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Building Bridges in New York: An Interview with Venerable Bhante Hennbunne Kondanna By Heli Rantaniemi-David \| \| Buddhistdoor Global Venerable Bhante Hennbunne Kondanna is the abbot of Staten Island Buddhist Vihara in New York City. He took novice ordination in Sri Lanka in 1968, completing his monastic training in Colombo and earning a BA in Buddhist Philosophy from the University of Kelaniya. After moving to the United States, he obtained a BS in Social Work from York College, CUNY, and a Masters in Social Work from Fordham University. A member and former president of the Buddhist Council of NYC, he is also a member of the Community Bridges organization, a representative of the New York Disaster Interfaith Services, and a member of the NYC Mayor’s Clergy Advisory Council. Heli Rantaniemi-David talks to him about his work for the vihara. Heli Rantaniemi-David: Venerable Bhante Kondanna, what brought you from Sri Lanka to the United States? Venerable Bhante Kondanna: I always went anywhere with the need of the people. It wasn’t my desire to come here. But in 1980, my teacher had come to New York and opened the first New York Buddhist vihara. Some of my “Dhamma brothers” were sent to New York, but I knew that I had to stay behind in the temple in Sri Lanka to do all the social services we needed to do and help my teacher. Then, in 1984, I had a chance to come to the United States at the invitation of a senior monk in New York, and my teacher agreed that I would go. But before I could settle in New York City, first I was asked to take care of the Los Angeles vihara. I ended up staying in Los Angeles for eight months. HR-D: Was the first New York Buddhist vihara the present one in Staten Island? VBK: Initially, the Sri Lankan temple was in Kew Gardens, Queens, and we still have a temple in Queens. But then someone in the Sri Lankan community in Staten Island helped to find this house. An old lady who had lived in it had passed away, and her children wanted to sell it. As soon as we saw the house and the land around it, we really liked it and thought that with some changes it would serve our purposes as a temple. A family in the community helped to sponsor [the purchase]. That was in 1999. The house was old and needed a lot of work—in fact, we had to demolish most of it and rebuild everything. Now it is beautiful, very practical, and we can all enjoy it. HR-D: Do Sri Lankans from other boroughs and communities now come to Staten Island regularly? VBK: We have many programs here, especially on the weekends, such as children’s Sunday school, but I still have to travel in order to reach other communities too. Many communities in Queens, New Jersey, Connecticut, or Massachusetts are so far away that it is challenging and expensive for people to travel here on a regular basis, but still the communities always need support. So, one day, I had an idea. I told my community members that if someone gives the temple a car, I could drive to different places to give my support and classes. They listened and not long after, someone donated an old car. Ever since, even though we have this Staten Island Buddhist Vihara as the main temple, I have been traveling to give classes, help other communities, and even to train monks in other temples to take more charge of things. People saw that when the children and parents were getting together and learning something spiritual, they felt very happy. It took some effort from many people in each community to get organized and form the groups, but in this way we have been able to provide the important teachings to the children and families. It was quite difficult in the very beginning. HR-D: You are also a mentor for the younger generations—for first-generation American Sri Lankans. VBK: Yes, because it is very important that we can bring the people back [to the vihara] even when they are attending high school or college, or are young working adults. I have been watching them now for nearly 30 years. Many of them are gone and don’t come to the temple anymore, but often they still consider themselves Buddhists. Maybe their parents were born in Sri Lanka and they were born in the United States, so sometimes they don’t know who they really are. I [felt that I] must provide them with the opportunities to discuss these things with their friends and peers who have similar backgrounds. It’s hard for me to imagine what it is like to be in their shoes, so I needed to find out their concerns and questions. Since I had observed [this situation] for a long time, I wanted to do something about it. In the backyard at Staten Island Buddhist Vihara. Image courtesy of the author HR-D: How did you go about it? VBK: I had collected all these email addresses over the years, so I decided to write to them saying, “Hey, it’s time to come back. Let’s have a meeting. If there’s anything wrong, let me know. I’ll be watching, observing you having a meeting, not speaking, but listening. But in case you need my help, I’m there to support you. If you think it’s important for you guys, start meeting each other regularly.” I told them that the reason for the meeting is that they have to find out for themselves who they want to be; to find out what they want to do about it. In the first meeting we had 4 people, second, 17, and in the third meeting I had 19 people. I learn a lot about them during these discussions. They are the commanders of the group, but if it’s going in the wrong direction, I will help to steer it around. HR-D: How about community projects? Do the young people get involved? VBK: They wanted to do an event, so I told them that in July we would have completed 16 years at the Staten Island vihara and that perhaps they could do something about it—and they did. We had a celebration in August that was attended by hundreds of people: adults, children, and teenagers. This was organized by Sri Lankan teenagers and young adults who were born in the United States. It is important that they learn to know each other and feel part of the community. We must support them, and the parents should support their efforts. I’m very happy about all these young Sri Lankan groups and community projects. I hope that, in the end, many good things will come out of them and they will have a better sense of who they are and can feel part of the community. Teaching at the Sunday school. From sibv.org HR-D: Talking about communities, you are a community builder in various Sri Lankan communities around the country, but also among various religious and non-religious communities in New York City. VBK: Yes, it’s very important that people from different religious backgrounds get together. Our temple, from the very beginning, has been welcoming people from different backgrounds. They don’t have to be Buddhist or Sri Lankan. Any friends who need service, they can come to us. Staten Island Buddhist Vihara is a member of the “Building Bridges” community of various different religions. We build friendships among the leaders of many other religious communities within New York. This way we can learn what is happening in different neighborhoods and how we can be of help. We learn so much from each other. We need each other. During the 2004 Tsunami disaster, so many New Yorkers helped with contributions, and our community is very grateful for that. Also, we are happy that we were able to help New Yorkers during the 9/11 tragedy. HR-D: Returning to the vihara itself, in the Sunday school on the weekends, do you also teach some Pali? Do you recommend that children memorize prayers in Pali? VBK: Oh yes—the children are doing it now. It’s a good thing and they are happy afterwards. I didn’t push them to learn, because when we meet only once a week or once every two weeks, it’s not enough. If they really want to learn Pali and the prayers, they need the support from home. It’s a good idea, if possible, to sit down and do their part with the parents or even grandparents at home. We need to show the value and beauty of that language. I also teach that Pali was the language of the Buddha. If you want to learn the teachings of the Buddha, you can learn a little bit of the language and then maybe enjoy the chanting in that language even more. But I don’t push them too much. A little bit at a time. With the Pope. From sibv.org HR-D: What else do you teach them? VBK: The one thing that I ask them do regularly is meditation. I encourage them to do the Metta—loving-kindness—meditation every single day. We are making progress. HR-D: Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share with readers? VBK: When people are doing well, they forget about spirituality. But even if materially we are doing well at this moment, we should not forget about the spiritual side. We need to keep a balance. So, I always teach—as Buddha taught—these four things: Metta–Loving-kindness, Karuna–Compassion, Mudita–Sympathetic Joy, and Upekha–Equanimity. We should be happy to see the success of other people, too, just as if good things happened to you yourself. Life does not go in just one direction—there are always ups and downs. We must be able to handle all situations. That’s why I emphasize these four qualities of life, the four sublime states of living teachings. I ask everyone to genuinely get these teachings into their hearts and practice them. One day we will look back at how we lived our lives. Don’t do anything that you would regret doing later; do something that you can smile about. So that you may say: “Oh, I’m so happy about how my life turned out.” I teach this to both the children and the adults. Also, meditation is very important, and that is something that we should do every day. The best way to do it is in the morning. I start my own day by first having a shower, then a glass of water. After that I go downstairs to meditate and do my chanting. Only after all that I will have my breakfast and start doing other things. If first thing in the morning you start checking your emails and stuff like that, just sitting in front of your computer, you will never meditate! Ven. Bhante Kondanna at the United Nations on Vesak Day. Image courtesy of the author
Ok I think you need to stop. You're actually embarrassing me. Your argument about otherkin pronouns... Literally all that is being said that you are arguing against is that a NON-BINARY person who is also otherkin created a set of pronouns to describe BOTH their gender and kin and put them out in the world and asked that since this set of pronouns describes their gender in relation to their kin, it should only be use by similarly kin folk. You need to step off. ◥ zobothehob0 Cool, but I don’t care if I’m embarrassing you? I’m NON-BINARY, why do I suddenly not get a voice jfc people… no, they’re not allowed to create pronouns to describe both their gender and kin- NO ONE IS EVER ALLOWED TO INNOVATE PRONOUNS BASED OFF OF THEIR KIN- THAT IS APPROPRIATING THE TRANS/NB COMMUNITY AND ANY TRANS/NB OTHERKIN THAT TRIES TO DO SO IS BEING TRANSPHOBIC!!! And it’s especially insulting when a trans/nb otherkin declares that a certain set of pronouns is ~only~ for trans/nb of the same kin type. Do you know who gets to restrict language and its use? ACTUALLY OPPRESSED GROUPS! So I don’t care if you’re also trans/nb, if you’re otherkin and arguing for the use of otherkin pronouns, you are a transphobe, now get out of our askbox, scum.
Obama was an inconsequential lawmaker in the Illinois Senate when his future pick to be U.S. secretary of Commerce introduced him to titans of the finance industry and raised three-quarters of a billion dollars toward his presidential election, investigative reporter Greg Palast tells us. As Truthdig wrote this week, Pritzker is worth more than $1.8 billion and has held leadership positions in the Hyatt Hotels Corp. and the now-defunct Chicago-based Superior Bank. Her vast fortune affords her “a heavy magic wand in the world of politics,” Palast writes, an instrument that “would have been heavier … except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior.” At the time of its collapse, Superior was the costliest bank failure ever and “the first of the deregulated go-go-banks to go bust.” Taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Depositors lost millions and many poor residents of state Sen. Obama’s South Side of Chicago lost their homes. “Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit,” Palast writes. “What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap. “Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that’s really what they call themselves) on Chicago’s Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better — an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.” In return for Rubin’s help raising campaign money from the major banks, Obama agreed to appoint Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to the highest economic appointments in his Cabinet, Palast notes. All three of these men had played an executive role in creating the deregulated banking industry that brought the U.S. economy to its knees in 2008. But high-level positions for Summers and Geithner were not the only returns Obama was supposed to make for Rubin and Pritzker’s help raising campaign money, Palast writes. Pritzker was supposed to be made secretary of Commerce at the start of Obama’s first term. But “in November 2008, just as Obama was about to submit her nomination to Congress, a bunch of Pritzker’s victims marched on Washington. They were not from her busted bank, but unhappy workers from the lucrative nursing homes that her family owns through a string of complex offshore trusts.” The president didn’t want to risk tarnishing the false progressive image that millions of his liberal voters had bought. For the moment, the deal with this “infamously combative anti-union apostle” was off. “Obama slammed the door on Penny pronto.” “Obama appeared to keep the door shut on Pritzker throughout the 2012 campaign,” Palast reports, “reducing her to hosting an election fundraiser at her Gold Coast digs, which she had to bill as a Goldman Sachs PAC event. This marks possibly the first time and last time anyone used Goldman Sachs as a PR cover. “But today, with the unions’ money and votes already pocketed and counted, Obama can give working folks The Finger and give Penny her pound of flesh: the Commerce post.” — Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
Going into the 2016 Republican primary, former Florida governor Jeb Bush was the favorite on many handicap cards. True, the Bush name could be a liability, but probably less so against an equally dynastic opponent like Hillary Clinton. (Or, for Bush critics, running him would foolishly hamper the Republicans’ ability to make hay over the ascension of a hereditary Clinton monarch.) Bush had vast financial resources, a political organization second to none, gubernatorial experience, and all the Establishment support anyone could ask for. Even after the Trump surge, conventional wisdom still held Bush was the candidate best positioned to ride out the frenzy… which became an enduring phenomenon that baffles observers across the political spectrum to this day. Bush had the endurance to keep his head down, make plans for a few early-state wins, watch his less well-financed candidates drop away, and become the last man standing against Trump… at which point the majority of GOP voters who don’t want Trump as the nominee would coalesce around him. None of that is actually happening for Bush, despite millions of dollars spent on his doomed political effort… but the Bush strategy does seem to be working for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. As improbable as it seemed a year ago, Cruz is on the verge of becoming the last man standing against Trump. Perhaps the GOP Establishment will soon begin having trouble remembering exactly why they hate Cruz so much. They do hate him, make no mistake – to a degree average Republican voters might not fully appreciate. Author Mark Steyn was recently on Capitol Hill to attend a crucial hearing on climate change, in the company of highly capable skeptics Judith Curry, John Christy, and Will Happer. When climate cultist Senator Ed Markey tried to stage an inquisition, Steyn and his merry band turned the hearings against the Democrat senator and actually drove him out of the room. But there was no Republican backup to capitalize on the moment, because while all the Democrats on the Senate Space, Science and Competitiveness Subcommittee showed up for a fight, the only Republican who bothered with the hearing was the subcommittee chair: Ted Cruz. The “not-so-subtle” reason for the absence of other Republicans, Steyn ventured, “is that, like Bob Dole (currently threatening, if Cruz is the nominee, to ‘oversleep’ on Election Day), their antipathy to Ted Cruz outweighs everything else. Dole feels that Cruz has been given the greatest honor any man can have – the keys to the Senate men’s room – and yet he won’t play by the rules of the club.” The more subtle reason deduced by Steyn for Republicans taking a powder on a hearing that could have been politically helpful is that they’re planning to fold on the climate change issue, just like they fold on everything else. Which is really just a subset of the first reason he gave, because Ted Cruz is one of the few Republicans who doesn’t fold easily. If the Establishment is really willing to sabotage the race and throw 2016 to Clinton out of antipathy for both Cruz and Trump, then the Republican Party will die on their watch, and there’s really nothing that can be done to save it – a very tough break for America. If they’re really interested in fielding a strong alternative to Trump, motivated to some degree by a sincere conviction that he can’t beat Clinton, they really need to start thinking about making peace with Cruz. One suspects he is ready to make peace with them, albeit driving a hard bargain the process, because he seems to have gamed this whole election out, and blunting the anger of the GOP’s professional loser class is one of the last moves he needs to make. Cruz also has to get past Marco Rubio. It’s effectively a three-man race now, unless Chris Christie’s long-shot bid to put a governor back on the map by scoring a surprise win in New Hampshire pans out. As Ben Carson deflates, Cruz has been picking up much of his support, surging 10 points in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The WSJ notes that Cruz’s gain among “very conservative voters” exactly matches Carson’s loss of 23 points. Cruz seems very well-positioned to continue picking up Carson’s support. Actually, he’s better positioned than any of the remaining candidates to pick up everyone’s support. Headline news items have remarked on Cruz’s enduring refusal to hit Donald Trump, even as Trump goes to work on him at last… but really, for a politician who is supposed to be a renegade firebrand, Cruz has been remarkably successful at keeping a line open to just about every constituency. That’s probably one reason he was relatively quiet during the early debates – he was more interested in introducing himself to the national audience as a broadly acceptable candidate than throwing punches and alienating constituencies. At this point, Cruz-bashers might have a hard time explaining to Republican voters exactly why the senator from Texas would be such a terrible alternative, especially given what actually happened in the 2014 midterm elections, after Cruz’s stand against ObamaCare supposedly doomed the party. For that matter, it would be a tough sell convincing most Americans that taking a firm stand against ObamaCare, before its expensive collapse began in earnest, was a bad idea. Marco Rubio is the prime Party pick against Trump… but the truth is, unless he turns things around with the next couple of debates and hard campaigning on the ground, he just doesn’t look as strong as Cruz. Too many grassroots voters are having a hard time getting past Rubio’s Gang of Eight debacle, not just because they value the rule of law and are exceptionally concerned with border security at the moment, but because they’re furious at Republican leaders who roll over for Democrats. It should be obvious at this point that Republican voters are looking for a tough negotiator who can take a strong hand with the opposition party, and make “bipartisanship” something more than a euphemism for “capitulation to Democrats.” The Hill praised Cruz this week for playing a “long game” and building solid support in important primary states, while media attention was focused on national polls that had not yet switched to the more accurate “likely voter” screen. Cruz is also raising more money than all other candidates, and has spent his money carefully enough to accumulate the most cash on hand. “Cruz’s investment in ground operations has paid off, as he notably has the strongest infrastructure in Iowa and South Carolina, and is far ahead of the pack in Super Tuesday primary states,” The Hill noted. He’s been winning the support of important community leaders in these states, creating a network of campaign advocates who can do important ground work for him. Another important, under-reported victory for Cruz was his endorsement by a group of conservative leaders in Virginia at the beginning of September – an assembly designed to hold conservative support together during the turbulence of a hotly-contested primary. The group was deadlocked between Rubio and Cruz during four exhausting rounds of voting, but during the fifth, Cruz prevailed. “It represents more than a public-relations victory for Cruz,” reported Tim Alberta of National Review: The senator has long said, both publicly and privately, that his best chance to secure the Republican nomination is to unite the conservative base behind him — and that the best way of doing so is to earn the backing of high-profile activist leaders in hopes that their endorsements trigger a cascade of support down to the grassroots level. That scenario no longer seems far-fetched, especially with Ben Carson fading and the conservative “lane” of the GOP primary now cleared of one-time threats such as Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Perry. The big problem with 2012’s spectacular, but short-lived, insurgencies is that none of those candidates ever seemed to have a firm strategy for winning a 50-state primary, while Mitt Romney did – and he’d been working on implementing it for years. Ted Cruz clearly does have a plan, and it’s not something he scribbled down on a cocktail napkin on the day before the primary began. Trump and Rubio clearly see him as a threat, attacking Cruz in their distinctly different ways. Cruz has been pulling significantly ahead of Rubio in the polls; if he consolidates that lead, this crowded primary might suddenly become a two-man race, and voters will never forgive anyone other than Bob Dole for sleeping through it.
The unemployment rate has fallen by 0.2% to 7.3% for November, when compared with October. New figures from the Central Statistics Office also show the rate of unemployment is 1.8% lower than it was at the same time last year, with 36,200 more people now at work. The unemployment rate has now fallen for six consecutive months and is down from a post-crisis high of 15.2% at the beginning of 2012. On a seasonally adjusted basis, 160,700 people were unemployed in November, down from 164,100 the previous month. The unemployment rate during the month for men was 8.3%, while the corresponding figure for women was 6.1%. Meanwhile, according to the CSO the youth unemployment rate (people aged 15-24) fell by 0.9% to 15.5% in November. Commenting on the figures, Alan McQuaid from Merrion Economics said: "Although emigration has been a factor to some degree in keeping unemployment down since the financial crisis, the labour market has improved dramatically in recent years, reflecting the strengthening of the economic recovery. "Indeed, the most recent migration estimates showed net inward migration of 3,100 in the year to April 2016 as against net outward migration of 11,600 in 2015, and the first positive figure since 2009," he added.
