the states lose, the courts inevitably order them to foot the bill for the ESA's legal fees. This costly burden on taxpayers collectively adds up to well over a million dollars. Although there have been 12 rulings over the past eight years affirming that video games are protected speech and cannot be censored, the issue has yet to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. California's law is the first to be appealed this far, largely because other states decided to cut their losses and avoid further embarrassing and costly defeat. California, however, is determined to fight the losing battle all the way to the last level. "I signed this important measure to ensure parents are involved in determining which video games are appropriate for their children," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "By prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18 and requiring these games to be clearly labeled, this law would allow parents to make better informed decisions for their kids. I will continue to vigorously defend this law and protect the well-being of California's kids." The ESA has responded, contending that California's effort to instate the censorship law is wasteful and ultimately doomed to failure. "California's citizens should see this for what it is—a complete waste of the state's time and resources," he said in a statement. "We are confident that this appeal will meet the same fate as the State's previous failed efforts to regulate what courts around the country have uniformly held to be expression that is fully protected by the First Amendment." California is facing an unprecedented budgetary crisis and is struggling with an enormous deficit which could soon necessitate deep cuts across all state services. In the face of these challenges, it is troubling that California is throwing more money away to defend flawed legislation. Unless the state can raid some coins from Bowser's lair to cover the cost, this is looking like an awfully misguided use of limited states resources. Hat tip to GamePolitics.com
The Knights of Columbus, a lay Catholic men's group, stand guard over the remains of Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old Italian girl who is the youngest Roman Catholic saint in a ceremony officiated by Father Artur Sowa in Orland Park, Illinois October 14, 2015. REUTERS/Nikitta Foston Thousands gathered at a church in suburban Chicago on Wednesday to visit a display holding the remains of Maria Goretti, an 11-year-old Italian girl who became the Roman Catholic Church’s youngest saint. The skeleton of Goretti, who was stabbed to death during an attempted rape in 1902, was encased in a wax statue lying inside a clear glass coffin. Viewers waited for hours to approach the display, and many were moved to tears. Goretti is seen as a symbol of forgiveness and mercy in a violent world. The display at the St. Francis of Assisi church in Orland Park, southwest of Chicago, is part of a first-ever visit to the United States, and will take in 16 states. The remains also drew huge crowds at a viewing in Chicago on Monday. Visitor Kathy McNolte, 43, said Goretti was an example of how violence could be met with mercy – a message she said was especially needed in Chicago, which saw 435 homicides in 2014, according to the Chicago Tribune. “She showed mercy and we need to show that,” said McNolte, who has three sons. “I’m here for my boys. They need someone to emulate. We need people who are kind and loving and forgiving to look up to.” Goretti was stabbed 14 times near Anzio, Italy, but asked forgiveness for her 20-year-old attacker before her death, according to the church. “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli … and I want him with me in heaven forever,” she said in the hospital. After Serenelli’s release from prison, he became a lay brother in a monastery. The tour is a prelude to the “Year of Mercy,” set to begin Dec. 8. It was declared by Pope Francis, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. The display arrived early on Wednesday in a motorcade escorted by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic lay group. “Her presence here reaffirms the Christian faith in that there is forgiveness,” said Patrick Allen, national coordinator for the tour. “She endured such agony and pain and yet had mercy.” Visitor Lorraine Kowalkowski said that while she was glad to see Goretti, violence in the city would not stop without parents teaching “care and respect” to their children. (Reporting by Nikitta Foston; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Peter Cooney)
The political left in America is blind to the agenda, desires, and reality of Sharia law. Liberals are literally scoffing at the professed desires of Islamists and jihadi radicals that want to murder in plain daylight hundreds of citizens for drawing a cartoon of the historical person Mohammed. They do so in the aftermath of two jihadis having attempted to carry out just such a plan. The left does not recognize Sharia as a threat to America. The New York Times in 2011 wrote: "The crusade against Shariah undermines American democracy, ignores our country’s successful history of religious tolerance and assimilation, and creates a dangerous divide between America and its fastest-growing religious minority." Maxine Waters, the leftist Democrat Congresswoman, attending an Islamic Townhall meeting in Orange County California in 2012 openly criticized 13 states that would seek to pass laws that would ban Sharia law from their jurisdiction. She also openly stated, "anti-Sharia laws are motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry, plain and simple.” A sentiment oft repeated in leftist circles. In 2014 the Jewish lesbian “Rabbi" Robin Nafshi, first identified herself as a person with a wide understanding of various religious and political views and then proceeded to imply that Sharia law could be one hundred percent compatible with the constitutional life of modern day America. She also proceeded to condemn those that would say otherwise: "The politicians who endorse anti-Sharia laws are exploiting Americans’ legitimate fears of ISIS, al Qaida, Hamas and other extremist groups in order to ostracize and discriminate against the American Muslim community." In advance of the second high profile “Draw Mohammed” contest of the past month, I was invited to participate in what has become a weekly panel on America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum. In the conversation I make three inferences and two overt references to the idea that Sharia is gaining acceptance in America. I referred to it by way of “Sharia-creep.” My opposing pundit, David Goodfriend, formerly a staff secretary for President Bill Clinton took the parting shot of the interview to lecture not only me on the “ridiculous” nature of the idea that Sharia-creep exists, but he also argued that we should be having more discussions about what the actual limits of the first amendment should look like: “I don’t think you’re doing your side any favors by talking about Shariah creep. That’s just ridiculous. What I do think what’s going on is a healthy debate about the limits of First Amendment and free speech and that’s where we ought to keep it. That’s the American way.” Click The Picture To Watch The Full Segment So no worries about those that think Sharia law is acceptable and compatible with American life, let’s argue about limiting the amount of free speech American’s are allowed to have? Sorry Mr. Goodfriend that’s not a healthy debate at all. It’s not where we ought to keep it, and it’s the opposite of “The American way.” Sharia law goes beyond the private governance of muslims. In nations where it is established it undermines the civil government and dictates the public behavior—which it also demands must be modified to adhere to it’s specificities—or punishment from public floggings to the sight of hanging homosexuals from atop cranes in the center of cities does follow. Sharia law is by its very nature a political/legal matter, and the jihadis that showed up in Garland Texas to kill Pamela Geller and 300 other Americans that night, were basing their justification of doing so on the most specific understanding of their Sharia standards. When many of the major mosques in America have publicly declared their desire to see Sharia become the governing legal system in America, when Imams from New York City to Dearborn, Michigan have declared that such will be the case before 2050, and then the political class looks the other way—and furthermore—shames those like Pamela Geller who are speaking up as to this reality, yes Sharia-creep is very much in effect. And while David Goodfriend was quick to play “he was brought up in a Jewish household” card, I might point out that the middle east nations where Sharia is practiced, and in the nations where ISIS now owns more geography than the United Kingdom (with a presence in 12 nations total and one contiguous region in Iraq/Syria that is larger than Great Britain alone) Jews are absent a presence within those places. Sharia law disallows freedom of speech. Sharia law sees as blasphemous (and thus punishable by death) conversion away from Islam and to any other faith. Sharia law allows questionable sexual relationships to be arranged as it pertains to what it calls marriage. Sharia law subjugates women. Sharia law (depending on the Imam) excuses honor killings. Sharia law calls for the decapitation of those who profane the “holy men” of Islam. (And by profane that could range from the Charlie Hebdo cartoons (which were profane), the Pamela Gellar cartoon (which is not profane), to the fact that I even just put “apostrophes” around the word “holy men” to indicate that only some believe that they are holy.) Sharia law is the justification for why 81% of those who responded to a survey from Al Jazeera Online said they support the aims of the Islamic State in it’s current attempt at conquest of the world. The left (particularly Clinton-connected types) may have enormous short term rationalizations for why they are ignoring the changing reality of Sharia law and it’s intentions for the USA. There may be incentives, cash, cabinet positions, all to be had in touting the right line on such. But let’s just say, I won’t be taking my advice on what I think about this or any other matter from a leftist who is blind to his own potential destruction. Say what you wish Mr. Goodfriend. It is those on your side, who are blind—to the evils of Sharia law and the growing nature of acceptance it is receiving here in the United States—particularly in your own political circles, and that is exactly why more “Draw Mohammed” contests must continue to take place.
Pigeon William of Orange William of Orange was a male war pigeon of British military intelligence service MI14. He was awarded the 21st Dickin Medal for delivering a message from the Arnhem Airborne Operation. This message saved more than 2000 soldiers at the time of the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. Its official name in military record is NPS.42.NS.15125. He received the Dickin Medal in May 1945.[1] Communications in that battle were a problem for the Allied units; German troops had surrounded the airborne forces and the few radio sets present malfunctioned. William of Orange was released by British soldiers at 10:30 on 19 September 1944 and arrived at his nest box in England at 14:55. He flew over 400 km (250 mi) and the message he carried was one of few to make their way back to the United Kingdom. William of Orange was bred by Sir William Proctor Smith of Cheshire and trained by the Army Pigeon Service of the Royal Signals. Smith bought him out of service for £185 and ten years later reported that William was "the grandfather of many outstanding racing pigeons".[2] References [ edit ]
Frances Kissling, the former president of the liberal group Catholics for Choice, once told me that it was her ambition to discomfit the pope every single day. But that’s easier said than done. The Vatican has erected a fortress around itself that is so formidable that it seems impregnable. Making any impact on that protective shield is almost impossible, but I had an opportunity to try recently at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. It was there, speaking as a representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, that I launched a fusillade that attempted to get the Catholic Church to face up to, and admit, its responsibilities in relation to child abuse. Many had tried before. Earlier this year the Ryan Report in Ireland had revealed a devastating catalogue of abuse by priests that had been compounded by a systematic cover-up by the Church and repeated attempts to belittle victims and evade compensating them. Although this had dealt a severe blow to the Church in Ireland, the Vatican remained characteristically tight-lipped, waiting for this latest crisis to pass. The Chamber at the UNHRC is huge and I was well back behind the international ranks of governmental and diplomatic representatives. The chair – whom I almost needed binoculars to see – called on me to start. The Holy See’s representative was listening more intently than usual, presumably because he had seen my statement of charges published by the UN and, probably by then, the text of my speech which had just been released. As far as we are aware, no one else has ever berated the Holy See from the floor of a United Nations body. I had very little time but a lot of complaints to make, so I jumped in without ceremony. I pointed out straight away that it was not the child abuse itself, but the Church’s handling of it that I was addressing. I complained about the 15 years of reports, mandatory under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), that the Holy See had failed to produce. Victims’ suffering had been compounded by being told they were liars, and if they had received any compensation it had been minimised. Senior clerics had been complicit in perpetuating the cycle of abuse by moving offending priests around like sinister chess pieces, and shielding them from civil authorities and likely criminal sanctions. The Church had done everything in its power, right to the very top, to cover up a massive problem that has been around for decades – some say centuries. I demanded full openness over abusers by the Church worldwide and for it to bring the reporting up to date. The Holy See claims “its jurisdiction over a territory, known as the Vatican City State, serves solely to provide a basis for its autonomy and to guarantee the free exercise of its spiritual mission”. It is this enigmatic nation status that affords it the maximum influence with the minimum accountability – the very antithesis of secularism and a permanent “get out of jail free” card. The only law to which it is subject is international law and, as I showed at the UN, it breaks this with impunity. Clearly it has many friends in high places. So, I concluded by calling on the international community to hold the Holy See to account – something that it has predictably, but shamefully, failed to do. I was shocked to find that the Holy See’s accession to the UNCRC had been accepted despite it “reserving” (excluding) Vatican City, its entire geographical entity and we believe the very place to which all child abuse accusations are mandatorily sent. My longer report, published by the UN, was much more specific and hard-hitting; it detailed, for example, five Articles of the Convention I accuse the Holy See of breaking, and demonstrated that the roots of the problem go to the very highest level of the Church. From 1981 until his promotion, Benedict has been in charge of Church discipline. Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston (the largest American diocese), was heavily implicated in massive cover-ups and life became too hot for him in the US despite the personal, and foolish, intervention of John Paul II. So, since 2004, he has been holed up in Rome where he also enjoys Benedict’s patronage. Despite the huge scandal that forced Law from office, he remains a cardinal and a member of the Pontifical Council of the Family. Revealingly, no bishop or cardinal has ever been laïcised (sacked) in connection with child abuse matters. A few hours after I sat down, the Holy See exercised its Right of Reply, which was widely regarded as complacent, duplicitous and arrogant. It thought, for example, that the addition of just one paragraph on abuse by priests in this report that is 15 years overdue would suffice. The rebuttal then went on to claim, falsely, that US Protestants have an even worse record on child abuse. It said the abusers weren’t paedophiles (we never said they were), but homosexuals – Benedict’s new bogey men. The reply wilfully missed the point that sex – indeed physical or mental abuse of any kind – by anyone in authority against someone in their charge is an abuse of that authority on top of the wrongs of the act itself. The rebuttal was an obvious attempt to deflect attention from the charges I had levelled at the Vatican by introducing other issues that had never been mentioned in the original speech. Most significantly, not one of my many charges did they even attempt to deny – because they couldn’t. The Holy See soon realised that Archbishop Nuncio Tomasi – who had written the rebuttal – had made a spectacular misjudgement with his evasiveness and lack of compassion for the victims. No wonder this Right of Reply was conspicuous for its absence from the Vatican’s website. Its press officer told a newswire’s Vatican correspondent: “the Vatican had chosen not to publish it, in order not to ‘add gasoline to the fire’ on a volatile topic.” The only other reaction from Rome was to describe my intervention as “a very hard and unjust attack”. The media reaction, though, was far harder. American Public Radio, for example, covered the matter in a detailed article on its website which concluded: “let Archbishop Tomasi have the limelight and the microphone all to himself. It is hard to imagine what the Church could possibly do to look worse than it already did in the face of a global scandal that has cost it $2 billion in settlements in the United States alone. Hard to imagine ... and yet somehow, that’s precisely what it did.” Neither Benedict, Tomasi nor their colleagues have yet realised just how much the Church’s previously unquestioned authority has been eroded. They need look no further than the 50 newspapers and major blogs in 15 countries around the world that covered this exchange, with hardly any disagreement with the stance I took. The Tablet even ran a lead editorial lambasting Tomasi. I want to expunge the unspoken rule that the Holy See is above criticism and encourage the international community to take its responsibilities in this respect more seriously. The needs of children should have been the prime concern, rather than massaging the Vatican’s ego or indulging its unquenchable appetite for power. Clearly, the Vatican has shot itself in the foot, and I am very happy to have given them the bullet with which to do it. The hundreds of thousands of victims of the Church’s cruelty deserve no less.
NHL.com continues its preview of the 2014-15 season, which will include in-depth looks at all 30 teams throughout September. Possibly the worst kept secret in the hockey world during the past 12 months was Thomas Vanek's desire to explore the option of returning to his adopted home in the Twin Cities and play for the Minnesota Wild. That desire became a reality July 1 when Vanek signed a three-year contract to play for the Wild, and in the process changed the way he approaches his hockey season. No longer must he, his wife Ashley and their three sons pick up from their summer home in nearby Stillwater, Minn., and move somewhere else for the winter. They'll have the comforts of home year-round, including Thomas, who rolls out of bed and is a 20-minute drive from work. "[The routine] changes, especially once the kids start school," Vanek said. "I would have been gone a good month already. You have to get back … for us it was Buffalo. You've got to get the kids settled. It's nice to stay here, train with my trainer and kind of get the full summer with him." Vanek has made the Twin Cities his home since he arrived from Austria to play down the road at the University of Minnesota. He led the Gophers to the NCAA Championship in 2003, was taken by the Buffalo Sabres with the fifth pick of the 2003 NHL Draft and met Ashley, whose friends and family live in Stillwater. Winning a title with the Gophers meant Vanek no longer was an Austrian who came here to play hockey. In the eyes of puck-crazed locals, he now was full-blooded Minnesotan. "It's nice for us to call it home year-round now," Vanek said. "It's weird though, because for so many years we left for Buffalo. We enjoyed our time there and we made so many friends there away from the rink. We miss them." Vanek will have the opportunity to re-kindle a friendship on and off the ice after signing with the Wild. His longtime teammate and good friend with the Sabres, right wing Jason Pominville, enters the first year of a five-year contract extension he signed with the Wild before the start of last season. It was Pominville who sought out Vanek two years ago when the Sabres traded him to Minnesota, asking about the city, places to live and eat, and the general attitude of the people here. And though Vanek will need no such help with those things, Pominville said it is cool to see things come full circle. "Our wives are friends. You get to know the guy, get to know his family, his kids are growing. It's been a lot of fun," Pominville said. "Who would have ever thought we'd be back on the same team and here in his hometown? It's pretty exciting." Exciting might be an understatement for Wild coach Mike Yeo, who spent his summer writing down different line combinations and finding ways to get his playmakers on the ice together. Early in camp Yeo avoided putting Vanek and Pominville together, as they were for many seasons in Buffalo. Instead he's had Vanek on the left side of captain Mikko Koivu and right wing Charlie Coyle. It's a group that's big and provides Yeo with a number of different ways to create offense. "They can go against heavy bodies and can play a down-low game," Yeo said. "But they can also score off the rush. Mikko is a very underrated playmaker and has the ability to find guys. And when you have a guy like Thomas, who's so good around the net, it's going to open up a lot more ice for the guys he's playing with." No matter where Vanek ends up, and Yeo said he is willing to move pieces around if necessary, the objective will be the same: More goals. Vanek has scored at least 20 of them every season he's been in the NHL. Minnesota tied for 24th with 2.43 goals per game last season, and more than half of their games ended up as one-goal games. The Wild were 24-7-12 in those games, a .558 winning percentage that was sixth in the League. The hope is Vanek will help improve upon those numbers, while at the same time turning a few one-goal victories into two-goal victories. "There's a lot of times you're holding a 2-1 lead or a 3-2 lead, and if you can get one more goal you relieve a lot more pressure and you're playing a lot less difficult minutes," Yeo said. "Throughout the course of the year, that adds up to a lot." The Wild begin their fourth season under Yeo, the youngest coach in the League, looking to continue their trend of improvement. They missed the playoffs in his first season, lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round in his second season and lost to the Blackhawks in the second round last season. Though the spoils of home certainly are nice, Vanek said he's here to build something too. After advancing to the Eastern Conference Final last season with the Montreal Canadiens, Vanek wants to bring that experience with him. "That's my excitement," Vanek said. "It's not about me coming back, but what we can really do here."
USMS to Auction 2,719 Seized Bitcoins This Month According to several reports, the U.S. government has announced another Bitcoin auction on August 22, selling 2,719 BTC — worth $1.6 million USD at press time — confiscated by authorities. This will be the latest auction of cryptocurrency since the last U.S. Marshals (USMS) sale last year. Also read: Ernst & Young to Auction 24,000 Confiscated Bitcoins in Australia Multiple Forfeiture Cases Allows USMS to Hold Another Bitcoin Auction The bitcoins that were forfeited to the U.S. Marshals come from several different criminal cases. The last auction the government held was for the final blocks of the seized Silk Road coins. This particular sale also includes money coming from the Silk Road marketplace, with bitcoins seized from special agent Carl Force. The U.S. Marshals state in their announcement: These bitcoins were forfeited in various federal criminal, civil and administrative cases. This auction includes seized bitcoins associated with various cases, including the controversial United States v. Carl Force, Sean Roberson, Ross William Ulbricht case. In order to participate in the auction, potential bidders must register by August 18. Applicants have to pay a deposit fee of $100,000 when registering, which must be deposited “in US Dollars sent by wire transfer originating from a bank located within the United States.” Bid data will not be disclosed to participants, and they cannot change their bids once submitted. On Monday, August 22, 2016, at 5:00 P.M. EDT, the USMS will disclose the winners of the auction. The winner must also send a wire transfer for the cost of the winning bid. The USMS statement details: No bitcoin transfer will be made until the USMS has confirmed receipt of all purchase funds. The bitcoin transfer process will begin immediately following receipt of purchase funds. The winning bidder will be given private instructions related to the transferring of the bitcoins. The announced sale follows the Australian auction held on June 20, 2016, which sold $16 million worth of bitcoin in Sydney. The government auction held in Australia was hosted by Ernst & Young, one of the “Big Four” audit firms. What do you think about the latest USMS sale of Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments below. Images courtesy of Pixabay and Bitcoin.com.
The number of job openings in June hit the highest level since May 2008, rising 3.8% to 3.94 million from 3.79 million a year earlier, according to government data released Tuesday. However, details in the report show little change in the U.S. labor market, which is still short two million jobs compared with the start of the Great Recession. Indeed, the number of openings during the month as a percent of total employment and openings was unchanged in June, remaining at 2.8%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s latest report on its job openings and labor turnover survey, otherwise known as the JOLTS report. While the JOLTS report attracts less attention than the government’s monthly employment estimate, it contains valuable information about job flows. Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors and a candidate to replace Ben Bernanke as chief, said earlier this year that such statistics offer clues about “the underlying dynamics of the labor market.” Central bank officials are keeping a close eye on employment data as they consider a timeline for scaling back the Fed’s bond-purchasing program. — Charts and text by Ruth Mantell
Although the Supreme Court upheld ‘Obamacare’, the ruling complicates an important element of the law by making the Medicaid expansion optional for states. States will no longer risk losing all their Medicaid funds if they opt out of the expansion, which is projected to cover some 17 million low-income people. Most states will be hard-pressed to turn down the infusion of federal funds to help cover their uninsured residents, despite incurring new costs down the road. But Republican governors face a genuine political predicament because if they accept the Medicaid expansion, they open themselves up to potentially resonant right-wing attacks for buttressing ‘Obamacare.’ While some GOP-led states are hedging, others vow to reject the funds.Iowa “We’re opposed to it and we’re not going to have any part of it,” Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) told the Huffington Post. “But we’re taking our own approach. … But we’re certainly not going to buy into this federal effort. We’re going to fight it in every way we can.” Florida “Florida will opt out of spending approximately $1.9 billion more taxpayer dollars required to implement a massive entitlement expansion of the Medicaid program,” the office of Gov. Rick Scott (R) said in a statement. South Carolina “We’re not going to shove more South Carolinians into a broken system that further ties our hands when we know the best way to find South Carolina solutions for South Carolina health problems is through the flexibility that block grants provide,” Rob Godfrey, a spokesperson for Gov. Nikki Haley, told the Post and Courier. Missouri “I just don’t see any way we will be expanding Medicaid at the expense of things like education and public safety,” state House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey (R) told a local paper. The state’s Democratic governor has been mum, but Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (R) called the Medicaid expansion a “break-the-bank” scenario and sided with Silvey. “Our position in the General Assembly and, speaking for me, personally, is clear,” he said. Wisconsin “Wisconsin will not take any action to implement Obamacare,” said Gov. Scott Walker (R), signaling that he wants to wait until the November elections, which will in large part determine the future of the law. Louisiana “We’re not going to start implementing Obamacare,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). “Every governor’s got two critical decisions to make. One is do we set up these exchanges. And, secondly, do we expand Medicaid. And, no, in Louisiana, we’re not doing either one of those things,” Jindal said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday. “I don’t think it makes sense to do those. I think it makes more sense to do everything we can to elect Mitt Romney to repeal Obamacare.” Kansas Officials in Gov. Sam Brownback’s (R) administration told the Kansas Health Institute that they want nothing to do with ‘Obamacare’ and “will take no action to implement it.”