On the morning of Friday June 9, Theresa May walked through the black door of Downing Street and into an empty shell. Where once there was power, wielded through control and fear, there was impotence. Overnight, Mrs May’s attempt to win an electoral mandate to negotiate Brexit on her own terms had been eviscerated. As the door swung open, an ashen prime minister was applauded by her officials. A few days later, in the Pillared Room of Number 10, Mrs May spoke with a catch in her voice as she thanked her staff for that act of kindness. But Mrs May’s leadership would never be the same again. Downing Street had become a lonely place. Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, Mrs May’s chiefs of staff, did not accompany her into Number 10 on that morning and the next day they resigned. Several weeks later, eyewitnesses say her office is still depleted, key jobs unfilled. “The bunker seems almost empty and deeply disheartened,” says one. Mrs May has cut a diminished figure. In Brussels for a European Council summit on June 22, she was allowed to give a brief presentation on her plans for safeguarding EU citizens’ rights while waiters cleared the dessert of macerated cherries and almond milk ice cream. Mrs May, who asked voters to give her “an equally strong mandate” to the landslide secured by France’s Emmanuel Macron, was then asked to leave. Cameras filmed the prime minister, head bowed, walking grimly to a waiting car. Prime Minister Theresa May's chief of staff Nick Timothy and Joint-chief of staff Fiona Hill leave Conservative party headquarters in London the day after the election © AP At Westminster she has been reduced to cobbling together a deal with reactionary politicians from Northern Ireland to secure a fragile House of Commons majority, jettisoning many of the policies in the Conservative manifesto and apeing the anti-austerity policies of the Labour opposition. “Defeat in victory,” notes Nicholas Macpherson, formerly the top official in the Treasury. Meanwhile cabinet ministers exploit the vacuum by publicly dictating terms to Mrs May on the future direction of policy on Brexit and the economy. The briefings and the jostling for succession become more audacious as the days pass. Mrs May’s election offer of “strong and stable” leadership is now a staple of the gallows humour that has enveloped Conservative MPs. A Conservative minister laments: “There is no plan, no strategy, no direction.” The question being asked in Britain and Europe is simple: how long can Mrs May last and can she deliver Brexit? * Mrs May only survived the humiliation of last month’s snap election because Conservatives have decided that the alternatives to an enfeebled leader are even worse. On June 9 party grandees trooped into Downing Street to tell the emotional prime minister that she had a duty to party and country to stay. Most Conservative MPs fear that if Mrs May is ousted, the party would face a leadership contest that would once again split it over Europe, this time between those favouring a soft or hard Brexit. There is no obvious frontrunner, the eventual winner would have no direct mandate from the British people and they might inherit a party in a state of nervous disintegration. There would be a clamour for another election, which the leftwing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could win. Although Mr Corbyn is no fan of the EU, the Brexit process would be thrown into chaos. “There is a general mood of seriousness and a sense that if we screw this up, a Marxist government steps into the breach,” says one senior Conservative MP. Another says: “The person holding the party together is Jeremy Corbyn. The fear of Corbyn is greater than any nuance in the Brexit negotiation.” Under the most common plan articulated by Conservative MPs, the first aim is to get the prime minister through to the safety of the summer recess on July 20. Then, if all goes well, Mrs May would stay long enough to oversee Brexit in March 2019, taking the blame if it goes wrong. Then, her political use exhausted, she would hand over to a new leader to take the party into the next election in 2022. It is an uphill and thankless task, but Mrs May insists she is up for it. “I will serve as long as you want me,” she told the party’s MPs on June 12. “I got us into this mess and I’m going to get us out of it.” One Conservative MP says: “She has the real sense of duty of a vicar’s daughter.” Mrs May has stabilised her situation in recent days. Her parliamentary performances have been solid, while Mr Corbyn has failed to exploit her weakness. She has replaced the aggressive Mr Timothy and Ms Hill with a single chief of staff, the popular former MP Gavin Barwell. After her woefully misjudged visit to the site of the Grenfell Tower fire last month, where she failed to meet survivors, she has had a better few days. “She’s laughing again,” says one Downing Street insider. But the reprieve may be temporary. Mrs May might get through to the summer holidays but her fragile grip on power will be tested again in what promises to be a dangerous October. In the first test, Mrs May attends the annual Conservative party conference in Manchester. It will see cabinet ministers jostling for position in the leadership contest that they believe will take place in the following 18 months. It has started already. In recent days potential leadership contenders such as foreign secretary Boris Johnson have taken to publicly unpicking the government’s austerity programme by calling for an end to the 1 per cent cap on public sector pay. Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons who fought Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016, made an unannounced visit to Grenfell Tower to meet survivors, in a move seen by Number 10 as a blatant attempt to show she possessed more empathy than the prime minister. But these acts of cabinet insurrection are nothing compared with the public battle raging between ministers over Brexit, with Mrs May apparently unable to stop it. The hard and soft Brexiters will make their pitches to the Conservative faithful in Manchester, just weeks before Mrs May has to make up her own mind on how she hopes to execute Britain’s departure from the EU. Theresa May faced fierce criticism for meeting only emergency services at Grenfell Tower. She later invited survivors of the fire to Downing Street © AFP A Brussels summit on October 19-20 will be the crunch point by which Britain hopes to have concluded preliminary talks on the divorce settlement in order to move on to the future UK-EU relationship. Chancellor Angela Merkel, if she wins September’s German elections, will want to know what Mrs May has in mind. * Before the election, policymaking on Brexit was straightforward: it was set inside Mrs May’s fortress by an inner circle with Mr Timothy and Ms Hill at its heart and presented to the cabinet as a fait accompli. The “chiefs” controlled all access to the prime minister; unwelcome advice or overly “pessimistic” officials were kept at bay. Ivan Rogers, Britain’s former EU ambassador, was briefed against and then forced out of his job for presenting uncomfortable truths. Chancellor Philip Hammond, according to Downing Street insiders, was also seen as too gloomy about Brexit and was abused by Ms Hill at meetings. He expected to be sacked too, had Mrs May won her expected election landslide. So when Mrs May set out her “red lines” for the Brexit negotiations at last year’s conference in a speech written by Mr Timothy, there had been no thorough cabinet consultation. Her insistence, for example, that the European Court of Justice could have no future role in a Brexit settlement came out of the blue and left Brexit secretary David Davis “hamstrung” in negotiations, according to James Chapman, his former chief of staff. Mr Timothy, anxious to court working-class voters, was determined that big business should also be kept at arm’s length from Mrs May. The prime minister’s allies now admit this was a mistake: on Friday business leaders will be invited to a Brexit summit at Chevening, a country house near London, hosted by Mr Davis. Business voices are now starting to fill the policy vacuum. The post-election ousting of Mr Timothy and Ms Hill — the latter was notorious for spying disloyalty in colleagues and sending critical texts — has removed the fear that hung over Mrs May’s administration before the election. During that time ministers were banned from giving interviews or setting out their own views: now it is a free for all. “We can talk now,” joked one minister last week. “Fiona’s gone.” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, being cheered at Glastonbury, is now seen as a real threat by the Conservative party © Getty In place of paranoia has come a remarkable reappraisal of what exactly Brexit should mean. “There wasn’t really any debate before,” admits one minister. The only problem is that it comes a bit late in the day: Britain voted to leave the EU more than a year ago and the clock is ticking down to an exit in March 2019. “It would be nice to know exactly what we want from Brexit,” confided one government insider. No senior minister has yet directly challenged the central tenets of Mrs May’s “hard Brexit” strategy set out in her January Lancaster House speech, which called for Britain to leave the single market, customs union and the jurisdiction of the European Court. But the soft Brexiters are starting to chip away at the edifice. Mr Hammond is pressing for a long transition during which Britain would retain close ties to the EU, including remaining in the customs union. The Treasury is challenging Liam Fox, international trade secretary, to prove that the deals he hopes to secure when Britain eventually leaves the customs union more than offset an expected loss of trade with the EU. Mr Hammond is vehemently opposed to Mrs May’s threat — or bluff — that Britain could walk away with no deal at all. Theresa May met Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and the other EU leaders in Brussels but was not permitted to remain for talks © EPA Mr Davis, who is said by colleagues to be “more flexible than you think”, is exploring ways in which the ECJ might have a limited backstop role, allowing Britain to continue participating in European regulatory bodies, rather than recreating them at great expense at national level. *** By October, Ms Merkel and Mr Macron will be expecting answers from Mrs May: is she going to seek a softer, more protracted Brexit, spread over several years, or the harder, quicker version favoured by some in her party? If she tacks away from a hard Brexit, she risks incurring the wrath of the Eurosceptics. All the while Mrs May will aim to push Brexit legislation through the House of Commons when she has a working majority of only 13 and is vulnerable to rebellions by pro-European Conservatives pushing her towards a softer version of Brexit and disarming her threat to walk away with no deal. The poison is already running around the system. “We can work with half the Labour party and crush the fuckers,” says one Conservative MP, referring to his Eurosceptic colleagues. A leading pro-Brexit MP says he would not tolerate threats from the “wankers” on his party’s pro-European wing. Faced with implacable opponents in Brussels, a breakdown in cabinet discipline and a party torn over Europe, one can now see why Mrs May hoped to maintain the iron control that would have come with her expected “stronger mandate” on June 8. Instead she must try to hold it all together and deliver Brexit — a policy she initially opposed — as her last gift to a party counting down the days to the moment when it can finally oust her. Additional reporting by Jim Pickard in London and Alex Barker in Brussels The contenders for the Conservative leadership: Boris Johnson, Philip Hammond and David Davis © FT montage; Reuters; PA The replacements: May’s survival bid helped by a lack of alternatives Theresa May is, according to the former Tory chancellor George Osborne, “a dead woman walking”: her survival time as prime minister is measured by most Conservative MPs in months rather than years. Already the positioning for the succession has begun, but Mrs May is helped by the fact that there is no clear alternative waiting in the wings. David Davis, Brexit secretary 3-1 (latest odds with William Hill) The 68-year-old was favourite for the party leadership in 2005 but looked outdated against a youthful David Cameron. He has handled his Brexit brief competently and rehabilitated his reputation after years in the wilderness. Brought up on a council estate and possessing a breezy self-confidence, Mr Davis is blamed by some Tories (including Boris Johnson) for encouraging Mrs May to hold the calamitous early general election. Philip Hammond, Chancellor 7-2 Mr Hammond, dubbed “spreadsheet Phil” for his uncharismatic demeanour, would have been sacked had Mrs May won a big majority last month; for now he is untouchable and asserting his authority. A Remainer, the 61-year-old fiscal hawk wants a business-friendly Brexit, spread over a number of years. Has been touted as an interim leader, but as one senior Conservative MP puts it: “What’s the point of that? May is that interim leader.” Boris Johnson, Foreign secretary 4-1 Figurehead of the Brexit campaign, Mr Johnson is charismatic and brings showbiz to politics; he is also disliked by some Tory MPs and Remain voters for his role in what they regarded as a shallow and mendacious campaign to take Britain out of the EU. Mr Johnson’s allies discussed a leadership bid in the aftermath of last month’s election, a move seen by party grandees as grossly unhelpful. The 53-year-old’s call this week for an end to public sector pay restraint was a sign of him jockeying for the top job. Letter in response to this article: Epithets surely apply the other way round / From Nicholas Boyle, University of Cambridge, UK
The ACLU sued the CIA and other government agencies today for still more documents relating to torture. They’re basically suing to enforce a FOIA request they submitted last year that amounts to … everything they haven’t already gotten. 1. "Any indices, tables, or logs that list or otherwise identify legal memoranda produced by the Office of Legal Counsel (‘OLC’) after September 11, 2001, relating to the detention, interrogation, treatment, or prosecution of suspected terrorists, or the transfer of suspected terrorists to foreign countries, including any indices, tables, or logs produced in response to the subpoena issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee to Attorney General Michael Mukasey on October 21, 2008. 2. "All legal memoranda produced by the OLC after September 11, 2001, relating to the detention, interrogation, treatment, or prosecution of suspected terrorists, or the transfer of suspected terrorists to foreign countries. 3. "All records issued after September 11, 2001 by the Defense Department, Justice Department, State Department, or CIA, in which any of those agencies, or personnel at those agencies, sought guidance, advice, or analysis from the White Housel with respect to the detention, interrogation, treatment, or prosecution of suspected terrorists, or the transfer of suspected terrorists to foreign countries. 4. "All records, including directives and memoranda, that were issued after September 11, 2001 by the White House to the Defense Department, Justice Department, State Department, or CIA, or to specific personnel at those agencies, and that relate to the detention, interrogation, treatment, or prosecution of suspected terrorists, or the transfer of suspected terrorists to foreign countries. But in their press release announcing the suit, the ACLU describes three documents in particular they’re seeking. Documents between the White House and CIA concerning the use of the CIA’s so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" A legal memorandum or letter dated July 22, 2002 from Yoo to Alberto R. Gonzales regarding the applicability of the Convention Against Torture A 2007 opinion by Bradbury analyzing the legality of the interrogation techniques authorized for use in the CIA program under Common Article 3, the Detainee Treatment Act and the War Crimes Act Item one would include the discussions about approval for individual techniques (and might catch David Addington chatting up John Rizzo). Item three is one of the two remaining torture memos we’re missing, where Bradbury tried to authorize things SCOTUS had already ruled were illegal. This is the memo, remember, that justified Bush’s July 2007 Executive Order on torture. I’m particularly interested in item two, though. I noted yesterday that I think we’re going to learn that the Bush Administration claimed to have exempted CIA from complying with the Convention Against Torture’s prohibition on cruel and inhuman treatment. This opinion–which was mentioned in John Yoo’s 2003 torture memo for DOD–apparently claims to exempt everyone from complying with Article 16 of CAT. Here’s how Yoo’s memo referred to this earlier memo (which he also wrote): Article 16, like the other first 15 articles in the treaty, is non-self executing. The United States took a reservation to this section, as with the other first fifteen articles, that this section was non-self executing. As explained in text, therefore they not only "are not federal law cognizable in federal court, they also place no obligations on the Executive Branch." Letter for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, at 1 (July 22,2002). Keep in mind the implications of this opinion. As reviewed in the SSCI narrative, the Bush Administration told Congress over and over and over that they fully intended to comply with CAT’s Article 16. In January of 2005, in response to a question for the record following his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Gonzales indicated that “the Administration . . . wants to be in compliance with the relevant substantive constitutional standard incorporated in Article 16 [of the Convention Against Torture], even if such compliance is not legally required.” [snip] Before the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act, in October of 2005, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for OLC noted in response to questions for the record: “[I]t is our policy to abide by the substantive constitutional standard incorporated into Article 16 even if such compliance is not legally required, regardless of whether the detainee in question is held in the United States or overseas.” Similarly, in December of 2005, both the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser stated publicly that U.S. policy was to treat detainees abroad in accordance with the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment contained in Article 16. And in fact, this claim–that the Administration intended to comply with CAT’s Article 16–is one of the things that Mary McCarthy has alleged a senior CIA official lied to Congress about in a briefing in June 2005 (a briefing, incidentally, that the CIA didn’t list in its torture briefing list). A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and elsewhere. But another CIA officer — the agency’s deputy inspector general, who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account. It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA’s interrogations. You see, we’re eventually going to find out that, in fact, the Administration had–based on Yoo’s 2002 memo–made a policy decision to blow off complying with CAT’s Article 16 altogether. And lied about that policy to Congress repeatedly. I wonder whether we’ll get this opinion before the SSCI completes its investigation into all the times the Administration lied about this to the SSCI?
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Paul Adams spends time with a civilian detective on patrol The city of Mesa in the US state of Arizona has turned over some police duties to a new team of civilian investigators. The BBC's Paul Adams says the programme is a law enforcement innovation - and policing on the cheap in an era of government cuts. In the only programme of its kind anywhere in the United States, Mesa's nine civilian investigation specialists are handling work normally reserved for uniformed officers. Plenty of other police departments employ civilians to handle DNA and fingerprint collection or perform clerical work, but nowhere do they perform the range of functions Mesa's unit has handled since its inception in 2009. From crime scene processing to fraud investigations and a lot of patient hand-holding, the civilians appear to be making an impact. 'Cops hate change' Image caption Sgt Cota of the police union says the civilian investigators cannot replace uniformed officers Last year, the unit handled about 50% of all burglary calls, the police department says. It also wrote almost one in 10 written reports city-wide, relieving uniformed officers of much burdensome paperwork. "If you look at the numbers that they've produced, they're really mind-boggling," Mesa Police Chief Frank Milstead says. The department's officers greeted the suggestion civilians would take on regular police work with scepticism, Chief Milstead acknowledges. "There's nothing cops hate more than change and the unknown," he says. "What I didn't expect was the consistency and the amount of work that they can do, day in and day out." In her sky-blue uniform and unmarked car, soft-spoken Corinna Barno says she and her colleagues are the "customer service police". Pepper spray protection Not obligated to respond to urgent calls from police dispatchers, she can afford to linger at a crime scene, spend time with the victim and develop a rapport. "We're there to show them that we care," she says. Ms Barno, the daughter of a private detective, doesn't carry a gun, handcuffs or baton, relying on her radio and a can of pepper spray for protection. Image caption Mesa Mayor Scott Smith would like to turn over some fire department tasks to civilians She has a background in insurance, and says she was one of more than 1,000 applicants for the new unit when jobs were first advertised in 2008. The pay is 30% to 40% lower than the starting salary for a uniformed officer, but she finds the work satisfying. "I think it's a great programme," she says, adding that the department's detectives frequently commend the unit on its report-taking. The programme is also a product of necessity. Reduced roles The department has lost about 80 uniformed positions over the past five years, spokesman Sgt Ed Wessing said, stretching staff and resources. And not everyone is convinced the civilian investigators constitute the best response to the resulting shortfalls. "The answer is not to reduce the amount of officers," says Sgt Fabian Cota, president of the Mesa Police Association. "They can complement what the officers are doing but certainly they are not replacements for officers." Surveying the sprawling desert city of half a million from his office high in City Plaza, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith says he appreciates the worries. "Unions understandably see this as a threat to their jobs," he says. Image caption Chief Frank Milstead says the amount of work the civilian investigators handle is "mind-boggling" Even though the introduction of civilian investigators was a project born of the need to cut costs, Mr Smith says he is happy with the way things have turned out. "We've taken non-traditional approaches to providing services," he says. "And that's where the financial crisis gave us that opportunity." And Mr Smith says he hopes to expand the concept. "It's not just a money-saving thing," he says. "I would love it if our fire-fighters concentrated on fighting fires."
Arcen Games latest title still in production, Stars Beyond Reach, is nearing release. We decided to ask Chris Park, the lead developer, a few questions to get a better grasp of the game. Stars Beyond Reach was showcased in our List of Games you shouldn’t miss, and with the release fast approaching, we thought it was appropriate to get more insight on the game. Stars Beyond Reach is a turn-based, sci-fi themed, planetary scale 4X strategy game. However, unlike Civilization: Beyond Earth or Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, this title seems to take a page from the City Builder genre where the player expands out their settlements by placing buildings and districts as they sprawl out. Just like City Builders, the game has simulated populations you need to oversee their needs like crime control, health, and pollution. Despite all this, the game is still a full 4X title, which means this is not SimCity with 4X elements but a 4X game with SimCity-like elements. As always, Arcen doesn’t like to stay in the box of established conventions and this game hints to being no exception. You can go to the game’s official page if you wish to get a more stylised features description of the game (warning: Arcen has a sense of humour with everything they do, despite the things that happen in their games are far from being a joking matter, usually). For those who want an even more direct and detailed description of the game, the following interview may be helpful. The Not-So-Short Interview SS: What are your opinions about the 4X genre? You’ve obviously toyed around with the genre in the past and are now going forward with a title that seems to be closer to the traditional 4X formula. What were your motives to do so? Chris Park: For me it really depends on the game. There are definitely more RTSs that I have liked historically, but in terms of my very favorite strategy games, there’s an even mix between 4X and RTS. I think that a lot of games in the 4X genre tend to be too submenu-driven for my taste, if that makes sense. I don’t mind an abstract representation — I’m a big fan of Risk, for instance, and that’s about as abstract as you can get — but when I can’t “see the state of the board” in any remotely meaningful way by looking at the game map, that does bother me. That said, the opportunity for depth in this genre is unparalleled within strategy. There’s no crutch of “well the player will have to make this choice fast, so the details of the choice don’t matter much anyway.” Designed properly, a good 4X can instead really challenge the player to think at their own pace — and ideally, for experienced players of a game, they can speed through turns while making really meaningful decisions. SS: Arcen Games is known to think outside of the box, creating unique mechanics. This is both good but can also be off-putting for some players that like more traditional mechanics. Before we discuss any new ideas or ways you’ve approached game design, what can you tell us that will be familiar to the fans of the genre? Chris: With our game AI War, I think it was a case where it “felt” like most RTS games that you’d played before, in terms of controls and so forth. For this game, I think that there is a parallel in that it “feels” like Civilization in a lot of ways — despite it being really really different — so there’s an immediate sense of being at home to some degree. Making it so that players could feel reasonably competent just in navigating the game at the start is really important to me with this one, and then the uniqueness hopefully unfolds naturally from there. SS: You have also mentioned SimCity a few times as a source of inspiration for some of your design choices. What can you share with us about this and how has it influenced the game in the end? Chris: If you look at Civilization, a single hex is a city, right? And there are a few improvements on a few tiles around that. In this game, every building takes at least one tile, sometimes more — bringing out a lot of that SimCity feel. Your empire is thus a lot more visible, and your buildings have position on the map that matters relative to one another. As with SimCity, you have to think about the effects of pollution of industrial stuff on the buildings that surround them, for instance. So you want to either build those downwind, or build hazmat buildings around them, or both. There is also an element of “simulated citizens” here that you don’t quite get in some 4X titles. You have population counts that move around, need jobs, need to staff buildings, etc. It’s a bit like how your citizens move around in SimCity based on what you create for them. You have some strong tools to make them do what you want in times of dire need, though — if something is understaffed because citizens don’t like to move jobs but a monster just murdered three city blocks of people, then you can shut down less-critical buildings to force your citizens to give up their jobs there, and then they’ll take up those more critical posts. SS: Your last game, The Last Federation, had more of a behind the scenes schemer approach to the gameplay. So, what approach have you taken with Stars Beyond Reach? How much of it will be a hand’s off simulation and how much of it will involve more direct participation from the player? Chris: You are definitely firmly in the dictatorial role that you would expect from the genre. One thing that does differ is that the other races are unusually powerful, and you’re unlikely to just go slicing through them with a military. That “paint the map your color” strategy might work, but it would be hard. Instead you’re likely to shoot for a hybrid victory of dominating different races different ways — the Acutians are hooked on your exports, the Andors are in debt deep with your banks, you’ve militarily eradicated the Burlusts with the help of some other races, you’ve got the Fenyn subdued based on how much espionage intel you have on them, and you’ve subjugated everyone else into puppet states, let’s say. So in that sense, on the global stage, you can’t just come out and try to beat everyone’s brains in. So in that regard you will have to make at least temporary alliances, get involved in international conflicts that don’t involve you (or choose to avoid them, depending on the time), and generally undermine everyone else in a variety of ways. The “more than just military is going on” aspect is something that I really love about the 4X genre in general, but usually you have to choose a single path to victory: here that’s not the case, so you can treat each individual race as its own special case. SS: Now, what are the new and unique approaches you are trying to bring with the game? We heard mentions about how you approach military deployment (not using the traditional way of controlling unit pieces on the map) differently. What other different approaches to mechanics can you share with us? You also mentioned of having a different approach towards scouting and exploration. Chris: Whew, I could literally write for a few dozen pages explaining all the things that are new here. One of the big highlights is how the game is asymmetrical between you and the computer players. Each one of the computer races has their own set of buildings and motivations and AI and even rules, and they play pretty differently from you, want different things, and so on. This is similar to what we did in AI War, but taking that idea even further. Overall when it comes to the other things that you mentioned — military, scouting, and so forth — it all boils down to one idea: making things as fluid as possible, so the time between you having an idea and executing that idea is as tiny as possible. That does indeed mean no units to move around the map in a fiddly way. You position bases and then attack via the buildings themselves — you don’t even select specific buildings, you just select a building type. The unit animations that happen are non-blocking, so you don’t have to wait for attacks to resolve before you launch more attacks or see the results or even start a new turn! That’s pretty huge for me, because I love seeing attack animations but hate waiting for them. Taking a lot of things that might normally be in a submenu and instead make them part of the main map, and making it so that adjacency and position thus comes into play, has also been a really big goal of mine. That actually adds a surprising amount to the city building portions of this, because it makes it so that you are adapting to the terrain, the resources and natural wonders available, what your allies and enemies are doing, and what your goals are. That might sound overwhelming, but really it’s just a way of saying that these cities evolve over time and in a way that is not cookie-cutter or “different just for the sake of making something a different shape,” which are both things that happen with players in a lot of strategy and city building games. So I’m very excited about that bit. SS: We were wondering if you can share some more about those unique elements. You don’t have to give us the 12 pages, but perhaps a little more details would be nice. Chris: A lot of what makes this so unique is its flow, and how it is different from “the sum of its parts,” so to speak. One of our beta testers noted “it’s like Civilization but it really isn’t,” in a happy way. Probably the biggest single difference is how position matters in this game. This is in a carrot sense much more than a stick sense, so to a very casual player they may completely miss the significance of this. But if you’re going to take on the top difficulties, you’re going to be really honing your cities based on the concepts of what makes the most sense, where. How efficiently can you place your solar cells to maximize their output? Where can you place a district to best take advantage of some rich mining and still have room for the factories you want there? Is it better to have the smog from that science lab deep in your city, thus requiring hazmat to protect some more sensitive buildings like residences or hospitals, or do you build it further downwind… but in a more risky place that an AI could ambush you? How much redundant power generation do you build? Are you the sort that rides the bleeding edge of efficiency and turns off secondary services when a brownout hits because a flying saucer just nuked your geothermal plant, or are you the sort who has two extra heavily-guarded nuclear power plants that are very far apart from one another and making it so that you always have enough redundancy to avoid a brownout even under heavy attack? On the tech tree, that’s another area that is really subtly different from something like Civilization if you are just looking at it casually — or just looking at the leftmost portion of it that is visible at the start of the game. Basically, in Civ you have to unlock everything eventually on the left if you’re heading to the right, because of how the prerequisites interact. Plus you just need that newer stuff in order to function. Here that isn’t really the case, because you are never unlocking better versions of stuff you already have — if you want that, there are some augment techs, and social progress gives you some of that, and your procedural market item “techs” also provide that. Instead you are choosing what sort of city you want to have. If you are making a big focus on science, then okay, probably you can unlock everything eventually. But otherwise there are a lot of cul-de-sacs of cool tech that you are going to be choosing between, stuff on the left that you pass on your path to the right. Maybe you never unlock the stock exchange because you’re really focused on the fishing and mining sector instead, and that’s all you need for monetary income. Maybe you never unlock fine dining because you’re going about that kind of social progress generation a different way. And that brings me to another thing that is pretty unique: why do you care about building your baseline city in a better-than-average way? Obviously there is the goal of avoiding bad things like too much pollution making you sick, but those are not that interesting in the long run. Instead, it’s about generating social progress in a variety of forms, as well as the other adjacency augments. By setting things up such that your citizens are not only having the basic necessities, but are also what you would consider productive and happy, you can unlock a lot more of the social trees (there are three — government, commerce, and cultural), and that in turn can make you more powerful as well as open up more of the main tech tree, as well as special ending conditions you can shoot for. New player? Don’t stress about building placement, please! Just throw some stuff down, get it out there, and learn as you go. No problem. You’ll notice some things where you go “ooh, I get a bonus if I put that together with that other thing!” And those are little happy moments, and you wind up looking for more of them. Next time you play, you automatically find yourself designing a more efficient town from the start, and shaping yourself to the terrain more. Eventually you’re doing those things super well alongside hopefully getting creative with it, too. SS: Also, can you give us an idea what the player will be doing in the game? Perhaps a small preamble of what the player will be doing in the beginning of the game to help our readers get a better idea of what your game will be like. Chris: You start out by landing your spacecraft and then setting up a city around it. You start with one district that you’ll quickly outgrow, and then you expand your districts either near one another or all the way across the map as you grow. You discover natural wonders that give strong adjacency bonuses to buildings next to them, and so that will influence your build patterns. There are also 80+ kinds of resources around the map, which you can mine, harvest, or extract. You don’t have to make a district in order to control these, but if they are contested you may wish to have some nearby at least. These resources can then be converted into adjacency bonuses elsewhere in your city by special resource-processing buildings. Spatially, that’s what you’re doing in the game, if we ignore the other races. But of course they are out there as well, and you may find yourself the target of attacks or desiring to attack another race over land or some other issue. Possibly you don’t want to be hemmed in and thus you need to carve a path. Maybe you just want to subjugate your nearest neighbor so that they become your puppet state and thus both a nice buffer and are not so much in your way. Mechanically, you’re placing one or more buildings on most turns, but not all of them. You’re unlocking techs and social progress bonuses over time like you’d expect. Sometimes you might start constructing 10 buildings in one turn, but on some other turns you might just flip past them. I’ve played about 200 turns in half an hour before, but I know the game really well; I’ve seen other players at 400 turns after five hours or so. Disease and crime are big problems for you internally if you let them get out of control, so smart city design is important even without the AIs messing with you. When the AIs are after you, you can either negotiate them away (depending), or call some other races to be your ally in that fight (hopefully), or fight them alone and weather it out (if that’s your style — or your lot in life, I suppose). When you’re after an AI, you’re going to build a network of teleporters over to near them, build a little military base, and then launch your skirmish. How far you carry it, and if they invite in other parties to help oppose you (possibly having guys show up on your doorstep or the doorstep of your puppet state), or if you invite other parties to join in smashing them, is up to you and the AI in that situation. Chris (cont.): Ultimately it takes citizens to do the work of your empire, and so you need more citizens. But to have larger populations, you need things for them — food, water, places to live, either entertainment or work, crime protection, some sort of disease or other medical facilities, things to deal with pollution, and so on. So there’s a cycle of building up both your citizenry to power your more outlandish stuff (weapons, wonder-style major buildings, specialty things like embassies and international banks, etc.), and building up a really tight, efficient core of citizen amenities — ideally with enough redundancy that you can weather some degree of wreckage if a giant worm erupts from the ground, etc. There are a variety of other activities that you may or may not choose to partake in, depending on your self-chosen path toward victory. You will probably engage in terraforming the land to be more like your native planet, as all the other races are doing. This brings you into atmospheric competition where you try to get the atmosphere most like your own, and the races are weaker or stronger depending on how different their ideal atmospheres are from the current. You have rebreathers, so you can either take the penalty and ignore that, or compete — it’s totally valid either way. You can also focus on making those “procedural techs,” in the form of broadcasts, writings, philosophy, consumer products, military products, etc. Construction of your city and usage of resources can really augment this process as well, and these can both make you stronger as well as give you something to use in international trade. You might completely ignore international trade, and that’s cool too — maybe you are hoarding your procedural techs for yourself, which is fine, or maybe you’re not even making them because you’re too busy efficiently capturing territory and sowing discord between other races so that they stay off your doorstep. There are a lot of meaningful choices right from the start of the game, even though the impact of all of them might not be apparent until later (and that’s nothing to worry about on the normal difficulty), but once you hit the later game is really when your breadth of playstyles opens up. Just because you’ve been ignoring international trade until turn 400 doesn’t mean you can’t suddenly redirect your empire into that after you’re done with a conquest spree. There is obviously a certain amount of inertia that you’re going to have with any large scale empire like this, but unlike a lot of similar games you really aren’t so hemmed in by earlier choices. “Well I started on the science path and now I’m behind on everything else, so this is all I can do” isn’t a thing. It bears mentioning that, also unlike a number of other 4X games, the computer players can’t “win”. They have their own goals and so forth, of course, and they will pursue those and succeed or fail. And it might be that one of those goals is crushing you, and you wind up losing the game because they succeeded in that goal. But there’s never a point where you have a viable civilization and one of the other races wins by snatching a victory condition first. There’s no worse feeling for me in a single player strategy game than that, heh. Ultimately that gives you the tempo, rather like you’d have in a city builder, but of course you are still competing with those other AIs for land, resources, natural wonders, and sometimes simply life itself, so you can’t just rest on your laurels, either. SS: Lastly, how have you approached the end game? One common complaint that has arisen recently in the genre is that the end game is a bore or a grind, requiring the player to ‘work’ for the official victory despite it has become clear they have won or that the mechanics for the victory itself require tedious play to achieve. Have you considered this issue and what have you done to help resolve it? Chris Park: That’s definitely something that I hate, too, so I’m with people there! We’re still in beta and so there are definitely some parts of the endgame that drag at the moment just because we aren’t release-ready yet. Overall my approach to this, however, is to make it so that at the end of the game you are actually more likely to lose than at any other point. That’s how things are handled with AI War, for instance — there is never a point where you are just overwhelmingly more powerful than everyone else. You may be absolutely dominating to the point that victory is clearly near, but your opponents still have very real weapons that can sneak past your defenses and take you completely out — and never are they more desperate than right when their demise seems near. I haven’t fully worked out all the details on that bit yet, but it’s going to be a major focus for me over the next month or so. I’ve done it before, so I have a pretty specific framework in mind for how I want to approach it, but I’m not going to lie and say I have that figured out yet! Hopefully the endgame is actually the most exciting climax of the game, but the proof will definitely be in the pudding. For me, my dear hope is that this will finally be a game to top AI War. I’ve never managed that, but I feel like I have a shot at it with this one. SS: Thank you for your time, we are eager to see what Stars Beyond Reach has to offer. Stars Beyond Reach has been pushed back to an early 2016 release, no date official date is given. The game will be released for the Windows PC, Mac and Linux. It’s currently in Beta, at the moment of this article’s writing. As usual, SpaceSector will have a full review of the game after release. Overall, Stars Beyond Reach has certainly perked out interest and personally I have always been a city builder fan; so seeing a game that combines both 4X and city-building elements sounds intriguing. (Release Date updated again from new information) Subscribe RSS Related Articles:
My friend came back from a shopping trip with this bag of goodies and was all like “I bet you can’t make anything out of THIS.” Challenge accepted! So what’s inside the er, ‘packet’? Ain’t that a thing of beauty! Chips, 1 chicken leg, 2 pieces of chicken from a bit of chicken anatomy that I have no idea even existed, 1/2 liter of Pepsi. And how does it all taste? Succulent, moist, well balanced, delicious, inspiring. These are words I would not use to describe a KFC 3 piece meal deal for £4.99. Whereas soggy, limp, greasy, salty, tragic, granular, are all just words. Anyway, what am I going to do with all this delectable goodness? After much original thought and not because Saturday Kitchen was on TV I decide to make a Szechuan inspired stir fry which I kick off by deconstructing the Meal Deal… First I break up the skin, bones and chicken (FYI I can’t believe how greasy this stuff is): But what about the Pepsi I hear you cry? Well, I reckon I’m going to make a sweet reduction made from the bones and the soft drink: Yeah, I know, inspired genius. And with the skin I decide to make crispy chicken scratchings by placing them into my professional chef’s oven at 180c for 20 minutes… And with the chips I create a sophisticated piece of conceptual art: cough So lets meet the rest of team Szechuan stir fry: 1 tsp ground Szechuan pepper, a lemon, tbl spn soy sauce, tsp chutney (for ginger edge), mange tout, green beens, a shallot, 2 cloves garlic, tsp black onion seeds, hot chili oil. Moving swiftly on… after 20 mins I check back with my sweet reduction: Erm, which tastes exactly how you would expect chicken bones and reduced Pepsi to taste i.e pretty f*cking unique. Well hey ho I press on with my amazing KFC Far Eastern Tasting Experience by frying the shallot, garlic, onion seeds and pepper in a searing hot wok: Woking (ahahaaa!) very fast I add the vegetables, soy sauce, lemon juice and Pepsi reduction and stir furiously for about 45 seconds, altering the balance by adding more lemon juice: The last step is to assemble my incredible KFC Szechuan stir fry on a bed of jasmin rice and to crown it all with a crispy KFC chicken skin crouton I’ve just taken out the oven: All hail! And how does it taste? Well well well! The combo of everything together, especially the baked skin, is really nice; very umami, sweet, sour, aromatic! On the slightly negative side it certainly has a powerful kick and if you were to try this at home I would maybe use half a tsp of pepper and go easy on the chili oil too; and be careful with the lemon juice because it’s maybe a wee bit sour. But overall, I’m really happy with my reconstructed-deconstructed-KFC-£4.99-meal-deal Szechuan stir fry! But what do you think? Have you tried reduced Pepsi or other soft drink reductions with your food? Are you a big fan of KFC? Then why not head over to the facebook page and tell other food geeks about it!… And if you have 10 seconds to spare and haven’t done so already, could you fire over here and vote for me cos I need to get to the free bar at the awards gig, er, or so I have been told… Twitter Advertisements
Story highlights Roxanne Jones: We have all been duped in the Trayvon Martin case Jones: This case was never "open and shut" as the Martin family attorney said earlier She says race still matters deeply in our courtrooms, just as it does in our nation Jones: In Zimmerman trial, the prosecution appears to be lying low and taking punches We have all been duped in the Trayvon Martin case. Bamboozled. This case was never "open and shut" as Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump insisted in a news conference at the start of the trial. I doubted it was that easy from Day One. Said Crump then: "The jury will have to hear all of the evidence. We think this is a simple case. No. 1: Zimmerman was a grown man with a gun. No. 2: Trayvon was a child with no blood on his hands. Literally." When I heard Crump's words, I was immediately suspicious. Could it really be that simple? Or was the attorney just trying to placate a grieving family and spin an angle for the media? Did Crump really believe that "Justice for All" had finally arrived in our nation? And that the damning stereotypes associated with race and class would have no room in a Florida courtroom where George Zimmerman is being charged with second-degree murder in the death of Martin? Roxanne Jones I'm no cynic but I am a realist. A realist who's covered enough criminal trials to know for certain that the trial that plays out in the public over pep rally vigils and celebrity protests is never the trial that unfolds in the courtroom. I understand that race still matters deeply in our courtrooms, just as it does in our nation. And there's no getting away from that fact. As the trial of Zimmerman continues, nothing is as simple as it seems. "This case is a perfect storm," says Xavier Donaldson, a defense attorney and former prosecutor in New York. "You have to look at the nature of the case and the racial, political and social economics of the defendant and accused. You have a young black kid, walking with a sweatshirt on and some guy, who wants to be a cop, assumes he's a criminal and shoots him dead." Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. "Zimmerman had an image in his community as a good guy, who wanted to protect people. So he -- and not Martin, the victim -- has gotten the benefit of presumption of innocence. Normally, in murder cases that doesn't happen. People generally believe that if you've been arrested and charged that you must have done something wrong, but those lines are blurred here," says Donaldson. JUST WATCHED Preparing for Zimmerman verdict Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Preparing for Zimmerman verdict 00:29 JUST WATCHED Lesser charge for Zimmerman? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Lesser charge for Zimmerman? 02:46 JUST WATCHED Who's screaming on the 911 call? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Who's screaming on the 911 call? 02:28 It seems Zimmerman, in part because he belonged to his neighborhood watch group, has been granted the status of a police officer. He even has police officers testifying in his favor that Trayvon's father, Tracy Martin, told them that the voice screaming for help on the 911 call was "not his son" when he heard the tape for the first time. The father strongly denies he said those words to the police. Normally, the prosecutor in a high-profile murder case puts forth evidence to prove the defendant's guilt and aggressively goes after any notion that suggests that the victim is at fault. The prosecution's goal is to do anything it can to convince a jury that the killer is a menace that needs to be taken off the street. That's how the battle is won in the courtroom. But in the trial of Zimmerman, the prosecution -- Richard Mantei -- appears to be lying low and taking too many punches. Could it be that Mantei himself buys into the theory that Zimmerman is some misunderstood do-gooder in the community? It's just puzzling. Words matter, as we have seen over the course of the trial. So when Mantei told the court before resting his case: "There are two people involved here. One of them is dead, and one of them is a liar," I was shocked. This is a murder case. One person is dead, and the other person is a murderer. Those words more accurately describe the facts presented in the case. There is no question that Zimmerman killed Martin, so there's no reason to tiptoe around the words. And that's exactly what is so troubling for myself and many others, especially in the black community. It has been all too easy an idea for people to entertain that Martin did something to cause his own murder. History tells us that in our nation's courtrooms and even outside of those walls, my son, your son, our sons still don't have the presumption of innocence, even when they are the victims of a murder. "I would have told Martin's parents, 'prepare for hell,' " says Donaldson. "It will not be easy. They will present evidence that will make your son look like the worst criminal. The defenses' goal is to turn your son into the criminal here and make him guilty of the crime." No one knows yet how this trial will end. Donaldson feels it's too close to call until rebuttals are made and the case wraps up. "It could go either way," Donaldson says. But I do know one thing: We should not have to wear a Trayvon T-shirt to an awards show or attend a pep rally to remind America that when an unarmed child is confronted and gunned down in the street by a grown man who's trained to kill, that's murder. End of story.