The Air Force selected 770 enlisted airmen to serve in nine hard-to-fill developmental special duties such as recruiter, military training instructor, and first sergeant, according to an Aug. 3 release. In a follow-up email Monday, Air Force Personnel Center spokesman Mike Dickerson said that 313 of those airmen have already been assigned to their duty, and the remaining 457 were still being assigned as part of the spring 2017 selection cycle. Nearly half of those selectees, or 350, are likely to become recruiters, Dickerson said. The Air Force also plans to choose 145 airmen to serve as first sergeants, 112 to serve as MTIs, and 73 to serve as professional military education instructors. The Air Force also is selecting 36 new military training leaders, 22 airman family readiness noncommissioned officers, 14 academy military training NCOs, 13 career assistance advisers, and five Air Force Honor Guard members. Dickerson said the number of airmen in each duty could change as the Air Force’s requirements shift. “Airmen selected for [developmental special duties] have high potential and are filling some of the Air Force‘s most critical positions,” Master Sgt. Danielle Hamilton, AFPC’s special duty and DSD assignments manager, said in the release. ”They must be an ambassador and role model for the Air Force core values of integrity, service and excellence.” Serving in a special duty can be lucrative. MTIs and recruiters can receive special duty pay of up to $450 a month. First sergeants can get another $300 per month. The Air Force in 2013 began nominating airmen to serve in developmental special duties, because the old system of relying on volunteers wasn’t enough to fill the slots. The nomination cycle occurs twice a year. The date nominations will open for the fall cycle has not yet been set, and commanders will be encouraged to nominate their best staff sergeants, technical sergeants and master sergeants to fill these jobs. × Fear of missing out? Fear no longer. Be the first to hear about breaking news, as it happens. You'll get alerts delivered directly to your inbox each time something noteworthy happens in the Military community. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to our Newsletter: Sign up for the Air Force Times Daily News Roundup “The more opportunities airmen have to broaden their skill sets, the more capabilities they bring to the fight,” Hamilton said. ”We are systematically preparing those airmen with high potential to assume their place as tomorrow‘s leaders.” Airmen who were nominated for this cycle, but have not yet been selected, will remain eligible until the spring cycle ends Sept. 30. The Air Force in June began allowing staff sergeants to serve as MTIs for the first time in several years. Until then, only technical and master sergeants had been allowed to be MTIs. Staff, technical and master sergeants were already eligible to serve in the other eight duties. Staff sergeants can once again become MTIs For the first time in five years, staff sergeants can be nominated to become military training instructors, the Air Force announced Tuesday. The Air Force also that month lowered the physical training scores for all developmental special duty positions, as well as the technical training instructor job, setting them to the same standard of 75 points that the rest of the service uses.
Back in 2006 I began charting the most successful teams based on a few categories, passes defensed, forced fumbles, average per rushing and passing attempt and interceptions. It became clear that every year, the best teams in the NFL, for the most part, ranked very high in an aggregated score. This year is no exception as the teams that we all expect to be in or near the Super Bowl rank near the top of these aggregators. The Patriots are an exception this year, but they do make up on it on the offensive side of the ball. This morning in an attempt to evaluate the performance of the three teams still in the fight for the AFC West Crown, I came to a very startling realization, the defense is NOT the problem. It is the offensive penalties. The Raiders lead the AFC West with a score of 82. That is an average score of 16.3, or middle of the pack in the NFL. The Chargers are next with a score of 98, that is nearly an average of 20, or knocking on the doorsteps to the bottom 30%. The Division Leaders, Denver have the worst numbers with a score of 109 which places them in the bottom third of the NFL. Taking it a step further, the Raiders have a passing aggregate of 25. With three categories that is an 8, which places them firmly in the top 30%. Their running aggregate is 57 or an average of 28.5, near the bottom of the League. Now we get to the real reason that the Raiders are NOT in first place in their Division. Penalties. Oddly enough the Raiders are only 6th in the NFL in Defensive penalties with 101 for 826 yards. Combined with the defensive numbers, maybe Bresnehan isn't the TRUE problem here. That is 86 more than the Broncos and 138 more than the Chargers. Not really a deal breaker, on paper. Man coverage teams get away with more penalties, which allows them to rank higher in passing stats, but, they are also more likely to get penalties called because of the scheme, so I expected the Raiders to be higher in defensive penalties. The REAL problem is offensive penalties. The Oakland Raiders have committed 140 offensive penalties for 1,202 yards! To put that into perspective, the Broncos have a total of 1,475 yards in penalties and the Chargers have only committed 1,363 yards in penalties. So, say what you want about the stats, injuries or bad calls. How the Raiders win games when the commit more than 10 penalties, may be indicative of how they play looser with the lead than anything else. It looks to me like the problem with the Raiders lies on the offensive side of the ball and if they can clean that up, they can win out.
Descendants is a 2015 American musical fantasy television film directed and choreographed by Kenny Ortega. The film stars Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Booboo Stewart, and Cameron Boyce as the teenage children of Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Jafar, and Cruella De Vil, respectively. The film follows these teenagers adjusting to life outside their island prison, while on a mission to steal the Fairy Godmother's wand and free their parents from captivity. It debuted on July 31, 2015, as a Disney Channel Original Movie, to positive reviews and 6.6 million viewers. The film also stars Mitchell Hope, Melanie Paxson, Brenna D'Amico, Sarah Jeffery, Zachary Gibson, Jedidiah Goodacre, Dianne Doan, Dan Payne, Keegan Connor Tracy, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Maz Jobrani, Kathy Najimy, and Kristin Chenoweth. The first installment in the Descendants franchise, Descendants was spun off into a CGI animated short-form series titled Descendants: Wicked World, and was followed by a sequel, Descendants 2, which premiered on July 21, 2017,[1] with a third film, Descendants 3, set for mid-2019.[2] Plot [ edit ] Twenty years after Belle and Beast marry and become king and queen, they establish the United States of Auradon, creating a prosperous new nation from the surrounding kingdoms, and banish the villains to the Isle of the Lost, a slum surrounded by a barrier where magic is suspended. Their son, Ben, announces that his first proclamation is to give four selected children from the Isle of the Lost the chance to live in Auradon, away from the influence of their villainous parents: Carlos, son of Cruella de Vil; Jay, son of Jafar; Evie, daughter of the Evil Queen; and Mal, daughter of Maleficent. On the island, Maleficent instructs the quartet to steal the Fairy Godmother's magic wand to release the barrier so she can take over Auradon. Traveling to Auradon Prep, the four meet Ben and his self-proclaimed girlfriend Audrey, daughter of Princess Aurora. They also meet the Fairy Godmother, the school's headmistress. Evie uses her mother's pocket-sized magic mirror to locate the wand in a nearby museum, and Mal uses her mother's spinning wheel from the museum to put the security guard to sleep, but they fail to steal the wand due to a barrier around it. After learning that the Fairy Godmother will use the wand at Ben's coronation, the four wait it out by attending classes, but start to fit in with the students. Jay is recruited into the school's "tourney" team (a sport similar to field hockey and lacrosse), while Carlos overcomes his fear of dogs by befriending the school's dog, Dude. Evie, though intelligent, acts vain to impress Chad, Cinderella's son, but ends up doing his homework for him. Dopey's son, Doug, encourages her not to pander to others and be herself. Mal becomes popular, using Maleficent's spell book to improve the looks of Jane and Lonnie, the daughters of the Fairy Godmother and Mulan, respectively. Learning that Ben's "girlfriend" will be seated close to the wand during the coronation, which is used during the ceremony, Mal bakes a cookie laced with a love potion and gives it to Ben, who falls madly in love with her, much to his friends' shock. On a date with Ben, Mal becomes conflicted with her inner goodness and desire to please her mother, unsure of how to react to Ben's feelings towards her. During the school's family day, the villains' children are ostracized after an encounter with Audrey's grandmother, Queen Leah, saying Maleficent's curse was the reason she missed Aurora's childhood, prompting an argument that drives Mal to end the beauty spell she used on Jane. While Ben tries to reassure them that everything will be okay after the coronation, Doug tries to remain friendly towards Evie, but Chad forces him to distance himself from her. At Ben's coronation, Mal gives him a cupcake containing the love spell's antidote, believing it is unnecessary to keep him under the spell. It turns out, per Ben's admission, that he was already freed of the spell since their date when he went swimming in the Enchanted Lake, believing that Mal only did it because she really liked him. During Ben's crowning, a disillusioned Jane grabs the wand from her mother, wanting to improve her beauty, only for her to accidentally destroy the Isle's barrier. Mal takes the wand from Jane, but torn over what to do, is encouraged by Ben to make her own choice rather than follow Maleficent's path. Mal recognizes that she and her friends found happiness in Auradon and they choose to be good. Maleficent crashes the ceremony, freezing everyone except herself and the four children. When they defy her, Maleficent transforms into a dragon. Mal and her friends use a counterspell, turning Maleficent into a lizard based on the amount of love in her heart. Mal returns the Fairy Godmother her wand as she unfreezes everyone and tells her not to be hard on Jane. While the villains watch the celebration from afar, Auradon Prep's students party through the night. Mal's eyes turn green as she addresses the audience, telling them the story is not over yet. Cast [ edit ] Production [ edit ] On December 12, 2013, Disney Channel announced the production of the film and released the plot outline. Kenny Ortega, a director who has previously worked with Disney Channel on the High School Musical trilogy, was announced to be directing the film.[3] The script was written by the Josann McGibbon and Sara Parriott. Filming began in the spring of 2014.[citation needed] Filming took place in Victoria, Canada.[citation needed] The costumes were designed by Kara Saun. Broadcast [ edit ] Descendants made its debut on Family Channel in Canada on July 31, 2015, simultaneously with the United States. It was also the last Disney Channel Original Movie to air in Canada on Family after the launch of a Disney Channel there.[4] The film premiered on August 1, 2015 on Disney Channel in Australia and New Zealand and on September 25, 2015 on Disney Channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland.[5][6] In the Middle East and Africa, the film premiered on September 18, 2015 on the English feed of Disney Channel.[7][8] It premiered in Turkey on October 17, 2015 on Disney Channel.[citation needed] Home media [ edit ] Descendants was released on DVD on July 31, 2015. Reception [ edit ] Critical reception [ edit ] Descendants received positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 63 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9] Isabella Biedenharn of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" grade, saying "... plot isn't really the point. The fun is in the roll call... It's no High School Musical, but the songs are catchy, and the junior villains are worth rooting for."[10] Tisha Mae Eaton of Moviepilot.com stated, "It's a movie that definitely had the feel of a Disney classic with a modern twist and I highly recommend it."[11] Alex Reif of LaughingPlace.com gave it a score of 4.5 out of 5 saying, "... I highly recommend this to any Disney fan, if for no other reason than to see what they've done with the characters, the Hocus Pocus references, and Kristin Chenoweth's Maleficent which is closer to the animated character than Angelina Jolie's portrayal."[12] Brian Lowry of Variety called it "... a playful and tuneful TV movie, exhibiting much higher ambitions than, say, the Teen Beach franchise."[13] By contrast, Amy Amatangelo of The Hollywood Reporter gave it a mixed review, calling it "High School Musical meets Once Upon a Time. It smartly ushers little girls who have grown up watching Disney movies into the tween audience and is an idea so ripe for merchandising that the Disney Store is already chock-full of Descendants costumes, dolls and T-shirts." She called the story "flimsy", but singled out the performances of Chenoweth, Najimy, Robinson and Jobrani.[14] Ratings [ edit ] Before the film made its TV debut, it was viewed more than one million times on the Watch Disney Channel app.[15] It was viewed by 6.6 million people on its premiere night[16] and 10.5 million viewers in Early DVR Playback.[17] Shortly after the premier air date, ratings showed the film was the fifth most watched original movie in cable history.[18] In Australia, the film attracted 151,000 viewers, making it the sixth highest-rated broadcast on pay television on its premiere day.[19] The British premiere was watched by 827,000 viewers, making it the most-watched broadcast on Disney Channel of that week and month.[20][21] The viewers rose to 1.45 million in 28 days, making it the highest viewership ever on the network.[citation needed] Accolades [ edit ] Franchise [ edit ] Sequels [ edit ] During the 2015 D23 Expo, Disney announced that a sequel to Descendants has been ordered.[27] The news was made official on the Disney Channel Facebook page on October 15, 2015.[1] Deadline reported that Parriott and McGibbon will reprise their duties as screenwriters and executive producers and that all of the cast from the first film is expected to return.[28] On June 10, 2016, it was announced that China Anne McClain would join the sequel as Ursula's daughter, Uma.[29] On February 16, 2018, Disney Channel announced a third film in the series, Descendants 3, which is scheduled to premiere in mid-2019.[30] Prequel spin-off [ edit ] Before the film's premiere air date, Disney Channel announced a live action mini series leading up to the event. Every day leading up to the release of the film, a new episode of Descendants: School of Secrets would be released revealing more secrets about the students at Auradon Prep. Each episode of the series is under 5 minutes long, with 23 episodes in total.[31] Animated spin-off [ edit ] Right after the film finished airing on Disney Channel, it was announced that a CGI-animated short spinoff entitled Descendants: Wicked World would be released in September 18, 2015.[32] Furthermore, former Phineas and Ferb storyboard artist Aliki Theofilopoulos Grafft announced on Twitter that she was directing the series, with Jenni Cook as producer, and that the original cast would be reprising their roles.[33] In other media [ edit ] Soundtrack [ edit ] Descendants (Original TV Movie Soundtrack) is a soundtrack album by cast of Descendants, released on July 31, 2015 by Walt Disney Records.[34] The soundtrack peaked at number 1 in United States at Billboard 200, number one on the US Top Digital Albums and topped the US Top Soundtracks.[35] Novels [ edit ] The Isle of the Lost [ edit ] A prequel novel called The Isle of the Lost by Melissa de la Cruz, has the villains' descendants banding together to retrieve the Dragon's Eye. The book has spent over 14 weeks as a Children's Middle Grade New York Times Best Seller.[36] Besides detailing about the children of Maleficent, Jafar, Cruella De Vil, and the Evil Queen, it also talks about some of the known locations of the Isle of the Lost like Dragon Hall (the only school on the Isle of the Lost), Goblin Wharf (which is operated by goblins who would like amnesty for their involvement with Maleficent), Bargain Castle (which sells enchanted robes and bargain hats while the top floor is where Maleficent lives), Jafar's Junk Shop (which is owned by Jafar as mentioned in the film), Castle Far Away (where the Evil Queen lives), Hell Hall (where Cruella de Vil lives), and the Isle of the Doomed (which is hidden next to the Isle of the Lost). The sorcerer Yen Sid from Fantasia is positioned here by King Beast to work at Dragon Hall to help the students with formerly magical parents adapt to more modern methods since the Isle of the Lost's barrier negates all magic. Other villains mentioned or hinted to be on the Isle of the Lost are Captain Hook from Peter Pan (who is mentioned to own "Hook's Inlet and Shack" and is the father of Harriet, CJ, and Harry Hook), Ursula from The Little Mermaid (who owns "Ursula's Fish and Chips" while the Strait of Ursula that's named after her is what separates the Isle of the Lost from Charmington as well as her being the mother of Uma and the other Sea Witches), Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog (who was the founder of Dragon Hall and the father of Freddie Facilier), Mother Gothel from Tangled (who is mentioned to be a teacher at Dragon Hall teaching "Selfishness 101" and is the mother of Ginny Gothel), Lady Tremaine and her two daughters Drizella and Anastasia from Cinderella (Lady Tremaine is the grandmother of Anastasia's son Anthony and Drizella's daughter Dizzy and a teacher at Dragon Hall teaching "Evil Schemes and Nasty Plots" while her cat Lucifer is the school mascot), Clayton from Tarzan (who is the father of Clay Clayton), Madame Mim from The Sword in the Stone (who has Mad Maddy as one of her granddaughters), Governor John Ratcliffe from Pocahontas, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast (who is the father of Gaston Jr, Gaston III, and Gil as well as the owner of "Gaston Duels Without Rules"), Shan Yu from Mulan, Shere Khan from The Jungle Book (who owns "Shere Khan Pawns"), Scar and his hyena cronies from The Lion King, the Coachman from Pinocchio (who operates a taxicab pulled by normal donkeys after spending a year rounding up the boys he had turned into donkeys), the Horned King from The Black Cauldron (who is mentioned to own "Cauldron Repair"), Professor Padraic Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective, Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove (who is the mother of Yzla and Zevon), and Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (who is mentioned to own "Frollo's Creperie" and is the father of Claudine Frollo).The Isle of the Lost novel also mentioned an original character who was the former Royal Astronomer of Agrabah and an ally of Jafar who is the father of Reza. Return to the Isle of the Lost [ edit ] Another Descendants novel titled Return to the Isle of the Lost was released on May 24, 2016.[37] While Ben is running Auradon while his parents are on a cruise, Mal, Jay, Carlos, and Evie receive threatening messages to return to the Isle of the Lost at the time when it ends up in worse shape ever since Maleficent's defeat and the fact that Cruella de Vil, the Evil Queen, and Jafar have gone missing. During this time, it was confirmed that the Crocodile from Peter Pan (who has various children swimming around "Hook's Inlet and Shack"), Edgar Balthazar from The Aristocats (who is mentioned to have a son named Eddie), Hades from Hercules (who is mentioned to have a son named Hadie), and the Ringmaster from Dumbo (who is mentioned to have a daughter named Hermie Bing) are also imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. It also introduces Hercules's son Herkie, Pinocchio's son Pin, Grumpy's son Gordon, Tiger Lily's daughter Tiger Peony, and King Arthur's son Artie in the book. Also as Freddie, Jordan, and Ally appear in the book, the story takes place during Descendants: Wicked World. School of Secrets [ edit ] School of Secrets is a series of novels that serve as a continuation of the Descendants film. The first book, CJ's Treasure Chase, was released on August 30, 2016 and centers on Captain Hook's daughter, CJ Hook.[38][39] The second book, Freddie's Shadow Cards, was released on November 1, 2016,[38] and centers on Freddie, the daughter of Dr. Facilier. The third book, Ally's Mad Mystery, was released on February 28, 2017 and focuses on Ally, the daughter of Alice in Wonderland. The fourth novel, Lonnie's Warrior Sword, is set to be released on August 25, 2017, and will focus on Lonnie, the daughter of Mulan and Li Shang, while the fifth book, Carlos's Scavenger Hunt, is set to be released on November 14, 2017. Junior novelization [ edit ] A junior novelization of the film Descendants, adapted by Rico Green, was published on July 14, 2015.[36][40] Other books [ edit ] Other books have been released, including Mal's Diary,[41] Mal's Spell Book,[42] a poster book, and a Guide to Auradon Prep.
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos was a comic book series created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee and published by Marvel Comics from 1963 to 1981. The main character, Sgt. Nick Fury, later became the leader of Marvel's super-spy agency, S.H.I.E.L.D. The title also featured the Howling Commandos, a fictional World War II unit that first appeared in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (cover dated May 1963). Publication history [ edit ] Stan Lee has described the series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos as having come about due to a bet with his publisher, Martin Goodman that the Lee-Kirby style could make a book sell even with the worst title Lee could devise.[1] Lee elaborated on that claim in a 2007 interview, responding to the suggestion that the series title did not necessarily seem bad: It did at the time. First of all, it was too long for a title — we didn't have any that were six words. And "Howling" was a long word, and "Commandos" was a long word. I got the name "Howling Commandos" because in the Army there was a group called the Screaming Eagles. And I loved the sound of that. So I figured we'd have the Howling Commandos.[2] Comics-artist contemporary John Severin recalled in an interview conducted in the early 2000s that in the late 1950s, Kirby had approached him to be partners on a syndicated, newspaper comic strip "set in Europe during World War Two; the hero would be a tough, cigar-chomping sergeant with a squad of oddball GIs — sort of an adult Boy Commandos",[3] referring to a 1940s wartime "kid gang" comics series Kirby had co-created for DC Comics. Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos followed an elite special unit, the First Attack Squad, nicknamed the "Howling Commandos", which was stationed in a military base in England to fight missions primarily, but not exclusively, in the European theatre of World War II. Under Captain "Happy Sam" Sawyer, Fury was the cigar-chomping noncom who led the racially and ethnically integrated unit, unusual for the time.[4] Even in the early 1960s, Lee was obliged to send a memo to the color separator at the printing plant to confirm that the character Gabe Jones was African American, after the character had appeared with Caucasian coloring in the first issue.[5] The series ran 167 issues (May 1963 - Dec. 1981), though with reprints alternating with new stories from issue #80 (Sept. 1970), and only in reprints after issue #120 (July 1974); at this point the formal copyrighted title in the indicia, which had been simply Sgt. Fury, was changed to match the trademarked cover logo, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.[6][7] Following seven issues by creators Lee and Kirby (who returned to collaborate on #13 and on the opening and closing pages of #18),[6] penciller Dick Ayers began his long stint on what would be his signature series, penciling 95 issues, including two extra-length annuals.[8] John Severin later joined as inker, forming a long-running, award-winning team; he would, additionally, both pencil and ink issues #44-46. The series' only other pencilers came on one issue each by Tom Sutton (which Ayers said was "done that time I asked for a furlough and reassignment")[9] and Herb Trimpe ("They shuffled Trimpe and me around, [him] to Fury and [me] and Severin to [The Incredible] Hulk" Ayers recalled.)[9] Roy Thomas followed Lee as writer, himself followed by Gary Friedrich, for whom this also became a signature series.[10] Ayers said in 1977, "Stan Lee left Fury first to Roy Thomas because the superheroes were gaining in popularity at that time it was best he concentrate on them", referring to the young Marvel's then growing line of superhero comics, such as Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man. "I must admit I resented somewhat those superheroes taking Stan away from Fury![11] Friedrich began as a co-scripter of issues #42-44 (May–July 1967). The Friedrich-Ayers-Severin team began in earnest, however, with #45 (Aug. 1967), the first of what would be several of the series' "The" stories: "The War Lover", a shaded exploration of a trigger-happy soldier and the line drawn, even in war, between killing and murder. Daring for the time, when majority public sentiment still supported the undeclared Vietnam War, the story balanced present-day issues while demonstrating that even in what is referred to as "a just war", a larger morality prevails. As one writer in the 1970s observed, ...Sgt. Fury #45 took a firm moralistic stance for the rest of the series by premiering what would become one of the most acclaimed series of stories in comics: the Gary Friedich "The" series, beginning with "The War Lover". ... Future stories in that fashion — all but one written by Friedrich — would center on what war could do to "The Assassin" (#51), the tragedy of a man turned hired liquidator, his family held hostage by Hitler's Gestapo; "The Informer" (#57), an observation on loyalty and trust, staged in a German P.O.W. camp; "The Peacemonger" (#64) [about a World War II conscientious objector]; "The Deserter" (#75), an allusion to the real-life execution of Private Eddie Slovik; "The All-American" (#81), Al Kurzrok's tale of a man [caught] between the twin microcosms of sport and war; and ultimately, "The Reporter" (#110), an account of a journalist faced with the [question of] when might a human life be forfeit? Many feel, also, that #46's tale, "They Also Serve", should be included ... for that story might as easily have been called "The Medic"....[12] Sgt. Fury #57 (Aug. 1968), featuring a Friedrich "The" story. Cover art by John Severin. #57 (Aug. 1968), featuring a Friedrich "The" story. Cover art by Dick Ayers At his best, Ayers' art in Sgt. Fury showed "a clear, forthright storyteller, excellent in medium close shots with a subtly out-of-focus background. He blended large panels with thin or small ones for movement, and often provided vast, cinemascopic panoramas for his writers to work with.... [E]ven in a scene that would ordinarily be static you could feel his characters breathing."[13] Inker Severin "took the art even further, laying dark, scratchy inks" that gave grit to Ayers' pencils.[13] Ayers himself "liked the results of John Severin's work on Sgt. Fury immensely", he said in 1977. "He added details beyond what I'd put in. He always seemed to go one step beyond."[11] Friedrich continued through #83 (Jan. 1971), with the late part of this run having reprint issues alternating with new stories. He returned for the even-numbered issues from #94-114 (Jan. 1972 - Nov. 1973).[6] Sgt. Fury ran concurrently with two other, short-lived Marvel World War II series, Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders (later titled Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders), which lasted 19 issues from 1968–1970; and Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen, which lasted nine issues from 1972-1973. The Howlers guest starred in #6 and #11 of the former series, and #4 of the latter. Lee explained the series's transition to reprints: "... so much fan mail came in from readers who wanted more of Sgt. Fury, but we didn't have time, I didn't have the men to draw it, I didn't have the time to write it, and we were busy with other things, so we just started re-printing the books, and strangely enough, the reprint versions of Sgt. Fury sold as well as the original ones had!"[14] The final issue, #167 (Dec. 1981) reprinted the first issue.[7] Seven annual publications appeared, the first titled Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos Special King Size Annual #1 (1965), and the remainder titled Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos King-Size Special #2-7 (1966 - Nov. 1971), with hyphen and sans "Annual". The final three contain reprints only, save for a 10-page framing sequence in #6. In annuals #1 and #3, the Howlers reunited for a special mission each in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, respectively; annual #2 found them storming the beaches at Normandy on D-Day in 1944, and annual #4 was a flashback to the Battle of the Bulge.[15] One latter-day story was published in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (July 2009), as the cover logo read; its copyright indicia read Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos One-Shot #1. The 32-page story, "Shotgun Opera", was by writer Jesse Alexander and artist John Paul Leon.[16] Characters [ edit ] In addition to Fury, the elite special unit of US Army Rangers nicknamed the Howling Commandos consisted of Fictional team history [ edit ] In issue #34 (Sept. 1966)[10] it is shown that a young Nick Fury with his friend Red Hargrove, left their childhood neighborhood to pursue their dreams of adventure, eventually settling on a daring wing-walking aviation act. Their death-defying stunts caught the attention of Lieutenant Samuel "Happy Sam" Sawyer when Fury and Hargrove were training British Commandos in low-level parachuting. Sawyer was serving with the British Commandos in 1940 and underwent training by Fury.[5] Sawyer enlisted them for a special mission in the Netherlands. Nick and Red later joined the U.S. Army, with Fury undergoing basic training under a Sergeant Bass at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Both Fury and Red were stationed at Schofield Barracks, Oahu, Hawaii when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the base on December 7, 1941, and Red was among the many killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor.[19] Sawyer, recruited select U.S. Army Rangers to his "Able" Company. Sawyer assigned Fury the command of the First Attack Squad, nicknamed the "Howling Commandos". They and the Second Attack Squad (the "Maulers", led by Sgt. "Bull" McGiveney, with Cpl. "Ricketts" Johnson),[20] and, later, Jim Morita's Nisei squad[21] were stationed in a military base in England to fight specialized missions, primarily, but not exclusively, in the European theatre of World War II, eventually going as far afield as the Pacific theatre, Africa, and, once each, in the Middle East and on the Russian front. Fury fell in love with an English nurse, Pamela Hawley, who died in a bombing raid of London before he could propose to her.[5][22] The Howling Commandos' earliest (but not first-published) assignment occurred in the autumn of 1942. They were to recover British rocket scientist Dr. MacMillan from a German military base in occupied Norway. Their success brought the attention of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who incorporated the unit into the British Army, and given the title of "Commandos". The Howlers fought against the likes of German General Erwin Rommel and inter-squad bigotry, often in the same story. Antagonists included Baron Strucker, Captain America's nemeses Baron Zemo and the Red Skull (Adolf Hitler's protégé), and other Axis villains. The Howlers encountered Office of Strategic Services agent Reed Richards (later Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four) in issue #3 (Sept. 1963), and fought alongside Captain America and Bucky in #13 (Dec. 1964). They reunited for missions in the Korean War, where Fury received a field promotion to lieutenant, and the Vietnam War, each in a summer-annual special, as well as at a present-day, fictional reunion gala in issue #100 (July 1972). In other media [ edit ] Television [ edit ] Animation [ edit ] Live action [ edit ] Film [ edit ] Video Game [ edit ] In the Captain America: Super Soldier video game, Howling Commando members Bucky, Falsworth, Dugan and Falsworth are NPCs. Collected editions [ edit ] Marvel Masterworks: Sgt. Fury Vol. 1 ( Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1-13) Vol. 1 ( #1-13) Marvel Masterworks: Sgt. Fury Vol. 2 ( Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #14-23, Annual #1) Vol. 2 ( #14-23, #1) Marvel Masterworks: Sgt. Fury Vol. 3 ( Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #24-32, Annual #2) Vol. 3 ( #24-32, #2) Marvel Masterworks: Sgt. Fury Vol. 4 ( Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #33-43) Vol. 4 ( #33-43) Essential Sgt. Fury Vol. 1 (Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1-23, Annual #1)
The good folks from the American Friends Service Committee posted today on their blog, Cell-Out AZ, documents they obtained that show the "state of Arizona deliberately circumvented and ultimately repealed a state law requiring private for-profit prison corporations to demonstrate cost savings in their bids on new prison contracts. These records reveal that the state was aware that existing private prison contracts were not saving the state money—despite state laws requiring private prison contractors to deliver such savings." You can read the documents and the entire post here. A brilliant snippet from the AFSC post: Governor Brewer’s campaign manager and top advisor, Chuck Coughlin. Coughlin runs Highground Consulting, which lobbies for CCA in Arizona. Paul Senseman, a CCA lobbyist, is also the “spokesman” for Brewer’s PAC John Kavanagh, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has accepted numerous campaign contributions from lobbyists associated with the for-profit prison industry. Kavanagh was instrumental in the passage of the 2012 CJBRA. House Speaker Andy Tobin has raked in thousands of dollars from lobbyists and others associated with three of the for-profit prison corporations currently bidding on contracts in Arizona. This includes donations from the CEO’s of both GEO Group and GEO Care, as well as the MTC PAC. Suspecting that the “invisible hand of the market” was behind the effort to remove the cost and quality assessment requirements, muckraking journalist extraordinaire, Beau Hodai, sent a public records request to Kavanagh’s office seeking documents related to the drafting and passage of the budget bill. [Mr. Hodai, you may recall, was responsible for first revealing the links between CCA and the Governor’s office in relationship to SB1070 for In These Times.] In response, Hodai received a two-paragraph letter, denying access to records relating to the bill and invoking “legislative privilege.” Because, after all, what good will it do to remove all accountability from the for-profit prison industry if snooping reporters can uncover records relating to influence working behind the scenes through public records law? The timing of the repeal coincides with plans to award a new contract for 1,000 more for-profit prison beds. The contract for these beds is expected to be signed by September 1, 2012. Funding for the beds was approved in the same budget that removed the accountability provisions. Many have questioned the wisdom of building prisons we don’t need (the state’s prison population is decreasing) and can’t afford. After all, the state is barely beginning to come back from a crippling budget deficit. And where was Arizona supposed to find the funds for a massive prison expansion, anyway? Soon after the budget passed, the answer was revealed: The legislature planned to pay for new prison beds by sweeping $50 million from a housing trust containing money from a settlement the federal government negotiated with big banks in the wake of the mortgage crisis. The monetary aid was intended for states to assist people impacted by foreclosures. So, essentially the legislature planned to pay for overpriced prisons we don’t need by stealing the money from victims of the housing crisis. Classy. On May 24, 2012, The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest and the William E Morris Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit on behalf of distressed homeowners to prevent the transfer. So, to recap, private prisons are a waste of money and everybody knows it. But because the corporations pour millions into lobbying and campaign donations, Arizona politicians have adjusted state law to “look the other way”— thus paving the way for future contracts unencumbered by pesky accountability measures and ensuring that the state budget will continue to bleed millions into corrections at the expense of education, health care and social services.
Nature's Sleep Gel Memory-Foam Sofa Mattress A plush layer of high-density foam lines the bottom of this mattress, which protects sleepers from being poked by the frame of the sofa bed below. A top layer of gel memory foam contours to users' bodies to keep them comfortable, whether they sleep on their back, on their side, or in a handstand. The mattress is just slim enough to fold easily inside the sofa bed during the day. Sofa-bed mattress 4.5 inches thick; keeps sleepers cozy Multiple layers for support, comfort, and durability Top layer of gel memory foam contours to the body High-density foam bottom layer covers sofa-bed frames Folds easily inside sofa when not in use Cover: 60% polyester, 40% viscose Removable outer cover may be spot-, dry-, or steam-cleaned (do not machine wash or dry cover or mattress) Nature's Sleep FAQ page Dimensions: Full: 72" (L) x 52" (W) x 4.5" (H) Queen: 72" (L) x 58" (W) x 4.5" (H) Wide queen: 72" (L) x 60" (W) x 4.5" (H) How to get your goods: by purchasing this Groupon and providing your name and shipping address, your order is complete! For questions pertaining to this deal, please visit the deal Q&A on this page. For post-purchase inquiries, please contact Groupon customer service. View the Groupon Goods FAQ for additional information.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong is poised for a showdown with China when the Chinese parliament meets later on Sunday, with the largely rubber-stamp body likely to snuff out hopes for a democratic breakthrough in the regional financial hub at elections due in 2017. A Chinese national flag is seen in front of the chimney of a heat supply plant in Beijing July 16, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon Political reform has been a constant source of friction between Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and the mainland since the former British colony was handed back to Communist Party rulers in 1997. On the surface, the National People’s Congress will likely make a landmark ruling by endorsing the framework for the first direct vote by a Chinese city to choose its leader. Beijing is already hailing it as a milestone in democratic reform. However, Beijing will tightly curb nominations for the 2017 leadership poll to filter out any candidates it deems unacceptable, said a person with knowledge of the electoral framework. Only two or three “patriotic” candidates will be allowed on the ballot and open nominations will be ruled out. Instead, candidates must be backed by at least 50 percent of a 1,200-person “nominating committee”. That committee is meant to be “broadly representative” of Hong Kong interests, but will be similar in composition to an existing election committee stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists. It’s a formula that will rile Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists, who plan to blockade the city’s Central business district in the coming weeks. On Saturday, Hong Kong’s public broadcaster RTHK said 5,000 police will be deployed for the “Occupy Central” protest, heightening the sense of unease. The city’s 28,000-strong police force is already on high alert. An initial protest planned for Sunday evening will be the start of what activists and lawmakers have described as a “full-scale, wave after wave” civil disobedience campaign. Hong Kong’s democracy advocates remain deeply distrustful of Beijing despite assurances from the mainland. “Even if we accept a fake democracy model, there’s no assurance at all, that for the next vote, there’ll be real democracy,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy lawmaker. Wang Zhenmin, a prominent legal scholar and Chinese government adviser who was flown to Hong Kong by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to talk about the 2017 election, said it is time for “practical and realistic steps”. “Less perfect universal suffrage is better than no universal suffrage. Leave some room for future growth,” he said. WON’T BACK DOWN The proposed electoral framework will still have to be endorsed by two-thirds of Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature. With pro-democracy lawmakers holding more than a third of the seats, the proposal will likely be shelved. “We will not accept such a model of fake democracy, and we will vote it down,” Lee said. Senior Chinese officials have repeatedly warned activists against their “illegal” protests and say they won’t back down. Some key members of the pro-democracy movement, including media magnate Jimmy Lai, have also come under pressure in the run-up to the Chinese parliamentary decision. On Friday, China also repeated its warning against foreign interference, saying it will not tolerate the use of Hong Kong “as a bridgehead to subvert and infiltrate the mainland”. The Occupy Central movement has not yet won broad support among Hong Kong’s middle class, who are concerned about antagonizing China and disruptions to business, but strong measures by China or the Hong Kong police could change that. “If police use tear gas or water cannon ... this (use of) disproportionate force on protesters will generate more support for our civil disobedience campaign,” said Benny Tai, a law professor and one of Occupy Central’s main leaders. Tai and several other Occupy Central organizers, fearful of arrest, declined to be specific about the timing of their plans but said they also won’t back down. Other action could include a boycott of university classes, wildcat street protests, strikes and a mass refusal to pay taxes. Major companies and banks in Central, including HSBC, have held drills and have contingency plans for a possible shutdown in coming weeks or months. Ratings agencies and banks have also noted the possibility of China tensions affecting the city’s longer term economic outlook. Also on Sunday, Fernando Chui is widely expected to be “re-elected” as chief executive of nearby Macau, the tiny but wealthy former Portuguese-run enclave, after the pro-China government stifled an unofficial referendum on democracy. Chui is the only candidate in the election by a select panel of 400 largely pro-China loyalists. Macau, a casino hub, was returned to China in 1999.
Bruce Cain, who, as director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has watched Mr. Stark for many years, said the congressman was a hothead. “He’s not a person who is seen as having good judgment,” Mr. Cain said. “They regard him as a loose cannon and not very reliable.” A perusal of Mr. Stark’s greatest hits shows why. He once accused a female colleague in Congress of getting her information on health policy during “pillow talk” with her husband, a physician. He described an African-American cabinet secretary as being close to “a disgrace to his profession and his race.” Photo When President George W. Bush vetoed a bill to expand health insurance for children, Mr. Stark exploded. “You don’t have money to fund the war or children,” said Mr. Stark, an early opponent of the Iraq war. “But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” Those comments nearly got Mr. Stark censured in the House. More recently he was found to have applied for a state tax exemption for his Maryland home even though he was still a legal resident of California. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. But 3,000 miles away, where his district is stacked with liberals who share his outrage, his words barely caused a ripple. A lack of respect for decorum when addressing Republicans is hardly the kind of thing to get a man in trouble in Hayward or Fremont. And if Mr. Stark’s outbursts have made him less effective than he might otherwise be as a representative, his constituents have a hard time ever hearing about it. His district is in something of a news media vacuum, across the bay from San Francisco and squeezed between San Jose and Oakland. No major media outlet covers him closely.. Mr. Stark’s district is a mix of blue-collar workers and employees of the growing number of high-tech companies around Fremont. It is so heavily Democratic that Mr. Stark has never attracted a serious Republican opponent. For a Democrat to oppose him in a primary would take tremendous financial resources and, probably, greater sins by Mr. Stark than he has committed to date. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s a safe Democratic seat, and no one has ever come along who has wanted to push him out,” said Tony Quinn, who follows California’s Congressional politics for the Target Book, which he helps edit. “Nobody has ever challenged him.” The biggest risk to Mr. Stark, 78, might be the Bay Area’s demographics and his own colleagues in Congress. The region may lose a Congressional district when the lines are redrawn after the 2010 census, because its population is waning compared to the rest of the state’s. If that happens, one Democrat is going to have to go. And after last week’s slap from his party’s leadership, Mr. Stark had better watch his back.
Mitchell Pearce has been recalled to the NSW VB Blues side while David Klemmer will make his Holden State of Origin debut in next Wednesday's series opener at ANZ Stadium. Get tickets to Holden State of Origin Game One Queensland XXXX Maroons named Roosters halfback Pearce has been named at five-eighth and will partner incumbent Trent Hodkinson in the halves, while Bulldogs prop David Klemmer will come off the bench. Josh Dugan will replace Jarryd Hayne at fullback, while Josh Jackson will start at lock in place of injured captain Paul Gallen. "It's exciting times for NSW. It's a great group of guys who fully deserve their spots," NSW coach Laurie Daley said. "They have to uphold the values of what it means to play for NSW both on and off the field." Daley said Pearce was an important member of the Blues family. "He's a guy who I've got a lot of time for and I know he can add a lot of value to this team." In the absence of the injured Paul Gallen, Robbie Farah will skipper the Blues in Game 1 of the series on May 27. "It's always a great honour to captain your state," Farah said. "We've got a good core senior group around us and I'm sure we'll prepare well for next Wednesday." New South Wales VB Blues team for Holden State of Origin Game One 1. Josh Dugan (St George Illawarra Dragons) 2. Daniel Tupou (Sydney Roosters) 3. Josh Morris (Canterbury Bulldogs) 4. Michael Jennings (Sydney Roosters) 5. William Hopoate (Parramatta Eels) 6. Mitchell Pearce (Sydney Roosters) 7. Trent Hodkinson (Canterbury Bulldogs) 8. Aaron Woods (Wests Tigers) 9. Robbie Farah (Wests Tigers – captain) 10. James Tamou (North Queensland Cowboys) 11. Beau Scott (Newcastle Knights) 12. Ryan Hoffman (NZ Warriors) 13. Josh Jackson (Canterbury Bulldogs) Interchange: 14. Trent Merrin (St George Illawarra Dragons) 15. Boyd Cordner (Sydney Roosters) 16. David Klemmer (Canterbury Bulldogs) 17. Andrew Fifita (Cronulla Sharks)
By By Kesavan Unnikrishnan Jan 31, 2016 in Environment Scientists in South Africa have recreated the quagga, a relative of the zebra that once roamed South African plains in herds of thousands, but went extinct by 1883 due to excessive hunting. A team of scientists based at the University of Cape Town led by Professor Eric Harley have recreated an animal that is genetically similar to quagga with the help of DNA and selective breeding. The scientists have so far bred six Rau quaggas — animals with attributes of the original quagga. They are named " Rau quaggas" after Reinhold Rau, one of the project's founders 30 years ago. The Quagga Project website By bringing selected individuals together, and so concentrating the Quagga genes, a population should emerge that will be closer to the original Quagga population than any other extant Plains Zebra. For re-introduction into areas formerly inhabited by Quaggas, such animals would undoubtedly be more desirable than any others. However, there are many Quaggas, which resembled zebras in the front and horses in the back, once roamed South Africa in large herds, specifically in the Karoo and southern Free State. European settlers did not want quaggas sharing grass with their livestock and the animals were ruthlessly hunted. When the last quagga in Amsterdam Zoo died on 12 August 1883, it was not immediately realized that the species had gone extinct. South Africa's government even passed a legislation to protect the animal in 1886 not knowing that the last quagga in the world died nearly three years before.A team of scientists based at the University of Cape Town led by Professor Eric Harley have recreated an animal that is genetically similar to quagga with the help of DNA and selective breeding. The scientists have so far bred six Rau quaggas — animals with attributes of the original quagga. They are named " Rau quaggas" after Reinhold Rau, one of the project's founders 30 years ago.The Quagga Project website says However, there are many critics of the Quagga project, with some saying the project is a stunt and all the researchers have done is to create a different species of zebra with zero regard for the behavioral and ecological adaptations of the original quagga, which, as of now, are mostly unknown. More about quagga, Zebra, Extinction quagga Zebra Extinction
SYDNEY, Australia — President Trump’s combative phone call with Australia’s prime minister and his rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal have left many Australians wondering whether it is time to pay less attention to the United States and engage more with China. Stephen FitzGerald, Australia’s first ambassador to China, delivered a speech on Thursday that will only amplify that debate, arguing that the world had reached the end of an era defined by European and American leadership. He called on Australia to make China its primary focus of diplomacy and economic policy and to “implant in our education the study of China and Chinese.” “We are living in a Chinese world,” he said. “But we don’t have a relationship to match it.” Dr. FitzGerald’s comments — delivered as part of a popular lecture series known as the Gough Whitlam Oration, named after the prime minister who sent Dr. FitzGerald to China in 1973 — reflect a view that has been gaining momentum in Australia for years, but especially so since Mr. Trump’s victory. After decades of Australia sidling up to the United States, sharing intelligence and fighting alongside the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Australians in the foreign policy and economic establishment are now questioning what some have come to describe as a complacent favoritism for American priorities in the region.