THE NUMBER OF long term homeless people in Cork has increased three fold since 2008, according to the Cork Simon Community. In its annual report, launched today by housing minister Jan O’Sullivan, the charity says that throughout 2011, 76 people in Cork Simon’s Emergency shelter were long term homeless, compared to 24 in 2007. “Too many people are stuck in emergency accommodation for over six months, because they have no other option” said Dermot Kavanagh, Chief Executive. The charity said there needs to be an increase in ‘move on’ options for people who are staying in emergency accomodation for more than 6 months, the definition the government gives for long term homelessness. Cork Simon has 5 homes for long term homeless people, Cork Simon told thejournal.ie, in which 70 people stayed over the course of 2011. However, it needed more. “When people come to our shelter almost half are able to move on within one week and more than two thirds within one month” said Kavanagh. Nonetheless almost one in five shelter residents are stuck in homelessness six months later because there are no move on options for them. The Cork Simon Community supported 621 people in 2011. Of these, 18 per cent were women and 19 per cent were under the age of 26. According to a health survey carried out by the charity, 66 per cent of homeless people in Cork had a mental health problem. One in five had both a mental and physical health problem.
As we noted in December, Apple had planned to sell 40M iPad minis (7.9”) and 60M iPads (9.7”) in 2013. However, the reality seems to be the reverse, as the iPad mini has been more popular than the iPad. We now understand that Apple may be planning to sell 55M iPad minis (7.9”) and 33M iPads (9.7”) in 2013. Cannibilization is a huge opportunity for us. We never fear it because if we do, someone else will do it. iPhone has cannibalized iPod, that doesn't worry us. iPad has on the Mac, and that doesn't concern us. Sales of the iPad mini are cannibalizing sales of the iPad, according to a report from NPD DisplaySearch. January shipments of tablet panels between 7 and 9 inches eclipsed shipments of larger panels, indicating an unexpected shift in consumer preference for a smaller form factor tablet.Shipments of 9.7-inch panels (the iPad) fell from 7.4 million in December to 1.3 million in January, while shipments of 7.9-inch panels (the iPad mini) rose to over 5 million. Smaller tablet panels, including those used for the iPad mini, the Kindle Fire, and the Google Nexus, saw total shipments of 14 million.In December, NPD estimated that Apple would sell 40 million iPads minis and 60 million iPads during 2013, but the January sales numbers suggest that the mini will outsell the iPad.For much of December and January, the iPad mini was in short supply due to low yield rates of the mini's display panels, with shipping times up to a week . Apple finally reached supply-demand balance earlier this month, which will facilitate even greater sales of the smaller tablet.During Apple's January earnings call, Apple executives addressed cannibalization fears, indicating that the company is not worried about iPad mini sales overtaking iPad sales.Currently, the full-sized iPad is an attractive choice because of its Retina display, but Apple is rumored to be releasing a second generation iPad mini with Retina later this year.
Long before Bryan Fuller was announced as the showrunner for the next Star Trek series, and even before he ran other shows (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daises, Hannibal), he was cutting his teeth as a TV writer on both Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine. All told, he is already credited with 22 stories in the world of Trek. Fuller was, and is, a longtime Star Trek devotee. But, despite his love of the series, he sometimes struggled with writing it. This quote from Fuller sums up a lot of the problems that I believe plagued Trek in the '80s, '90s and 2000s: "I got into writing to become a Star Trek writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to. So it was really...if back then, you told me 'you're gonna write for Star Trek for twenty years,' I couldn't have imagined a happier career. But after writing for Star Trek for four years and bumping up against the parameters of the storytelling, which sometimes were very restrictive because there was always that magical reset button and you could never carry story arcs over the episodes because they were so heavily syndicated that it simply wasn't allowed, I began to get itchy and wanting to tell stories with a little more emotional depth, because one of the things about the Star Trek universe, especially Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine and Voyager, were that the characters were so much more evolved than we were that they wouldn't be terrified when they're looking at a giant Borg cube about to assimilate them. They would handle their jobs and they would behave responsibly and calmly, and I just had a hard time relating to that after a certain point." The good news is that TV has changed a lot since Fuller wrote his final episode of Voyager. The less good news is that there are some Fuller-written episodes which ... aren't great. But (and there is an important "but" here), there is still good in most of his episodes, and you can definitely see Fuller's interests and style as a writer taking shape. So I'm going to rank all of his episodes now. Yes, I am going to make fun of some of these episodes (because that's fun, when you're a mildly sadistic culture critic), but I'm also going to talk about what trends stand out and why, after watching Fuller's early work, I'm more excited than ever to see what he does with Star Trek next.
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world The House in the US state of Minnesota passed a bill to legalise equal marriage on Thursday, with a clear majority in favour. The final vote was 75 to 59, following a two-hour debate around the issue. It will now move to the Senate, which will take up the issue on Monday. Advocates of the measure have voiced hopes that the state will become the twelfth in the US to legally recognise same-sex marriage. Leading up to the vote, thousands of supporters and opponents of equal marriage gathered outside the House. During the debate, opponents to the measure argued that it was “not the time” for the measure, but its proponents denied they were “destroying” marriage, and said they were to “uphold it for all”. If it passes in the Senate on Monday, Democratic Governor Mark Dayton could sign it into law as early as next week, and same-sex weddings could begin to take place in August. Leaders in the Senate have also said they had gathered enough votes to pass the bill. In November 2012, Minnesotan voters avoided a constitutional ban on marriage equality, and pro-equality campaigners have since stepped up efforts to push for equal marriage to be legalised. A group opposed to equal marriage in the state has pledged half a million dollars to defeat any Republican legislator voting to legalise marriage equality. On 6 November, voters in Minnesota voted ‘no’ on Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as being a union solely between a man and a woman.
American Express (Amex) sent waves through the financial and payment sector this past Thursday partnering up with Ripple, the cross border payment platform that seems to be seeping into every payment channel now. Ripple has signed on over 100 financial institutions to the RippleNet including: Bank of America, Banco Santander, YES Bank, RBC, National Bank of Australia, BBVA Spain & Mexico, and many more. With Amex now on the RippleNet, Ripple is gaining traction with each passing day. As big and surprising as this news was, it wasn’t a shocker to those who follow Ripple’s Reddit or XRP Chat closely. Back around Ripple’s Swell Event in mid-October, many people were speculating on Ripple’s future partnerships and many were pointing to Amex. Someone managed to get a photo of an internal company email from Amex stating the companies preferred choice for a distributed ledger platform was Ripple. At the time, no one could independently verify the info and with the Swell event passing by with no news, it simply faded off. Amex is joining the RippleNet to provide real time gross settlement (RTGS) for business to business transactions, thus greatly enhancing their customers’ experience. To start off this program, American Express FX International Payments (FXIP) will partner with Santander UK to open a corridor between the U.K. and the U.S. The U.S. is the U.K.’s largest trading partner, so this couldn’t be a more perfect solution that brings frictionless payments to the table, which commercial global payments are in dire need of. José Luis Calderón, Santander’s global head of transaction banking, stated: “This blockchain solution opens up a new channel between the U.S. and the U.K. and presents a significant opportunity for payments globally. Collaborating with forward-thinking businesses has enabled us to deliver this cutting-edge, secure, friction-free payment solution and extend our ‘Simple, Personal, Fair’ philosophy to American Express and their customers.” Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse concurred with Calderón, saying: “Ripple is taking a huge step forward with American Express and Santander in solving the problems corporate customers experience with global payments. Transfers that used to take days will be completed in real time, allowing money to move as fast as businesses move today. It’s just the beginning, and we look forward to growing this partnership to help other American Express FXIP customers.” The U.K.-U.S. corridor will open up more corridors as the cost savings gained by Santander UK show, we will see more banks hop on board. Banks care about one thing: money. By showing the immense savings of these cross border transactions handled by the RippleNet, banks will have no way of ignoring this technological innovation. The proof is in the pudding. SWIFT vs. Ripple Compared to the traditional legacy system used for most international payments, SWIFT, Ripple’s blockchain payment system allows for end-to-end visibility of transaction status and costs associated. Not only that, what used to take two to five days and have high transaction fees (SWIFT), now takes a mere four seconds and costs a fraction of a penny. On top of that, FXIP transactions will now be more secure than ever, an issue that has plagued SWIFT throughout its lifespan since its inception in 1973. Just this past month, hackers managed to steal $60-million from a Taiwanese bank after they broke into the SWIFT terminal system. In summer 2016, SWIFT was hacked on three different occasions. Ripple has had no major breaches in it’s history and it’s ledger has been running flawlessly since 2012. When it comes to cost savings, it’s hardly a comparison between SWIFT’s legacy system and Ripple—note photo below.. Even SWIFT’s new system, GPII—Global Payment Innovation Initiative—doesn’t compete with Ripple. Note the photo below is a little out of date. Ripple now has over 100 banks signed on as stated earlier in this article. End of an Era A major step forward for Amex will be phasing out those plastic cards we carry around everywhere to make payments. Debit and credit cards will be on their way out over the next decade or so as we see more mobile payment—Apple Pay, AliPay, Venmo—systems gain users, and as users see the advantage of these systems. Amex hired Leslie Berland specifically to figure out what will make her company’s flagship product obsolete. In an article by Wired, she discusses the two things we always have on us: a smartphone and a credit card. The day will come where these two are combined, and some could say we’re already there, just not on a mass scale. Berland discusses how the inevitable day where your phone and credit card combine, stating: “What we are hyper-focused on is how do we merge those two things. Especially as one day the physical card will disappear.” Berland is not the only one thinking the plastic cards are on their way out, it is one of the biggest issues facing Silicon Valley currently. The same people who made it possible to hold thousands of songs on your phone and take selfies are trying to figure out the best way to go about this. Everyone from Google and Apple to Square are working on this. Opportunity for Ripple The dilemma facing Silicon Valley above is simply just an obstacle. A quote Steve Jobs frequented goes as, “Obstacles are opportunities in disguise.” Ripple is that solution, giving banks a four second settlement time and the ability to handle upwards of 50,000 transactions a second. Sooner or later people will come around to realize how much Ripple truly has to offer. The cost and time savings alone will free up billions of dollars that get locked up in international transfers. 2018 will be a big year for Ripple. Disclaimer: This author currently has a stake in Ripple. This is not investment advice, always do your own research. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances. Opinions expressed here by Contributors are their own.
The Problem With Kissinger’s World Order I spent the last week immersed in geopolitical conflict, but not in eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea. No, I was at NYU Abu Dhabi, one of the least conflictual places on Earth, at a Brookings Institution conference titled “International Peace and Cooperation in an Age of Global Competition.” The 40 senior policymakers and thinkers from the United States, Europe, and emerging countries largely agreed that we have entered a new world — one which looks very much like the old world — characterized by growing conflict between states. A few of us bridled at the premise. Someone — I think it was me — said that the return of state conflict was a gift to the foreign policy boys’ club, which in recent years had been bemused by the rise of non-state actors, popular uprisings, and “soft” issues like climate change. Suddenly the realist world of international relations theory has come back from the dead. (See Walter Russell Mead’s 2014 piece in Foreign Affairs, “The Return of Geopolitics.”) The world has turned hard. The problem with my gibe is that while it is true that non-state forces, and above all the Islamic State and al Qaeda, are responsible for many of the worst conflicts in the world, it is also true that major states, including Russia, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia (and the United States), are prepared to use coercion and force — often in those same conflicts — in a way that has not been true for generations. We do live in an increasingly geopolitical world. So I began to examine the sources of my resistance. I am sorry to say this, but Henry Kissinger has me nailed. Kissinger has long lamented Americans’ unwillingness to accept that global affairs consists essentially of a remorseless struggle for advantage among states. In his recent book, World Order (see my quite laudatory review in the Wall Street Journal here), Kissinger writes that American leaders from the time of Woodrow Wilson have envisioned foreign policy as a teleological struggle for justice rather than a “permanent endeavor for contingent aims.” American foreign policy has thus remained “unmoored from a sense of history or geopolitics.” That is one part of the story; the other part is recent events. The suppression of state competition in the aftermath of the Cold War, the sudden appearance of dangerous non-state actors, and the rise of a new set of global issues gave those who instinctively recoiled from the zero-sum formulations of power politics a reason to feel that the realist model had become archaic. Indeed, it was George W. Bush who made the decisive break with state-centric thinking. In his 2002 National Security Strategy, Bush declared that America was no longer chiefly threatened by powerful states but by “shadowy networks of individuals.” Foreign policy required changing the insides of states, rather than state behavior. Of course, that didn’t work out very well. Barack Obama came to office promising to call off that campaign — but not in the name of a restored realism. Obama believed that the salient issues were not interstate but global. Those collective goods required an unprecedented degree of cooperation. What was most appealing about Obama — at least, I thought so at the time — was his belief that these global goods constituted a new form of national self-interest, and might be argued for as such. It was globalism, not terrorism that had superseded the old order. “The pursuit of power,” Obama declared, “is no longer a zero-sum game.” Alas, it must be admitted that he pronounced this fine sentiment in Russia, a place where the zero-sum game often qualifies as a best-case scenario. As I pointed out in an article earlier this year, Obama soon learned that other states — at least outside of that Kantian garden known as the European Union — did not want to be summoned to their better angels. Obama was right about the supreme importance of the global issues, but he was wrong about the pursuit of power. What’s more, he had offered this transaction at precisely the moment when the states whose cooperation he needed, above all China and Russia, were, for very different reasons, adopting an increasingly bruising path of confrontation. Obama was slow to accept this; so, I now see, was I. Yet the world we now live in is scarcely a Kissingerian one. State relations have become more conflictual than they were a decade ago; but states, collectively, are much weaker than they were, far less able to control the forces of popular discontent, cultural fragmentation, resource scarcity, environmental degradation. And the United States, for all its preeminence, no longer has either the will or the capacity to reassure allies or scare off adversaries as it once could. “World order” looks increasingly like a chimera. A good deal of the aggressive state meddling, above all in the Middle East, is an attempt to control the chaos prompted by these fissiparous forces. Look at Libya. The storm that rages over Libya was unleashed not by aggressive neighbors but by the collapse of a hated authoritarian leader who had so hollowed out the state that nothing save tribal and local identity could fill the vacuum. Sub-state and sub-regional actors are now tearing the country to bits. But the two main Libyan factions also have external patrons — Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey and Qatar. Or look at Yemen, where Saudi Arabia seems bent on carrying out a proxy war against Iran. Conflict among Sunni states, or between Sunnis and Shiites, keeps the pot boiling in the region’s failed states, and makes efforts at mediation all but futile. In short, recognizing that we live in a world of rising geopolitical conflict does not mean scanting the forces that transcend states or flourish within them — including the demand of ordinary people for a better life than their government now affords them. Statecraft now means confronting, or at least recognizing, both problems at once. One of the global issues Obama identified from the outset of his tenure was the problem of failed and fragile states. That problem only seems more urgent today. There will be no long-term answer to the conflicts in the Arab world until these states achieve at least a minimal threshold of legitimacy. But neither will there be an answer without the kind of muscular diplomacy that persuades neighbors to stop fishing in troubled waters. The Brookings conference was off the record, but I don’t think I’m violating any confidences in saying that speakers were much more convincing on “Global Competition” than they were on “International Peace and Cooperation.” The mood was, in fact, not far from despair. Virtually everyone, Western and non-Western, craved more “American leadership,” but there was nothing like a consensus about what this meant. Should Washington be drawing a line in the South China Sea, supplying weapons to Kiev, or egging on the Saudis and the Emiratis as they shadow-box with Iran? Or does leadership require “strategic patience,” an Obamian phrase that speakers invoked both admiringly and pejoratively? Should the imperative of confronting revisionist states trump the need for cooperation on global goods? As Steven Walt recently asked, are we prepared to sacrifice Chinese cooperation on climate change in order to stare them down over the Spratly Islands? We know what answer the Republican hopefuls for 2016 will give. Geopolitical conflict may not be a gift to foreign policy professionals, but it’s a treasure chest for the GOP. We’ll be hearing for the next year and a half about how Russia, China, and Iran left tire treads on Barack Obama. We’ll be hearing from Dr. Kissinger about world order. One thing I will say for Hillary Clinton, a hard person who has long preached the merits of the soft issues, is that she will be better positioned to refute these simple-minded arguments than anyone else out there. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
Tom Cruise! He is so crazy, what with the Scientology madness. It's been so long since we heard examples of his craziness. Thank god there is a new tell-all book! In which Tom Cruise controls inanimate objects, with brainwaves. Scientology refugee Marc Headley has written a book called Blown For Good—featuring a dramatic, action-scene-type cover—detailing his 15 years of work inside Scientology. The Village Voice interviewed him about his 1990 "auditing" session performed by Days of Thunder-era Tom Cruise himself. "You do a lot of things with a book and a bottle," Headley says. "It's known as the book-and-bottle routine." Cruise, he says, would instruct Headley to speak to a book, telling it to stand up, or to sit down, or otherwise to move somewhere. "You do the same with the bottle. You talk to it. You do it with an ashtray too," he says. "You tell the ashtray, 'Sit in that chair.' Then you actually go over and put the ashtray on the chair. Then you tell the ashtray, 'Thank you.' Then you do the same thing with the bottle, and the book. And you do this for hours and hours." This was supposed " to get your intention over to the bottle...to rehabilitate your ability to control things." Well then. Tom Cruise can control books and bottles with his mind and don't ever let anyone tell you different. Headley also says that there are only about 10,000 Scientologists in the whole world. They could be whupped by the Unitarians! [Village Voice. Pic by Richard Blakeley]
Weavile. I've been waiting for this guy to leave since the xurkitree meta. I've always struggled to cover him in my 3 wall cores. The way he stands in the shadows of psychic and ghost pokemon in this tier is absolutely ridiculous. His pursuit ohkoes offensive starmie from more or less full health, even without starmie switching out. Furthermore, Weavile's speed tier is absolutely ridiculous. He's the fastest Ice type in the game. Including megas. He outspeeds so much of the tier, and can pick off many faster pokemon with ice shard (Aerodactyl M,Sceptile,Crobat,Scarf Krook etc.). Maybe once the meta has settled down we can re suspect this beast, but for now, Weavile needs to take a vacation.Rotom-Wash @ Waterium ZAbility: LevitateEVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 SpeTimid NatureIVs: 0 Atk- Hydro Pump- Volt Switch- Thunderbolt/Thunder wave/Will-o-wisp- Toxic/Thunder Wave/Will-o-wispMost people scoff at rotom. They say, "wow, Rotom, all I need is a grass type ". This may be true in a way, but what is Rotom's main purpose? To generate momentum. Meaning as your passive amoongus comes in, the opponent can send in whatever they want. Infernape with swords dance or nasty plot? Mamoswine to set up rocks? SD Gliscor, or the rare Double Dance Gliscor?Latias? The list goes on. The point is, even with your supposed counter, you havent stopped this guy from doing his real job. Generating momentum. This is where rotom shines. Although it is true that pokemon with u turn can do similar things, the fact that rotoms counters are very specific (passive special walls,Blisssey,Sylveon etc, or Grass types) means that dangerous pokemon such as offensive sd scizor, the above mentioned pokemon, and basically anything else, will get a free turn. If you want to stop this momentum, you have only 3 pokemon to choose from. Basically 2, since 2 of them are so similiar. First you have Gastrodon and Seismitoad. Differences? Gastrdon has healing, Seismitoad lacks it but has stealth rocks and knock off. Then you have Lanturn, who gets worn down easily, nobody uses it, and is just included because its a possible cuunter. Another point to consider is this. Gastrodon and Seismitoad can't hurt Rotom other than toxic. Rotom can also poison them with its own toxic. Also, rotom could easily, easily carry hp grass,Shutting down these 2 mometum stoppers, everybody bar Lanturn, who nobody uses. Now do you see the problem with rotom? To make matters worse, Rotom has levitate, meaning it can take pretty long to wear down if the opponent plays smart, especially in this spikes infested metagame. Finally the waterium Z. This waterium Z obliterates any obscure counters,(Volt Absorb Jolteon etc) and lets rotom tank knock offs quite comfortably. it can also blow away some bulky special walls after enough prior damage. After Latias M, and Gardevoir M, this guy should be the first to go. Seriously.