7 Modern BBSes Worth Calling Today Net neutrality isn't a problem on these vintage online systems PCMag reviews products independently , but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use 8 Way back in the 1980s and early 1990s, before the internet reigned supreme, many PC owners dialed up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes), which were other PCs running special software that allowed users to connect and share messages, play games, or download files. While few BBSes remain today compared to their height in the early-mid 1990s, one can still connect to a BBS using the internet. Thanks to the antique text-only protocol called telnet, you can use a terminal emulator program to start BBSing just like the glory days. Why would you want to do that, you ask? Well, among my group of Twitter friends—all vintage computer enthusiasts—we do it as a hobby for nostalgia's sake. We do it to share messages with a tight-knit group of people and have fun. If you're more libertarian-minded, you might even pursue BBSes as a way to gather on the 'Net outside the purview of the usual data-scarfing giants like Google or Facebook. And about that whole net neutrality issue—well, I'm not going to even pretend that BBSes can replace the modern web, but they feel like safe place for people who want out of the usual toxic online rat race. So how do you do connect? I recommend using a telnet terminal program that supports IBM PC color ANSI graphics. SyncTERM is a very nice BBS terminal program for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X that supports traditional IBM PC fonts and ANSI graphics. And if you're a vintage computer fan like me and have an old machine sitting around, you can even use a miraculous device called WiFi232, developed by Paul Rickards, to connect. WiFi232 simulates a modem but actually creates a telnet connection, allowing you to BBS on the internet with vintage machines like the Apple II or old IBM PCs. With all that in mind, I thought it would be fun to create a list of neat modern BBSes for you to check out. I asked a handful of BBSing friends for recommendations, which are compiled below. To find even more, check out the Telnet BBS Guide. Have fun in BBS land!
AP The IRS Inspector General has released a lengthy report on the service's targeting of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status. President Barack Obama and his administration have faced heat since the IRS originally apologized for the debacle on Friday. But at least politically, the good news for Obama is that the Inspector General has determined that all inappropriate targeting was not "influenced by any individual outside of the IRS." Moreover, Obama's name is not mentioned once in the report's 48 pages. According to the report, public perception of Tea Party groups was also not a factor in how they were treated by the IRS. Here's the key passage from the IG: We asked the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division; the Director, EO; and Determinations Unit personnel if the criteria were influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. All of these officials stated that the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. Instead, the determinations Unit developed and implemented inappropriate criteria in part due to insufficient oversight provided by management. Specifically, only first-line management approved references to the Tea Party in the BOLO ["be on the lookout"] listing criteria before it was implemented. As a result, inappropriate criteria remained in place for more than 18 months. Determinations Unit employees also did not consider the public perception of using politically sensitive criteria when identifying these cases.
Prepare now for surging food costs and empty grocery store shelves... How To Survive The Coming Food Shortage! Why almost everyone is wrong about how to survive any food shortage or crisis! From: Consumer Reporter Thursday, 8:37 a.m. ******************* If you have ever wanted to produce your own cheaper than dirt survival food...this is going to be the most important message you will ever read. Here is why: There now exists a new video course that reveals how to safely prepare and store foods in the event of a dangerous worldwide crisis. It's designed for anyone who is frustrated with surging grocery prices and the very real possibility of empty shelves during the latter half of the Obama administration. The success of the new videos has already encouraged hundreds of people who never thought they could preserve their own food to take action and finally start storing their emergency supply. Massive Food Shortage Creates Worldwide Chaos! Skyrocketing food prices are hitting pocketbooks worldwide. The world's poorest countries which have the highest population bases are most at-risk as core food supplies become scarce. Worldwide grain supplies are dropping precipitously. Exporting nations are now themselves running out of grain. Could This Happen Again? As a result, hunger is spreading worldwide. Already, several African nations have had citizens killed in food riots. There is talk that the government in Bangladesh could be toppled over soaring food prices. Food-related tensions and unrest are breaking out in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America. Armed soldiers now stand watch over rice distribution in more and more countries. Just a few miles to the South, food riots have broken out in Mexico and Haiti. Estimates are that 33 nations are at risk of conflict and social unrest because of food shortages. That's a lot of suffering. And, Americans who know their history understand all too well, suffering tends to bring out the ugly side in human nature. Right now, Americans just change channels when they see others starving on television. But it seems America could be next. The dollar is quickly losing value and the U.S. is more dependent on foreign food production than ever. Already grocery bills are rising faster than incomes. Wheat, corn, soybeans, bread, apples, beef, chicken, eggs, and milk: prices for these items are shooting up by double-digit percentages. Coupled with energy prices pushing skyward, more and more Americans are feeling the pinch which now includes food shortages. Many experts think we could be approaching the greatest disaster in the country's history. Many Americans are starting to prepare. How To Prepare For An Unthinkable Crisis! There is still time for you to prepare, but you have to start learning how to make your own survival foods as soon as humanly possible. The best way to do it is to get the inside scoop on how to do it right. Fortunately, there is a way to get twenty years worth of food storage secrets crammed into two DVD's. This new food storage system is called Food Storage Secrets. You do not need a lot of expensive equipment to store foods for a crisis using the methods taught here. Even better, Food Storage Secrets pays for itself quickly as you begin to put away garden produce or even meats that you buy on sale. For most folks it's simply the biggest bargain of their lives. You can finally become self-sufficient and any extra money saved in food expense goes right back to your pocket. Frankly, at the end of the day, Food Storage Secrets actually makes you money! What's more, the videos take you by the hand, step by step, through the entire process of "putting away" almost any food you can think of. It's very much like having a food storage professional right there with you every step of the way. Makes Creating Survival Foods Easy! It's extremely easy to start storing food using this method and you can immediately understand why actual users of the "Food Storage Secrets" system are saying things like this: Traci W. Evanston, IN For the last four years my New Year's Resolution was to learn how to do my own canning in the event of an emergency. Finally after watching your videos, I'm putting up every kind of food you can think of. Traci W. / Evanston, IN Stephen M. Savanna, IL "I bought a book at Barnes and Noble on canning. It had a lot of pictures but I have to admit it wasn't until I watched one of your videos that it all seemed to come together. We're even using your system to can wild game. Nothing gets wasted anymore. We're canning everything in sight! You're on my Christmas list for life!" Stephen M. / Savanna, IL Jennifer A. Stanhope, NJ "Growing up in a house where my mother canned food every year I thought I knew everything there was to know. I was astounded by the things I didn't know about and learned. I'm really happy with the videos." Jennifer A. / Stanhope, NJ Many experts believe the global food shortage will become the greatest crisis in American history. Can These Videos Keep You Alive In A Crisis? It depends. They won't help you if you just buy them and put them on a shelf somewhere. It's best if you really want to get off the grid, prepare for a crisis and learn to be self-sufficient. Food shortages are now likely in the U.S. in the near future. One single strategic terrorist bombing can literally empty grocery store shelves for months at a time. Will you be ready when the unthinkable happens? Sadly, most Americans will not be. Most will demand that the government "do something." But the truth is... The Government Won't Help You In This Crisis! Face it, when a crisis arises, you and your family will be on your own. And if you want to be able to help others, you will need to have a basement full of stored foods. Just imagine the peace of mind you'll enjoy knowing your family will have enough to eat no matter what happens! Lastly, you will finally say good-bye to being a super market slave. Every time you go to your basement or pantry and grab a jar of your private food supply, you are truly self-sufficient and finally off the establishment food grid. Easy To Watch And Easy To Learn! You will never again worry about starving because of a terrorist attack, food shortage or even inflationary food prices. In fact, the goal of these videos is to teach families like yours the easiest, quickest and absolutely best self-sufficiency... food storage... canning secrets available. No special skills required. No need to spend a lot of money to get started. Call it very cheap starvation insurance. Crash Course On Getting Off The Food Grid! Here are some of the things you'll learn: How to make your canned foods taste five times better than grocery store food. What you absolutely must learn about vegetable acidity. Advice many "old time" canners give that is dead wrong. Where to buy your produce for canning. How to produce potent "canned medicines". 3 mistakes to avoid when boiling and cooking produce. How to be up and running overnight. How to store your canning equipment. How to "short cut" your learning by half. The #1 most popular food for canning - and how to can it! Why a teaspoon of vinegar changes how your vegetables look, feel and even taste. How to use a single teaspoon of vinegar to make sure your food looks fresher than store bought. The right kind of salt to use when canning. (It's NOT table salt!) An easy way to determine which foods can be canned and which ones can't. The one meat that can't be canned in a quart jar. How to process and prepare almost any type of food. How to create your own basement or pantry supermarket. Some crucial (and unusual) things you must do to protect against food poisoning. (It's easy to do once you know the secret). (It's easy to do once you know the secret). Absolutely everything you need to know is on these food storage teaching DVDs. Someone once said that these videos are the ultimate "all you need to know" private lessons on preparedness. And if there ever was a time to learn all you can on preparing for hard times, it's now. Here's more of what you will learn about food storage: Best ways to keep food fresh for a year at a time. Secrets to keeping your kitchen safe. When to say "no" to canning fruits and vegetables. Utensil shortcuts that can save a fortune. How to produce the absolute best tasting survival food. 4 important steps to ensure your food is ready to be processed. The absolute best method to can tomatoes. One deadly mistake beginning canners make and how to avoid it. Canning times and pressure tables for 39 different meats. Canning times and pressure tables for 21 different fruits. Altitude charts you can't start without. The only safe way to can meats. How to get more vitamins, minerals and trace elements into your canned food. Best of all, you'll learn how to turn each jar of prepared food into canned "Super Food" by adding a very powerful ingredient that can change the way you think about storing food forever. You'll now produce your own "foods that heal" any time you want, any where you want. It's easy once you know the secrets. For a Limited Time Only, Get a FREE 63-Page Companion Canning Guide Ebook! Naturally, we want you to have every last advantage when it comes to canning and storing your own foods. That's why for a limited time we'll also give you a FREE 63-page Companion Canning Guide ebook! This robust guide is packed with all kinds of valuable information, including quick-reference charts, full-color diagrams, and even tasty recipes. You'll discover the exact tools you'll need to start canning; step-by-step instructions for canning different types of foods; processing times for fruits, vegetables, and meats; how to keep jars from breaking; common canning problems and solutions; how to "put up" food at high altitudes; and much, much more! This supplemental guide is the perfect companion for your Food Storage Secrets DVDs. And it's yours FREE when you order today! It's Easy To Order! For the absolute fastest way to order: Just click on the Order Now button below. Or just write "Food Storage Secrets" on a piece of paper and send it to the address below with your check or money order for $39.95 (Illinois residents add $2.50 tax) plus $5.00 for immediate shipping and handling to: Powerful Living Food Storage Secrets Dept. C77 2200 IL Rte. 84 P.O. Box 361 Thomson, IL 61285 You may also call to order with a credit card: 815-259-4552 Dept. C77 Here's To Surviving the Coming Food Shortage, Mike Walters P.S. One more thing. It's important. If you order within the next 11 days we will also include... free of charge... "Food Dehydrating Secrets" DVD that explains in great detail how to use dehydration techniques to make "emergency food" out of just about any food you can think of. Beef, poultry and fish all become survival foods in just a few hours. P.P.S.PLEASE ORDER RIGHT AWAY! We sold out our entire stock the previous time this offer was made. We now have an additional 57 sets in stock. As the food crisis worsens, a set of these DVD's could be worth more than gold. Order Online RIGHT NOW! Yes Mike! I want to receive the 2-DVD set, "Food Storage Secrets"and since I am ordering today, please include the "Food Dehydrating Secrets" DVD, available to me absolutely free RIGHT NOW if I act fast! Order Online By Safe Secure Server Read Articles About The Coming Food Shortage Contact Customer Service Powerful Living Food Storage Secrets Dept. C77 2200 IL Rte 84 P.O. Box 361 Thomson, IL 61285 Home
The Farm 51 has announced the Chernobyl VR Project, a game with a documentary feel featuring 3D scanned locations in Chernobyl and Pripyat. The virtual-reality adventure promises to “put players in the role of a documentary crew” sent to uncover secrets surrounding the tragic event. It features photorealistic recreations of numerous areas in Chernobyl and Pripyat, such as the Restricted Zone where players will seek clues pertaining to past events and help “a survivor find his family memories.” “The Farm 51 was granted special scientific access to areas unavailable to tourists, spending dozens of hours in the area and using its Reality 51 technology to scan locations in detail,” said the studio. “Minor details, including paint peeling off the walls, scuffs on an abandoned amusement-park ride, and rust on an old cash register were captured with exceptional accuracy utilizing photogrammetry and stereoscopic, 360-degree camera technology.” The Chernobyl VR Project will support multiple VR headsets such as Oculus, PlayStation VR, Vive and Samsung Gear VR. You can get a brief look at the project through the video above along with the team behind it along with the process.
User Info: XxLastBull3txX XxLastBull3txX 6 years ago #1 http://www.gameonpromo.com/ How to get it (without having to buy the drinks): 1. Text "game" to 87963. 2. You should receive a message back saying "Reply w/your email to agree to Official Rules, confirm you're age 18 or over & see if you're a winner! Reply HELP GEARS for help. Msg&Data rates may apply." 3. Reply back with your email address. 4. You should receive another message back stating if you won instantly or not. (Clarification: If you get "Sorry you didn't win instantly this time.", you will still receive a code. 5. Either way, check your email for "Gears of War Downloadable Content from Brisk!" 6. Enjoy your free code. 7. Also, you can only text "game" (or "dance") five times per day. This is only if you want to try to win other prizes. NOTE -When you redeem the code through your dashboard (or xbox.com), it will say you have a Baird downloadable character. This is not true. Go to System > HDD > Games > Gears of War Judgment and it will say Jungle Tai MP Character. -If you want an extra code, you must use a different cell phone and email to receive a code Anyone kind enough to give me one of the codes? It's not available in my country. Lipton/Brisk are giving away 500,000 codes for Jungle Tai during their promotion. (Ends 4/30/13 at 11:59:59 p.m. ET; US only )http://www.gameonpromo.com/How to get it (without having to buy the drinks):1. Text "game" to 87963.2. You should receive a message back saying "Reply w/your email to agree to Official Rules, confirm you're age 18 or over & see if you're a winner! Reply HELP GEARS for help. Msg&Data rates may apply."3. Reply back with your email address.4. You should receive another message back stating if you won instantly or not. (Clarification: If you get "Sorry you didn't win instantly this time.", you will still receive a code.5. Either way, check your email for "Gears of War Downloadable Content from Brisk!"6. Enjoy your free code.7. Also, you can only text "game" (or "dance") five times per day. This is only if you want to try to win other prizes.NOTE-When you redeem the code through your dashboard (or xbox.com), it will say you have a Baird downloadable character. This is not true. Go to System > HDD > Games > Gears of War Judgment and it will say Jungle Tai MP Character.-If you want an extra code, you must use a different cell phone and email to receive a codeAnyone kind enough to give me one of the codes? It's not available in my country.
A massive crime compounded by a massive cover-up 9 August 2010 The Obama adminsitration is in full propaganda mode in an effort to declare an end to the Gulf oil disaster. The way is being prepared for the oil industry in the Gulf to return to business as usual, while working people, whose livelihoods were stripped away by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will be left to fend for themselves. The administration is promoting claims that most of the oil erupting from the leak has either been contained or evaporated, with only a quarter posing a continued threat to the region. The claim, advanced in a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and promoted by the National Incident Command in the Gulf, is simply the latest in a long record of lies and falsifications. From the beginning, the policy of both BP and the Obama administration has been to cover up the true size and scope of the oil spill. It was NOAA which provided the claim in the days immediately following the April 20 blowout that only 5,000 barrels per day were spilling into the Gulf, and continued to drastically underestimate the size of the spill throughout the crisis. Like those claims, the current numbers were immediately challenged by independent scientists. Among them was Susan Shaw, the director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, who told the press, “The blanket statement that the public understood is that most of the oil has disappeared. That is not true. About 50 percent of it is still in the water.” Others, like University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, who described the findings as “ludicrous,” have said as much as 75 percent of the oil remains unaccounted for. Even if the administration’s numbers were accurate, this still means that more than 100 million gallons of oil remain in the Gulf (either on the surface or sunk to the bottom of the sea)—about ten times more than was released by the Exxon Valdez. The widespread concerns of scientists did not deter the administration from its public relations campaign. Carol Browner, the director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to assure the American people that “the vast majority of oil is gone.” The same day, Thad Allen, head of the National Incident Command, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to congratulate BP, saying they have done “very well” with operations at the wellhead. His only criticism of the oil giant was for errors in judgement regarding their public relations campaign. Under pressure from the oil industry to rescind the moratorium on offshore drilling, scheduled to end November 30, Michael Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement indicated this week that his agency was prepared to do just that, saying “I think it’s everybody’s hope that we will feel comfortable enough that the moratorium can be lifted significantly in advance of November 30.” The oil companies will return to drilling without having been compelled to make changes to their safety practices. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat—Nevada) recently withdrew a bill calling for stricter regulations on deepwater drilling and greater financial penalities for corporations responsible for spills. The campaign to minimize the impact of the spill is also designed to reinforce the adminsitration’s efforts to ensure the continued profitability of BP. The grossly inadequate $20 billion compensation fund set up by BP and the Obama administration only serves to shield the oil giant from overwhelming financial liabilities. The fund is administered by Kenneth Feinberg who was appointed by President Obama and, it has been revealed, is on the BP payroll. Feinberg’s job will entail settling only those claims against BP which he designates as “legitimate,” while working to prevent costly litigation for the company. Above all, no one will be held accountable—either in BP or the government, which facilitated the disaster by giving free rein to the company to ignore safety and environmental regulations. The Obama administration’s investigation into the cause of the Deepwater Horizon disaster stands exposed as a farce. The New Orleans hearings, co-chaired by ConocoPhillips board member William Reilly, amounted to little more than public relations events in which representatives of BP and the US Coast Guard were given the opportunity to present the company line unchallenged. These events expose the absolute dicatorship that corporations like BP exercise over American society. They expose a political system in which both the Democrats and Republicans function as direct agents of the corporate elite. Just as the financial speculators on Wall Street escaped prosecution for the criminal activities which led to the global economic crisis, the executives at BP, if the administration has its way, will escape the Deepwater Horizon disaster unscathed. With unbridled contempt for the population, the administration—along with the entire political establishement and mass media—believes that it can simply declare “mission accomplished” and move on from the worst environmental disaster in US history. But it is in for a rude shock. The blatant criminality exposed by the BP oil spill, combined with the throughly corrupt and cynical response of the government, has only added to mounting public outrage in the US, outrage that will find political expression, sooner rather than later. When it does so, it must be based on the realization that there can be no serious response to disasters like the Gulf oil spill—and no serious effort to prevent the next disaster—that does not address the problem at its source: the capitalist system. Hiram Lee Hiram Lee
My apologies for invoking one of the oldest cliches in the book, but: they say you can’t judge a book by its cover. We all know, however, that it’s a lot easier to do so, which is why so much money goes into the design of cover art. While we’ve already provided our lists of the best books of the year, let’s celebrate the best cover designs, as well. After all, these covers played a major part in what we chose to pick up this year. Winger, Andrew Smith One glimpse at the poor roughed-up young man on Smith’s novel tells you everything you need to know about Winger: it’s going to be an unapologetic take on teenage life. Luckily for us, Winger was also pretty damn funny and inventive. Tampa, Alissa Nutting You can’t tell from a .JPG, but Nutting’s controversial, provocative novel about pedophelia boasted a fuzzy dust jacket, putting the reader ill at ease long before they cracked the first page. The Astronaut Wives Club, Lily Koppel Nostalgia sells, and we saw a lot of memory-baiting book covers this year, but Koppel’s look at the women who watched from home as their husbands ventured into space gives insight into the families affected by the missions, and the cover highlights the women’s essential roles in space exploration. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt Was The Goldfinch the most Instagrammed book cover of the year? Possibly. That illustrated tear looks like the real thing when you put it through the Valencia filter. The Dinner, Herman Koch The title and the cover of this book say it all: something terrible will be served on the table in Herman Koch’s international bestseller. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Perish, David Rakoff Rakoff’s final book (and first novel) was written entirely in verse, and its cover is equally beautiful, heartbreaking, and poetic. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman Waldman’s debut novel features a lovely cover that incites the mentality of classic comedies of manners in the vein of Jane Austen, while being still incredibly modern and, dare I say it, very Brooklyn. In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, Matt Bell A blunt, colorful design will always grab a reader’s eye, and Bell’s novel and its mythical, mystical themes perfectly compliment its hauntingly stark cover art. Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, Rich Cohen There was much more to the 1985 Chicago Bears than “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” and Cohen’s book about the Monsters of the Midway has a glorious cover that only teases to some of those titanic accomplishments. Little Known Facts, Christine Sneed Sneed’s debut novel is a multi-layered story featuring, at its center, a George Clooney-type A-list actor. The cover offers a gorgeous shot of the Hollywood Hills, offering a familiar look of Los Angeles and the familiar sense that all that glitters isn’t gold. September Girls, Bennett Madison Madison’s coming-of-age novel is a modern fairy tale, and you’d definitely get that sense from the lovely, dreamy cover art. Night Terrors: Sex, Puberty, and Other Alarming Things, Ashley Cardiff Cardiff’s hilarious collection of personal essay received a charmingly brash cover art. It’s as clever and off-putting as most of the stories between the covers. Autobiography, Morrissey The US version may have gone for the standard glossy celebrity memoir cover, but the UK version caused quite a stir when Moz’s autobiography was published as a Penguin Classic. But aesthetically, could it be any other way? The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer A simple, eye-catching design is sometimes enough to make a great book stand out on a shelf. The Stud Book, Monica Drake I can’t imagine what this one could be about, can you?