Researchers in Germany have started on a nuclear fusion program that they are hoping the find the answer of how to produce clean and safe energy with plasma power. At the first launched event German Chancellor Angela Merkel has released a limited quantity of hydrogen into the big, and complicated looked device at the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald. In the device; the hydrogen has been heated to super-hot gas which known as plasma, this is also a similar reaction which we can see in the Sun. So in an attempt to study how can they harnessed energy from that plasma that created. During the test, the device reaches 100 million degrees Celsius. READ ALSO: France Will Build 1,000 Kilometers Long Solar Panel Roads X-ray achievement ‘opens an entryway’ to controlled atomic fusion X-ray. The reactor itself won’t be able to generate energy but will be utilized to test innovation that could hold plasma into a spot in nuclear reactors. The innovation is thought to prove itself very soon, yet defenders contend that it could be a replacement trade for fossil-based fuels and atomic fusion reactors. Another reactor in France also an electric current to hold the plasma in its place while this facility in Greifswald utilizes a perplexing arrangement of magnets to do likewise. The group said, will keep the plasma in their desired place for longer. Germany has spent over £1 billion on the task, with £300 million of that being put into the plasma device in Greifswald. Angela Merker things; if this technology improves itself will take the place of other fossil-based plants and nuclear power stations in the future. Germany almost there to generate half of their energy with renewables and with this energy technology that we are hoping that it will come to a conclusion soon will make the Germany most clean energy producer in the world and opens new ways to produce clean energy for our needs. Comments comments
Paul Turner isn't returning to the practice field for the Philadelphia Eagles any time soon. According to a report from CSN Philly's Dave Zangaro, Turner has a fractured scapula in his shoulder and will be out another three weeks. Turner has missed practice since August 2. Preseason is here Eagles fans! Make sure to stay in the loop for all Eagles news this offseason -- take five seconds to sign up for our FREE Eagles newsletter now! The injury has nearly eliminated Turner's chances of making the Eagles 53-man roster, just one year after he led all NFL receivers with 17 catches for 165 yards in the preseason, which included an 81-yard punt return for a touchdown. Turner was signed onto the practice squad after making the initial 53-man roster in September and was promoted to the active roster in November. He finished with nine catches for 126 yards. The shoulder injury has buried Turner to the bottom of the depth chart, behind the likes of Greg Ward and David Watford. Turner still has practice squad eligibility remaining and could end up there if the Eagles choose to keep a spot available for him. To follow Eagles reporter Jeff Kerr on Twitter: @JeffKerr247
The Rawnsley family spent their most recent summer holiday travelling in the United States. It was terrifically good value, which is one of the reasons August already seems like such a very long time ago. Those were the happy days, the pre-crash days when a pound bought two dollars. One of the highlights was the trip we took along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a fabulous road through the stunning scenery of the Appalachian mountains. Plunging ravines, glorious meadows, breathtaking mountaintops and wonderful waterfalls are all to be enjoyed. Running for 469 miles from Rockfish Gap in Virginia to Cherokee in North Carolina, it is the sort of drive about which songs are written. Work on the scenic highway began in 1935 as part of the public works programme of Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal. It did what it was designed to do, which was to generate jobs and draw visitors to one of the regions of the United States most devastated by the Great Depression. Here's the double beauty of it. This was a project to alleviate the economic distress of its own time which also bequeathed an achievement of enduring value to future generations. Some 20 million people visit the national park every year. The Blue Ridge Parkway is testimony to how crises can be turned into legacies by leaders with the requisite willpower, ingenuity and intelligence. As the D-word again stalks the world, the current crisis will separate Prime Ministers and Presidents into two kinds of leaders. The unlucky countries will be those led by politicians who think only of how they might scrabble through the next six months. The lucky ones will be those with leaders who turn the emergency of the moment into an opportunity to equip their countries for the future. When Gordon Brown and his fellow EU leaders met on Friday, they tried to make their agreement to a stimulus plan sound a lot bolder and more decisive than it really is. They wrote a cheque for €200bn but left it unsigned. It is entirely up to individual states whether they actually fund the plan. That is a bit deflating of the Prime Minister's boast that the world is following his example. In a Freudian moment at the dispatch box last week, he even claimed to have saved the planet. Yet GB is not the role model for Barack Obama. The next American President prefers the example of FDR. The President-elect has just committed himself to a vast programme of public works as the centrepiece of his response to America's economic anguish. By contrast, Gordon Brown's answer to the recession has been focused on trying to prop up banks and prod consumers to keep shopping. The risk of that approach was highlighted by the German Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, with his undiplomatic scorn that 'crass Keynesianism' may not do much to alleviate the recession but is guaranteed to leave Britain saddled with a national debt that 'will take a whole generation to pay off'. His words have been gleefully seized on by David Cameron and George Osborne. Yet Herr Steinbrück's intervention also drew attention to their own failings. The most brutally succinct criticism of Mr Brown's approach to the crisis has come not from the leaders of Britain's Conservatives, but from a German social democrat. He is wrong to suggest that nothing can be done to stimulate distressed economies. He's right when he points to the potential perils of throwing huge sums at consumers and failing companies with little guarantee that maxing out the nation's credit card will work. The more I think about it, the more sure I become that there have to be smarter ways of using billions of pounds than encouraging people to go shopping for more foreign imports. If the government is going to spend like there is no tomorrow, better to use the money building things that might be useful when tomorrow comes. Better to invest in Britain. That way, when we do eventually emerge the other side of recession, we will be in a fitter place to exploit a resumption of growth. The case is even more compelling because this is a country crying out for serious investment to improve its creaking infrastructure. There are plenty of needs to be met. Let me suggest three projects that would provide much better value for money than squittering away any more billions on electronic toys from the Far East. The first and most screamingly obvious candidate for investment is Britain's outdated railways. We are now in that dreadful season when a centimetre of snow is capable of paralysing our antediluvian rail network. It is as bewildering as it is shocking that our railways are so bad. Britain invented the train. We live in a compact, temperate and relatively flat country with no mountain ranges like the Alps or the Rockies to negotiate. Nature gifted us geography ideally suited for a fast, efficient and green rail network. We blew it. When one of his cabinet urged Tony Blair to take railways more seriously, the then Prime Minister fatalistically responded: 'There's no point. There's nothing that can be done.' That attitude, shared by British politicians of every stripe for many decades, has left us with the most embarrassing railways in western Europe. France, Germany, Spain and Italy all have high-speed rail networks. The only high-speed link in Britain are the tracks that take you out of the country and through the Chunnel. We belatedly invested in that only because the French shamed us into it. The government is humming and hawing about whether to commit to building a high-speed rail link connecting Heathrow, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. If it makes the decision in the way that has been historically typical of British governments, it will spend half as much money as is required to do the job properly and it will take twice as long as it should. For around the same sum that the Treasury is throwing at consumers to spend on plasma screens made in China, Britain can have a high-speed rail link connecting its industrial spine. For more immediate results, and for a pretty modest net cost, work could be begun quite quickly on the modernisation of the inter-city network. Smelly and expensive diesel trains still ply the Midland mainline and the Great Western mainline. For a fraction of the money which has been spent on a VAT cut of uncertain effect, those lines could be electrified. A programme to modernise the railways will generate work for key industries such as construction, steel and engineering. It is a big job creator. It will have an excellent multiplier effect feeding the stimulus through to other industries. It will help move Britain away from its addiction to the car. It will lift the long-term growth potential of the economy. It is a no-brainer. Modernising our antiquated railways is a catch-up project to haul Britain's transport system into the early 21st century. We will also need get-ahead projects which will equip the country for the rest of the century. My next candidate for investment is the creation of a national fibre optic network capable of connecting everyone to super-fast broadband. More and more economic, social and political activity is happening on the internet, but the digital plumbing is struggling to cope with the volumes of data. If you want to download a film, for most people that means leaving the computer running all night. This is because nearly all households and many businesses are still connected to the net by old-fashioned copper wiring. There's a big, essential and urgent job of work to do replacing the outdated wiring with fibre optics. This is another project which is too large for the private sector to take on by itself, especially during a recession. A fibre optic network would allow every firm and household to enjoy and exploit the potential of the broadband speeds currently available only in swanky offices. This is the sort of project that intelligent government would invest in. My third candidate is green energy. We know this recession will end one day. The oil price is not going to be low for ever. To prepare for the day when it soars again, to make good on commitments to reduce carbon emissions and to be free of dependency on the likes of Russia and Saudi Arabia, we have to get much more ambitious about renewable energy. For a blowy country surrounded by sea, Britain has been pathetic at harnessing the energy of wind and wave. One pressing need is to start laying power lines which will allow the energy from wind and wave turbines in the North Sea to be plugged into the national grid. That will cost a fraction of the billions which have been committed to the feckless banks. Ministers should commit to that essential investment for a greener energy future. A modernised rail system, a national fibre optic network and a renewable energy grid: all have the triple merit of generating business in Britain, creating jobs in Britain and enhancing Britain's competitiveness. They are not make-work schemes of the sort that can give infrastructure projects a bad name when money is spent building bridges to nowhere. All these projects meet a national need and will leave a profitable legacy. Our politicians need to be thinking not just about how to get through the next six months, but how to make Britain fit for the world after the slump. If we are going to spend billions, better they are spent leaving future generations with a legacy which amounts to more than just a mountain of debt. Cleverly done, big can be beautiful. If you remain to be convinced, let me recommend a drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Hollis Johnson If anything, 2016 has certainly been the year of "realizing things." From the apocalyptic to the apoplectic, we can all agree that this year has put us through the ringer. Yet for all that has occurred, one wonderful thing sticks out in my mind amidst the bad: I found perhaps the best hot dog in the country. Costco's. I'm no hot-dog connoisseur, but of all I've tried in my life thus far, Costco's is the best yet. How is the nation's best hot dog from such a bare-bones place as the Costco cafeteria? First of all, it's a great value. You can order a hot dog and a drink for $1.50 — that's it. And considering how large the hot dog is, it's definitely an outrageous deal. But a deal alone isn't enough to sway most. The expectations are understandably low for a Costco meal. But on that first bite, it's abundantly clear that this is no run-of-the-mill hot dog. Hollis Johnson The dog is unexpectedly flavorful. Gone is the bland, hollow taste of the average hot dog; instead, a delightful smoky taste pervades, similar to a kielbasa sausage but not as fatty or rich. There's a slight charred taste to it that isn't overpowering. It's juicy, and there's a satisfying snap with every bite. This is not the lifeless frankfurter that one microwaves for 30 seconds before chopping up and throwing in some ill-conceived mac-and-cheese dinner. Nay — this dog has vitality. The condiments aren't needed to mask the soul-crushing saltiness that they normally would, but simply to compliment the already delicious hot dog. Speaking of condiments: Ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, and sauerkraut — if you're into that — are all at your disposal at Costco's commissary. Such freedom is truly a national treasure worthy of our patronage. Hollis Johnson The bun is deceptively simple — what's in a bun, after all? It's seen as the vehicle, not the cargo. Yet the bun is the unsung hero of this hot dog. It's soft and pliant, and tastes lightly sweet, which complements the dog itself perfectly. But the real magic happens when the condiments are dumped on the dog with wild abandon — precisely because nothing happens. The bun is immune to shabby sogginess or untimely breakage. It's truly miraculous. By all means, grill your own hot dogs in the backyard — char them if you must. But if you find yourself heading to Costco to stock up on huge amounts of paper napkins, meat for the grill, etc., do yourself a favor and grab a hot dog on the way out. Holiday hot dogs are totally a thing.
The more I think about having my personality downloaded into a computer to be treated like a binary coded lab rat, the more overwhelmed I feel with dread. That's the concept behind Homeshake's “Getting Down Pt II (He’s Cooling Down),” premiering today on The FADER, but it's only slightly horrifying. The video is directed by Pierce McGarry, a funny and distinctive voice in music videos with frenetically absurd clips for Mac Demarco, Walter TV, and Alex Calder. ADVERTISEMENT In this new visual, Homeshake 2.0 sings his smooth and soothing R&B while his image surfs through stock visuals, TED Talks, and big JNCO jeans. "The video shows my consciousness uploaded to the world wide web, which is unfortunately not far off from my daily routine," Homeshake told The FADER over email. "My favourite part is when I land the 900." Homeshake's new album Fresh Air is out now via Sinderlyn.
TORONTO – Film, television and digital productions contributed more than $2 billion to Toronto’s economy in 2016, Mayor John Tory said Monday as he promised to streamline regulations, helping the city compete with other global destinations. Calling the industry a “key economic driver” for the city, Tory said that 2016 topped the previous high of $1.5 billion in 2015. Tory said $800 million of last year’s total came from Los Angeles-based productions, adding that Toronto will have to fight to keep the business. The mayor said he met with the studios to thank them for their business and to find out what would help them return to Toronto. READ MORE: TV, film production in Toronto surpasses $1B for third straight year “They told me that we had to continue to invest in facilities,” he said. Vancouver has a full-time person promoting the city in Los Angeles, Tory said, adding that Toronto’s other competition includes Atlanta, New York and London. “We have every reason to be proud and aggressive,” he said. “We are competitive with them in every respect in the film and television and digital production industry, but we’ve got to go down and make sure we sell our story and not be complacent or shy as Canadians often are.” And he said tax credits are an “important part of the package” that keeps productions coming to the city. “Atlanta, New York, California itself, they have them, and so it’s really just us being competitive,” Tory said. READ MORE: Toronto mayor headed to Hollywood to drum up support for city’s film, TV industry In an effort to bring more work to Toronto, Tory said the city is moving to streamline processes for production companies and work with residents in neighbourhoods impacted by filming. “As our film industry keeps growing every year we are going to create more jobs and more economic success,” he said, noting that the academy award-winning film “Suicide Squad” employed more than 4,700 people while it was being filmed in Toronto in 2015. He also said that the TV series “Suits,” now in its seventh season, provides the equivalent of 2,300 full-time jobs. “These are good jobs, they’re skilled jobs, they’re solid jobs, for set designers, editors, directors, hair stylists, makeup specialists, special effects, catering, sound, lighting, actors,” Tory said. Combining the $2.01 billion with figures from broadcasters and interactive digital media – such as video games – resulted in a total investment figure of $3.26 billion for all of Toronto’s film, television and digital media production last year, the city said in a release. Foreign and domestic TV series remained the dominant investment type in Toronto, as 115 productions brought in $908 million in 2016, the city said. Foreign major production investment in film and television grew to $794 million, a 49-per-cent increase from 2015, while investment in animation and visual effects grew to $403 million, a 179-per-cent increase from the previous year, city figures showed. Investment by broadcasters was down about $69 million in 2016 at $211 million, while interactive digital media rose to $1.05 billion, from $1 billion a year earlier. Commercials production spending was up 10 per cent last year to $380 million. “This is a key economic driver for Toronto, and it enhances our reputation as a home to creative industries,” Tory said.
(CNN) With less than a month left in office, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a stern rebuke Wednesday over Israeli settlements and warned that the two-state solution to the enduring conflict with Palestinians is at risk. Kerry defended the United States' decision last week to abstain from a vote on -- and not veto -- a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as one aimed at "preserving the two-state solution," which he called "the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians." "I am also here to share my conviction that there is still a way forward if the responsible parties are willing to act," Kerry said, opening his speech. But he underscored his optimism with a warning: "Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back, deriding Kerry's speech as "skewed against Israel" in a statement Wednesday. "For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict -- Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries," Netanyahu said. Netanyahu also signaled his support for the incoming Donald Trump administration, saying, "Israel looks forward to working with Trump to mitigate the damage this resolution has done and ultimately to repeal it. We hope the outgoing Obama administration will prevent any more damage." The back-and-forth was a remarkable moment in US-Israeli relations. Kerry and Netanyahu were unusually candid in articulating the perceived shortcomings of the other side. The dueling speeches essentially offered both countries the opportunity to unleash nearly eight years of tension that has built up under the Obama administration. And it played out just over three weeks before Trump takes office with a pledge to work more closely with Netanyahu. 'That's how we work' Kerry called on both Israelis and Palestinians to take steps showing the seriousness of their commitment to a two-state solution, such as complying with the terms of the Oslo Accords. He put forward six principles he argued should guide future negotiations, including secure borders for both an Israeli and Palestinian state, a "fair and realistic" solution to the question of Palestinian refugees and establishing Jerusalem as an "internationally recognized capital of the two states." Kerry also ruled out the possibility the US would join efforts to dictate peace terms at the UN Security Council or that the US would recognize a Palestinian state without a negotiated agreement. "The incoming administration has signaled that they may take a different path, and even suggested breaking from long-standing US policies on settlements, Jerusalem -- and possibly the two-state solution," Kerry said. "That is for them to decide. That's how we work." Kerry acknowledged as much, noting Trump has signaled a break with long-standing US policies toward the conflict. Trump, in his latest breach of presidential transition protocol, made clear on Twitter Wednesday morning ahead of Kerry's speech that change was on the way. "We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)!" Trump tweeted. "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but....... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016 not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016 Asked about the speech later Wednesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said it "speaks for itself." Congress is taking steps to back Trump's approach. House Republicans are looking to bring up a non-binding House resolution condemning a recent vote at United Nations that has caused intense blowback from Israel. Kerry on Wednesday offered the US's most direct rejection of Israeli claims that the US worked behind the scenes to guide the UN resolution to passage and criticized those claims as an attempt to "distract attention from what the substance of this vote really was all about." "The United States did not draft or originate this resolution, nor did we put it forward," he said, adding that the US simply made it clear to the resolution's sponsors that "if the text was more balanced, it was possible we wouldn't block it." Kerry bemoans conflict's status quo Kerry lamented the status quo in Israel and the Palestinian territories, drawing on personal experiences as he criticized Israeli and Palestinian actions he said hurt chances for a two-state solution. He pointed to the conflict's impact on children in both Israel and the Palestinian territories -- from Israeli children facing rocket fire and must rush to shelter at the sounding of a siren, to destruction in the Gaza Strip, where he said he remembered seeing Palestinian children playing in the rubble. Kerry argued that current Israeli settlement policy in the region was leading toward a future of "one state and perpetual occupation" and slammed the arguments of right-wing Israeli officials who argue settlements are aimed at bolstering Israel's security. He also reserved special criticism for Netanyahu, whose governing coalition Kerry called "the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements." "They're leading towards one state," he said. And the secretary of state also pointed to the recent rapid growth of settlements east of the 1967 borders, which have long been seen as the basis for the territory of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel. He noted that the Israeli settler population in the West Bank has grown by 270,000 since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. But while he argued that settlements furthered the likelihood of a one-state solution that would jeopardize Israel's status as both a Jewish and democratic state, Kerry stressed that settlements are not "the whole or even primary cause of this conflict." Kerry also acknowledged that Palestinian leaders, including the moderate Fatah faction that rules the West Bank, continue to glorify Palestinian terrorists who carry out attacks against Israeli civilians. Defending the Obama administration The outgoing secretary of state's speech at the State Department comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Israeli administrations over the UN resolution vote. And Kerry sought to push back against arguments that the abstention amounted to a US betrayal of Israel. He defended the administration's commitment to Israel, arguing that "no American administration has done more for Israel's security than Barack Obama's" and noting that Netanyahu has acknowledged as much as it comes to US security cooperation and military aid. Kerry had planned to give the speech last Thursday, when the vote was originally planned. Those plans got scrapped after the proposal's original sponsor, Egypt, forced a delay for a day. Regarding the timing of Kerry's speech, two White House sources told CNN the Obama administration wanted to make it clear where it stands on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as a matter of principle and as a matter of history. Netanyahu responds Netanyahu offered a quick reply to Trump's tweet earlier Wednesday morning vowing stronger US backing for the Jewish state, thanking Trump on Twitter for his "warm friendship" and "clear-cut support." President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel! 🇮🇱🇺🇸@IvankaTrump @DonaldJTrumpJr https://t.co/lURPimG0wS — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 28, 2016 And after Kerry spoke, Netanyahu derided the speech as "skewed against Israel," arguing that Israel doesn't need "to be lectured by foreign leaders." Netanyahu insisted Palestinian leaders were the "root of the problem," not Israel's government. "In these days of the Hanukah holiday, the light must overcome the darkness, and Israel's light must overcome all challenges with the Jewish Menorah lights I would like to bring light in the world," he added. Deputy speaker of the Knesset Ahmad Tibi, one of the most influential Arab members of Israel's parliament, slammed Netanyahu for deriding Kerry's speech, pointing to opposition among Democrats in the US to Israel's settlement policy. "Let's face the facts: Israel is upset because this American action advances freedom and equal rights for Palestinians," Tibi said. Netanyahu's government has said in recent days Israel will provide detailed, sensitive information to the incoming Trump administration to bolster their claims that the US played a covert role in pushing passage of the UN Security Council resolution on Israel. The Obama administration has denied any such involvement. Netanyahu's outrage, though, has played out publicly. The Israeli prime minister launched a scathing attack on the Obama administration on Sunday and summoned the US ambassador to a face-to-face meeting. This story has been updated.
Vancouver MP Joyce Murray has launched her bid for the leadership of the Liberal party. B.C. Liberal MP Joyce Murray becomes the seventh person to officially announce a run for the federal Liberal leadership. (joycemurray.ca) Murray's announcement in Ottawa Monday kicks off a week in which at least two more candidates are expected to announce campaigns for the party's leadership. Canada's first man in space, former astronaut and Quebec MP Marc Garneau, will tell a Montreal audience on Wednesday that he is challenging fellow MP Justin Trudeau for the leadership of the federal Liberal party. The three sitting MPs along with former MP Martha Hall Findlay of Toronto are thought to make up the top tier of a field of candidates that could number in the double-digits. Toronto lawyer George Takach, who has a campaign team that includes veteran Liberal organizer Mark Marissen, is also expected to announce his bid this week. The 63-year-old Garneau flew three space shuttle missions before running the Canadian Space Agency. After being defeated in his first run for office in 2006, Garneau was elected in the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie in 2008 and was re-elected in 2011. The former Navy combat engineer is expected to give up his duties as Liberal House leader. Garneau, who also a former director of an energy company, was named his party's natural resources critic this week after David McGuinty resigned from that post on the heels of embarrassing his party with remarks that were aimed at Alberta Conservative MPs. McGuinty's suggestion that Alberta Conservatives were too narrow-minded for federal office was followed up by Trudeau being forced to apologize for saying in a 2010 television interview that Canada was better off with Quebecers rather than Albertans running the country. Both stumbles left Liberals reeling in Alberta ahead of a Monday byelection in Calgary-Centre where the party was thought to have a competitive chance of winning a seat in the city for the first time in decades. Other declared candidates include Ottawa lawyer David Bertschi, Vancouver lawyer Alex Burton, Toronto lawyer and professor Deborah Coyne, retired Lt.-Col. Karen McCrimmon. Other possible candidates include former Montreal MP Martin Cauchon, former president of the B.C. branch of the federal Liberal Party David Merner and economist Jonathan Mousley. Liberal MPs Denis Coderre and Dominic LeBlanc, as well as interim leader Bob Rae, have said they won't run.
RANGERS last night rejected internet rumours that the club will enter administration for a second time on Wednesday, but faced demands from supporters to answer claims that former chief executive Charles Green still has influence within the club. A spokesman for the club said last night: “There is absolutely no truth in these claims [about the club facing administration], which appear to come from agenda-driven bloggers who are out to damage the club. There is no chance of administration while there is no board meeting tomorrow. This is all completely false.” However, The Union of Fans – a coalition group representing six supporter bodies – released a statement seeking clarity about what happened to the Yorkshire businessman’s 7.68 per cent stake in the club after he ended his second stint with the club as a paid consultant last August. It comes after former director Dave King spoke out at the weekend about his fears that it was “quite possible that Charles Green is still de facto controlling the club”. King now plans to travel to Scotland from his base in South Africa to launch his bid for boardroom change after claiming his previous attempts to invest in the club in order to avert a planned downsizing of the budget were thwarted by the current Ibrox regime. Green stepped down as the Rangers chief executive last April after it was alleged he had links to former owner Craig Whyte, although he was later cleared by an independent commission. The 60-year-old then returned to the club during the summer but had his consultancy contract terminated after friction with manager Ally McCoist. It was announced then that Green would sell his stake in the club to investors Sandy Easdale and Laxey Partners but the fans say they have no record of the Easdale transaction ever taking place and want an explanation. The Union of Fans’ statement said: “We welcome the fact that Dave King has committed to travelling to the UK. We very much look forward to meeting him in the near future to push things forward. We also note that, like us, he shares a fear that Charles Green and the people he represents are still de facto in control of our club. We would like this board to explain just what has happened to the five million shares Charles Green awarded himself at one penny each and which constituted a 7.68 per cent stake in Rangers. We are aware that some of those shares are now in the hands of Laxey. It was also widely publicised that Green had proxied his shares to the Easdales and struck an agreement to sell those shares to the Easdales in December 2013. But no record of such a share trade exists. “It is entirely unclear who now holds the balance of Mr Green’s shares and if, indeed, they have even moved out of his control.” Demanding the right to examine the club’s register of shareholders, the fans group added: “Dave King is quite correct to express his fear that Charles Green and those he represents are possibly still controlling Rangers. Just as we, as supporters and shareholders, are right to exercise our legal right to view the up-to-date shareholders register. Once again, we simply ask this board to answer the perfectly reasonable questions they are being asked and to not just speak about transparency but actually provide it.”