BALTIMORE, Md. -- Marcus Thornton scored 17 points, Omar Prewitt added 16, and top-seeded William & Mary beat eighth-seeded Elon 72-59 on Saturday to advance to Sunday's semifinals in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament. The Tribe (19-11) will face No. 5 Hofstra (20-12), which beat or No. 4 James Madison (19-12) 74-57 on Saturday. Daniel Dixon scored 12 for the Tribe, which made 11 of 29 from distance. Connor Burchfield hit consecutive 3s for an 11-6 Tribe lead amid a 15-4 run and the Tribe never trailed. Thornton, named the conference's Player of the Year, scored eight points in the half and William & Mary led 36-26 at halftime. Tanner Samson made back-to-back 3-pointers and Elon closed within 40-35, but the Tribe regained a double-digit lead on a 3 by Prewitt and led 61-47 with 5:36 left. Elijah Bryant scored 15 for the Phoenix (15-18), Austin Hamilton had 13 with four assists, and Samson added 11.
According to the New York Times, the residents of a tiny isolated farming village of Sodeto in Spain were thinking of passing up Spain’s huge Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo — the fat one — which is something of a national obsession. But they bought tickets out of loyalty to the homemakers’ association here, which makes a small percentage on the sales. The only resident who did not win was Costis Mitsotakis, a Greek filmmaker, who moved to the village for love of a woman. As cretalive.gr and the New York Times report, that are not aware of the fact that the name ‘Mitsotakis’ has a negative connotation in Greece, some of Sodeto’s residents, mostly farmers and unemployed construction workers, won millions. The least fortunate came away with a minimum of $130,000 — and the giddy feeling that life, in its mysterious ways, was giving them another chance. “Costis Mitsotakis said it would have been nice to win. But he has benefited nonetheless. He had been trying to sell some land without much success. The day after the lottery a neighbor called to say he would buy it. The next day another neighbor called. But Mr. Mitsotakis refused to get into a bidding war”, the New York Times concludes.
Not sure what to think about the Yomiuri Giants choosing Yoshinobu Takahashi as the team’s new manager. He is just 40 and did not even get a chance to retire as an active player before being selected to lead the club as its field boss in 2016. The situation reminds me of the time 40 years ago when superstar third baseman Shigeo Nagashima slid right into the manager’s chair immediately after ending his playing career at 38 following the 1974 season. If you go by the league standings in 1975, Nagashima’s first year as skipper was a disaster; the Giants finished dead last in the Central League. There was criticism Nagashima was not a good leader that first season because he had no experience coaching, he had always been on the field as a player and thus could not “study” the strategic moves by his manager Tetsuharu Kawakami, and he may have been “soft” with his players who had been his teammates just prior to his taking over the helm. Takahashi’s circumstances are a little different. He’s two years older than Nagashima was when he retired, was listed as a player-coach in 2015 and, although he started some games this past season, Takahashi was used mostly as a pinch hitter, so he got to spend a lot of time on the bench observing his predecessor, Tatsunori Hara, and the decisions Hara made. Nagashima made his decision to retire from playing while the 1974 season was still going on. “I realized my limitations,” he had said at the time. When that year ended, and the Giants failed to make the Japan Series for the first time in 10 years, the timing was right for the aging Kawakami to give up the manager’s job, and there was the super-popular Nagashima supposedly ready to take over. Following the last game that October, Nagashima gave an unforgettable sayonara speech, the video of which has become an iconic piece of Japanese baseball history. That followed what everyone knew would be Nagashima’s final at-bat as an active player. Takahashi has not yet had his sayonara game; as late as mid-October, he most likely did not expect to become the Giants manager. Had Yomiuri defeated the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in the Central League Climax Series final stage and gone on to play in the Japan Series, Hara might have stayed on as field boss, and Takahashi would likely have been a player-coach again in 2016. When the Giants’ season ended after losing to Yakult on Oct. 17, Hara stepped down, and speculation arose about who would be the next Kyojin manager. Maybe former Giants and New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui? Or ex-Yomiuri pitcher Suguru Egawa? Perhaps Hara’s head coach Masahiro Kawai? Or Takahashi? In the end, it was “The Wolf,” Takahashi, who got the nod. So, what kind of a manager will he be? Can he revamp the Giants offense, which sputtered in 2015, and maintain the excellent pitching staff that carried the club to a second-place CL finish this past season? Will he be able to overcome the rookie skipper problems faced by Nagashima in 1975? It should be mentioned Nagashima came back to lead the team to pennant victories in 1976 and 1977 and was a much better manager in his second tenure between 1992 and 2001, winning three pennants and two Japan Series. That’s when he was older, more mature and experienced and more of a father figure disciplinarian than an easy-going buddy to the players. As for Takahashi’s sayonara game, if he so chooses, he can make his final plate appearance, albeit an unofficial one, at a home exhibition game in March, and that would most likely draw a capacity crowd to Tokyo Dome for a preseason contest. Kawai, by the way, has been designated as the Giants san-gun (third team) manager, while this season’s varsity pitching coach, Masaki Saito, becomes the ni-gun (second team) skipper. The multi-functional John Turney, an interpreter for Giants foreign players the past two seasons, returns to his former job as a training coach. Meanwhile, new Yokohama DeNA BayStars manager Alex Ramirez will be supported by an all-Japanese coaching staff. Beginning with Bobby Valentine in 1995, the four Americans who most recently managed Japanese teams had at least one foreign bench, batting or pitching coach to support them. Valentine had Tom Robson and Lenny Sakata and later Frank Ramppen as coaches during his two terms as manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines. Trey Hillman had help from Gary Denbo, Dave Owen and Mike Brown while managing the Nippon Ham Fighters. Marty Brown relied on assistance from Jeff Livesey with the Hiroshima Carp, and Terry Collins was joined by John Debus with the Orix Buffaloes. However, with 15 years’ experience living and playing in Japan, Rami-chan has achieved a degree of fluency in the Japanese language, so should have no problems running the BayStars without an English — or Spanish-speaking coach to share the decision-making. Tom O’Malley will be back to continue his work as a batting coach with the Hanshin Tigers under new manager Tomoaki Kanemoto. Another former Japan pro baseball player has become a major league manager as well. Andy Green, the new San Diego Padres pilot, was an infielder who played under Hillman with Hokkaido Nippon Ham in 2007. Contact Wayne Graczyk at: Wayne@JapanBall.com
President Trump earlier this week issued a revised President Trump earlier this week issued a revised version of his infamous executive order to temporarily ban the issuance of new green cards and visas for nationals from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. The new order dropped Iraq, which eviscerated Trump’s argument that the list of banned countries is based on an existing list in U.S. law. The order also cuts the number of refugee admissions by about 37 percent compared to the post-1975 average number of annual refugees admitted—from 79,329 per year to just 50,000. However, there were 110,000 refugees scheduled to be admitted in 2017 so the actual decrease in refugees this year is a whopping 55 percent under this executive order. The Trump administration thinks this new order addresses many of the legal challenges made against the first version. Introduction When the first version of this order was signed at the end of January, Cato’s When the first version of this order was signed at the end of January, Cato’s research showed that the actual domestic terrorism risk from nationals of those six countries was minor and that the order stands on shaky legal ground. For this iteration of the executive order, I intend to show that the permanent decrease in refugees costs native-born Americans more than we’d save from fewer terrorism deaths. This cost-benefit analysis does not look at the cost of temporarily reducing green cards and other visas. Results If Trump’s refugee reduction eliminated all deaths from refugee terrorists then it will cost native-born Americans about $159.4 million per life saved, which is about 10.6 times as great as the $15,000,000 per statistical life estimates if the average number of refugee admissions had stayed at 79,329 going forward (Figure 1). In other words, such a policy would reduce your annual chance of dying a terrorist attack committed by a refugee on U.S. soil from one in 3.64 billion per year to zero at a cost of $159.4 million per life saved. However, President Trump’s executive order is not decreasing refugee flows by 37 percent in 2017. The Obama administration slotted 110,000 refugee admissions for 2017, so this year’s reduction is actually 55 percent. If I assume that the new 110,000 annual admission figures would have been the new normal in the absence of Trump’s executive order, the economic costs increase to $326 million per life saved for a 100 percent reduction in your chance of dying in a refugee terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The economic costs incurred are about 21.7 times as great as the cost for a single death by refugee terrorist in this scenario (Figure 1). To break even, Trump’s decrease in the refugee program would have to save one life per year if the average number of 79,329 refugee admissions had continued or about two lives per year if President Obama’s boosted refugee numbers are considered the new baseline. Regardless, there would have to be an unrealistically large and sustained increase in deaths committed by refugee terrorists in attacks on U.S. soil to justify this reduction in numbers. By expending so many resources to save each statistical life, this executive order will actually kill more people. Those expended resources could have been more effectively used to save more lives in other areas than by further reducing an already minor threat. Methods The above cost-benefit analysis is similar to that which Greg Ip at The Wall Street Journal but with some minor changes. The above cost-benefit analysis is similar to that which Greg Ip atThe Wall Street Journal published but with some minor changes. I estimate the economic benefits of refugees to American natives. This figure is known as the immigration surplus which ignores all of the economic benefits to the immigrants themselves and instead focuses entirely on the economic benefit to native-born Americans. George Borjas estimates the immigration surplus at I estimate the economic benefits of refugees to American natives. This figure is known as the immigration surplus which ignores all of the economic benefits to the immigrants themselves and instead focuses entirely on the economic benefit to native-born Americans. George Borjas estimates the immigration surplus at 0.24 percent of America’s $17.194 trillion GDP. Over 43 million immigrants are currently living in the United States. From 1975 to the end of 2015, about 3.3 million entered as refugees. I assume that 1/3 of those refugees are deceased. From this, I am able to make a rough estimate of the annual immigration surplus per refugee that I further decrease by 50 percent because refugees tend to be poor (although this doesn’t matter as much for the immigration surplus). The result is that each refugee increases the wages of native-born Americans by $476.61. I then multiply that lost immigration surplus per year by the number of fewer refugees admitted. I then take the chance of dying annually in a refugee terrorist attack and divide it by the current U.S. population to estimate how frequently a death would occur if the chance remains constant which estimates a death by a refugee terrorist once ever 11.4 years. Multiplying the wage loss by the number of refugees who have been locked out by the number of years it would have taken for another refugee-terrorist death yields the $159.4 million cost per life saved. Yearly economic benefit for Americans from all immigrants is $41,265,600,000 according to lowest estimates from Borjas ($17.194 trillion times 0.24 percent). Multiply that by .0503 (percent that’s refugee) to get $2,077,246,422. Divide that by the stock of immigrants currently alive who entered as refugees (2,179,170) to get $953.24 wage benefit to all Americans per year, per refugee. I then assume that they only add half that amount because they are poor so the result is $476.61 immigration surplus per refugee per year.
Gwibber 2.0, next major release of the popular desktop microblogging application for Gnome, will boast many new features, support for more services and sport a newly redesigned interface. Improved first-run set up “wizard” Support for FriendFeed and Facebook Streams API Multiline input textbox Separation of replies and messages Support for viewing individual streams Option to limit number of messages displayed in stream (i.e. Adding a “More” button) Built in search box Message sending filter based on the UI view Public timeline support for Twitter, Identi.ca and Friendfeed On the cards for future versions is a QT interface, allowing Gwibber to cross platforms from Linux to Windows and OS X! Also planned for future versions are: - TweetDeck-style multi-column UI Contact lists and message filtering Geolocation and mapping support Integrate GrabberSnap for social imaging (Uploading to Twitpic, etc) Tracking of unread messages Gwibber 2.0 is still currently in development but (if finished on time) may possibly be shipping as a default application in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Ubuntu plan to fully integrate Gwibber into Karmic Koala and have even dubbed the next release with an unofficial slogan: “Social right from the start”.
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[2607:f8b0:400d:c04::22b]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g123si10859417qhc.125.2015.10.22.14.56.06 for <john.podesta@gmail.com> (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:56:06 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of cheryl.mills@gmail.com designates 2607:f8b0:400d:c04::22b as permitted sender) client-ip=2607:f8b0:400d:c04::22b; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of cheryl.mills@gmail.com designates 2607:f8b0:400d:c04::22b as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=cheryl.mills@gmail.com; dkim=pass header.i=@gmail.com; dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=gmail.com Received: by mail-qg0-x22b.google.com with SMTP id m9so43905251qge.1 for <john.podesta@gmail.com>; Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:56:06 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=references:mime-version:in-reply-to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:message-id:cc:from:subject:date:to; bh=Diz8Usjr0OtB2RiVTkD4d7ugXJpFZ8dkTiFayLaUwq4=; b=gXuOpmubHZXNlnBi+JNU3vgCKdptn1hE5hTNu+V9ZaNoek0dkEBk7wBhAGdinQPtYd blA/Ch8IlSpqbbKtNB9Esokib4Ouey7FKcICPdVoEK1aHAt6Gcolstyos3DGz5BtT7ZH nzmsqCdVRn7ubrhax91M0J/OhX0+OfaId1hGzvAZSeW9m5PQx9D3BrxPiEBjsHFgjmM1 rmJkiZzQLZc/MWMuGswK+2n0uJ3aR+Fh/R+1QWaJrXEaSrz4Ci4H/NolT/x8SBbD7kxN Yr18FsX6fSV4WFAnuXcBVzFx29XMWiWgr7Fp0rpfbruYBuRc0wiURwEDnleU/wDYj9bD 41/w== X-Received: by 10.140.235.210 with SMTP id g201mr22804298qhc.89.1445550966588; Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:56:06 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <cheryl.mills@gmail.com> Received: from [172.22.56.180] ([143.231.249.139]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id h198sm6136437qhc.47.2015.10.22.14.56.05 (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:56:06 -0700 (PDT) References: <CAAEwKfyaC8zGSmeO+5QB=yAYjWboY6fWsUwbXVG05bQjKeev=w@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (1.0) In-Reply-To: <CAAEwKfyaC8zGSmeO+5QB=yAYjWboY6fWsUwbXVG05bQjKeev=w@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-406FCCCC-4CD1-4914-9162-F829E31C9C43 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <C06B9A15-73C6-464C-B482-C4D6A2CCFE33@gmail.com> CC: Jake Sullivan <jsullivan@hillaryclinton.com>, Jennifer Palmieri <jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com>, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com>, Philippe Reines <pir@hrcoffice.com>, Brian Fallon <bfallon@hillaryclinton.com>, Phil Schiliro <pschiliro@sb-atalaya.com>, Huma Abedin <ha16@hillaryclinton.com>, "Kendall, David" <DKendall@wc.com> X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (11D201) From: Cheryl Mills <cheryl.mills@gmail.com> Subject: Re: Post-game statement Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:56:04 -0400 To: Dan Schwerin <dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com> --Apple-Mail-406FCCCC-4CD1-4914-9162-F829E31C9C43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I don't want her to go partisanship.=20 Dems did it - let her stay above. =20 I would take out everything in brackets=20 cdm > On Oct 22, 2015, at 5:48 PM, Dan Schwerin <dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com> w= rote: >=20 > What do folks think about this as a post-game statement she could make to p= ress? >=20 > =E2=80=A2 I came here today to honor the service of four Americans ki= lled in the line of duty and to contribute in every way I could to learning t= he lessons of Benghazi and better protecting our people in the field. That=E2= =80=99s why I answered every question the Committee asked for X hours. =20 >=20 > =E2=80=A2 As I said at the outset, I hoped we would put aside partisa= nship and reach for statesmanship. After all, our country has a long histor= y of bipartisan cooperation on national security. And to sustain our leader= ship around the world, we need responsible leadership here at home.=20 >=20 > =E2=80=A2 [Unfortunately, that=E2=80=99s not what we saw today. I=E2= =80=99m disappointed that the Committee wasted so much time on questions wit= h little or no relevance to the attacks in Benghazi or improvements we shoul= d make going forward. Coming on the heels of seven previous Congressional i= nvestigations and a non-partisan Accountability Review Board, it=E2=80=99s h= ard to see how today=E2=80=99s hearing added anything to our understanding o= f these important issues.=20 >=20 > =E2=80=A2 As this eighth investigation now comes to a close, I think w= e can all agree we=E2=80=99ve seen enough political theater.] =20 > I hope Congress will step up and work with the administration to provide t= he resources and reforms we need to better protect our diplomats and ensure t= he United States can continue to be represented in dangerous places. =20 >=20 > =E2=80=A2 I am going to continue making the case for smart American l= eadership in the world and I will always be an advocate for the brave men an= d women who serve our country.=20 --Apple-Mail-406FCCCC-4CD1-4914-9162-F829E31C9C43 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <html><head><meta http-equiv=3D"content-type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3D= utf-8"></head><body dir=3D"auto"><div>I don't want her to go partisanship.&n= bsp;</div><div><br></div><div>Dems did it - let her stay above. </div>= <div><br></div><div>I would take out everything in brackets <br><br>cdm= </div><div><br>On Oct 22, 2015, at 5:48 PM, Dan Schwerin <<a href=3D"mail= to:dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com">dschwerin@hillaryclinton.com</a>> wrote:= <br><br></div><blockquote type=3D"cite"><div><div dir=3D"ltr">What do folks t= hink about this as a post-game statement she could make to press?<div><br></= div><div>=E2=80=A2<span class=3D"" style=3D"white-space:pre"> </span>I ca= me here today to honor the service of four Americans killed in the line of d= uty and to contribute in every way I could to learning the lessons of Bengha= zi and better protecting our people in the field. That=E2=80=99s why I= answered every question the Committee asked for X hours. </div>= <div><br></div><div>=E2=80=A2<span class=3D"" style=3D"white-space:pre">= </span>As I said at the outset, I hoped we would put aside partisanship and= reach for statesmanship. After all, our country has a long history of= bipartisan cooperation on national security. And to sustain our leade= rship around the world, we need responsible leadership here at home. </= div><div><br></div><div>=E2=80=A2<span class=3D"" style=3D"white-space:pre">= [</span><u>Unfortunately, that=E2=80=99s not what we saw today.&nbs= p; I=E2=80=99m disappointed that the Committee wasted so much time on questi= ons with little or no relevance to the attacks in Benghazi or improvements w= e should make going forward. Coming on the heels of seven previous Con= gressional investigations and a non-partisan Accountability Review Board, it= =E2=80=99s hard to see how today=E2=80=99s hearing added anything to our und= erstanding of these important issues. </u></div><div><u><br></u></div><= div><u>=E2=80=A2<span class=3D"" style=3D"white-space:pre"> </span>As t= his eighth investigation now comes to a close, I think we can all agree we=E2= =80=99ve seen enough political theater.] </u></div></div></div></block= quote><div><br></div><br><blockquote type=3D"cite"><div><div dir=3D"ltr"><di= v>I hope Congress will step up and work with the administration to provide t= he resources and reforms we need to better protect our diplomats and ensure t= he United States can continue to be represented in dangerous places. &= nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>=E2=80=A2<span class=3D"" style=3D"white-spac= e:pre"> </span>I am going to continue making the case for smart American le= adership in the world and I will always be an advocate for the brave men and= women who serve our country. <br></div></div> </div></blockquote></body></html>= --Apple-Mail-406FCCCC-4CD1-4914-9162-F829E31C9C43--
Get the biggest politics stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Vince Cable has warned that London is "draining the life" out of the rest of the country. The Business Secretary's comments came as he continues with his opposition to a third runway at Heathrow airport. A commission of airport provision put forward this week that a new or extended runway at Heathrow and a second at Gatwick were the three preferred options to deal with growing demand for flights. But it ruled out pre-2030 expansion at Stansted in Essex or Birmingham. Mr Cable said more use should be made of regional airports. "One of the big problems we have at the moment - which I don't think the report sufficiently addresses - is that London is becoming a kind of giant suction machine, draining the life out of the rest of the country, and I think more balance in that respect would be helpful," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. The senior Liberal Democrat stood by his determination that expansion of the country's biggest airport "is not going to happen" despite the findings from the commission led by Sir Howard Davies. The flightpath of Heathrow crosses Mr Cable's Twickenham constituency. He said he believed a third runway - which was ruled out for this parliament by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition - was "very unlikely". But that did not represent any watering down of his previous stance that it was "not going to happen", he insisted. "I still hold that view," he said. "I was making a firm declaration of my own view and my own position and indeed my own party's position. That hasn't changed. "What this report is doing - and it is actually a very well-argued report as you would expect from Howard Davies - is trying to reconcile two different things: one is to try to ensure that from the economic interests of the country we have more connections to the big emerging markets; on the other hand we have hundreds of thousands of people in London living under the flightpath with very serious issues of noise, and all the parties have made clear we can't make that problem worse." Asked if it was a matter over which he would resign from the Government, he said: "No. There are a lot of issues I feel very strongly about and argue ferociously about in the coalition but I don't rush around resigning every month."
Concerned about the role hackers and false news might have played in the United States election, the Dutch government announced on Wednesday that all ballots in next month’s elections would be counted by hand. The decision to forgo electronic counting is a stark response to warnings that outside actors, including Russia, might try to tamper with pivotal elections this year in the Netherlands, France and Germany — three major democracies in which establishment parties are facing pressure from right-wing populism of the kind that fueled Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald J. Trump’s triumph in the United States election. “The cabinet cannot exclude the possibility that state actors might gain advantage from influencing political decision-making and public opinion in the Netherlands and might use means to try and achieve such influence,” Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk said in a statement. “We’re talking about actors that both have the intention and ability to do this.” Parliament recently discussed the finding by intelligence agencies that the Russian government tried covertly to help Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump’s allegations — made without evidence — that millions of undocumented immigrants had cast ballots, costing him the popular vote.
Malthouse was elected to the London Assembly in 2008, having previously served Westminster Council from 1998 to 2006. Upon his election to the Assembly, Boris Johnson appointed Malthouse Deputy Mayor, responsible for policing. Edmiston made his money in the motor trade, by importing cars through his IM Group. He is a Christian Evangelist and a philanthropist, funding charities and educational establishments as well as making donations to the Conservative Party. 48 (-22) STEPHEN GILBERT Director, Target Seats Campaign Gilbert’s role is to identify and help win the key marginal seats for the Conservatives at the upcoming election. Credit for the Tories’ success at several recent by-elections is also due, in no small measure, to Gilbert at CCHQ. 47 (NEW) DAVID ROWLAND Conservative Party donor Another key donor and supporter brought in by the appeal of Cameron and the possibility of finally winning, Rowland is a property magnate who has announced his intention to continue making significant donations to the party. 46 (+1) LORD HARRIS OF PECKHAM Conservative Party donor After Cameron endorsed his City Academies, Philip Harris become a major funder of David Cameron’s leadership campaign, giving £90,000. He promised to raise £100 million for the party if Cameron became leader but Party treasurers are (still) wondering when they will see it. He made his money from his carpets empire and is said to be worth nearly £1 billion. 45 (+3) JOHN REDWOOD Conservative MP for Wokingham John Redwood has had a renaissance. His Economic Competitiveness Report was a model of its kind and Redwood’s blog (johnredwoodsdiary.com) has attracted a large and influential readership. There are many who think Cameron could do worse than make Redwood Chief Secretary to the Treasury if he is serious about cutting public spending. 44 (+11) JAMES O’SHAUGHNESSY Director of Policy and Research, Conservative Party Appointed to succeed George Bridges at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, O’Shaughnessy was formerly a leading light at Policy Exchange, the right’s most influential think tank. He has transformed what remains of the Conservative Research Department and is highly thought of among the Shadow Cabinet. 43 (+6) JILL KIRBY Director, Centre for Policy Studies Jill Kirby has added a new dash to the Centre for Policy Studies. A specialist in family policy, she has laid on a series of seminars attended by several leading Shadow Cabinet members and David Cameron himself. The CPS is now back where it should be – at the forefront of Right-of-centre policy formation. 42 (-) MICHAEL HINTZE Conservative Party donor Australian-born Michael Hintze is a highly successful hedge fund manager and philanthropist. His influence relates to the causes which he funds. He was the first to out himself as someone who had loaned the Conservative Party money during the last election. 41 (+46) NIGEL FARAGE MEP Leader, United Kingdom Independence Party The decision to run against John Bercow at the next election has all the hallmarks of Farage’s publicity expertise. He has taken Ukip from nowhere to topping Labour in the European polls and if there is any kind of breakthrough at the general election, it will be down to him. He may be about to step down as leader, but he will retain an ability to grab the headlines. 40 (+17) NICHOLAS BOLES Conservative candidate for Grantham Nicholas Boles made his name as director of the influential think tank, Policy Exchange. He wanted to run for Mayor of London, but had to withdraw due to a cancer scare, from which he has now fully recovered. Selected to fight the safe Tory seat of Grantham in 2007, he is now a key adviser to Francis Maude on how to implement a Tory manifesto in government. A sure-fire member of a Cameron cabinet within three years. 39 (NEW) MATTHEW HANCOCK, ROHAN SILVA & RUPERT HARRISON Advisers to George Osborne Osborne’s election team are crucial in the next eight months and may play a key role in government. Matthew Hancock is looking for a seat, and will go far, but few can deny that these three young bucks have already played a major role in restoring the Conservatives' economic credentials. 38 (-14) NICK HERBERT Shadow secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs Despite some criticism of the donations given by pro-hunting groups, Herbert has been quietly effective in the DEFRA brief. His rise to the top has stalled rather than ended. 37 (-24) SIR SIMON MILTON Deputy Mayor of London Sir Simon Milton was the long serving leader of Westminster City Council and then moved on to the national stage by taking on the chairmanship of the Local Government Association. He resigned that position in July 2008 to become Boris Johnson’s principal Deputy Mayor. Boris may be the front man but Sir Simon is running the show behind the scenes. 36 (-14) CHARLES MOORE Chairman, Policy Exchange and biographer of Lady Thatcher The former Telegraph editor (and current columnist) is chairman of Policy Exchange. Currently writing Margaret Thatcher’s official biography, his writings demonstrate an independence of thought that stops him from being pigeon-holed as a Cameronista or a Cameron critic. 35 (-7) THOMAS STRATHCLYDE Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords The ebullient Lord Strathclyde is a hugely popular figure and has steadied the uncertain ship left behind by Viscount Cranborne (now Marquess of Salisbury) when he struck a deal with Tony Blair over Lords reform. Strathclyde has managed to keep their Lordships on an even keel when the rest of the Party has entered into its periodic bouts of internecine warfare and now faces a Labour Party set on banishing the hereditaries from the Lords altogether. 34 (+51) GUIDO FAWKES Blogger: www.order-order.com The notorious Guido Fawkes gossip blog is written by the libertarian-inclined Paul Staines, who was at the heart of the Damian McBride/Derek Draper affair. If the stories keep coming, Fawkes will keep rising. 33 (+4) GREG CLARK Shadow secretary of state for climate change We wrote last year that "it is only a matter of time before he joins the Shadow Cabinet"; in January this came to pass and he was handed one of the toughest briefs. Squaring up to Ed Miliband on climate change has not been easy but Clark has kept the Tories’ green credentials intact. 32 (+12) ANDREW LANSLEY Shadow secretary of state for health Thought effective and a match for Health Secretary Andy Burnham, Lansley can still say or write things that make some question his judgment, for example that unemployment allows people more time with their families. Despite this lingering doubt, he continues to impress his leader and is heading back to the top 30. 31 (+7) MATTHEW ELLIOTT Director, The TaxPayers’ Alliance The central debate in British politics is now about tax and spend. Elliott’s pressure group is therefore perfectly positioned to be at the heart of the battleground and he is making the most of the opportunity. The TPA’s profile rises inexorably. 30 (+1) DAVID DAVIS Former shadow home secretary Davis made waves in 2008 when he announced his resignation as an MP over the issue of 42-day detention for suspected terrorists. Despite losing two leadership elections, Davis is a strong voice in the party and retains the ability to create headlines. He has made telling interventions over Trident, public spending and Afghanistan in recent months. But will he get a seat in a Cameron cabinet? 29 (-4) DOMINIC GRIEVE Shadow justice secretary Grieve’s move sideways move from home secretary sees him slip back a little. The justice brief matters and after Brown’s conference speech it might actually be more important in the run-up to the election than the general home brief. Could be one of the stars of a Cameron government. 28 (-17) ANDREW FELDMAN Chief executive of the Conservative Party Caught up on the margins of the Osborne/Deripaska affair, Feldman has a dual role as a fundraiser and running the party headquarters. He was treasurer to David Cameron’s leadership campaign and is a close friend. 27 (+27) DAMIAN GREEN Shadow minister for immigration When the CPS decided there would be no charges against Green in the case of the leaked documents, he got his life back and the Conservatives saw one of their most experienced politicians restored. Entirely vindicated by a Commons committee, he is destined for a major role in government. 26 (-12) CHRIS GRAYLING Shadow home secretary Having led the attacks on Labour for sleaze, Grayling did not fare well during the expenses scandal. Though promoted to shadow home secretary, his own claims for a flat he rarely used because his constituency was only 17 miles away were typical of the soft end of the expenses allegations. A period of quiet has ensued but he will be back. He is still the Tories’ best attack dog. 25 (+8) JEREMY HUNT Shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport Hunt continues to impress and to build a reputation. He is an effective speaker and though he has been given second division briefs to date, he looks set for a big role in the government. Perhaps needs to develop a harder political edge, but he is seen as a potential successor to Cameron. 24 (+53) THERESA MAY Shadow secretary of state for work and pensions One of the great survivors of modern politics, Theresa May is enjoying a political renaissance and proving some of her critics wrong. Her tenure so far at Work and Pensions has been far more successful and radical than most anticipated, and she has recaptured her TV star quality. She is the best known female face (with the best known feet) on the Tory front bench, which insulates against those who don’t "get" her. 23 (-5) PATRICK McLOUGHLIN Conservative Party Chief Whip It is often said that nice guys don’t become chief whip, but Patrick McLoughlin is the exception who proves the rule. Having spent many years as deputy chief whip, he knows what the top job demands and he has become a powerful and respected figure in the parliamentary party. There are few people in politics fitted to their jobs like a hand in a glove, but McLoughlin is one of them. 22 (-6) FRANCIS MAUDE Shadow minister for the Cabinet Office There were those who thought that when he was removed from the party chairmanship, Francis Maude’s political career was drawing to an unremarkable close. Far from it. He has relished his new job as "enforcer", a role in which he is tasked with ensuring that his colleagues are ready for government. Much of his work is behind the scenes, chivvying and progress-chasing, but if the Conservatives are to avoid the mistakes of Tony Blair’s first term, Maude’s job is one of the most vital in the shadow cabinet. 21 (+2) IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Former leader of the Conservative Party IDS has slowly resurrected his reputation since his fall from the leadership and has become the party’s conscience on social justice. His Social Justice Commission policy report was by far the most comprehensive of the six commissions launched by David Cameron when he became leader. His Centre for Social Justice has become a leader in its field. His conference speeches in the last two years have cemented affection for him among party volunteers, who still feel a little guilty about what happened to him. Will he be Secretary of State for Social Justice? 20 (+1) TIM MONTGOMERIE Editor, ConservativeHome.com ConservativeHome styles itself as the home of the Tory grassroots. Others view it as the home of a particular brand of Christian Right-wing fundamentalism. It started life during the Tory leadership election and hasn’t looked back. Tim Montgomerie can pick up the phone to anyone in the party and they will take the call. Montgomerie’s high ranking on this list is testament to the growing influence of the internet in politics. 19 (-). OLIVER LETWIN Head of policy, Conservative Party Oliver Letwin is more of an academic than a politician. He has a brain the size of David Willetts’s, but so far a deft political touch has eluded him. He is currently charged with writing the next Conservative manifesto and is certainly one of David Cameron’s inner circle, but he has been diminished somewhat by the reaction to several of the policy commissions that have proposed offbeat policies with no chance whatsoever of being adopted. 18 (NEW) LORD MANDELSON First Secretary of State and multifarious other titles Mandelson did not say he would serve in a Conservative government, but he did say he would serve his country. While Cameron is unlikely to offer him a department, the election will not be the end of Mandelson. His influence on British politics – and the Right – has been immense and will continue. 17 (+28) KENNETH CLARKE Shadow secretary of state for business When Mandelson came back a big gun was needed to neutralise him – enter Kenneth Clarke. Having run big departments of State and succccessfully restored the public finances as Chancellor, he can expect a significant job in the new government and he seems to be enjoying politics again. 16 (-1) LIAM FOX Shadow secretary of state for defence Fox emerged from the 2005 leadership campaign with his reputation enhanced, but didn’t feel that the job he was offered by David Cameron reflected his new stature. Since then he has come to terms with political realities and emerged the stronger for it. Some doubt whether defence is really the ideal job for him, but his previous doubts about the Cameron project have been overcome and he has become one of the party’s strongest media performers. 15 (+21) ERIC PICKLES Chairman of the Conservative Party The rise of Chairman Pickles continues apace. He is one of politics’ great survivors and is hugely popular with party activists. He has overseen two famous by-election victories in Crewe and Norwich North and is tasked with putting the whole party into an election-winning mode. The question now is this: which job does Cameron give him after the election? 14 (+82) PHILIP HAMMOND Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Hammond has shone in his current job, after a relatively anonymous period at Work and Pensions. His business background has helped him become a key part of George Osborne’s Treasury team and he has become an adept media performer. His capacity to find savings in public spending could well determine the fate of Cameron’s whole government. 13 (-1) MARGARET THATCHER Former Prime Minister Though carrying out fewer engagements each year, Lady Thatcher remains the touchstone of the Conservative Party. If Cameron campaigns as Blair, there is still a strong possibility that he will govern with the free-market and small-state instincts of Lady T. 12 (-3) MICHAEL SPENCER Conservative Party treasurer The Managing Director of ICAP and owner of the spreadbetting company City Index, Michael Spencer funded David Cameron’s leadership campaign and even provided him with a helicopter. He weathered a difficult year, admitting breaking Stock Exchange rules, but his company came through and the Conservative war chest sits secure. 11 (+6) SAMANTHA CAMERON Wife of the Leader of the Conservative Party With Sarah Brown doing the conference thing, the spotlight on Samantha is even stronger than last year. Her dignity and pose have been important elements in filling out Cameron’s image and that influence will grow as the intensity of the scrutiny increases even more over the next few months. 10 (+76) DANIEL HANNAN Conservative MEP, columnist and blogger Fiercely Eurosceptic, Hannan has established a powerful brand for himself, not just through his actions in the European Parliament but through his columns and, more latterly, his impressive Telegraph blog. His YouTube attack on Gordon Brown, ideas on constitutional reform and controversial comments on the NHS have ensured that he is the darling of the Tory Right. 9 (+1) EDWARD LLEWELLYN Chief of Staff to David Cameron As the election approaches, the backroom becomes ever more important. The presidential nature of elections means that the leader’s positions and style matter greatly. Llewellyn controls access, drives the secretariat and keeps the ship on course. Whether this influence will translate into government is not clear and how long his ambition will be met by working one step away from the limelight also remains to be seen. 8 (-) MICHAEL GOVE Shadow secretary of state for children, schools & families Having weathered a difficult expenses scandal with verbal dexterity and confidence, Gove presented his ambitious schools policy, which has put Labour on the back foot. He is a central part of the machine and though Cameron might well produce a Cabinet which leaves out some of the young blood, Gove will be there at the centre and looks set to be an effective Cabinet minister. 7 (-) WILLIAM HAGUE Shadow foreign secretary Hague has pursued a responsible and calm path over a complex year in foreign affairs. Though loyal, he was said not to be overjoyed about the moves to the Right in the European Parliament. He has more than matched David Miliband and, in so far as foreign affairs will influence the election result (they won't), Hague will deliver. 6 (-) STEVE HILTON Director of strategy, Conservative Party Though questions were raised about his strategy earlier in the year, Hilton survives and remains highly influential. Now back from a sojourn in California, he continues to control the party message and drive the Cameron agenda of a radical decentralisation of power. 5 (-3) BORIS JOHNSON Mayor of London The Mayor’s policy U-turns and choice of staff have left him battered over the year but he is still very much in the game. His PR stunts and occasion faux pas keep him in the headlines but he has also surprised many with his executive ability and he seems to be growing into the job. 4 (-) LORD ASHCROFT Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Ashcroft has moved strongly into the blogsphere, buying up political sites, as well as continuing to run the Conservative campaign machine with efficiency and resources. His influence and his refusal to reveal his tax status make many Conservatives uneasy, but he remains a key figure whose role after the election will be to keep the discipline in the party machine focused; his money should help keep the Conservative Party concentrated on the challenge of retaining power. 3 (+2) ANDY COULSON Director of communications, Conservative Party Cameron’s loyalty to Coulson during the allegations about bugging by the News of the World while Coulson was editor reveal just how important to the project he is. The media are now all lined up behind the Tories, with the Murdoch papers falling into place and the messages being delivered. In the next eight months, Coulson’s job will be to keep the party on message and in line – the evidence so far is that he is every bit as good at his job as Alastair Campbell in his prime. 2 (+1) GEORGE OSBORNE Shadow chancellor of the xxchequer If the plans for a joint administrative hub come off, Osborne will be a very powerful number two – but there is always a great difference between theory and practice. Whether or not the structure resembles the flow charts, Osborne will be directing political strategy. All he has to do now is deliver the majority. 1(-) DAVID CAMERON Leader of the Conservative Party The election is now Cameron’s to lose but the discipline and judgment he has shown this year suggest he will not throw the chance away. He has been ruthless when necessary, which shows that he will be able to reshuffle his pack in power, and by keeping his policy cards close to his chest, he will have more options. He commands much of the Conservative Party and now he must ready himself for the much bigger challenge of commanding the state machine. Once again, the Leader of the Opposition has topped the list of influential Right-wingers. Iain Dale and Brian Brivati explain why.
8-4 Play: 6/9/2017: NEW DONK EXPRESS Jun. 9th 2017 It’s E3 time again! Join us as we walk through all the major conferences, make some terrible predictions, miss out on numerous big announcements that happened after we recorded (Bubsy? Really?!), and more! #E3HYPETRAIN Episode Notes: Time – Topic Discussed: 03:58 – EA 09:50 – Microsoft 20:16 – Bethesda 29:27 – PC Gaming Show 32:50 – Ubisoft 37:50 – Sony 47:28 – Nintendo 48:00 – Arms 1:00:50 – Nintendo (Pt 2) 1:21:40 – Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon 1:27:20 – Switch Headset 1:30:59 – News: Seaman, PS4 Sales, Backwards Compatibility, Nintendo Online 1:42:33 – Persona 5 1:51:11 – Closing Comments 1:52:02 – Bonus Secret of Mana Collection talk And now…a list of music used in our previous episode! 8-4 Play 5/26/2017: INGLORIOUS DASTARDS Intro: ‎Takeru Kanazaki – Fire Emblem Echoes Theme Break 1: Yuka Tsujiyoko – Together We Ride (Fire Emblem) Break 2: Takeru Kanazaki – Undiscovered Horizons (Fire Emblem Echoes) Ending: KoikinGO – The Magikarp Song More Options Less Options
Do you support Truthout’s reporting and analysis? Click here to help us continue doing this work in 2013! This is a moment of moral clarity. Right now there are only two sides in the Social Security debate: the side that says it’s acceptable to cut benefits — in a way that raises taxes for all income except the highest — and the side that says it isn’t. It’s time to ask our leaders — and ourselves — a simple question: Which side are you on? Nancy Pelosi says she can convince most Congressional Democrats to “stick with the President” as he pursues his gratuitous and callous plan to cut Social Security benefits as part of a deficit deal — even though Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. Excuse me: Stick with the President? What about sticking with our seniors and our veterans? What about sticking with our disabled fellow Americans? What What about sticking with the more than 4,000 children on Social Security who lost a parent in the Iraq War? If you want to “stick with” Americans on Social Security, it’s time to call everybody who represents you in Washington — your Representative, your Senator, your President — and tell them that they’ll lose your support if they do this deal. It’s time for an end to the Orwellian doublespeak. Cutting benefits won’t “strengthen” Social Security, as Nancy Pelosi claims. Cuts of 6.5 percent for a 75-year-old and 9.2 percent for a 95-year-old aren’t so small that “folks won’t even notice ‘em,” as President Obama claimed. They’re not a “technical” adjustment, as his press secretary argued, nor do “most economists believe … this about getting a proper measure of inflation.” The smart economists know that even today’s cost of living formula isn’t enough. It undercounts the things older and disabled people use the most, like health care and public transportation. Some other people know the formula’s inadequate, too: Seniors. They live with the costs every day. So let’s stop all the double-talk and get down to the real question at hand: Which side are you on? It’s time to put an end to weasel words and waffling language, too. You know the kind I mean: “We won’t slash benefits.” “No major cuts.” The Huffington Post reports that Democrats voiced their objections to the President’s chained CPI offer. But when asked, they “did not rule out voting for a deal” which included it. That’s not good enough. It’s not good enough to say the “chained CPI” is “is a deal breaker, or close to a deal breaker.” It’s not good enough to say ”I very much don’t like it” but “I’d vote on a whole package.” Or that “My strong preference is that it not be included.” Or that it’s “likely going to be a tough vote for a lot of us.” That’s not good enough. Mike Lux wrote an informative piece explaining why so many Democrats are likely to fall in line anyway unless we pressure them. You can probably guess the reasons: Access. Influence. Not alienating the top guy. I’m not dismissing their concerns. I get it. They’re in a tough position. Know who’s really in a tough position? Elderly widows trying to get by on $850 a month. If Obama’s deal goes through that figure will fall to around $770 a month by the time they’re 95. Know who else is in a tough position? Kids who lost a Mom or Dad in Iraq. Disabled Americans. And the millions of struggling families who’ll see their taxes go up as the “chained CPI” bounces them into higher tax brackets. It’s “going to be a tough vote”? Tough. You should’ve thought of that before you decided to run for office, because tough comes with the territory. And please don’t tell those of us who oppose this deal that we’re too “extreme” or too “left.” Three-quarters of all Republicans and Tea Party members agree with us, so who’s “extreme”? Don’t tell us we’re close-minded, either: Some of us know the numbers better than you do, but you won’t talk to us. You’d rather give credibility to the stealth corporate lobbyists at Fix the Debt and the Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget. We’re very open-minded. We’re open to lifting the payroll tax cap. We’re open to fighting unemployment so that more people can pay into Social Security’s trust fund. We’re open to increasing its benefits as a stimulus measure – and because it’s the right thing to do. We’re open to a public exchange of ideas on the subject. Don’t try to cut benefits behind closed doors and then tell us to be “open-minded.” It’s true that waffling Democrats have offered some fine rhetoric. They’ve always got good rhetoric. In fact, they’ve got rhetoric to burn. But somebody else always winds up feeling the heat. The President even offered up a new rhetorical flourish — the “superlative CPI” — he says will help those who are most deeply in need. But he offered no details, and the devil’s in the details. A lot of seniors on Social Security are already impoverished, according to the research. And that study was don before the economy was battered in 2008 — by many of the same Wall Street CEOs pushing this deal. It’s a pipe dream. Besides, why fund an antipoverty program with other seniors’ and disabled people’s benefits, when the wealthy still won’t pay their fair share under your “compromise”: to avoid the “fiscal cliff”? As far as the “cliff” goes, Van Halen said it best: Go ahead and jump. And if politicians come around at election time after voting for this deal, a lot of people will tell them the same thing I just said: Jump off a cliff. Even if your only loyalty is to Team Blue — if Democratic victories are all you care about – you still need to make those calls. Democrats’ huge polling lead on Social Security helped them win the House in 2006. Then that lead fell by 21 points and Republicans won the House back — helped in large part by their “Seniors’ Bill of Rights,” a transparent con only made plausible by muddled Democratic doublespeak. It’s only been a few weeks since the party’s renewed credibility on this issue helped it achieve a major victory. Now it’s about to trade it away — again. And this time it lose that advantage forever. We need to act — now. We need to tell them: Don’t just say the right thing. Do the right thing. Put up or shut up. There are real leaders who can show them how it’s done. Rep. Keith Ellison: “I will not vote for something that includes chained CPI.” Rep. Raul Grijalva: Chained CPI is “a Beltway fig leaf that I will never support.” Rep. Charlie Rangel: “Any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits is unacceptable and I will oppose it.” That’s how it’s done. This is no time for us to waffle, either. Did you vote for Barack Obama, or for a Democratic Senator or Representative? I did. I feel a personal responsibility to do everything I can to stop them from doing this. It’s time to make those phone calls and send those emails. Because Lux is right about something else: Without mass resistance these Social Security cuts are a done deal. And we’ll have to face the fact that we didn’t do enough to stop it. Tell the President you’re against the chained CPI. Tell your Senators and your Representative to declare their unequivocal opposition to it like Grijalva and Ellison and the others did, and to vote accordingly. And ask them that simple question: Which side are you on?