Last summer The Get Down hit Netflix to much critical acclaim. The musical drama, which takes place in the 1970s Bronx, follows a group of teens as they try to reach their dreams and musical aspirations. Unlike most other Netflix shows, only the first half of the season aired last summer and the second half will be available for streaming on April 7, but what happens after that? Will The Get Down return for Season 2? Fans certainly hope so. Thankfully, it seems the odds of another season happening are pretty good. Show creator Baz Luhrmann sat down with Vulture last month to discuss the future of The Get Down and he's hopeful there will be a second season. "To be honest, we have already developed the opening of the next season," he told the outlet. "Sony and Netflix have been very driven about having a second season. There has been no question about that. They really want it." However, although the want for a second season is definitely there, Luhrmann said he doesn't think he'd stay on as showrunner if the show does continue. Instead, he hinted that they already have a showrunner in mind to take his place. "Way back in the very beginning of this, and I won't say who it was, but there is an African-American director who is absolutely the best of the best for this, and always was," he said. "I tried to get him involved and I couldn't. I don't want to be tease-y, but we're all trying to hope to make that work out." So even though a second season hasn't been officially ordered yet, Luhrmann feels confident that once they find a new showrunner the second season will be a go. Hopefully that won't take long and fans' minds can finally be put at ease about the continuation of their favorite show. For now, though, they can continue to look forward to the second half of the first season finally premiering. Although the second half will be shorter than the first (five episodes instead of the expected six), the finale will be a bit a longer than the other episodes, clocking in at 75 minutes. Also, fans will definitely see a change between the first half and the second. "The first half is a little bit more naïve," Luhrmann told Vulture in the same interview. "It's a little bit more childish. Whereas the second part... as they jump forward [from summer 1977 to fall 1978], the style of show has a little bit more edge and complexity." Fans can see the change for themselves when the second half of The Get Down Season 1 begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, April 7.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses — a religious organization that owns dozens of valuable Brooklyn properties – save quite a bit on taxes. Over the last 12 years, the church has saved at least $368 million in property taxes, according to a new report by BJH Advisors, a consultancy, and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Property taxes on the Witnesses’ 37 Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo properties were estimated at $138.6 million since 2006. The church also saved $230 million on transfer and capital gains taxes on the 21 properties it has sold since 2004. The Partnership is attempting to pressure the Witnesses into donating $50 million to Brooklyn before their planned relocation upstate. The Partnership has argued that the Witnesses have benefitted greatly from Brooklyn’s rise to prominence over the last decades, but haven’t sufficiently given back, Crain’s reported. “Once they leave and head upstate, if anyone goes knocking on their door with a tin cup saying, ‘Hey, remember Brooklyn,’ it is going to fall on deaf ears,” the Partnership’s president, Tucker Reed told Crain’s. The church has been selling off properties for years in anticipation of the move. It’s currently marketing at least five properties including its 733,000-square-foot headquarters at 25-30 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights, known as the Watchtower. Combined, those properties could earn as much as $1 billion, according to industry experts. [Crain’s] – Ariel Stulberg
Learning a new language is often a core part of moving abroad – but in some linguistically diverse places, expats will need to learn two or three languages just to get by. According to data from Ethnologue, a reference work documenting the world’s living languages, the countries with the largest number of spoken languages include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, India and the United States, all with more than 300 unique tongues spoken within their borders. To understand how that language diversity impacts daily life, we sought out locals and expats in their most populous cities – where residents are most likely be exposed to a number of languages on a daily basis – and asked them what it’s like to live in a place where so many cultures and communities coincide everyday. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea Not only does Papua New Guinea (PNG) has the world’s highest number of spoken languages (more than 800), it also has the highest language diversity index in the world; it’s incredibly likely that two randomly selected people in PNG would have different native languages. The diversity springs from the country’s geography of deep valleys and tough-to-navigate terrain, which kept hundreds of customary societies and clans separate for centuries. As the capital and largest city in PNG, Port Moresby has drawn people from many of these small villages to find work, while a recent mining boom has attracted a sizeable expat community, making the city an increasingly diverse place to live. Safety is a top concern here, however, and precautions like not driving alone must be taken to avoid gang violence and organised crime. Still, that shouldn’t deter people from experiencing life in PNG, said expat Clara Raven, who moved from London nearly two years ago. “What you get exposed to here is life changing,” she said. “It’s such a unique place to be.” While the lifestyle may not include spontaneous drives within the city, it does allow for weekends away to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches and mountain hikes throughout the country’s 19 very different provinces. It’s easy to get around the city as an English speaker, since the country’s business language is English and many expats are Australian. You will also commonly hear Tok Pisen, Raven said, which is a pidgin English and one of the country’s four official national languages (which also include English, Hiri Motu and Papuan New Guinean sign language). “It’s very easy to understand, and it’s constantly evolving as a language,” she added. Most expats live in European-style apartments, often paid for by their employers, in the areas of Ela Beach, on the water on the city’s south side, and Paga Hill, on the west side of the peninsula. Jakarta, Indonesia The most populous city in Southeast Asia, with 11 million residents, Jakarta attracts expats from throughout the region for its economic opportunities. As such, it’s common to hear a number of the more than 700 languages spoken in Indonesia. The country has a similar geographic diversity to PNG – in fact, they share an archipelago province – and is made up of more than 17,000 islands, which contributes to the sheer number of dialects. “It’s refreshing; you get to meet people who are not of the same background as you,” said Jakarta native and grandson of Chinese immigrants Peter Richie Putra. “A lot of cultures are mixed with one another and that's a good thing.” The diversity makes for one of the best food scenes around, especially late at night when street vendors come alive. Though it’s easy to find street food around the city, go-to hubs include Sabang, Bloc M and Pecenongan Street, where you’ll find everything from Indonesian fried rice and Chinese steamed buns to Middle Eastern martabak pancakes. Expats often live in apartments in the wealthier neighbourhoods, such as walkable and affluent Menteng, 3km to the north of downtown; shopping oasis Thamrin, 5km to the east; and nightlife-hopping Kemang, 10km north. For those on a budget, it’s also common to rent a single room in a boarding house, known colloquially as kos-kosan. To make friends with local Indonesians, you need to make the effort to get out of your own neighbourhood, said Brett McGuire, who moved to the city from Auckland more than 10 years ago. “It's a very vibrant dynamic city. If you are prepared to step out of your comfort zone, you will have a great time and be so much the better for it,” he said. The country’s official language is Indonesian, and it helps to at least have a rough grasp of it in order to communicate in Jakarta. “I often hear people say that Indonesian is an easy language to learn. It's not. The truth is that Indonesians will let you butcher their language in the interests of communication,” McGuire said. “The result is that you can get away with very basic Indonesian. No one is going to laugh at you or correct your grammar. Most, if not all, Indonesians will be thrilled that you had a go at their language.” Lagos, Nigeria More than 500 distinct ethnic groups inhabit Nigeria, and each has their own language. Though many are spoken in small, rural villages, you’ll hear a large range of them in the country’s largest city and commercial capital, Lagos, especially as more rural migrants come to find work. “It is pretty common for people to speak two or more languages in addition to English, which is the official language,” said Idowu Koyenikan, originally from Lagos and now living in the United States. After English, the major languages include Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. But those who want to move here to learn another language must put some effort into it. “The more affluent the neighbourhood, the more English dominates and the less likely an expat is to experience interactions in Nigerian languages,” said Dr Laine Strutton, an American who lived throughout Nigeria during her PhD studies and writes about oil politics in the region on her blog Niger Delta Politics. “I studied Igbo for a year, and it was imperative that I stayed in rural Igbo villages in the Niger Delta in order to be able to really practice.” Languages can be especially concentrated within certain trades in Nigeria, Stutton added. “For example, Igbos are typically market traders, so I went to outdoor markets to practice. Fulani tend to be the butchers of the north, so to experience the Fulani language, one would want to visit a butcher's shop.” No matter the language or trade, the residents of Lagos are “fun-loving people”, Koyenikan said, with the city known for its buzzing nightlife and overall chaotic energy. Most expats live on Lagos Island, 10km southeast of the city. The island includes the Banana Island area on its eastern side, with some of the most expensive real estate in Africa. Housing in Lagos, which is typically a mix of apartments and houses, can be tough to come by. “One of the unique things about renting a home in Nigeria is that you usually have to pay your rent two to three years in advance. That is how strong the demand is,” Koyenikan explained. Delhi, India More than 400 languages are spoken throughout India, and the capital, Delhi, hears a huge mix of them, including Hindi, English, Urdu and Punjabi. “Everywhere you go in Delhi there are people from all walks of life, from different states, who speak different languages,” said Sayani Ghosh, originally from Kolkata, who now runs Peak DMC tours of the city. “This mingling has opened up opportunities to learn about other cultures and food habits.” Despite its large population and crowded streets, Delhi also has a number of green spaces and parks where families congregate in the evening, and residents escape from the frantic pace of daily life. South Delhi used to be the only expat-friendly area, but that has changed in recent years, Ghosh said, as expats moved into areas like Central Delhi and East Patel Nagar 6km to the northwest of downtown “Expats have become more daring, and stay where the real people and communities live, like smaller locations in South Delhi which weren’t popular even a few years ago.” She recommended Humayunpur in South Delhi and Karol Bagh in Central Delhi, which put residents in the heart of the action with their vibrant shopping, dining and city markets. For those who prefer the gated community experience, she recommended Vasant Kunj in the mountain foothills southwest of downtown New Delhi; Greater Kailash in South Delhi which is popular among affluent families; and the residential, family-friendly Safdarjung Enclave, also in South Delhi. Almost everyone lives in apartments, and Ghosh said living in one makes it easy to meet neighbours from other cultures. While English is the written and business language, it can be helpful to learn some Hindi and Punjabi, as they are the most widely spoken. Los Angeles, United States Sometimes called a “melting pot” for its assimilation of diverse immigrant cultures, the US has more than 300 languages spoken within its borders, with English, Spanish and Chinese being some of the most commonly spoken. The country’s most linguistically diverse city is Los Angeles, thanks to a large number of Spanish-speakers hailing from Mexico and Latin America, and a large East Asian immigrant population bringing a density of Chinese, Korean and Tagalog speakers. “It is common to see people speaking two to three languages in LA, ranging from Swedish to Korean to French and so on,” said Chris Lu, general manager of Freddy Smalls Kitchen and Bar in west Los Angeles. “Our local culture takes from so many others that the lines become blurred between what might be distinctively LA and what might not be.” In general, residents have a “laid-back hustle”, he said. “I have met some of the hardest working people, but even the most successful seem to make time for yoga or a hike.” The LA area is huge, including all of Los Angeles County and some of Orange County. As such, neighbourhoods range from hipster up-and-coming to laid-back suburban. “Santa Monica [located on the beach 15 miles to the west] and Pasadena [located 10 miles northeast] are two very nice cities in this metro for any budget,” said Thi Thi Ma, who immigrated from Vietnam in the 1980s and is now manager of the Best in Class Education Center in Koreatown. Lu agreed, noting that “these areas can be better spots for someone raising a family.” “As housing demand increases, areas such as Culver City, West Hollywood and Mid-Wilshire are undergoing major transformations,” Ma said. “They are becoming gentrified, but street-friendly, family-oriented and convenient.”
A well-known New York City radio personality is accused of attempting to transport a 7-year-old girl from New Jersey to the Virgin Islands to have sex with her, according to federal prosecutors. Dave Herman, 77, who hosted "The Dave Herman Rock and Roll Morning Show" for 27 years, allegedly had been communicating online for several months with an undercover law enforcement officer posing as the mother of a young girl. In one conversation, he allegedly asked the undercover if she was sexually active with her daughter or was interested in people who had sex with children. He allegedly said "age 6 is the perfect time to start her being loved that way," and discussed how he was attracted to the innocence of young children. The pair continued communicating, with Herman allegedly trying to set up a meeting with the woman and her daughter. He allegedly suggested last month that they fly to his vacation home in St. Croix, and that he would pay for it. He then bought plane tickets for them to travel there on Thursday, continuing to "discuss his plan to engage in sexual activity" with the girl, prosecutors said. Herman was arrested at the airport in St. Croix, where he was set to have a court appearance. Lawyer information was not immediately available. --Andrew Siff contributed to this story
SAN DIEGO, Calif. – A mother is furious after she learned what her daughter was being forced to do to complete a visual arts class. Associate Professor Ricardo Dominguez has been teaching Visual Arts 104A: Performing the Self for 11 years. “The class that focuses on the history of body art and performance art in relations to the question of the self or subjectivity,” Dominguez told KGTV. However, one mother says she is furious that her daughter was forced to perform nude for her final in the class, or risk getting a failing grade. “It bothers me, I’m not sending her to school for this,” said the mother. “To blanket say you must be naked in order to pass my class, it makes me sick to my stomach.” Dominguez told KGTV that students must be nude in order to pass the final. “At the very end of the class, we’ve done several gestures, they have to nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says, ‘what is more you than you are?’ He said that 20 students strip down, including him, and do a performance of self in a dark room that is only lit by candlelight. “It is all very controlled,” he said. Dominguez says all students know what to expect from the first day of class. “If they are uncomfortable with this gesture, they should not take the class,” he said. However, the student’s mother says that was not the case. “Nothing was ever explained, nothing was ever stipulated prior to Thursday,” she said. The Chair of the Visual Arts Department, Dr. Jordan Crandall, provided KGTV with a statement on Monday. In it, it states that the class is not a requirement for graduation and that students are not required to be nude. “The concerns of our students are our department’s first priority, and I’d like to offer some contextual information that will help answer questions regarding the pedagogy of VIS 104A. “Removing your clothes is not required in this class. The course is not required for graduation. “VIS 104A is an upper division class that Professor Dominguez has taught for 11 years. It has a number of prompts for short performances called “gestures.” These include “Your Life: With 3 Objects and 3 Sounds” and “Confessional Self,” among others. Students are graded on the “Nude/Naked Self” gesture just like all the other gestures. Students are aware from the start of the class that it is a requirement, and that they can do the gesture in any number of ways without actually having to remove their clothes. Dominguez explains this- as does our advising team if concerns are raised with them. There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness, summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one’s “traumatic” or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can “be” nude while being covered.” See a mistake? Report a typo here.
If there ever were a time to give dogs a right to vote, it would be now. As of next week, puppy mill owners could have their own representative in congress. Jason Smith, a Republican from Southeast Missouri, is currently favored to win a special congressional election in the 8th Congressional District. His mother is none other than notorious Missouri puppy miller Mary Ann Smith. Jason and his mom used to be business partners. Now, you would think this would be a public relation’s nightmare to end all nightmares in an American congressional campaign. Family business = cruelty to man’s best friend. But, no! This should have been the firestorm of a media controversy…but there has been no outrage. No debate. It’s not even the subject of what could be a very damaging TV commercial campaign in most other places. With days leading up to the election, it’s not even an issue. In Missouri, everyone knows what Smith’s family does for a living. The family puppy mill is so bad that in 2011, it was named one of the dirty dozen mills because of the excessive USDA violations. This information does come up when you Google them. The Show Me State is the puppy mill capital of the U.S. – it is home to the most puppy mills of any state. If you ever wondered why it’s so difficult to get things done there, Jason Smith has a lot to do with that. Since he’s been in the Missouri statehouse, protecting puppy mill operators has been Smith’s big agenda item. At one point, people in Missouri got outraged about all the puppy mills, the stories of abuse and the black eye it gave their state. So, in 2010 Proposition B – aimed at holding breeders more responsible – was put on the ballot. Voters passed that measure…but it never became law. Would you like to know why? The House Majority Whip in Missouri at the time was none other than Jason Smith…the same guy in the running in the 8th congressional district. He campaigned and fought and dragged the whole agriculture industry into the debate to protect his family business. In the Midwest, our number one industry is agriculture. With the death of other industry in the Midwest, keeping family farms afloat is very important. Anytime anyone wants to change the laws related to ag it is very tricky. In Missouri, Smith made Proposition B the devil to the farm industry, even though it had nothing to do with cows, pigs, chickens or the food supply. He whipped up so many agriculture people that his family business was safe from further scrutiny. In the end, a very watered down version passed. He’s now running as a small businessman and farmer. At his family “farm,” things aren't nurtured to grow like most farms. Instead dogs are crammed into small cages with inadequate shelter with no medical care or socialization. That cage is where they stay to eat, sleep, poop, breed, give birth to puppies and repeat until they die or get passed off to another breeder. This is where they bake in the summer and freeze in the winter. Now, he’s up for congress and when you Google him – there is little controversy or mention of his family business. He’s now tallying endorsements from a wide variety of people…including Sarah Palin. (I’m not even going to go there.) Why should we care? Animal cruelty is animal cruelty no matter where you live. He could be headed to congress where laws are being considered that will have a huge impact on his family business. He will be leading the charge in favor of protecting that interest. The people of Missouri apparently don’t care…so let’s give the vote to someone who will care. Let’s let the dogs out of the cage and into the sunlight for just one day. Let’s let the puppy mill dogs of Missouri have a vote in who should be representing their interests in Washington. I think we all know who won’t get their vote. Or better yet. Give the media one last chance to get the word out prior to the election. For a list of media outlets, got to these links - TV, Radio, Print media. To subscribe to my feed, type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free and you can opt out at any time. You may reach me at kathypetexam@gmail.com and also like my Raining Cats & Dogs Facebook page.
By John Schroyer Rapper Snoop Dogg and a Washington State marijuana entrepreneur learned the hard way that cannabis businesses must tread carefully when it comes to trademark protection. Both recently encountered trademark snafus, underscoring the pitfalls cannabis companies face. Still, MJ entrepreneurs do have options to safeguard their names, logos and other intellectual property. Experts said state-level trade protection is one option, given that federal trademark protection typically is unavailable for plant-touching companies because of marijuana’s status as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. Cannabis entrepreneurs also can turn to “common law” trademark rights, experts said. And it helps to have a distinctive trademark or brand that stands out from the crowd. At the very least, experts advised, MJ business owners should educate themselves about what options are available – and seek them out. “Trademarks are the king,” Ohio attorney Howard Cohn said. “All you sell, really, is your intellectual property. Which means … it’s very important to protect it. Because if you don’t, you don’t have anything to sell.” Recent Setbacks Over the summer, the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled that owners of state-licensed marijuana retailers can’t receive federal trademark protection on marks that are connected to cannabis sales because marijuana is illegal under federal law. The ruling stemmed from a trademark application from a Washington State resident who owns a recreational marijuana store in the state and a related website. The man, Morgan Brown, applied to register “Herbal Access,” but a federal patent examiner denied the bid. Also over the summer, Snoop Dogg got into a legal battle over whether his branded marijuana product line, Leafs by Snoop, infringes on the trademark of the National Hockey League team the Toronto Maple Leafs, again illustrating the potential pitfalls for cannabis businesses. The rapper himself had filed a trademark application in January, 2015, for the Leafs by Snoop trademark on clothing, but dropped that effort in November. He recently filed a separate application for different products – and could encounter more legal issues with the Maple Leafs on that bid. That said, marijuana entrepreneurs do have legal recourse to protect brand names and other intellectual property. Take one of the best-known strains in the world: Charlotte’s Web. The Stanley Brothers’ famous high-CBD strain – which fights seizures – made headlines starting in 2013. That’s when CNN’s Sanjay Gupta picked up the story of Charlotte Figi, a young girl whose intractable epilepsy was practically cured by a tincture produced from a high-CBD medical cannabis strain that Joel Stanley and his brothers bred on their Colorado farm. The brothers named the strain after Charlotte, and they all became famous. “Right after the first Sanjay Gupta piece, there was virtually no CBD in existence out there. Most of the industry couldn’t pronounce ‘cannabidiol,’” said Joel Stanley, who is now CEO of CW Botanicals. “Then all of a sudden, it was this big popular thing, and lots of people wanted it. Lots of families were trying to access it in different places. You started to see all of these fake Charlotte’s Web products pop up.” CW Botanicals has turned to common law trademark rights to protect their brand. Stanley estimated his company has spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, which includes ongoing monitoring to keep an eye out for Charlotte’s Web impostors. And Stanley estimated the company has issued between 40-50 cease and desist letters to various companies that have tried to illegally imitate Charlotte’s Web, including one company in Britain. “We had people call us and say, ‘We bought your product at such and such a dispensary in this state, and our family member had an adverse reaction,’” Stanley said. “And then you find out that not only did it not have any CBD, but it was very high in THC. Then you would find products that were dangerous, like you find all over the MMJ industry, products with high levels of pesticides or other contaminants.” The Primary Options The biggest and best option is a state-level trademark, said California attorney Mary Shapiro. “In lieu of federal trademarks, there are state trademarks,” Shapiro said, adding that they often cost less than $100 to apply for. “Those can be really helpful in this particular scenario.” The exception to the rule, she said, is California, which is voluntarily following a rule to not issue trademarks to companies that violate the federal Controlled Substances Act, which by default means marijuana-touching businesses. Both Shapiro and Cohn noted that common law trademark rights can come into play in the cannabis industry. Those extend essentially when a company has been using a trademark in practice and commerce, by association with its products, and can claim ownership through use. “Once you get a common law trademark right … if someone else comes in and gets a federal trademark right, they can’t stop you, because you have a common law trademark right,” Cohn said. “That means, ‘Listen, everyone, I’m using this. It’s not registered, but I’m using it.'” The best way to establish that common law right, said Stanley of CW Botanicals, is to document every sale and every transaction that includes the brand or name or product that you want to protect, along with dates and relevant information. That way, when the government comes calling, you’ll have information to back up your claim. Down the Road As the industry progresses and regulations change, experts suggested that companies should look for trademarks and brands that stand apart and are easy to identify, for the sake of defending against any potential competitor. “I’m very careful to counsel clients on choosing marks that are exclusive and distinctive, so that they can obtain federal protection,” Shapiro said. “And I’m pushing state protections much more than I was before, because there doesn’t really seem to be an end in sight with the feds.” John Schroyer can be reached at [email protected]
Anyone watching TV Tuesday night saw hours of back-to-back speeches from the New Hampshire winners and losers. But amid the endless stumping, one speech stood out. Shown alongside his competitors, the particular (and particularly effective) language and style of Donald Trump is remarkably clear. To see if there’s any quantifiable difference between Trump and everyone else, we gauged the post-primary speeches of all four candidates by the reading-level. Trump comes in lowest, speaking at a fourth-grade level. By comparison, the New Hampshire speeches of Hillary Clinton and GOP primary runner-up John Kasich were ranked at eighth and sixth grade, respectively. Bernie Sanders, with his speech’s readability at a tenth grade level, had the highest grade out of the four candidates. We used the Flesch-Kincaid readability test to determine the grade levels. The test measures sentence count, words per sentence, characters per word, and syllables per word. A speech with longer sentences and complex vocabulary is given a higher score and vice versa, indicating what level of education is needed to understand that speech. While it’d be easy to disparage Trump for his low register, his campaign is appealing to a surprisingly wide group of people. His win in New Hampshire cut across most demographic groups, with particular support among people without college degrees. Trump’s style is fitting for a campaign prides itself on its appeal to everyday Americans—an explicit reject of the so-called elites of the establishment. Trump’s also following the trends: Vocativ used the same test to analyze over 600 presidential speeches throughout history. That data shows a steady decline in reading level, from George Washington’s college-level speech to Barack Obama’s 10th grade-level speech about ISIS on December 6th, 2015.
The big predators in Gatineau Park have no name. But there are six small packs of them, watching you even when you can’t see them, and traversing great distances in West Quebec. But the new census of these packs — the first ever — leaves a tricky question: What do we call them? Wolves? Coyotes? “Coywolf” hybrids? All of the above, probably, as National Capital Commission experts who surveyed the park found a “canid soup” that mixes the genes of wolves and coyotes. (Canids are wolves, dogs and their relatives.) This is the first real census of wolves and coyotes in the park, conducted with traps, cameras, trackers and DNA analysis. “In general there were potentially six groups in all,” said Christie Spence, the National Capital Commission’s senior manager of natural resources and land management. “Maybe three packs with 15 individuals (in total) of the larger animal, and another three packs of coyotes,” with 10 to 12 individuals in all. Each group ranged from a pair to seven animals. “That was more than I was expecting,” she said. While the number surprised her, “it doesn’t surprise me as much if you think of them all just using one portion of it, or (living there) just during one time of year. “This kind of animal has learned to be very wary of people, so I think they see us a lot more than we see them,” she said. But exactly which species they are remains complex. Most of Canada has grey wolves, alias timber wolves. But there’s a slightly smaller type native around here called the Eastern wolf. It was once common both here and in the Eastern United States, but today lives mostly around Algonquin Park. And as Eastern wolves fared poorly during the European settlement, they sometimes bred with coyotes, so that the distinction is now blurred. The NCC study found a 72-pound male whose genes were mostly coyote, even though it was far bigger than coyotes are supposed to be. Its mate weighed only 42 pounds, which is more typical for the species. The big male also had some grey wolf genes. The Gatineau wolves travel long distances. One collared male, probably a young one, left its pack and followed Highway 148 to farmland near Shawville where it was shot and killed. Another young male with a collar also headed out on its own, travelling west and then north. It’s still active somewhere near Gracefield. But two others with collars stayed closer to home. They turned out to be a mated pair. “They had a more tightly defined territory,” Spence said. “They probably spent more than half of their time outside the park, south of the park in the Pontiac region. They went to the (Ottawa) River quite a lot. This was an interesting confirmation of our hypothesis that some of these ecological corridors that connect the park down to the river would be important.” “They had a den, and that was also outside the park.” So, do they get protection? Eastern wolves are officially endangered. “I guess they do when they are in the park,” Spence said. “That’s been part of the thinking in conservation biology for a long time: that protected areas can’t really do the job” unless there’s also protection outside the park or reserve. In the autumns of 2013 and 2014 the NCC trapped wolves, gathered DNA, measured tracks, and fitted wolves with radio collars. “People do see them,” Spence said. “At least a couple of times a year people will send us photos of animals that they see. Blurry, from a bit of a distance.” One park staffer arrived for work at the Visitors’ Centre a month ago “and there was one right on the front lawn.” tspears@ottawacitizen.com twitter.com/TomSpears1
1.1K Shares Share Most articles about being a good lover begin and end with “How to Please Your Man” directives. This assumes 1) a heterosexual relationship and 2) that it is the responsibility of the woman to please her man. And, of course, if she isn’t doing something right, then she can surely expect her man to discard her. A woman’s value here is based on her ability to sexually satisfy her assumed male partner. There are also some popular literatures on “How to Please your Woman,” which oftentimes claim to know the secret to female orgasm — as if there’s a secret in the first place. If you can give your woman an orgasm, then you will inherit the secret power over the female body and sex. Of course, this again assumes 1) a heterosexual relationship and 2) that though it isn’t really your responsibility as a man to give your woman an orgasm, if you do, you will have control over her body, her pleasure, and ultimately, her. The problem is: Neither of these approaches actually thinks about each person’s power over themselves and pleasure. For some people, pleasure is not always gained through orgasm. And orgasm is not always something you can give or make someone else do. Neither of the above approaches actually gets to the heart of being a good lover, which starts with communication and self-awareness. Consent is key. Yes, you should always be checking in with your partner(s) about what feels good and right because people’s needs, wants, and desires change — even within a single sexual session. What felt good last week might be unbearable today. Everyone has a right to say, “Hey, I don’t like this.” And it’s always okay to say “stop” at any time. So here are a few more pointers that I’ve developed on how to be a good lover. There are surely more things to add, but this is a start to a feminist approach to good — and hopefully great — loving. 1. Take time to figure out what you like, what you love, and what you strongly dislike (and everything in between). A lot of times, people who have been socialized as women, or who identify somewhere along the feminine spectrum, have been taught that sex is all about pleasing your partner(s). It’s not uncommon to read cover stories of major magazines with cover headlines like “How to Keep Your Man at Home” or “How to Keep His Attention.” All of these how-to articles make the assumption that women are only here for men’s pleasure, even in magazines directed at female consumption. These articles also reproduce the notion that men only stray if women are sexually unavailable. This reflects multiple disavowals. The first is of women as anything other than heterosexual sex objects. The second is the idea that a faithful man, or a man who is interested in relationships that are founded on more than or something other than sex could exist. It is important for all people to take time to check in with themselves and figure out what it is that they like, but this might be especially difficult for women and feminine people who have been taught that their desires are secondary to whomever they are having sex with. This might also be a difficult thing for men who have desires that are considered “non-masculine.” But there is room for you, bottom and switch brothers, gay, straight, bi, trans*, and queer. You must take time to get to know your own body. What sensations do you like? What kind of touch do you like? This kind of exploration could be fun and also meditative because sometimes you just need to sit with yourself. Once you are able to talk to yourself about what you like and don’t like, you have taken the first step to becoming a great lover. Of course, this is an ideal situation because a lot of us don’t figure out what we like and what we don’t like until it’s already happening. In that case you have to be able to say “stop” — but we’ll come back to that! 2. Have a conversation with your partner(s) about your desires. And listen! Once you have figured out what it is you like and don’t like, you have to create the conditions to articulate those desires. Be sure that when you have this kind of conversation that you use “I” statements. “I like to be kissed here.” Or “I never want to be touched here.” The point is to make sure that your partner(s) know that this is about you and not them. It is easy to take these things personally if you are not clear about these being the things that you need. And still it may be difficult for a partner to hear something like “I really only like to have sex after we’ve both showered.” Your partner might think that you are insinuating something about their own hygiene, so reassure them that this is just what you need — from anyone. Now, as the listener (and you should always take turns listening and talking), you must try to be present to what your partner is saying to you, without taking it personally. If you feel like you need a break or what is being said is triggering, ask for a break. And remember: Just because your partner asks for something different doesn’t mean that you’re a bad lover. It just means that they want something different. Every person is unique and desires different things at different times. What may have worked with your last partner might not be what this partner likes. Be open. 3. What if my partner wants something that I feel uncomfortable with? When you have the discussion about likes and dislikes, it might become apparent that you and this person are not sexually compatible. At that point, it might be a good idea to walk away from a lovership. Not everyone is sexually compatible, and that’s okay. It’s up to you to decide the difference between comfortable boundary-pushing and a situation that makes you scared or anxious. And you should never do something that makes you feel like that. Trying something new? Yes! Try new things! But remember: if you don’t like it, stop. 4. Use safe words. Safe words are always important because it’s a fast way to let your partner(s) know that something isn’t working for you or in the case that words like “stop” and “no” are being used as a part of the preconceived sexual script. Choose a safe word that all parties will remember. It should be a word or phrase that can’t be easily misread as part of the sexual script. It shouldn’t be a multisyllabic word because that might be hard to hear and difficult to say. Something like “iPhone” or “yellow” might work, but you can experiment with this. For some, establishing a non-verbal safe physical signal might be helpful, especially if the situation is triggering, words might be difficult to access. Remember though: “Stop!” can always be used if you haven’t had the time to develop a safe word or signal. 5. Be sure to process. Sometimes processing after can be helpful. Maybe you did something that really wasn’t that good for you, but kept doing it anyway. Maybe you were trying to please your partner and forgot about your own needs. Maybe you couldn’t really figure out if you liked something or not in the moment or didn’t want to stop. At this point, you want to revisit steps 1 and 2. Talk it out. What didn’t work for you? What hindered you from using your safe word/signal? When you bring this information to your partner(s), it’s important to articulate what was coming up for you. And remember that you can wait to have this conversation until you feel ready and comfortable. It doesn’t have to happen right after sex. As the person on the receiving end, it is important that you listen to your partner without being defensive: “Well, you told me it was okay? Now you want to change your mind?” Reactions like that aren’t appropriate. You might feel guilt about doing something that your partner didn’t like, but remember that this isn’t just about you. It’s about relating to another person, which is about balance and communication. Ask yourself: Was there something that I sensed? Could I have asked if this was okay? You should always check in with lovers during your loving sessions. It’s just good practice. It helps you both to be present, and it lessens the chances of doing something that your partner(s) aren’t comfortable with. Sex can be a fun a journey with yourself, your body and other people. The best way to make the trip is to make sure that you always carry a self-awareness and communication tool-kit. 1.1K Shares Share Kai M. Green is a filmmaker and a spoken word poet who examines through film and poetry questions of gendered and racialized violence and a PhD candidate in the department of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Kai is committed to creating consciousness-raising art and scholarship. Learn more about him on Youtube and his blogs, Kai’s (Bi)Weekly Jams and In The Darkness: My Dissertation Journey. Follow him on Twitter @Kai_MG. Read his articles here and book him for speaking engagements here. Found this article helpful? Help us keep publishing more like it by Help us keep publishing more like it by becoming a member!
Shelton Stroman, right, and partner Christopher Inniss watch television with their son, Jonathan, 9, at their home in Snellville, Ga. The two are part of the group challenging Georgia’s same-sex marriage ban. (David Goldman/AP) Last week, there were five state same-sex marriage bans that had yet to be challenged. On Tuesday, that number fell to four. Next week, it’s expected to drop to three. Georgia’s ban is the latest to be challenged. Seven people filed suit against the state on Tuesday, asking a federal judge to toss out Georgia’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning such unions. That group includes a widowed woman fighting to have the marriage to her deceased spouse recognized and three couples: a pair of Atlanta police officers, co-owners of a pet day care, and a lawyer and real estate agent. The suit was filed by Lambda Legal, a pro-gay-marriage group, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and argues that the ban violates equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. Before that challenge, there were 65 pending lawsuits involving marriage laws in 30 states, according to the group’s Thursday accounting of same-sex marriage ban challenges. The only other unchallenged bans were in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. South Dakota’s ban is expected to be challenged next week. That challenge will be brought by Nancy Robrahn and her partner Jen Rosenberg, who plan to wed in Minneapolis this week before immediately returning home to challenge their state’s ban by filing a name-change request. The pair hopes to challenge the ban by May 1 (next Thursday). “We don’t want to postpone it any longer than that,” Robrahn says. Gay marriage is now legal in 17 states, according to Lambda Legal.
Reflections on the reflection proposals published at 02.03.2017 11:29 by Jens Weller A few weeks ago I wrote a short overview over the most interesting papers for the current C++ Committee meeting in Kona, Hawaii. The big surprise was that there were many papers on reflection, while there already is a very detailed proposal for reflection. With the C++ committee currently in Kona discussing lots of proposals, there will be some changes to the on going effort for reflection, but the current proposals are detailed enough to give an overview. Current Situation There is no support for Reflection currently in the standard, for years some solutions were more popular then others. Qt uses the moc extensively for reflection, boost always had with fusion (and now hana) its ADAPT_STRUCT macros. Also a different approach, writing a reflection engine from scratch was presented at Meeting C++ 2016. We're not going to see an adaption of the moc nor a std::ADAPT_STRUCT being standardized. Same is for any library solutions, the current trend goes to have static reflection become part of the language, with a certain library API through concepts to have access to it at compile/run time. Current Proposals For Kona, these are the 5 proposals which are (maybe) debated [if the committee finds time]: The first 3 proposals are from the same group of authors. The first is the main proposal, the other two focus on providing an overview document and a rationale why they choose this way for the standard. The 4th proposal is from Andrew Sutton and Herb Sutter, while the 5th proposal comes from Daveed Vandevoorde. Details below. The main reflection proposal TL;DR: use $reflect but not reflexpr for reflection. $reflect is a trait, which returns an object according to the std::reflection::Object and other meta concepts. Currently this includes support for unions, enums, structs/classes, and alias. Supported and not supported according to the nutshell document are: Supported: Data members (e.g. iterating over the member variables) Member types (typedefs/using declarations) Enumerators Template instantiations Alias support Not Supported Namespace member sequences Functions Class templates Building new datatypes Reflection facilities already in C++ Anonymous Functions Attributes This proposal is also based on facilities currently not in the standard, it provides placeholder implementations for compile time strings and type lists. Also reflection does build upon concepts, it defines a couple of concepts itself, mostly for supporting the above listed types. The authors aim at providing a minimal set for reflection, the major interfaces are defined as concepts rather then concrete types. The mirror library for accessing the proposed features already existing can be seen as a proof of concept implementation outside of the standard. Also Louis Dionne has demonstrated, that boost::hana can easily adopt and satisfy the requirements of the current reflection proposal. The base reflection concept is Object, which enables the querying of the source location, and reflects_same concept. The Record concept covers unions, classes and structs. It provides access functions to the reflected type members. The Named concept provides base_name and display_name facilities. The Alias concept allows you to access the aliased type via get_aliased_t. So far for the current main reflection proposal. Lets look at the 2 other proposals, arguing for a change in the above approach. A design for static reflection Andrew Sutton and Herb Sutter present a closely to the above proposal related design, except that... ... reflections are regular objects and not types. This enables a style of metaprogramming without the need for template metaprogrammig. A noble argument, also, as the main proposal builds so heavily on concepts, its interesting to hear a variation of this idea from Andrew Sutton, who was leading the work on concepts together with Stroustrup, Dos Reis and others. The proposal aims at making $ a reflection operator, with which you can access reflection meta objects. The difference is visible when we take the examples from both proposals next to each other: Main proposal This proposal template <typename T> T min(const T& a, const T& b) { log() << "min<" << get_display_name_v<$reflect(T)> << ">(" << a << ", " << b << ") = "; T result = a < b ? a : b; log() << result << std::endl; return result; } template<typename T> min(T a, T b) { log() << "min" << '<' << $T.qualified_name() << ">(" << $a.name() << ':' << $a.type().name() << ',' << $b.name() << ':' << $b.type().name() << ") = "; T r = a < b ? a : b; log() << r << ' '; return r; } Further the authors show, how their approach could be used to provide a hashing function, which is able to hash all simple structs. Another usage could be a stringification function for enums. There is a fork of clang which implements this proposal. This proposal is very similar to the current favored approach, as it also uses concepts to describe its API, but the difference really is being based on an reflection object with member functions instead of a reflection type. The proposal has a different set of APIs, I am not sure if part of this can be merged into the current main reflection proposal, or if this should be seen as a totally different approach. Reflect Through Values Instead of Types Similar to the other non main reflection paper, this paper aims at a different approach in handling reflection. This time through values instead of types (or objects). It is a rather short proposal, and the goal is clearly stated in the first paragraph: P0194R2 proposes adding compile-time reflection facilities to the language. I’m looking forward to the capabilities themselves, but I’m concerned about using types to perform computations when we’ve come such a long way in providing efficient compile-time computation facilities through constexpr . Let’s design with modern C++ in mind and leave the template metaprogramming shackles of the past behind. Also, the author doubts, that adding reflection into the type system is such a smart idea, instead he proposes to base reflection on a std::metainfo type, reflexpr(X) (or $reflect(X)) would then return a value of such type. The idea to base reflection on constexpr and values instead of a mechanism of it self is noble. Yet, the shortness of this paper shows that this idea is just in its beginning, while the main proposal has already progressed very far. Future reflection in C++ So the current situation is, that the main reflection proposal has progressed very well, but other ideas could still gain enough support to be merged into or change the main approach. This shows that reflection has become a serious feature to be added to C++, but we might not want to fast track things. Providing a first, minimal interface for reflection based on keywords or an operator starting with $ is a good idea. But also one should have in mind, that the main proposal emerged from a couple of other proposals for reflection in the past already, so the Committee seems to have a certain consensus where it wants to go with reflection. A complete new approach or do over is unlikely. Join the Meeting C++ patreon community! This and other posts on Meeting C++ are enabled by my supporters on patreon!
Top Five Ethereum Classic Wallets Now that Ethereum Classic is becoming a lot more popular, the quest to find a proper wallet solution is in full effect. There are quite a few different wallet solutions out there for ETC users, although some of them are slightly “better” than others. It all comes down to personal preference and the choice between a hardware and software solution. Below are some of the top wallet solutions for Ethereum Classic users available today. 5. JAXX People who are looking for a hot wallet solution for Ethereum Classic can always take a look at Jaxx. It is a very powerful mobile wallet supporting dozens of different cryptocurrencies and tokens. However, Jaxx should never be considered to be a long-term funds storage solution by any means, due to their issues with the mnemonic seed recovery. It is a good solution to store small amounts of Ethereum Classic for spending purposes, but not to store your life savings by any means. 4. ETHECORE PARITY Similar to the Ethereum Parity wallet, there is an Ethereum Classic version of this solution. This particular wallet is developed by Gavin Wood and his team and supports both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. It is good to see support for both currencies within the same wallet created by Ethereum developers, that much is certain. There is no reason for the bad blood between ETH and ETC supporters, even though there are some political disagreements to take into account. 3. CLASSIC ETHER WALLET Ethereum users will be all too familiar with MyEtherWallet, a prominent platform among ETH users. The Ethereum Classic fork of this platform goes by the name of Classic Ether Wallet, and offers the exact same features. Users can access Classic Ether Wallet through the web browser or run the open source client on their own computer for additional security. Classic Ether Wallet also includes support for future ICO tokens hosted on the Ethereum Classic blockchain, assuming such projects will come to fruition moving forward. It is worth mentioning there is a dedicated Classic Ether Wallet Chrome plugin as well. It provides all of the same functionality as the browser and desktop version but runs inside the Chrome browser at all times. Ethereum Classic users will be more than pleased to have so many different options at their disposal right now. It will help the Ethereum Classic ecosystem grow as a whole, which is never a bad thing. 2. MIST Some people may be surprised to learn the Mist Wallet can support Ethereum Classic, assuming it is downloaded from the correct GitHub repository. This particular wallet is currently being developed by the Ethereum Foundation, although there is a different forked version developed by Ethereum Classic developers. The Mist wallet provides a lot of functionality, and it is good to see this recognized offering being made available to Ethereum Classic users as well. 1. LEDGER NANO S There is no better way to keep your ETC funds safe than by using a hardware wallet. The Ledger Nano S is of great value in this regard, as it provides ETC, ETH, XRP, and BTC support. Getting your hands on the Ledger Nano S may be a bit difficult at times, though, since they seem to be selling quite quickly. Hardware wallets provide maximum security, this it is only normal to see such high demand for these products. Source: TheMerkle
I think a lot about estimation. I used to do a lot of estimation with my teams. When the organisation I’m currently working for started doing agile, we did loads of estimation. We were constantly being asked for estimates. High-level estimates, low-level estimates, feature level estimates, story level estimates. We would spend a lot of time doing various agile games, planning poker, silent sizing. All in the name of coming up with estimates. I think a lot of that effort wasn’t very valuable. I don’t think everybody should stop doing estimates. I’m not a member of the #noestimates movement (though I find the idea interesting). I think people doing Agile should spend a small amount of time doing estimates, but not much more than that. Because the estimates aren’t very important. That is because of the relative uncertainty of benefits versus costs. Estimates are done for two reasons: the first is to find out when something will be finished, i.e. the duration. The second is to find out the cost. Most of the time we did estimates, it wasn’t because someone wanted to know when it would be done. It was so they could find out how much it would cost. And they wanted to know the cost because that would tell them whether it was worth building it or not. That line of thinking is completely stupid and wrong. Because the uncertainty of benefits is higher than the uncertainty of costs. Return on an investment is the benefits minus the costs You don’t need an MBA to know that the return of an investment is the benefit minus the cost. If a project earns a benefit of $100K, and costs $80K, your return is $20K. Basic stuff. So if you want to know the return of a project, you need to know the benefits, and you need to know the costs. Well, we don’t know these things, because they happen in the future and we can’t see the future. So we try and estimate them. Generally, a product owner or project manager will ask a scrum team or a solution architect or someone to come up with a cost estimate. Meanwhile, that person will run around and put together a benefit estimate, that will go in a business case. If the business case shows that the (estimated) benefit is higher than the (estimated) cost, by a reasonable amount (taking into account some factors like risk and time value of money and opportunity cost), then the business case will be funded and the project will go ahead. So what’s wrong with this picture? Most people focus way too much on costs and not enough on benefits In my experience, the average amount of time that people on a project spend estimating the costs of a project is orders of magnitude greater than the amount of time people spend estimating the benefits of the project. There Which would make sense if the uncertainty around costs is much higher than the uncertainty around benefits. But it isn’t, it’s the other way around. If you are working on anything innovative, your benefit uncertainty is crazy high If you’re doing some boring project that is similar to a hundred other projects, or if you are doing BAU (Business As Usual) work, your benefits aren’t risky at all. But you probably shouldn’t be spending time reading this blog. This blog is about agile software development, which is a methodology used for building new software under conditions of uncertainty. If you’re building something that has market uncertainty, and/or customer uncertainty, and/or value proposition uncertainty, which a lot of people are these days, then the uncertainty of your benefits is high. Extremely high. That is where your real risk and uncertainty is. Not in your costs. I’ve worked on a project that estimated it would have 700,000 users; we shut it down after a year when we realised it had seven, and some of those were probably fake or hackers. I’ve worked on a project that was expected to have sales of 20 a week. Not long after launch, it had sales of 2000 a week. You need to consider the uncertainty of benefits versus costs What does this tell us? It tells us that for any sufficiently innovative product, the uncertainty of the benefits of that product is much higher, orders of magnitude higher, than the uncertainty of the costs of that product. This is really important. Let’s go through that again, in a simplified form: the uncertainty of your benefits is higher (much higher) than the uncertainty of your costs. Print that out and stick it on your cubicle wall. Turn it into a GIF and set it as your desktop background. Get your phone to send you a reminder with that text every day at 7am. Burn it into your brain. Say it out loud and say it again: “The uncertainty of your benefits is higher than the uncertainty of your costs”. What does that actually mean though? OK say that I’m right and that is true. So what? What does this mean? It means you should spend a lot less time trying to reduce the uncertainty of your costs, and a lot more time reducing the uncertainty of your benefits. If your costs could be anywhere between $400K and $800K, but your benefits could be anywhere from $0 to $5million, then the benefits are by far the more important factor in determining your return. So why do we put so much effort into estimation, which reduces the uncertainty of our costs (but not the uncertainty of our benefits)? Why do we not spend a lot of time trying to reduce the uncertainty of our benefits? I’m not sure why. I think it’s a form of cognitive bias, where we feel we are more in control of costs so we try and understand them better, but we subconsciously feel the benefits are just left up to fate, and nobody has any idea of what they will be or of any way to control them, so why bother trying to estimate them? Well, we can’t estimate them very effectively (just like we can’t estimate costs very effectively), but there is a methodology that can give us some useful information about benefits without a big upfront investment: the MVP (Minimum Viable Product), a concept from Lean Startup. Go read my article about MVP if you don’t know what it is. But we do market research! Market research is fine but it doesn’t give you real information about your benefits, just like estimation doesn’t give you real information about your costs. Surveys and focus groups can give you some clues but they don’t tell you how people will use a real product in a real environment. True research is done by collecting data with a real product (even if it’s a basic minimum one). You find out if people like your product by giving them a product. You find out how much something will cost by building it. This is the whole point of the Minimum Viable Product: it’s the smallest thing you can build that will give you validated learning. And that learning is generally learning about how much customers value (or will value, once you’ve built the proper thing) your product. This gives you information about your benefits, i.e. reduces the uncertainty of your benefits, which informs your decision as to whether to continue building or not. To go back to our previous example, your MVP might tell you that your benefits will be more in the $1million to $2million range, in which case it is definitely worth building it no matter whether it would cost $400 or $800K, or it might tell you that your benefits will be more in the $200k to $400K range, in which case it is not worth building it no matter whether it would cost $400K or $800K. But we can’t estimate based on data, it has to be guesses! You’re probably thinking “but this is a trap! If we can only estimate once we’ve built the thing, how can we decide to build it or not, since we only know how much it will cost by building it?”. Well, remember, your benefit risk is higher than your cost risk. Your cost estimation might be off by +/- 50%, but your benefit estimation could be off by +/-95% (or more). Also, estimation doesn’t have to be done in one big chunk at the beginning. If you’re doing agile, you should be breaking things down into pieces. You can then estimate them in pieces, as you go, rather than all in one lump at the beginning. For example, you could break your work into “MVP, feature set A, feature set B, non-functionals”. Then you estimate the MVP (but not anything else), then build it (that might tell you whether it is worth even bothering to estimate feature set A or B, or which one is more important). You also have information about how hard this thing is to build. You can then estimate feature set B for example (if your MVP tells you that is worth building). And maybe then non-functionals, once you’ve build feature set B. As you go, you learn more about the domain and the product, and your estimate will be more accurate and valuable. Trying to estimate everything up front is a waste of time because: you might not build all of it anyway (you might end up building hardly any of it, and that’s fine, remember, it’s not a crime to kill a bad product) you will learn a lot as you go and estimates done further down the track will be more valuable than ones done at the beginning. So we should all stop doing estimates, right? No I am not saying that we should all stop doing estimates for software development. We need to rethink why we are doing it and make sure we are doing it for the right reasons. And make sure we are doing other activities to reduce our benefit uncertainty. Remember, estimation can be done for two reasons: to tell us when something might be delivered to tell us how much something will cost i.e. is it worth building. If you are doing it for the first reason, fine, though remember, an estimate is a forecast not a commitment. And the earlier the estimate is made, the less information is available to inform it. So the less valuable it will be and the less you should use it to enforce dates. If you are doing it for the second reason, make sure you are spending about ten times as much time and effort on reducing the uncertainty of your benefits as you are in estimating the cost. Because that is where most of your uncertainty actually lies.