David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the security services were no longer seeing ambitious plots to inflict mass casualties such as the July 7 attacks on the London Underground. But he warned that the emergence of "lone actors" plotting against relatively limited targets could be more difficult to detect and stop. "We are certainly not seeing now what we saw in the years around 2005, 2006, which are the large, ambitious, 9/11-style plots perhaps to bring down simultaneously several airliners," he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. "What we are seeing is a trend towards lone actors and we are also seeing self-organised plots. "It may be that what we are seeing is something getting a little closer to the position that still applies unfortunately to some extent in Northern Ireland, which is smaller scale, lower tech attacks on national security targets more than the general public. "As Northern Ireland shows, they can be very difficult to anticipate and to stop." He stressed however that the emerging trend did not mean that the threat from al Qaida was over. "Al Qaida has been diversifying or fragmenting - particularly in the Yemen. Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula do still have good technicians and they have people who can make bombs. So we are not out of the woods," he said. Mr Anderson, who publishes his annual report today, also defended the controversial European Court of Human Rights, insisting its ruling had not jeopardised security in the UK. He said: "If you look at what the European Court actually says in terrorism, it is good news because it has modified the more rigorous and objectionable aspects of our laws without, I think, decreasing our safety in any way."
‘Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick’ runs from July 6 until August 24 at Somerset House. Daft Punk and Jarvis Cocker are working on an exhibition that pays tribute to legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, which opens at London’s Somerset House next month. Cocker and Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, among other artists including Beth Orton and sculptor Anish Kapoor, will provide a new or existing work inspired by the 2001: A Space Odyssey director, “responding to a film, scene, character or theme from the Kubrick archives, or even the man himself.” The exhibition, ‘Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick’, is being helmed by Kubrick’s wife and artist Christiane Kubrick, who will be contributing a portrait called ‘Remembering Stanley’ to the show. Go to the Somerset House website for more information. [via CoS] Read next: Check out this cosmic Stanley Kubrick-inspired turntable
Everywhere I turn these days it seems like there is some new diet, some new program, or some new meal plan promising a perfect body… Don’t be fooled by the pretty, multicolored containers, they may be bright, but they are definitely depressing. So what if your body is telling you no thanks to that dry, rubbery chicken breast you meticulously portioned out into a blue red container (shows how much I know)? You packed it, so eat it. It’s self-induced scarcity at its worst. And the problem with scarcity: it’s unsustainable, and typically ends in a binge and more weight gained than lost. What’s the deal with 1200 calories anyways Speaking of scarcity, let’s talk about this whole 1200 calorie diet thing. Why do we women automatically assume if we want to lose weight that our calorie limit is 1200? 1200 calories is fewer than the world health organizations definition of starvation for women. 1200 calories is fewer than the number required to induce a semi-starvation state in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This study was performed on men, eating slightly over 1500 calories per day, here are some of the results (as quoted from wikipedia- emphasis is my own, because TL;DR): “Most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression. There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally). Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase. Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation. The participants reported a decline in concentration, comprehension and judgment capabilities, although the standardized tests administered showed no actual signs of diminished capacity. There were marked declines in physiological processes indicative of decreases in each subject’s basal metabolic rate (the energy required by the body in a state of rest), reflected in reduced body temperature, respiration and heart rate.” Considering the difference between male and female calorie intake, it wouldn’t be surprising to see similar results when females eat only 1200 calories per day. The history of the 1200 calorie diet I’ll tell you where that number came from. That number is the minimum number of calories required to achieve an adequate intake of all essential nutrients. Meaning you won’t likely get beriberi (vitamin B1 deficiency disease) as long as you’re eating 1200 calories a day. But it doesn’t mean you are getting adequate energy to fuel your body. It doesn’t mean your body won’t think you’re starving and ramp up the hunger and reward factor of food the minute you’re around an abundance of delectable goodies. Your body loves you. It’s attempting to keep you from starving. It’s not trying to sabotage your results. It just wants you to survive the next famine it assumes is coming. Stop fighting your body to try to maintain a diet that is destroying your body. What we really want isn’t in the container or the restrictive diet Why is this misery so alluring? Why do we see others packing their food into deplorable containers of doom and want to do the same? Because there’s a kind of person we want to be – and we see controlling our food as a sign that we are that person. We want to be organized. We want to be disciplined. We want to be that person that worked for something, and then got it. We want to be achievers, the people who don’t just talk about change, but make change. We want to be the people that take care of ourselves We want to be rockstars. (figuratively speaking of course, I’m not sure I could personally handle groupies). And we assume that controlling our food intake is a sign that we are that person. But it’s not. It’s a sign that we’ve lost our freedom. We’ve lost connection with ourselves. We’ve succumbed to society’s standards of what we should eat, instead of nourishing our bodies well. What you want isn’t found in a restrictive diet, it’s found in your daily habits, in the choices you make, in allowing yourself freedom and pleasure, while still kicking butt at life. You don’t need to rely on a diet to tell you who you are. If you’re nodding your head in agreement, here’s what I need you to do: share this post. Share it with everyone you know. We women need to stick together and build each other up, and spread the message of unconditional self love, moderation, and happiness as the keys to true fitness and nourishment… not the next fad diet. Thank you in advance! -Ashley
from vivalaanarquia, transl waronsociety: Trying to be at our best and to continue maintaining the dignity deserved by human lives that rebel against the authority that provokes all kinds of oppression over the face of the earth in which we live, we again go on the offensive in the war declared by the lovers of freedom and their enemies. We remember that in the prisons of the territory dominated by the Argentine State the prisoners who are there continue to be murdered and tortured. And in the streets the misery goes on increasing, the alienation of work and consumption obscures the consciences of the people who constantly go around tensioned by the contradictions of a system that is proclaimed consolidated by a government that speculates with the economic sciences, trying to hide their tyrannical condition at all costs. Feel, victims, because nothing you have yet suffered compares with the humiliation that all of us feel, we who are threatened with the death and radical confinement which nourishes the theory of those who have the power and will to profit off of the authoritarian methods and practices of civilized society. Our proposal is the direct attack on those responsible for the misery of this reality, now the prison guards are in the sights of all the insurgent compañerxs — or is it necessary to keep saying what points we have in common? Actions say much more than words, but it is also necessary sometimes to mention what the media constantly try to hide. The cars that we burned at 3000 Amenabar street were parked right outside one of the properties of Sergio Berni (secretary of the Ministry of Security), under 24 hour surveillance by the Federal Police. The little bomb we set off in the Border Guards’ Mutual (Argentine Borders Building), located at 2264 Bartolome Mitre street, on Thursday September 19, 2013 at 1:40 am, unfortunately only caused material damages; we would have liked to find out that a servant of law and order had at least been injured. We salute the compañerxs of the Conspiracy for Revenge and all those who, without lots of questioning, go on the offensive against authority all across the world. Long Live Anarchy! Friends of the Earth Informal Anarchist Federation * * *
When you meet a 7-foot wrestler for the first time, the last thing you expect is for him (or her) to immediately reveal their addiction to the biggest shooter on the planet. Trust two-decade veteran Big Show to break the mould. In theory I'm sitting down with him to chat WWE’s upcoming grap game – but instead he reveals a Destiny haul to make all but the best of the best jealous. “I do a lot of gaming,” he tells GR+. “The graphics in WWE 2K17 are ridiculous, I’m excited about that. And I play a lot of Destiny. I’m a huge fan. I’ve got all the weapons, seriously. Everything. Gjallarhorns, the Trials of Osiris weapons, everything. And Xavier Woods has smartened me up on these leagues where gamers are playing Street Fighter for a million dollars. They’re selling out arenas watching these kids play. They’ve turned into superheroes via their gameplay.” Show – real name Paul Wight – has had a fair bit of time for gaming this year, with his onscreen appearances phased back to make room for younger recruits in the similar man-mountain mould. But he insists that’s a change he’s happy with. “They don’t need me right now," he says. "They’re building Baron Corbin, Big Cass, Braun Strowman. Hopefully they’ll give Erick Rowan a chance because I’m a big fan of his. I’ve done everything I can do, and I have a big WrestleMania spot with Shaq coming up, so I’m sure in January we’ll kick that off and I’ll be back on TV more. For now they’re using me like they should: as an attraction.” While his match with Shaquille O’Neal at WrestleMania 33 is something to look forward to, Show does admit to one regret pertaining to the biggest show on the wrestling calendar. “I’ve always prided myself on doing what really was best for business. The only time I had an ego is I when wanted to have a reverse Undertaker record at WrestleMania, and they messed it up!” [Undertaker famously went undefeated for 21 WrestleManias before losing to Brock Lesnar in 2014.] “I was 0-8, and they let me win one! Imagine being 0-22 all-time.” In addition to playing Destiny, Show has spent his time away from the ring cultivating some impressive facial foliage – so I can’t resist asking who’d win a beard-off between him and similarly chin-fluffed ‘rasslers Daniel Bryan (below) and Erick Rowan. "Hmmm… Rowan,” he answers, emphatically. “But you know who else has got a really dense beard? Sheamus. It’s a well kept beard, too. And he gave me some product for my beard that I actually like.” Throughout the interview, Show – unlike most other WWE superstars – is more than happy to discuss wrestling from a choreographed perspective, rather than tow the ‘kayfabe’ line (i.e. pretend everything is real). To that end, continuing the grooming theme, I have to ask who the company’s worst dressed wrestler is away from the ring? “Luke Harper. He just wears whatever. And yet he is actually super intelligent, and has the most beautiful little boy you’ve ever seen. You almost look at his kid and go, "who’s your real dad?!” jokes Show. “Nah, I’m giving him a hard time, but he’s a great guy.” Also on Show’s thumbs-up list is reigning Smackdown tag champ Heath Slater. Apparently the One Man Rock Band is a hoot to wrestle against because he’s constantly talking nonsense under his breath. “Heath’s funny to work with because he starts bitching during the match when he doesn’t like something. He’ll bitch about rental car prices, travel… I wrestled him once and the entire match he just bitched about the catering: “Come on man, we can’t have chicken like that… this is a big company!” And he’ll call for a press slam, then dead-ass you so you can’t lift him up.” At the other end of the spectrum, Big Show reveals two contemporaries who are much tougher propositions – and again, not in the storyline sense. “Sheamus [above] and I used to beat the snot out of each other. When we were feuding I would sit on my bus at night and look at all these bruises all over me and be like, “this is supposed to be a work”. Good guy, though. Great attitude. Sheamus doesn’t have a ‘work’ speed, he just hits the piss out of you. So you give it back, or you get beat up." "Christian is worse,” he continues. “He’s a potato thrower. Every time he punches you, his bony ass couldn’t hit any harder. He is the stiffest guy in wrestling. Ask Jericho, ask Edge, he is the stiffest guy you’ll ever work with in the ring.” And, reveals Show, there’s one competitor who’s tough to go up against simply because of the whiff made by one element of his ring gear: “Kane’s gloves get pretty rank. He grabs you for a chokeslam and you just want to faint. It smells like rancid friggin’ yak meat. It’s the sweat, it builds up real quick. Kneepads, masks – they suggest you throw them in the freezer for a month [every so often], to kill all the bacteria.” WWE 2K17 is out on October 11 for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360. Found something newsworthy? Tell us!
I recently spoke with filmmaker Mike Bonner of City Point Films, the creator of Henry George and the Single Tax documentary. The 26 minute film presents a basic historical overview of the man and the movement. We also hear insights from active members in the movement, including Rodney Jester and Mike Curtis. The Arden, Delaware, community is highlighted, as are some of the relevant socio-political events influenced by the movement leading to the Progressive Era. Mike spoke with me about his thoughts and efforts in the Georgist movement. See our question and answer session below for his comments about Georgist ideas and contact information. ‍ ‍ What was your inspiration to create the documentary? First, as a filmmaker, I was just inspired by a fascinating story that I had never heard before. George’s prominence during his time, and his almost complete disappearance from history made his story a good candidate to spend my time learning about the man and then attempt to tell others what I gathered. Second, I was inspired by his motivations. He actually wanted to alleviate poverty, and then to do so in such a brilliant fashion captivated me. How did you first come to learn about Henry George? I discovered the name ‘Henry George’ while reading a book documenting the history of Protestantism in America (I don’t remember the title). For some reason the author mentioned this man without any explanation of who he was, so I did an Internet search. His story interested me so much that it led me down a rabbit hole to learn more and more about him and the movement. Are you involved with any other related activities? Researching HG has led to something unexpected; an interest in economics. In addition to supporting Georgist ideas, I am very interested in telling more stories that clarify how the control of financial resources shape the world and impact individuals. What ideologies do you align with? That’s a big question, but I am very sympathetic to the struggles of large portions of society being denied opportunities for obtaining a basic quality of life. How do you think the ideas of Henry George can be implemented in today's political climate? This is tough, as we have seen the acceptance of these ideas have been difficult, historically. I think one of the major ideologies that Georgism hinges on is the idea of land rights being common to all. Many are going to disagree with this strongly, and land ownership is so ingrained in America’s heritage. But, I think if political groups can start questioning the validity of this idea, then there is a chance to change attitudes, and the rest will fall into place. What would you suggest for people wanting to implement the ideas of Henry George? I guess I would suggest that Georgists be understanding of the deeply ingrained philosophies that most Americans have that will shut down any discussion about a land value tax. I think progress can only happen when we gently start chipping away at these presuppositions. How can Georgist activism be improved? As we have seen in the latest election, narrative is important. I think it is true that most people don’t know that it is even possible to do things differently than the way things are being done right now. We need to start telling a different story, and get that story out. Then we can focus on the details. I had plans to make a longer version of the documentary that included some ideas on how to advance George’s ideas today. I came to the conclusion that it would have to come from an energetic individual who could inspire the public to adopt these ideas. I don’t know if he or she is out there right now, but I think that’s Georgism’s best chance. Are you familiar with the concept of a Georgist UBI called a Citizen's Dividend? I don’t know much about UBI, but it seems there would be huge political and idealogical opposition to it, at least in America. But, I think The Single Tax attempted in theory to do the same by providing support for the poorest people in a society, and do so by keeping capitalism and industry well intact. I would think most Americans would be more receptive to that. I would be supportive of a UBI through a single tax, but I really doubt the political feasibility of imposing such a concept in America. Furthermore, I would hate to see discussions on a LVT silenced if it were linked to policies that would be seen by many as a "hand out". Yet, I think this is an aspect that could be implemented in some communities. I can imagine, for example, some states adopting the use of a portion of the LVT for a UBI, while other states only funding public works and government expenses via LVT. Will advancing technology help us to be better equipped to support a Georgist economy? How so? I’m not sure Georgists are better off now than they ever were. If anything, technology may be giving the advantage to those who intend to make personal gain off of others. However, I understand one of the most difficult aspects of The Single Tax would have been assessing land value. So, maybe with the advantage of computer technology, that would be a more feasible task. What other areas of society do you see being affected by the ideas of Henry George (such as education, science, sociology)? I think providing equal opportunity, not necessarily equality, is at the root of George’s ideas. This is a basic American tenant that seems to have been forgotten. A shift in ideology that at least guarantees opportunity will undoubtedly affect all aspects of society. Any other comments you would like to share with the Geoist community? Well, I still consider myself an amateur on the subject, so I think I can comment with an outsider’s perspective. I was surprised how long it took me to “get it”. Even after reading Progress and Progress cover to cover, as well as other research, it didn’t make immediate sense. Also, when I tried to explain it to others I was usually met with blank stares or confident statements on why it wouldn’t work. So, I think we need to think about different ways of selling the ideas in a way that most people can immediately wrap their heads around. I don’t pretend to have those answers, but one of the things that hooked me was the idea of fairness. Maybe, if we first talk about how unfair things are under the current tax system, we can begin to discuss doing it in a more just way. Would you mind if people contact you with questions, comments, etc? I would welcome questions and comments with the understanding that I am still a student of these ideas myself. Do you have a website people can view or use to contact you? I have a Facebook page dedicated to discussions on the film and Single Tax ideas at: https://www.facebook.com/henrygeorgeandthesingletax
C-SPAN wasn’t the only one to get cut off on Wednesday. As The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur and self-declared 1 percenter Peter Schiff hotly debated the role of money in politics, Cenk cut off Schiff’s microphone when he interrupted him and continued to talk. “Are you saying the bankers are not guilty of this at all?” Cenk tried to ask after he was interrupted. “We don’t have the benefits of capitalism any more because we don’t have capitalism,” Schiff responded. “We have a centrally planned socialist economy, and that is why the average American is getting poorer.” “Alright, I’m done with that load of crap,” Cenk said, and asked for Schiff to be cut off. “He wants to blame the government for the problems, but he knows it’s his banker friends who have given those donations, who buy their senators, who buy their staff members, so they can get more money,” Cenk added. “He doesn’t want you to pay attention to that, because that’s how they rob you. And he comes on here and goes, ‘Oh, no no, it’s socialism.’ Socialism, my ass!” “The real problem is — and he’s talked about it in the past, but he didn’t talk about it there — corporatism, where the corporations come in and rob us blind.” Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:
The rapidly growing world of online gaming is about to receive another power up as Coke and IGN have partnered to create ESPORTS WEEKLY With Coca-Cola , an online show devoted to everything in the esports realm that launches worldwide on Friday, Oct. 9. “This is a weekly show that celebrates the gaming community, fandom, and offers refreshing news for the esports world,” said Matt Wolf, head of global gaming for Coca-Cola and an industry veteran. Coke has been part of the esports scene for several years, partnering with Riot Games on its hugely successful League of Legends game, where teams of five players battle to take control of their enemy’s end of the battlefield in an intense and highly strategic test of wits and quick-twitch ability. According to research firm Newzoo, more than 200 million people have either participated or watched esports in 2014, while the League of Legends championships drew 27 million viewers online, meaning there is an audience eager to stay abreast of the latest happenings. “The goal is to create a watering-hole atmosphere where players and fans could come to one spot to follow the news,” Wolf said. “IGN was thinking the same thing, and ESPORTS WEEKLY was born.” The show’s first big story will profile the massive ESL One tournament, held recently at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, another sign of esports’ increasing clout in today’s entertainment landscape. “IGN is proud to team up with Coke to bring the excitement of esports to the biggest possible audience of gamers online,” said Peer Schneider, IGN general manager and co-founder. “Coke has already established credibility as a supporter of the esports community, making it a perfect partner in unlocking in-depth coverage to IGN’s 66 million monthly viewers.” The show will feature not only the latest news in the world of esports, but also profiles of some of the genre’s biggest stars, the scoop on the newest games and a peek into the unique culture that has sprouted up in the gamer world. Watch a teaser. “It’s not just about what’s going on in the competitions, but what’s going on in the stands and in the minds of the players,” Schneider added. To that end, ESPORTS WEEKLY will be an interactive show fans can help shape through requests and comments. “We’re going to cover all kinds of esports news and we will take a very democratic approach to it,” Wolf said. “The fact is that we really want the users to help create the show. When it airs, fans are invited to show up and chat with us, and we will be having a conversation to understand what’s resonating. We are treating it as a living, breathing show and the feedback will help craft and influence what the show becomes. “We are interested in giving fans, players and gamers a real voice in what kind of coverage they will see and we are excited about that.” Coke’s involvement in esports began with the Coke Zero Challenger Series featuring amateur players for League of Legends, before moving its sponsorship to Coca-Cola in 2015, allowing Coke to expand its esports partnerships around the world. This strong connection with the growing global gaming community now adds another level with the launch and support of ESPORTS WEEKLY. “It was a bet that Coke took early on to get in this space and do our part to elevate it,” Wolf said. “We couldn’t be happier. Since the time we got involved, esports has become a big thing. There is a lot of passion behind it and it keeps growing by leaps and bounds. We feel like that will continue. We are happy we established the partnership to move forward and support game makers and players – while celebrating fandom in only the way Coke can.” Follow Coke eSports on Twitter.