Senator Mike Duffy said Thursday he wants a "full and open inquiry" to answer the many questions Canadians have about the spending scandal that prompted him to leave the Conservative caucus and now has the RCMP asking the Senate for more details about spending rules. Duffy said he has not been contacted by the RCMP and that he will co-operate with anyone who is doing an investigation into his travel and housing allowance claims. "I think Canadians have a right to know all the facts and I'm quite prepared in the appropriate place and time to give them the whole story," Duffy told reporters as he left the Senate and walked to his car. "There are bits and pieces out there, it should all be put together in one place and there will be some place to do that." Duffy had not spoken in public or accepted interview requests since it was revealed last week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff Nigel Wright had written a cheque for more than $90,000 so Duffy could pay back housing allowance expenses that he says he may have claimed in error. FULL VIDEO: An external audit by Deloitte was done on Duffy and senators Mac Harb and Patrick Brazeau to examine where their primary residence is and if they had properly claimed an allowance for a second residence in Ottawa. Duffy repaid the money before the audit was finished and did not co-operate with the process. Harper says he learned about the cheque payment through the media — a claim the opposition parties are casting suspicion on — and that he wouldn't have approved if he had known about it. Wright resigned on Sunday because of the secret cheque. His departure came days after news of the cheque first broke on Tuesday night and after Harper's office initially said Wright still had the prime minister's confidence. At a Thursday press conference in Colombia, where he is on a South American trade mission, Harper was asked why he stood by Wright for days if what he did wasn't acceptable. "He should have told me earlier, that's why I accepted his resignation. Upon reflection, should I have reached that conclusion earlier? Perhaps. But I think that is the correct conclusion," Harper said. Harper was asked about the terms of the deal between Wright and and Duffy, and if lawyers were involved. He said he's not aware of any formal agreement and that Wright will have to answer to Parliament's ethics commissioner for his actions. Harper said the expenses charged by Duffy, Harb and Brazeau were "inappropriate," that his government has taken "the appropriate actions" and will "hold people accountable." 'No idea' if Harper knew about cheque Duffy, who resigned from the Conservative caucus last Thursday but hopes to rejoin it in the future, was asked if Harper knew about his deal with Wright. "I have no idea. I would find … I just don't know," he responded. He was also asked to explain a media report claiming he said he had gotten a Royal Bank loan to pay the money back, contradicting what is known about the Wright cheque. "Just wait for it all to come out," he said. The Senate voted earlier this week to send the report on Duffy's expenses back to the internal economy committee that is currently being accused by the Liberals and NDP of whitewashing the version that was released on May 9. The Liberals are pushing for the normally in-camera meetings to be held in public and Duffy said he supports that. "Of course, it has to be done in public, there's no question," he said. The Prince Edward Island senator said that whether it is a Senate committee or another Deloitte audit, he welcomes the scrutiny. "Canadians deserve answers, I want to give them answers, and eventually, hopefully not too long, they will get the answers," he said. "We need a full and open inquiry so that it all gets aired." Duffy declined to questions from reporters about the different versions of the Senate report, his relationship with Wright, and about his lawyer. He flatly rejected a question about whether he plans to resign or stay in the Senate "Pfffft. Of course, I'm a senator, why wouldn't I?" VIDEO: PMO forced to correct Conservative MP's statement on Power & Politics that Harper won't appoint more senators until there is "substantial reform" to the Senate Duffy is now sitting as an Independent senator along with Pamela Wallin, who resigned from the Tory caucus on Friday while her travel expenses remain the subject of an external audit. Harb and Brazeau are also both sitting as Independents and disputing the orders to pay money back for the housing allowances they claimed. Harb left the Liberal caucus when the audit was released and Brazeau was kicked out of the Conservative caucus because of a criminal charge he is facing in an unrelated matter. RCMP asks Senate for rules dating back a decade The opposition parties spent much of Thursday pushing the government to explain who was behind the decision to edit the original Senate committee report on Duffy's expenses, and why. But the opposition parties aren't the only ones seeking more information. The Senate confirmed Thursday that the RCMP is continuing its probe of the Deloitte audits that were done on Duffy, Harb and Brazeau. A letter from the RMCP dated May 16 and tabled in the Senate says the force wanted copies of Senate policies "in order to make a determination as to whether there are grounds to commence a criminal investigation." Supt. Biage Carrese, of the sensitive and international investigations unit of the RCMP's national division in Ottawa, wrote that the RCMP is "conducting a review" of the Deloitte audits. He requested copies of guidelines over the last 10 years related to travel and living expenses and other administrative rules. The RCMP also wanted the Senate calendars for the last decade to determine when the upper chamber was sitting. Senate Speaker Noël Kinsella informed the Senate of the request and said the information had been passed on to the RCMP. The police force does not confirm whether it is conducting criminal investigations into matters. The government was asked in question period if Harper's office had been approached by the RCMP and Heritage Minister James Moore responded that it had not. "The Senate committee's report on Senator Duffy was whitewashed. Who ordered the members of the committee to whitewash the Duffy report and why did a majority of the senators on the committee agree to co-operate in this coverup?" Liberal MP Judy Foote said at a news conference with other Liberals earlier in the day. Much of the focus was on the two Conservative senators who handled the draft report on Duffy's expenses, Carolyn Stewart Olsen and David Tkachuk. Liberal Senator George Furey was the third senator on the steering committee that wrote the report before it was presented to the Senate's internal economy committee. Conservatives deny they were ordered to edit Tkachuk is not on Parliament Hill this week because of recent surgery, but he gave some media interviews and said he was not ordered by anyone to write the report a certain way. He did say that he had a "number of discussions" with Wright about Duffy, and sought advice for his report from the PMO, fellow senators, members of the media, and others. Stewart Olsen told CBC News that as chair of the internal economy committee it makes sense for Tkachuk to be in touch with people in the PMO and that she also had discussions during the course of the report. "I have spoken with some people in PMO. I don't speak to them a lot," she said. "No. The report is as we produced it, we changed it ourselves as we edited," she responded when asked if she was told to change the report. The final report on Duffy released by the committee on May 9 along with the reports on Harb and Brazeau lacked key paragraphs that had been in the first version related to findings about Duffy's primary residence and his co-operation with the audit. The Duffy report also used different language from that used in the reports on Harb and Brazeau. There is no mention of the rules on housing claims being clear in his report, for example, as there is in the other two. Olsen said the reports were written by different groups and "were never meant to be in lockstep." Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with Conservative Senate Leader Marjory LeBreton on Tuesday during a caucus meeting. Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press) Opposition MPs are raising questions about whether Conservatives were influenced by the Prime Minister's Office to go easy on Duffy, and if so, whether that was done in exchange for Duffy's repayment of $90,172. "We are not aware of any legal agreement between Mr. Wright and Mr. Duffy. It is as simple as that," Moore said in question period when asked who in the PMO knew about Wright's repayment. Harper is on a trip to Colombia. A Liberal on the Senate internal economy committee tells CBC News that the draft report was altered in the final 24 hours before it was tabled in the Senate on the afternoon of May 9. The Harb and Brazeau reports, prepared by a subcommittee struck in the fall to examine senators' housing allowances, were considered and approved by the internal economy committee on May 8. The committee's meetings are held in-camera behind closed doors. When the committee reconvened on May 9, Olsen introduced a motion to change the Duffy report, including deleting the draft report's references to the residency rules being "very clear" and "unambiguous." Another change initiated by Olsen deleted the draft report's statement that Duffy's travel patterns were not consistent with maintaining a primary residence on P.E.I. Duffy and his lawyer were in the room at the time. In a move sources suggest is unprecedented for the internal economy committee, which usually makes its decisions on a consensus basis, a vote was taken on whether to change the report. Committee members split along party lines and Tory votes carried the day. Later that afternoon, a relatively raucous scene emerged in the Senate as the reports were tabled, with some senators objecting to being asked to consent to reports they hadn't seen. Furey made it clear when he spoke in the Senate that while it represented the majority on the committee, the report was not unanimous. The committee of internal economy deals with senators' expenses. The subcommittee was struck when questions were raised about Brazeau and whether he was properly claiming a housing allowance that senators are entitled to worth up to $22,000 per year. The money is for a secondary residence in Ottawa if their primary residence is more than 100 kilometres away. The questions about Brazeau prompted a widespread review of senators' travel and housing claims, and led to the three audits plus the one on Wallin. A copy of the original Duffy report was obtained by CBC News. It showed that the committee concluded Duffy's primary residence is in Ottawa. It said his declaration that his cottage in P.E.I was his primary residence was not supported based on his travel patterns and time spent in Ottawa. This finding, however, was not included in the final report that was released May 9. Duffy, a former journalist in Ottawa, has had a home for years in the capital. Key paragraphs removed Other key paragraphs were removed from the first version of the report and opposition parties want to know why. "This is a scam being perpetrated on the Canadian people and the Senate has no credibility," the NDP's ethics critic Charlie Angus said. The Senate voted on Tuesday to send the Duffy report back to the internal economy committee for a second look. Angus pointed to the close connection between Harper and Olsen and noted that she sat on the steering committee that was driving the writing of the Duffy report. "This keeps going back to the prime minister," he said. Olsen has a long history with Prime Minister Stephen Harper that dates back to his time in the Canadian Alliance Party. She is one of his most loyal advisers, and worked as his press secretary and later as his chief communications strategist. Harper appointed her to the Senate in 2009. Marjory LeBreton, the government's leader in the Senate, was asked about the alleged whitewashing of the report Thursday during the Senate's question period and about Tkachuk's comments. She said she would review them and report back. LeBreton also fielded complaints from Liberal senators about the same committee that handled the Duffy report being tasked with looking at it again. She said she has faith in the committee and that it's up to its members to accept or reject Cowan's request for the meeting to be in public.
On Friday, I put up a follow-up post to one last month about how St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch and Missouri Judge Steven Goldman removed a foreman from a grand jury. The foreman was previously an attorney for the Missouri Civil Liberties Union. Friday’s post was on new documents released from the case showing that, as expected, the foreman was removed for being insufficiently deferential to McCulloch. Specifically, he was looking to investigate police corruption and brutality. Over the weekend, a three-judge panel for the Missouri Court of Appeals found that the foreman’s removal was in violation of state law. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch had complained to Judge Steven Goldman about the juror’s conduct when questioning police witnesses, and suggested bias against his office. McCulloch also complained that Roe’s ACLU work could pose a conflict. Goldman, with authority over the grand jury, called in [pseudonym John] Roe but did not question him under oath about McCulloch’s complaints. The appellate court said he should have done so under the law. “We find that the record properly before us is entirely inadequate to justify (Roe’s) removal from the Grand Jury for cause,” the appeals judges said. But here’s the punchline: The court also ruled that it couldn’t reinstate the foreman and had no choice but to dissolve the grand jury. But they also said they could not order his return, given a “significant chance” that future grand jury proceedings would be subjected to scrutiny and challenge, or influenced by the finding a member was improperly removed. The judges said it was their “firm opinion that the secrecy and independence of this Grand Jury had been compromised in part due to the public filings by both parties.” Roe’s name was accidentally revealed in some court filings, and there was enough information in his initial suit to deduce his identity. So McCulloch wins. Grand juries are of course infamous for serving as little more than rubber stamps for prosecutors. Here, for once, was a grand jury (or at least a foreman) who pushed back a bit. Just one guy on one grand jury. But even that is too much for McCulloch. He and Goldman abused their power to have the foreman removed. And even though they did so in violation of state law, they still get their wish. A grand juror showing the slightest bit of independence is prevented from serving. And of course neither McCulloch nor Goldman will suffer any professional sanction for what they did. McCulloch’s plea for the public to respect the grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson rested on the premise that grand juries are independent bodies. The entire purpose of the grand jury is to serve as a check against unjust accusations by police and prosecutors. They’re supposed to be free to investigate just about anything they want within their geographic jurisdiction. Nothing about what happened here could be described as fair, just or independent. And this incident just happened to involve a grand juror who had enough legal experience to be aware of his rights. How many times has this happened before to grand jurors who didn’t have a legal background? Because the entire system is secret, there’s really no way of knowing. And because of that secrecy and the fact that there will be no real punishment here, there’s little to prevent McCulloch or some other prosecutor from trying it again. There’s an argument to be made that, legally, the decision not to indict Wilson was the right call. But you certainly can’t blame people for questioning the integrity of McCulloch, Goldman and the grand jury system in St. Louis County.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement People in Asia have seen the longest total solar eclipse this century, with large areas of India and China plunged into darkness. Amateur stargazers and scientists travelled far to see the eclipse, which lasted six minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point. The eclipse could first be seen early on Wednesday in eastern India. It then moved east across India, Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Japan and the Pacific. The eclipse first became total over India at 0053GMT, and was last visible from land at Nikumaroro Island in the South Pacific nation of Kiribati. It ended at 0418GMT. Elsewhere, a partial eclipse was visible across much of Asia. Mixed blessing In India, millions gathered in open spaces from the west coast to the northern plains, with clouds parting in some cities at dawn - just before the total eclipse. AT THE SCENE Sanjoy Majumder, BBC News As we flew up high above the monsoon clouds over eastern India, the pilot counted down the minutes and dimmed the cabin lights. Then as the passengers sucked in their breath and exclaimed, the outline of the moon travelled ever so slowly across the face of the sun until it was completely obscure - a darkened orb with the sun's white crown visible in a perfect circle. Around us the sky was pitch dark and the galaxy glittered in all its glory. It was, as one passenger put it later, an emotional and breathtaking moment. 'A night to remember' But thick clouds and an overcast sky obscured the view at the Indian village of Taregna, "epicentre" of the eclipse, says our correspondent in the area. Many of the thousands of people who gathered there to watch the eclipse left the village disappointed. "We were apprehensive of this cloudy weather but it was still a unique experience with morning turning into night for more than three minutes," scientist Amitabh Pande told the Associated Press news agency. Some enthusiasts in India were on board a special chartered flight for a close-up view of the eclipse. The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder, who was on the flight, said that from a vantage point of 41,000ft (12,500m), it was a celestial spectacle like few others. Among the passengers were a man who was witnessing it for the eighth time, scientists, amateur astronomers and children. In India and Nepal, where it is considered auspicious to watch the eclipse while immersed in holy water, crowds gathered at rivers or ponds, including tens of thousands of people at Varanasi on the Ganges. FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. More from BBC World Service "We have come here because our elders told us this is the best time to improve our afterlife," said Bhailal Sharma, a villager who had travelled to Varanasi from central India. The event in Varanasi was marred, however, when a woman was killed and several others injured in a stampede on the river banks, police said. For others, the eclipse was seen to be a bad omen. In Nepal, authorities shut all schools for the day to avoid exposing students to any ill-effects, says the BBC's Joanna Jolly in Kathmandu. Some parents in Delhi kept their children from attending school at breakfast because of a Hindu belief that it is inauspicious to prepare food during an eclipse, while pregnant women were advised to stay inside due to a belief that the eclipse could harm a foetus. In pictures: Solar eclipse India's 'best place' disappoints "My mother and aunts have called and told me stay in a darkened room with the curtains closed, lie in bed and chant prayers," said Krati Jain, a software worker in Delhi who is expecting her first child. Authorities in China, where an eclipse was a bad omen in ancient culture, reassured the public that services would run normally. In the east of the country, heavy cloud or rain obscured it. Pollution was also a barrier, with thick smog in Beijing blotting out the sky. 'Special opportunity' The last total eclipse, in August 2008, lasted two minutes and 27 seconds. Alphonse Sterling, a Nasa astrophysicist who followed the latest eclipse from China, said scientists were hoping data from it would help explain solar flares and other structures of the sun and why they erupt. People bought masks to view the eclipse "We'll have to wait a few hundred years for another opportunity to observe a solar eclipse that lasts this long, so it's a very special opportunity," Shao Zhenyi, an astronomer at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China told the Associated Press. Solar eclipses allow scientists to see the gases surrounding the sun, or its corona. Solar scientist Lucie Green, from University College London, was aboard an American cruise ship heading for the point near the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, where the axis of the Moon's shadow passed closest to Earth. "The [Sun's] corona has a temperature of 2 million degrees but we don't know why it is so hot," she said. "What we are going to look for are waves in the corona. "The waves might be producing the energy that heats the corona. That would mean we understand another piece of the science of the Sun." The next total solar eclipse will occur on 11 July, 2010. It will be visible in a narrow corridor over the southern hemisphere, from the southern Pacific Ocean to Argentina. TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE In the area covered by the umbra (the darkest part of the shadow), a total eclipse is seen In the region covered by the penumbra (where only some of the light source is obscured) a partial eclipse is seen Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Pokemon GO’s developers take the stage at E3 and reveal new details about the GO+ device, as well as a price point and release window for the wearable device. After a day full of The Legend of Zelda at E3, Nintendo is back to show off some other upcoming projects. Representatives from Niantic, Game Freak, and Nintendo all came together for a Pokemon GO developer Q&A this afternoon and revealed some exciting new details about the game and its optional peripheral device. The Pokemon GO presentation started off about as expected, with the developers showing some screenshots of Pokemon that had been collected at E3 2016. Fans following the project since its announcement have already seen plenty of screenshots like this in the past, so the real excited came when Miyomoto (possibly accidentally) started dropping some dates and prices. Midway through the Q&A, Miyomoto began fielding a question about the GO+ wearable device. He explained that the device makes it possible to play the game without looking down at your phone at all. The device will vibrate when Pokemon or objects are nearby and users can catch Pokemon or pick up items without ever looking at the phone. The blinking lights on the device will indicate whether the catch was a success or a failure. After describing the functionality, Miyomoto seemed to surprise everyone on stage by revealing that the device releases before the end of July for $34.99. The developers quickly joked that there were no promises the actual game would be out by July, but kind of came around to the idea before the end of the presentation. No firm release date was given, but Ishihara explained… “We just released the release date for the GO+ device [late july] so obviously we’ll need the game to be out soon!” That isn’t exactly a promise of a July release for the application, but it certainly sounds like the company wants to have it finished before the GO+ releases. If not, what exactly will consumers be doing with the GO+? While explaining the uses of the GO+, the team also revealed that Pokemon GO and the GO+ will eventually tie-in to Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon. There was no explanation about how this will work at this point in time. North American field tests for Pokemon GO only began a few weeks ago over Memorial Day weekend, so if a release date is right around the corner, perhaps that beta will open up to a wider audience very soon. Do you think Pokemon GO will release in time for the GO+ launch? Let us know in the comments. Pokemon GO releases sometime in 2016 for mobile devices.
Story from The World. Listen to the above audio for a complete report. The detention of a prominent blogger and activist by Egypt’s military prosecutor has set the stage for the latest clash between democracy activists and the generals that rule the country. Even as Egypt prepares for parliamentary elections at the end of this month, observers say the army insists on remaining above the law, and silencing its critics. The army has tried over 12,000 civilians in military courts since they took control of the country last February. A few nights ago, protesters gathered in a traffic circle in downtown Cairo. Then they headed, loudly and angrily, to the military prison where blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah is currently being detained. Abdel Fattah and fellow activist Bahaa Saber were called in for questioning on October 30 and refused to acknowledge the authority of the military prosecutor. Abdel Fattah was taken into custody. “Down with military rule,” chanted the protesters. “Take one of us, you’ll get a hundred!” The generals who rule the country maintain that military courts are necessary to preserve law and order – because they’re fair and quick. And because the country is currently under military jurisdiction the courts are perfectly legal. Activists and human rights groups say the trials are arbitrary, unfair and a form of political intimidation. “All the lawyers we’ve spoken to have said it’s a sham,” said Shahira Abouellail, one of a group of young activists who have been working on the No to Military Trials campaign. “It’s not really a trial. You’re tried by the military. Most of the time you’re tried collectively so there’s like 30 people there and they all get prosecuted together and they all get the same sentence within like five minutes to half an hour,” she said. For months now, the No to Military Trials group has been inviting the family members of young men detained and convicted by the military to speak out. The mother of a young man arrested in Tahrir Square asked how political protesters could be convicted and common criminals remain at large. “What kind of a revolution is this, where the kids who made the revolution are arrested and the thieves that robbed the country and humiliated us, are still free?” she asked. Activists like Abouellail contend that the point of military trials is not to maintain law and order but to create a climate of fear. Many ordinary Egyptians with no political affiliation — who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time — also go through military courts, said Human Rights Watch researcher Heba Morayef. “From a human rights perspective every single one of those should be retried in civilian courts,” Morayef said. “And that’s an extremely hard battle to fight when you’re up against a military that has absolute executive and legislative power in the country.” * When it took power, the ruling Army Council promised it would hand power to a civilian government in six months. It now looks like they could remain in charge till the summer of 2013, when presidential elections would finally take place. Not only does Emergency Law remain in place — the generals have added new provisions to it. Blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has become the latest symbol of what Morayef calls “a message” being sent to all young activists. "Alaa Abdel Fattah is very significant,” Morayef said. “It’s not only that he is one of the most vocal and high-profile critics of the military. It’s also that he is one of the most active. He’s at every protest. I think the military makes very targeted choices. They believe in sending signals. You can see from their public statements and their decision in terms of who they prosecute and the laws they pass that they see information as a threat.” In fact, one military spokesman said that criticizing military trials is itself a crime. In recent months, the authorities have shut down television channels and programs and summoned journalists for questioning. “The local media is being held hostage,” Shahira Abouellail said. “They’re not allowed to criticize the army. They’re not allowed to speak of any truths that are happening on the ground.” * Abdel Fattah has been detained before: in 2006, by the Mubarak regime. The fact that he’s in jail again is part of a general sense of déjà vu in Egypt these days. The country will hold what should be its first free parliamentary elections at the end of this month, but it feels like none of the fundamentals have changed. “Egypt is not better off in terms of human rights protections from where it was a year a go,” Heba Morayef said. “We still have the main executive power in the country, which is the military, which sets itself above criticism and above the rule of law.” In fact, military leaders are pressuring political parties to pledge that in any new government there will be no civilian oversight of the army. At a meeting on Tuesday, the government asked parties to sign onto a series of “constitutional principles” that stipulate, among other things, that the army’s budget will be secret and that its approval would be necessary to declare war. Most of the parties walked out of the meeting, threatening protests and “a second revolution.” That may be the only real change so far since Egypt’s revolution: a belief that people-power can make a difference. “Freedom!” chanted the protesters the other night, as they marched to the military prison. They still have a long way to go. ---------------------------------------------------------- PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More about The World.
Eddy Radillo holds a Texas flag and a sign opposing the Transcanada Keystone Pipeline in February 2012 outside the Lamar County Courthouse in Paris, Texas. Sam Craft / Paris News / AP The Federal Bureau of Investigation is officially under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, but sometimes they answer to a higher authority. In this case, according to internal agency documents obtained by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal, that authority seems to be TransCanada, the North American energy company currently seeking United States government approval for the northern leg of its Keystone XL pipeline. If completed, KXL, as it is often called, would transport crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries and ports in Houston, Texas. As reported in the Guardian, the FBI broke its own rules investigating individuals and groups organizing to protest the Keystone project. Watchdogs say the pipeline poses a threat to the environment and water table if it should leak or rupture, and, even when functioning normally, will accelerate climate change by bringing more of the dirty, high-carbon tar sands oil to market. TransCanada and other hydrocarbon enthusiasts say the pipeline will provide jobs (though just how many is in deep dispute) and increase domestic energy independence (even though the oil from Alberta is intended for the global petroleum market). Oh, and among those other enthusiasts, it seems, is the FBI. “Many of these extremists believe the debates over pollution, protection of wildlife, safety, and property rights have been overshadowed by the promise of jobs and cheaper oil prices,” said the FBI document cited by the Guardian. “The Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.” (The merits of KXL project still await a final determination from the Obama administration, but it is good to know the FBI has already sorted that one out for us.) According to the documents, for nearly two years, the Bureau conducted surveillance on individuals and groups — some with an inclination toward peaceful civil disobedience, but none with any record of violence or vandalism — organizing in Houston to protest Keystone. The FBI also “cultivated” at least one informant, though the report says it is unclear if “the source or sources were protesters-turned-informants, private investigators or hackers.” The investigation proceeded without the expressly required approval of the top lawyer or senior Houston field agent. It did, however, seem to have the OK of the private corporation G-men seem to find more important. FBI documents “suggest the Houston branch of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline,” according to the Guardian. From that point through June 2014, the documents show “the FBI collated inside-knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure,” and “scrutinized police intelligence.” The Houston office of the FBI said, according to the Guardian report, that it would share “any pertinent intelligence regarding any threats” with TransCanada in advance of protests. It did not, at least for a year, however, share the information with the Houston field office’s top lawyer, the chief division counsel (CDC), or with the special agent in charge (SAC). Both the CDC and SAC are required by the Bureau’s own internal rules to sign off on projects such as this KXL initiative after first assessing whether such domestic spying would have an “adverse impact on civil liberties and public confidence” if word of the program got out to the general public. The FBI, responding to the Guardian report, admitted it did not “act properly under the law,” but insisted that, eventually, it got around to correcting the “non-compliance.” The feds said they felt justified in opening the investigation into KXL protesters “to secure and protect activities and entities which may be targeted for terrorism or espionage.” Again, in this case, that would be TransCanada. The Guardian revelations run strikingly counter to FBI statements from just a few months ago. In February, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that agents from the U.S. federal government had visited opponents of Canadian tar sands extraction and the Keystone XL pipeline, “knocking on doors, calling, texting [and] contacting family members.” In one instance, a caller left a message for a member of the environmental group Wild Idaho Rising Tide asking her to phone the FBI. In response to the Globe and Mail, the Bureau said it only investigates criminal acts and not political ones. “The FBI has the authority to conduct an investigation when it has reasonable grounds to believe that an individual has engaged in criminal activity or is planning to do so,” FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich told the paper in February. “This authority is based on the illegal activity, not on the individual’s political views,” Dietrich added. Tuesday’s Guardian report suggests that FBI surveillance, such as the kind uncovered in Houston, was likely going on in several states. That fits well with February’s Globe and Mail findings, even if, in light of the newly released documents, the Bureau’s previous denials do not.