The Price Of Power Even without subsidies, new wind and solar power plants are usually cheaper than new coal, nuclear, or natural gas power plants. In fact, they are often not only cheaper, but substantially so. According to Lazard, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) estimates based on averages for the U.S. as a whole show that utility-scale renewables are far less expensive than conventional power sources — even when historical subsidies for conventional power sources, or social costs such as healthcare for coal-related health problems, aren’t taken into account. Solar is even cheaper outside the U.S.; its costs are dropping faster in India, China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and elsewhere. The lowest costs reported by Lazar are far higher than those recorded around the world. However, even Lazard — with its often conservative measures — agrees that in many areas of the U.S., costs of coal and solar power have reached parity. Solar costs — which are connected to technology — are only going to drop, unlike coal prices. Data on installed costs of solar confirm it’s at least on par with fossil fuels for the time being, and may well soon be cheaper. By the end of 2015, installed costs of solar power were, on average, less than $50 per megawatt-hour in four out of five regions. They were less than $60 per megawatt-hour in the fifth, which was the Midwest, where prices are expected to be higher due to cold temperatures. In the power industry at that time, the average market price of electricity was $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour. Solar has been dropping steadily ever since, and is therefore poised to match, and ultimately beat, the price of conventional power. Deep Roots Nevertheless, most things still aren’t powered by solar. Energy changes we attempt are in conflict with our complex social and regulatory systems. There are multiple reasons why the transition is difficult at best: our nation has a history of heavily regulating utilities, disruption of the system draws disparate responses, the lack of financing for consumers, distracting focus on whether climate change is real and whether it is “right” for any funding for alternative fuel to come from public coffers, and finally, the slower development of energy storage solutions. Electricity, a basic necessity, is sold as a heavily regulated public utility, but not just because we all need it. This regulation also stems from the history of our energy infrastructure, which was developed from the ground up at great cost more than 100 years ago. Now, power companies profit from the sale of electricity but also take on the responsibility of maintaining these aging power lines and grids. This is how regulators work to balance the needs of consumers with the needs of energy companies. As a new technology like solar comes on the scene, some businesses and residences install panels. Suddenly, utility customers are drawing less power from the grid and demanding payment for the power they return to the grid. In contrast, the law in many places recognizes that unlike power companies, individual power users who install solar are not helping to maintain the power grid like a traditional power company does. As a reaction to this, they are charging customers a premium to use solar — even though the power is cheaper, or in some cases, free. Florida charges notably higher prices for its solar users. California requires all power customers to contribute at the same rate to grid maintenance, whatever power they use or contribute, and then calculates power charges. Moreover, many electricity meters just cannot work in reverse, tracking flow in the outward direction from customers. An additional problem comes from trying to “plug in” new solar farms where coal-based plants used to be. The technology just isn’t the same. Many argue that another substantial barrier to the solar transition is a basic lack of financing. Since it is a newer technology, there aren’t as many financing systems in place (although this is on track to change). Another issue that has fueled pushback against solar in the U.S. is the obsessive focus on whether climate change is real. Though, how the answer to that question would change the data on solar costs remains to be seen. Related to this distractor is the tired old argument that “the government” should not be promoting clean energy or subsidizing it — despite the fact that subsidies for conventional energy have been both magnanimous and numerous. One final obstacle to the transition has been the uneven development of solar power collection and solar power storage solutions. In California, for example, at peak times solar operators must shut down. This is solely because they have no way to store excess power. This will soon change, though: Elon Musk has stated that the entire world could switch to renewables with the help of 100 Tesla Gigafactories. The technology exists, it just needs to be accessible, and people must be willing (or incentivized) to utilize it. Realistically, how soon could the transition happen? Part of the answer to that question lies in how much pushback continues to exist, and how much progress on things like batteries and financing we see. The rest of the answer may hinge on how states like California and cities like Chicago, that have made major commitments to renewables, handle their own transitions. As these transitions happen and the rest of the nation watches, it seems more likely that other areas will follow suit.
CLOSE Gov. Terry Branstad signed a comprehensive rewrite that touches nearly every aspect of Iowa's firearms laws Wochit Buy Photo Handguns at a firing range in Boone, Iowa, in January 2016 (Photo: William Petroski/Des Moines Register)Buy Photo The Iowa Senate voted Tuesday to approve legislation making sweeping changes to the state's firearms laws, including a controversial stand-your-ground provision authorizing deadly force. House File 517, which has already passed the Iowa House, was approved on a 33-17 vote. Because the bill was amended, it must return to the House. But House Republican leaders are expected to accept the changes, which means it will likely be headed soon to Gov. Terry Branstad, who is expected to sign it. The language on standing one's ground says a law-abiding person does not have a duty to retreat before using deadly force with a gun, which prompted criticism that it will lead to an increase in gun violence. The legislation's supporters said those worries were unfounded. "The use of deadly force or any force has to be justified in defense of yourself or another, and the force has to be reasonable. Those two things don’t change here," said Sen. Dan Dawson, R-Council Bluffs, the bill's floor manager, who is also an Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent. The legislation specifies that reasonable force, including deadly force, may be used even if an alternative course of action is available, if the alternative action entails a risk to life or safety, or the life or safety of a third party. The bill would allow children to possess a pistol or revolver while under direct supervision of a parent or guardian who is at least 21 years old. In addition, the measure would create a uniform permit to carry weapons and provide for five-year permits to acquire handguns rather than single-year permits. Some other changes include allowing persons with permits to carry weapons to possess concealed handguns in the Iowa Capitol and striking possible restrictions on firearms sales during an emergency. The bill would also provide permit-holder confidentiality, add penalties for illegal sales and legalize short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns. All 29 majority Republicans voted for the bill, along with four Democrats. The bill's approval in both chambers is a major victory for supporters of Second Amendment rights who had sought similar legislation in past years, but were blocked by Senate Democrats who lost control in November's elections. "This is one of the most exciting days since I have been here," said Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, who is serving his seventh year in the Senate. He praised the legislation and he said the Second Amendment represents more than simply the ability to use a firearm to hunt for food. NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News Alert newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Alerts on breaking news delivered straight to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-877-424-0225. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Alert Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Sen. Jerry Behn, R-Boone, said the legislation gives law-abiding citizens the protections they need. "Criminals don't follow the rules and regulations," he said. Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, who opposed the measure, contended the bill does nothing to increase public safety. "Our current laws address all of the issues that I have heard raised," Jochum said. "You do not have to retreat. You can protect yourself and your property. This bill goes too far. It is no longer balanced.” Senate Minority Leader Robert Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, said he wanted to make it clear that "Democrats are not against guns." But he said Iowa already has good firearms laws, as well as a higher rate of gun ownership than most states and a lower rate of gun violence. Hogg said he is concerned the bill will put more Iowans in danger and more law enforcement officers in danger. He said the measure expands the use of deadly force in a manner that is prompting some Iowans to believe the public will have more of a right to shoot people than police officers. "For somebody to suggest that you need a bill to protect your constitutional rights is not accurate," Hogg said. "Your constitutional rights are your constitutional rights." The provision on standing one's ground is the most controversial section of the bill. The bill's opponents have pointed to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that shows Florida’s gun deaths have increased 31 percent since such legislation was enacted in 2005. In particular, they have raised concerns the provisions could lead to the deaths of African-Americans because of racial bias by whites making split-second decisions to shoot. Supporters of the legislation have said the provisions are important for self-defense, particularly in rural areas where law enforcement officers can't always quickly respond to emergencies. "Stand your ground is not a license to kill," said Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale. He called the legislation "a huge step forward in restoring our Second Amendment rights." Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, said the bill was the product of Iowans who have "worked and worked and worked" and have persistently contacted their legislators year after year. "Folks, your work has paid off," Garrett told the bill's supporters in the Iowa Senate gallery. "I just commend you. You are the ones who get the credit for what has happened. We are just responding to what our citizens have asked us to do. I want to thank you for your work and perseverance." But Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, said the legislation will not make Iowa a safer place to live. She particularly disputed the idea that Iowans cannot defend themselves under current state law. ”That is simply not true," she said. The bill is supported by the National Rifle Association, the Iowa Firearms Coalition, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and ABATE of Iowa. Opponents include Iowans for Gun Safety, the Iowa County Attorneys Association, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Iowa Judicial Branch — Supreme Court, Iowa League of Cities, Iowa State Association of Counties, Iowa State Bar Association, Iowa Judges Association, NAACP of Iowa and Nebraska and the Polk County Board of Supervisors. Read or Share this story: http://dmreg.co/2oABV7b
Analyzing PFF's Front Seven signature stat leaders from 2016 By John Kosko • Jul 10, 2017 Having previously touched on the leaders in key signature stats on the offensive side including quarterbacks and running backs, we’re jumping to the other side of the line of scrimmage to the defense. Specifically looking at the front seven – though that should be considered the front-six with how often teams line up in nickel and sub-packages. We dug through some familiar stats such as run stop percentage and pass rushing productivity and also highlighted some unique coverage and tackling efficiency stats. We’ve broke this into three bucket positions: defensive interior (DI), which includes nose tackles, defensive tackles, and 3-4 defensive ends; edge defenders (ED), which lumps both 3-4 outside linebackers and 4-3 defensive ends into one label; and linebackers, which groups all off ball linebackers – middle linebackers, inside linebackers, and 4-3 outside linebackers – together. All stats include the playoffs. (Join PFF Elite to access and view all of our PFF Signature Stats across all positions.) Defensive Interior Run Stop Percentage (minimum 115 run snaps) Damon Harrison, New York Giants This should come as no surprise to anyone that follows PFF or paid attention to that vaunted Giants defensive line. “Snacks” was an absolute monster stuffing the run and did so at a rate that dwarfs the next closest player by 3.2 percentage points. Not only did Harrison stop the run with incredible efficiency, he did so on 332 run snaps which is the 10th most of 115 eligible DI’s. His 52 total run stops is 12 clear of Leonard Williams, who plays a more playmaking-friendly position of 3-4 DE. While Harrison doesn’t possess a great pass-rushing skillset, his ability to put offenses in 3rd and long situations more than makes up for that. The next two players behind Harrison are both nose tackles in Baltimore’s Michael Pierce with an impressive 12.5 run stop percentage and Jets’ Steve McLendon at an even 12.0. Pierce’s name at No. 2 is interesting considering the Ravens shelled out some big time money to NT Brandon Williams, who lands at No. 9 in run stop percentage at 9.9, but has been better in years past. Some notables that failed to make run stops on a consistent basis: Carolina’s Star Lotulelei (1.7 percent, 115th), Tennessee’s (in Denver) Sylvester Williams (3.4 percent, 113th) and Dontari Poe (4 percent, 109th). Pass Rushing Productivity (minimum 146 pass rush snaps) Aaron Donald, Los Angeles Rams Another shocker, PFF’s No. 1 player for 2017 tops the list as a pass-rushing force from the interior. Anyone that has watched a Rams game the past three years knows how devastating Donald is and so much has already been written about him. Donald’s combination of speed, quickness, hand usage and instincts is almost impossible for interior offensive lineman to handle. If it weren’t for Bengals’ Geno Atkins impressive season, Donald would be well clear of any player in total pressures and pass rushing productivity. With a PRP of 12.6, Donald amassed eight sacks, 22 hits and 82 total pressures. His 22 hits is seven clear of the next closest player, Jaguars’ (in Arizona) Calais Campbell. Geno Atkins at No. 2 with a PRP of 12.1 and 77 total pressures is well clear of No. 3, 49ers’ Arik Armstead, at 11.2 PRP but just 24 total pressures on 168 pass rush snaps. Dolphins’ Ndamukong Suh had the third most total pressure but with just 58 and a PRP of 7.8. Edge Defender Pass Rushing Productivity (minimum 85 pass rush snaps) Khalil Mack, Oakland Raiders Two of the best in the business top the list in efficiency getting after the quarterback in Mack and Broncos’ Von Miller. Separated by just 0.1 PRP, Mack takes the crown at 14.5 while also rushing the passer 90 more times in 2016 resulting in 98 total pressures to Miller’s 79. While Miller did have more sacks – 14 to 11 – we know that a mere three percent of a player’s snaps doesn’t tell the whole story. Mack was able to rack up 76 hurries, 21 more than Miller. An underrated Mario Addison comes in third in PRP at 14.1 and 52 total pressures. Addison rushed the passer 294 times with 289 of them from the defensive right side. Also close behind in fourth is Eagles’ Brandon Graham at 14.0 and Chargers’ Joey Bosa at 13.8. Tackling Efficiency (minimum 301 snaps) Kyle Emanuel, Los Angeles Chargers A relative unknown, Emanuel is a former teammate of Carson Wentz as the former North Dakota State Bison was drafted in the fifth round of the 2015 draft. Emanuel missed just one tackle while making 35 tackles and six assists and a tackling efficiency of 42.0. His lone missed tackle came in the running game where he totaled 24 tackles and five assists. Miami’s Jason Jones comes in at No. 2 also missing just one tackle all season but did so while making only 27 tackles and five assists and an efficiency rating of 33.0. Von Miller makes another appearance in a signature stats list as the superstar is known for his pass rushing chops but not much is said about his sure tackling ability. Miller missed just two tackles while racking up 56 solo tackles and five assists for an efficiency of 31.5. Other big name players that didn’t miss often are New York Jets’ Sheldon Richardson (29.5, fourth), Steelers’ James Harrison (23.0, sixth) and Redskins’ Ryan Kerrigan (21.0, seventh). Some notables that tended to whiff when attempting to tackle the opponent: Packers’ Clay Matthews (4.0, 75th out of 77), Falcons’ Vic Beasley (4.1, T-73rd), and Seahawks’ Cliff Avril (4.1, T-73rd). Linebackers Yards per Cover Snap (minimum 182 coverage snaps) Typically a signature stat PFF uses to highlight excellent cornerbacks, it’s also a good indicator for how well linebackers perform in coverage as well. A rather simple stat, yards per cover snap is exactly what it sounds like, how many yards on average does the player allow when he is in primary coverage on the play compared to the coverage snaps he plays overall. Of course a stat is just a stat and doesn’t show the full ability of the player as coverage scheme, surrounding talent, and responsibility will mask deficiencies as will simply being targeted effect how many yards the player gives up. That said, the most efficient linebacker in limiting yards via the passing game in 2016 was Texans’ Brian Cushing as he allowed a paltry 0.32 yards per cover snap. Cushing isn’t known for his ability as a coverage linebacker (outside his rookie 2009 season where he hauled in 4 interceptions) and has had an up-and-down career in all facets of his game. He was able to put together an impressive 2016 grading as the 16th best coverage linebacker at 82.3. No. 2 on the list also graded as the second best coverage linebacker in 2016 and that’s Eagles’ Jordan Hicks. At 0.39 yards per cover snap, Hicks backed up his position leading five interceptions with impressive consistency when he wasn’t making plays on the ball. Cincinnati’s (in Arizona) Kevin Minter comes in at No. 3 allowing 0.53 yards per cover snap as the Bengals hope to strengthen the middle of the field in pass defense. A few notables on the list include Browns’ Jamie Collins. He lands at No. 5 but only from his snaps in New England before the trade and subsequent position change. He allowed 0.61 yards per cover snap and hauled in two interceptions. 2016’s No. 1 graded linebacker Jerrell Freeman comes in tied for 16th allowing 0.8 yards per cover snap. Steelers’ Ryan Shazier allowed 1.34 yards per cover snap ranking 67th out of 76 eligible. Shazier is known for his playmaking ability and flashy plays as he matched Hicks’ 5 interceptions but did so while allowing 637 yards when his coverage area was targeted. Run Stop Percentage (minimum 121 run snaps) Los Angeles Chargers’ Korey Toomer tops the list as the most efficient run stopping linebacker in 2016 but did so on just 177 run snaps. It marks the second year in a row a Chargers linebacker had the best run stop percentage as Denzel Perryman did so in 2015 with an impressive 18.3 percentage but on 169 snaps. Perryman wasn’t able to maintain that efficiency in his sophomore campaign dropping to 9.4 percent on 213 snaps. Toomer has bounced around the league until finding a home with the Chargers and if he’s able to maintain that level of play, four teams will have missed out on a late bloomer. Tennessee’s Avery Williamson comes in at No. 2 with a run stop percentage of 12.3 amassing 35 stops on 284 snaps with Chicago’s Danny Trevathan nipping at his heels at 12.1 percent. Jerrell Freeman shows off his well-rounded skillset as his 11.8 percent ranks fourth. Brian Cushing at No. 6 with 11.0 run stop percentage shows how stats can be misleading as Cushing’s 58.1 run defense grade highlights that despite making a lot of plays, Cushing often finds himself out of position and blocked out of the play.
Any Disney fan will tell you that a Disney movie is a veritable treasure trove of wisdom (as well as wit, good music, and snazzy dance moves). We all know the famously insightful quotes from Rafiki and Olaf and their ilk—the kind of quotes that make us say “whoa” from our very first viewing—but Disney wisdom is hiding everywhere, even in places that might surprise you. Here’s a list of some of our favorite Disney quotes that are profound in a way we never expected. “The sky’s awake, so I’m awake, so we have to play!” – Anna, Frozen On the surface, this is just the adorable rambling of an over-excited little cutie. But if you think about it, shouldn’t we all take advantage of every second of daylight to dream and play and explore? “You’ve got to put your behind in your past.” – Pumbaa, The Lion King Sure, Pumbaa meant to say that you’ve got to put your past behind you, but his point still stands. Plus, if your behind is in your past, that means your front is facing forward and you can march into the future! Pumbaa, you are secretly wise. “Try not to do anything stupid.” – Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl This advice is so simple, it’s tempting to overlook it. But honestly, has there ever been a more universally applicable strategy? Keeping this quote in mind will help you make the right decision most every time. “So small at first, then look how they grow. But someone has to start them.” – Grandmother Willow, Pocahontas Like every bit of wisdom Grandmother Willow shares, the beautiful simplicity of this metaphor about ripples makes it unforgettable. Remember this anytime you’re tempted to think that you don’t have the power to make a positive difference. “If you don’t think, then you shouldn’t talk.” – March Hare, Alice in Wonderland He’s not the first character we would have expected such a profound statement from, but who can deny that this is true? Blunt or not, it’s the perfect reminder to think before you speak, whether that be in person or online, to friends or to strangers. “It’s not much of a tail, but I’m sort of attached to it.” – Eeyore, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh In addition to being a masterful low-key pun, Eeyore’s statement is spot on. We should all accept the parts of ourselves that we can’t change, and even learn to love the things that we’re tempted to see as flaws. “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.” – Sebastian, The Little Mermaid Sebastian is a profound little crab with a marvelous understanding of both the human and mer worlds, it turns out. How easy is it to imagine that all our problems would dissolve if we just had somebody else’s set of circumstances? Super easy, but also super untrue, and Sebastian’s here to remind you of that. “A conscience is that still, small voice that people won’t listen to. That’s just the trouble with the world today.” – Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio Jiminy nails it right on the head. We all have consciences, and we know right from wrong. Everything just comes down to choosing between the two, simple as that. Always let Jiminy Cricket’s wise words be your guide! “Cheer up, child. It’ll turn out all right in the end. You’ll see.” Mrs. Potts, Beauty and the Beast While this advice was meant to comfort Belle, we think it can be applied much more broadly, to pretty much everything. Mrs. Potts’ words remind us not to give up when things are tough, because giving up means we’ll rob ourselves of the chance to make it to our happy ending. “Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others. You know, sometimes I don’t think she’s really very happy.” – Fauna, Sleeping Beauty Fauna may just be thinking out loud here, but there’s so much truth in her casual evaluation of Maleficent’s bad attitude. Where does happiness come from if not loving other people, being kind to other people, and helping other people out? What if Maleficent’s evilness just boils down to missing those things? “They can’t order me to stop dreaming.” – Cinderella, Cinderella There’s plenty you can’t control in your life, but the one thing you can always control is your attitude. There’s no better model of that than Cinderella. She reminds us that we have the power to keep dreaming no matter what life throws at us. “People do crazy things when they’re in love.” – Meg, Hercules Meg, the most fabulously cynical Disney character maybe ever, still believes in love with her whole heart, and still sacrifices everything for it. When it comes to recognizing the power of love, she is our ultimate example. “If watching is all you’re going to do, then you’re going to watch your whole life go by without you.” – Laverne, The Hunchback of Notre Dame Pretty insightful there for a gargoyle, Laverne. There’s so much truth to this, it almost hurts … but not as much as it would have hurt Quasimodo to give up on his dreams of putting himself out there. If fear is all that’s stopping you from doing something, do it anyway. “Like so many things, it is not what is outside, but what is inside that counts.” – Narrator, Aladdin He’s talking about the magic lamp, but he might as well be talking about anything or anyone. Appearances can be, and often are, deceiving. Inner beauty is the only kind of beauty that truly lasts. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.” – Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins Life is full of tasks that aren’t that awesome but still necessary to do, and we think Mary Poppins has the right approach. If you have to do it anyway, you might as well try to have fun with it, right? “Remember, you’re the one who can fill the world with sunshine.” – Snow White, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Instead of waiting for someone else to make the world a better place, we should all take it upon ourselves to do exactly that, even in tiny ways. Something as simple as sharing a smile and a song can sometimes make all the difference. “You get to go find a new dream.” – Flynn Rider, Tangled When Rapunzel confesses her fears that she won’t know what to do after her dreams come true, Flynn answers brilliantly. It’s the perfect reminder to all of us that we own our dreams—they don’t own us—and pursuing them will always make our lives richer. What would you add to this list? Tell us in the comments! Posted 4 years Ago
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