Two years ago, the Nationals had just signed Max Scherzer, and they were going to win 105 games. They were so loaded with pitching, they took Tanner Roark and his 2.85 ERA out of the rotation. If I had known about the season that Bryce Harper was going to have, I would have guessed the Nationals were going to win 110 games. They finished 83-79, seven games behind the Mets. This, then, is the opposite of that offseason. The Nationals were noisy in spurts this winter, melting down the farm and trading the ingots for Adam Eaton, but they didn’t have an “Uh, oh. The Nationals are loaded now” offseason. They didn’t pick up a stray Scherzer on the way home, just because they could. They paid market price for a premium, young center fielder, and they nabbed a couple of catchers. They’re the 2016 Nationals, Now With Adam Eaton (And Maybe Better Health). And they’re gonna chase that 105-win season this time. That is a stupid, overly confident prediction, and there is at least a slight dusting of hyperbole dust on it. It’s not like the Matt Wieters deal pushed the team over the tipping point. It turned a team with two solid catchers into a team with three solid catchers. But I have arguments that support my super-team theory. And they go like this: The Nationals will have four of the 20 best players in the National League this year, according to WAR It’s an absurd notion, until you tick off the names. Consider that over the last two seasons, Max Scherzer has been the third-most valuable player in the NL (just behind Kris Bryant and Paul Goldschmidt), Harper was the eighth-most valuable, and Eaton would have been the 14th-most if he were in the league. Turner probably isn’t going to hit .342 all season, but he had one of the most impressive debuts from any midseason call-up in baseball history, and now he’s moving back to his natural position. That’s before getting to the enigmas like Stephen Strasburg and Joe Ross, Daniel Murphy and Anthony Rendon, any of whom could get award votes at the end of the year without anything seeming out of place. Basically, Trea Turner is like the Kevin Durant of the baseball world, except he didn’t get to choose his super team. The Padres were the Durant’s ego and superego of the baseball world, then? This metaphor is off the rails, but the important part is to remember that the Padres traded Turner on purpose, and the Rays needed a third team involved because just wasn’t going to do it for them. The Nationals can remove their weak links just a little easier this year Ryan Zimmerman hasn’t been good for three years, according to Baseball-Reference’s WAR, but the Nationals gave him more than 400 at-bats last season because, well, they’re paying him, and the abject misery of his 2016 season crept up on them. Jayson Werth hasn’t been good for two years, according to Baseball-Reference’s WAR, but the Nationals gave him more than 600 at-bats last season because, well, they’re paying him, and it’s not like they were overflowing with better options. This is the year where it will be much, much easier for the Nationals to make an upgrade. Zimmerman’s contract isn’t up for three more seasons, but there isn’t a team in baseball that would put up with another season like his 2016. Werth’s contract is up this year, and the light at the end of the financial tunnel will make it easier mentally to transition to a new solution. If one or both of them enjoy a renaissance, that’s great! Found money. That’s a common expression, but in this case, it would really be like the Nationals finding sacks of cartoonish cash that they had previously thrown down a well. But if either of them repeats their 2016 seasons, the Nationals will feel a little more comfortable phasing them out. In Zimmerman’s case, that means Adam Lind could get the bulk of the at-bats. In Werth’s case, it could be that someone like Brian Goodwin or Rafael Bautista breaks out, or it could be a July trade that’s suddenly obvious. Victor Robles arriving one or two years ahead of schedule would be 35-grade weird on the 20-to-80 baseball-weird scale, if not lower. They’ll figure it out, and the 2016 season being entered into evidence will make it a lot easier for the Nationals to make whatever decision they need to. No, seriously, this is the year that Stephen Strasburg puts it all together Does that header need an “again” at the end? I’ll leave that up for you. But for five seasons, Strasburg has been baseball’s greatest latent ace, the top-o’-the-rotation tease of a generation. His strikeout rate has been improving every season, and he’s further removed from Tommy John surgery than he’s ever been, but the overall value keeps steady, somehow. WAR, by season 2012 - 3.0 2013 - 3.1 2014 - 3.5 2015 - 2.1 2016 - 3.3 Those are good, valuable seasons! Yet they’re so, so underwhelming compared to the Stephen Strasburg Spectacle that’s usually on every fifth day, where a mythological pitching beast shows us all the wonders of physical form and the upper limits of athletic ability. Max Scherzer has been roughly as valuable for the Nationals over the last two years as Strasburg has been over the last four. This is the season, then. My evidence is this: dunno, seems right. I’m not selling you on this, am I? OK, fine, then all of the above optimism, but shoveled in the direction of Joe Ross, if you prefer. But after a couple seasons of Max Scherzer being lonely at the top, this is finally the year that Scherzer/Roark/Strasburg/Gonzalez/Ross is as ridiculously productive as it feels like it should be. Reminder that the Nationals got Ross in that same Trea Turner deal, just because. Bryce Harper is still just 24, and he’ll win the MVP again Oh, maybe not the 2017 MVP. But he’s good for another one at some point, so it’s not like we should be shocked if it happens this year. He’s still a generational talent. I’m not sure who’s going to give Harper that $400 million contract that Scott Boras will stuff and hang above his fireplace, but he’s still a top-10 pick for any team in a hypothetical draft You know the Nationals won 95 games last year, right? Just checking. The Nationals are imperfect, of course, just like most teams. Their bullpen, which has helped with their demise in previous postseasons, is weaker. Werth and Zimmerman are in the lineup to start the year, and it’s not like Derek Norris or Wieters are coming off excellent offensive seasons. There could be a soft spot at the bottom of the order. The Nationals are replacing Danny Espinosa and Ben Revere with a full season of Trea Turner and Adam Eaton. They’re replacing 2016 Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg with the upgraded 2017 versions. They’ll have the flexibility to make tough decisions that flummoxed them last year. And, sure, they’ll have depth behind the plate, which is the almost-exciting news that got me thinking about their roster in the first place. Expectations were high for the Nationals before the 2015 season, and everything fell apart. Expectations are modest this year, perhaps as modest as I’ve ever seen for a team coming off 95 wins, but they shouldn’t be. It’s not the Cubs alone on an island. It’s not the Cubs and Dodgers wrestling and knocking down skyscrapers while tanks fire at them futilely. The Nationals are right there at the top with any team, and they have been since the World Series ended. All they’ve done is get better.
Paul Rand Logo Design Legend - IBM Logo Design Graphic Designer Paul Rand The legend Paul Rand: A Brief Biography PAUL RAND (BORN PERETZ ROSENBAUM, AUGUST 15, 1914 �� NOVEMBER 26, 1996) was a well-known American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs. Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute (1929-1932), the Parsons School of Design (1932-1933), and the Art Students League (1933-1934). He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design. From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. He designed many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS and ABC. Rand died of cancer in 1996. Inspirations Paul Rand believed that good dcsign was a way of life. His inspirations led him to develop some of the most ground-breaking creations and writings in graphic design history. Below is a selection of artists, designers, architects, writers and others who have inspired Paul Rand in life and work. This is simply a small collection, but hopefully you'll find the same inspirations and continue to learn more about these great pioneers. Paul klee John Dewey roger fry le corbiseur Paul Rand Work Books - Written & Designed By Paul Rand " This...ls the Stafford Stallion (1944) Tlmughls on Design (1947) Trademark Design ( I951, unpublished) * I Know a Lot of Things (I956) Sparkle and Spin ( I957) " The Trademarks of Paul Rand A Selection ( I960) Little 1 (l962) " Listen! Listen! (1970) A Paul Rand Miscellany (I984) " A Designer's Art (1985) " Good Design is Good Will ( I987) Some Thoughts Some Logos (1991) Some Thoughts. .. and Some Tribulations about the Design ofa Logo (I99l) From Cassandrc lo Chaos (I992) Failure by Design (1993)
Those who use violence to shape the world, as we have done in the Middle East, unleash a whirlwind. Our initial alliances — achieved at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead, some $3 trillion in expenditures and the ravaging of infrastructure across the region — have been turned upside down by the cataclysm of violence. Thirteen years of war, and the rise of enemies we did not expect, have transformed Hezbollah fighters inside Syria, along with Iran, into our tacit allies. We are intervening in the Syrian civil war to assist a regime we sought to overthrow. We promised to save Iraq and now help to dismember it. We have delivered Afghanistan to drug cartels and warlords who preside over a ruin of a nation where 60 percent of the children are malnourished and the Taliban is poised to take power once NATO troops depart. The entire misguided enterprise has been a fiasco of gross mismanagement and wanton bloodletting. But that does not mean it will be stopped. More violence is not going to rectify the damage. Indeed, it will make it worse. But violence is all we know. Violence is the habitual response by the state to every dilemma. War, like much of modern bureaucracy, has become an impersonal and unquestioned mechanism to perpetuate American power. It has its own internal momentum. There may be a few courageous souls who rise up within the apparatus to protest war’s ultimate absurdity, but they are rapidly discarded and replaced. The state rages like an insane King Lear, who in his madness and desire to revenge himself on his two daughters and their husbands decides that: It were a delicate stratagem to shoe A troop of horse with felt. I’ll put ’t in proof. And when I have stol’n upon these sons-in-law, Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! And kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill is the mantra chanted with every new setback in the Middle East. How many times have we rejoiced at the murder of those we demonized — Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and dozens of others. But as soon as one hunt for the fountainhead of evil ends, another begins. Those we kill are swiftly replaced. Fresh terrorist groups take the place of the old. The Khorasan Group, the U.S. government assures us, is a more sinister and deadlier version of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which was once touted as a more sinister version of al-Qaida. We cannot extinguish our enemies. They spring out of the ground like the legion of hostile warriors that rose up when Cadmus sowed his dragon’s teeth. Our violence spawns violence and never-ending configurations of enraged militants. We will keep spawning them until we stop occupying the Middle East. Endless war, which results in endless terror, leaves the arms manufacturers and generals giddy with joy. It is a boon to the state, which is possessed of an excuse to extinguish what few liberties we have left. It fuels the militancy and hatred that fanatics need to justify their slaughter and attract recruits. But it is a curse to humankind. The barbarism of modern industrial warfare creates complex bureaucratic mechanisms that exist to perpetuate and manufacture death. We are hostages to those mechanisms. “The soul that is enslaved to war cries out for deliverance,” Simone Weil observed, “but deliverance itself appears to it an extreme and tragic aspect, the aspect of destruction.” “Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own ‘war aims,’ ” she wrote. “It effaces the very notion of war’s being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.” Violence as a primary form of communication has become normalized. It is not politics by other means. It is politics. Democrats are as infected as Republicans. The war machine is impervious to election cycles. It bombs, kills, maims, tortures, terrorizes and destroys as if on autopilot. It dispenses with humans around the globe as if they were noisome insects. No one dares lift his or her voice to protest against a war policy that is visibly bankrupting the United States, has no hope of success and is going to end with new terrorist attacks on American soil. We have surrendered our political agency and our role as citizens to the masters of war. “It seems to me that nearly the whole Anglo-Saxon race, especially of course in America, have lost the power to be individuals,” wrote the artist Roger Fry. “They have become social insects like bees or ants.”Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warned that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and absorb individuals into a public that can be shaped and manipulated by those in power. This public is not real. It is, as Kierkegaard wrote, a “monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage.” In short, we became part of a herd, “unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization — and yet are held together as a whole.” Those who question the public, those who denounce endless war, are dismissed as dreamers or freaks. But only they, according to the Greek definition of the polis, can be considered citizens. In endless war it does not matter whom we fight. Endless war is not about winning battles or promoting a cause. It is an end in itself. In George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. The alliance then suddenly is reversed. Eurasia becomes an ally of Oceania and Eastasia is the enemy. The point is not who is being fought. The point is maintaining a state of fear and the mass mobilization of the public. War and national security are used to justify the surrender of citizenship, the crushing of dissent and expanding the powers of the state. The point is war itself. And if the American state, once a sworn enemy of Hezbollah, gives air cover to Hezbollah fighters in Syria, the goals of endless war remain gloriously untouched. But endless war is not sustainable. States that wage endless war inevitably collapse. They drain their treasuries, are hated by the wretched of the earth, and militarize and strangle their political, social and cultural life while impoverishing and repressing their populations. They are seduced by what Sigmund Freud called the “death instinct.” This is where we are headed. The only question is when it will unravel. Edward Gibbon observed about the Roman Empire’s own lust for endless war: ” … [T]he decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.”
Privacy advocates say Seattle is violating residents’ privacy “on a massive scale” by having garbage haulers look through people’s trash to make sure food scraps are going into the yard waste, not the garbage. A group of privacy advocates is suing the city of Seattle, arguing that having garbage collectors look through people’s trash — to make sure food scraps aren’t going into the garbage — “violates privacy rights on a massive scale.” “A person has a legitimate expectation that the contents of his or her garbage cans will remain private and free from government inspection,” argues the lawsuit filed Thursday in King County Superior Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation. Recycling questions? Learn how to sort your garbage, compost and recyclables like a pro with our Seattle trash-sorting guide. Since January, Seattle residents have been directed to place food scraps in the same bins as their yard waste, so that the material can be composted, instead of into garbage cans, where it would end up in a landfill. Public cooperation with the program has been so widespread that in April, Mayor Ed Murray said he was suspending the fines that would have been assessed against violators beginning this month, which would have been $1 for single-family homes and $50 for businesses and multifamily dwellings. But it’s not simply the fines — it’s the inspection of their garbage — that plaintiffs in this lawsuit want to halt. Ethan Blevins, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said courts have held that even law-enforcement agencies need warrants to look through people’s trash. When the ordinance took effect in January, garbage haulers were instructed not to rip open garbage bags to inspect their contents, but to pay attention to what they could see in transparent containers, loose or coming out of bags. If it appears that more than 10 percent of a trash can’s contents are either food waste or recyclables, the drivers are to leave behind a tag, informing the resident of the violation. The lawsuit estimates that some 9,000 of those tags were issued between January and April, including two to one of the eight named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Keli Carender, who since has moved out of the city. City officials had planned to issue warnings during the first half of this year, and then start issuing the fines, which would have been tacked onto customers’ utility bills. The 15-page legal complaint said the ordinance and the enforcement policies provide no clear way for a garbage collector to determine what 10 percent of a trash container is, and that different collectors have different methods of carrying out the requirements. Plaintiffs say that in addition to the violation of privacy, the ordinance is a violation of residents’ rights to due process because it does not provide a clear way for a resident to appeal an alleged violation. “The law makes garbage collectors the judges and the juries,” said Brian Hodges, Pacific Legal Foundation’s principal attorney. Assistant City Attorney John Schochet said the office is in the process of reviewing the lawsuit. He had no further comment. On Earth Day in April, Murray said the city appeared well on its way toward diverting 38,000 additional tons of material into compost per year, the goal that had been set for the third year of the food-waste program.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Raleigh, N.C., on June 5, 2015. (Photo: Gerry Broome, AP) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became the 15th Republican to officially declare he is running for president. "I'm in," he tweeted to his followers this morning. He is scheduled to deliver an announcement speech in his home state at the Waukesha County Exposition Center. Walker, who won re-election as governor in 2014, will join the race as a top contender for his party's nomination, according to Real Clear Politics' polling average. We fact-checked the governor during last year's campaign and after his victory once it became clear he would run for president. Here are some of our findings. EDUCATION In January, Walker boasted that his education policies were working, citing as evidence that "ACT scores are up and Wisconsin now ranks second in the country." But the state's ACT college admission scores are not up, and it ranks second out of 30 states — not the entire country. The state's average composite score on the 2013-14 ACT college admission exam was 22.2 — exactly what it was in the 2010-11 school year, when Walker first took office. As for Wisconsin's ranking, ACT does not rank states. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction determined the state's ranking by comparing its composite score with 29 other states that had 50% or more of their students take the ACT test. While Walker said Wisconsin ranks second "in the country," it is really only among 30 states. JOB CREATION In late October 2014, during his campaign for re-election as governor, Walker claimed in a TV ad that his "reforms" were helping Wisconsin create jobs, boasting that "just last month our reforms helped create 8,400 new jobs." But Walker was only referring to private-sector jobs. The state's gain in total employment for September was just 300 jobs because of steep declines in local government jobs. The preliminary jobs data for September 2014 showed a gain of 8,400 private-sector jobs, but a loss of 8,100 government jobs — for a net gain of 300 jobs. (See Table 5.) (Postscript: After Walker was elected, the BLS conducted its annual benchmarking correction that turned the state's preliminary net gain of 300 total jobs in September to a net loss of 4,200. There was a downward revision in Wisconsin's 2014 employment statistics, first reflected with the release of the January figures, to 2,851,000 in August and 2,846,800 in September – a loss of 4,200 jobs. See Table D-1. Those remain the current job figures for those months.) In that same ad, Walker said his state "now ranks in the top four states in the Midwest for private-sector job growth." But the state's job gains at the time lagged behind the national average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' total jobs data from January 2011 to September 2014 showed that Wisconsin had a job growth rate of 4.3% compared with a national average of 6.6%, ranking it ninth at the time among the 12 states that make up the "Midwest" under the U.S. Census Bureau's definition. Keep track of the candidates on FactCheck.org's Presidential Election 2016 page. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MpMBrN
Sen. Bernie Sanders is drawing impressive crowds as he launches his campaign for president of the United States. His focus on income inequality, removing big money from politics, and environmental issues must be striking a nerve. Also probably appealing to the average American? His take on vacations – which is basically that we need them, and that they should be paid. (Photo Credit: Senate Democrats/Flickr) Here’s what you need to know. Do You Know What You're Worth? GET A FREE PAY REPORT 1. Sanders recently introduced the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act to Congress. The bill would give 10 days of paid vacation to every employee who has worked at an organization with at least 15 employees for a year or more. “What family values are about is that at least for two weeks a year, people can come together under a relaxed environment and enjoy the family,” said Sanders on the Senate floor. “That is a family value that I want to see happen in this country.” 2. This is just a part of the “family values” agenda he outlined earlier this month. Additionally, Sanders backed legislation that would allow 12 weeks of paid leave for an employee with a child with a serious medical condition. Another bill gives workers up to seven paid sick days. (Photo Credit: Visit St. Pete/Clearwater/Flickr) “When you look at what other wealthy countries are doing, what you find is that the United States of America is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers some form of paid family leave, paid sick time or paid vacation time,” Sanders said. “In other words, when it comes to basic workplace protections and family benefits, workers in every other major industrialized country in the world get a better deal than workers in the United States. That is wrong.” 3. He’s right: Americans really do need a vacation. Too many folks don’t take enough time off. Feeling as though “a vacation is impossible right now,” is a common viewpoint, but the benefits of finding a way to make it happen are innumerable. Americans are working harder than almost anyone else, and hard workers need time off. No matter what happens with Sanders’ run for president, shifting the conversation toward these aims is a positive step in the right direction. Tell Us What You Think How do you feel about Bernie Sanders’ ideas about vacation? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment or join the discussion on Twitter.
Following pressure from Democrats and Republicans, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-California) will step aside from the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Californian Republican congressman said he is stepping down due to “entirely false” accusations filed against him with the Office of Congressional Ethics. The decision will also affect the committee’s probe into alleged possible interactions between Moscow and Trump campaign staffers. The probe will now be conducted by Representatives Michael Conaway (R-Texas), Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina), and Tom Rooney (R-Florida). Gowdy was the chairman of a House Select Committee that carried out the investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack. Declaring the charges against him “false claims,” Nunes said he intends to speak with the Ethics Office as soon as possible. READ MORE: Top Democrat wants GOP House Intelligence Committee chair investigated after Trump briefing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) said in a statement that “Nunes still has his trust,” and that he supports the chair’s decision to step aside from the probe. He added that he is confident the temporary head, Conaway, will conduct a “professional investigation into Russia and follow the facts.” Ryan called the ethics probe of Nunes a “distraction” to the committee’s investigation of Russian interference, adding that Nunes stepped away because he wants to clear himself without holding up the Intelligence Committee. Top House Democrats called for Nunes to recuse himself from the panel’s investigation into Russia, following the revelations that he had met on White House grounds with a source who showed him secret US intelligence reports. Nunes told reporters in March after the meeting with the source that President Donald Trump or his closest associates may have been “incidentally” swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies. READ MORE: House Intel chair confirms Trump team surveilled after election, while FBI denies wiretap claims The revelation that Nunes had viewed intelligence materials on White House grounds the day before bolstering the administration’s case – without briefing Democrats on the committee first – fueled damaging speculation that he was acting on instructions of the president. The House Intelligence Committee is running one of the three investigations into alleged Russian interference in the election, and possible ties between Trump associates and Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee is running its own inquiry, while the FBI has carried out a broad counterintelligence investigation since July 2016.
If you don’t like it, turn if off. She follows in the footsteps of : Follow Blog via Email Donate, to help me buy my domain name and expand my blogging, er, empire. STuFf YoU SaW MOsT Please Send Me Stuff…I Love Free Stuff I gratefully accept promotional materials, but respectfully reserve the right to decide whether said promotional material is suitable for my blog. 100% honest reviews and the opinions, thoughts, and beliefs will be my own, not that of the provider, party, or manufacturer. Contact: Email: iwanttobelieve@rogers.com Twitter: @yadadarcyyada Blog Stats 264,972 hits I Will Fol-low… To find stuff and thangs… Search for: @copyright stuff 2013-2019 D. Parker (Donna Parker, yadadarcyyada) 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to D. Parker (Donna Parker or yayadarcyyada) and only with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you. My Peeps Wibbly wobbly timey wimey August 2013 M T W T F S S Sep » 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 What’s Past Is Here What’s Past Is Here Select Month February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 August 2018 July 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 Goodreads – Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card OLdeR sTuFF OLdeR sTuFF Select Month February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 August 2018 July 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013
Steve Clifford pre-training camp press conference notes Hornets head coach Steve Clifford had a media availability session on Tuesday and Rick Bonnell reported some notable bites for Charlotte fans to chew on. – Clifford clearly understands the importance of lessening the offensive load on Al Jefferson if this team wants to turn a corner offensively. It’s the exact reason the Hornets spent the off-season chasing versatile offensive bigs and acquired Nic Batum. This team will run a ton of ball-screen action and now they have bigs who can either step out or roll on that type of play. Jefferson should be moving around the floor more than we’ve become accustomed to and should see ISO touches on the block later in the shot clock. “Hopefully more five-man movement and quick decision-making. If we can combine that with a good post game, Jefferson is by far our best offensive player. He’s 10 years of 19 points and 10 rebounds. But we can’t play where every play is to Al.” – As I touched on last week in the Nic Batum Player Forecast, he will inherit a significant offensive role with the Hornets this season. Likely the largest offensive assignment Batum has had in his six-year NBA career. Clifford sees Batum as a three-tool offensive weapon – he can dribble, pass and shoot, and he’ll be expected to do all three this season to give the Hornets a scoring shot-in-the-arm. “He’s in a similar place to where Turkoglu was in Orlando as far as size and exceptional feel for the game. If he’s open, he shoots it. If he’s not, he’ll drive. He’s as instinctual as you can ask of a player, and you can’t coach that.” – I also touched on how impactful the Batum-MKG defensive tag team should be this season, but Clifford pointed out why Batum should really help MKG flourish on the offensive end by demanding bigger defenders to him that would typically guard MKG. “Mike will have some nights with a smaller guy on him. He’ll take them into the post and crush them on the glass. Mike is never going to be a 20-a-night guy, and that’s fine. Guys can’t reinvent themselves. You’ve got to play to who you are.” – The pressure is on for Clifford and his coaching staff this season. It’s clear that MJ wants to win now, Rich Cho has wheeled-and-dealed his magic to concocting something resembling a playoff roster and now Clifford has to manage all the new talent on the floor. If he doesn’t, it will probably mean his job. “The trick or challenge is figuring out who plays with whom. We have a lot more depth this season. The subbing thing is tough. You have to get to a team game that works against everybody, then try to get that better.” – Clifford did confirm that Al Jefferson has lost “considerable weight”. It’s a contract year for Big Al and Clifford believes that “He’s where he should be”. – Training camp will begin for the Hornets on September 26th in Charlotte at Time Warner Cable Arena.
There is no appeasing the Nazis – they take by force what they want. MachineGames and Bethesda are bringing Wolfenstein back to PC and current- and next-gen consoles this year, and a bunch of new screens and concept art visualize what 1960 would have looked like if the Nazis won the war. Not only have the Nazis won WWII, but in the intervening time they've made giant leaps in technology, enabling them to create an intimidating military arsenal and even head into space. In the gallery below you can take a look at the regime's super Nazi soldiers, Nazi guns, regular Nazis, and Nazi mechs. You'll also be able to avail yourself of this Nazi tech for the power of good by raiding their facilities to upgrade your weapons, as well as take control of some of their machines. The game utilizes id's id Tech 5 engine, and the FPS's gameplay features car chases, underwater segments, and other set-piece moments. In one of the screens below you can see what looks like a split-screen conversation between hero B.J. Blazkowicz and a fellow operative. For more, be sure to take a look at the game's debut trailer.
Dear friends! Today, Sunday March 2, we have another Gathering coming up at 21:00 Oslo time, and this is what the CCs wanted to share about it: “As you already know, these get-togethers that you are staging at regular intervals are of the highest importance, not just to you personally, but also to All of creation, and the reason for this, is simple. For as you sit down to reaffirm your connection to this life-enhancing grid, you also serve as an anchor for these heightened energies to become attached not only to your personal energetic setup, but also to the world at large. Let us explain. We know that it will not come as news to any of you that you act as transformers in this process, for without the intervention of your singular set-up, these energetic emissions coming into your world would have a hard time finding a home or a home base as it were. For you act as beacons that not only serve to siphon down these energetic missives, you also filter them through your system in such a way, they become palatable to the rest of mankind. This may sound confusing to some, but you can in many ways be described as link-ups that help to transform the incoming current to one that can be utilized in a more “normal body”, much like it is being done with the electric grids on your planet. For you are all well aware of how the net carries a high voltage that would literally blow your fuses and then some if your house was directly linked up to this, so instead, your needs will be served via these transformers that downsteps the voltage in such a way, you can utilize it. So too it is with these charges that are beamed at an ever increasing rate down on your planet, so without you acting as intermediaries, fuses would be blown in the most inopportune of places and ways. Indeed, this whole process would be impossible because the sender and the receiver would not even be compatible at all. But unlike those more down to earth energetic transformers, you are also recipients of these emissions in your own way. For as you are able to receive the full force of these incoming missives, you can also reap the full benefit from the yourself. So in this, it is truly a win-win situation for you. For you will once again be showered by generous gifts from above, and this again will enable you to be the benefactor for our surroundings. You are in other words playing a dual role, as you are combining your personal development with the collective one, and as you stand in this in-between position between our side of the veil and mankind’s viewpoint, you are also the only one who can not only witness, but also partake in the proceedings. So in this, you are truly the chosen ones, the ones amongst many, many others who have been hand picked to fill this important place in history. So once again we extend our fondest greetings to you, the keepers of the flame, the caretakers of All, and we ask you to acknowledge your own importance in this whole operation. For without you, there would be no flames of joy lighting up your world, and without you there would be no chance to see the light taking on a much grander brilliance in the times ahead. So we thank you all, and we will make sure that you do not go empty handed from this wondrous get-together of souls, souls like you, souls who see the future already wrapped within a faint glow of light that will only continue to grow more and more apparent as you continue to anchor and send out these flaming spears of light and love in all directions. For these spears of love will continue to penetrate ever deeper into the souls of all mankind, and so, your glimmers of hope will soon become so much more than sporadic glimpses here and there. For they will continue to grow at a rapid pace, setting the course for a new sort of growth all over your planet. We thank you again for being who you are and for doing what you do, and we see that in choosing you, we could not have chosen any better. For you are the shining ones, the keepers of the flame, the makers of the dawn, and as such, we salute you all on behalf of All of creation.” It seems like once again, the timing of this Gathering is no accident, for I think the light we will help to anchor now will be put to work straight away. Not only on a personal level this time, but as a part of a collective effort to boost the level of light in those parts of the world that once again are subjected to the old patterns of warmongering. So let us do what we can to help to send out as many “flaming spears of light and love” as we can so that the fear that is brewing in so many hearts will be replaced by love.
UPDATE: As of February 7, Michael is taking some independent breaths. Go Mighty Michael! In the two weeks since 11-year-old Michael Morones attempted to take his own life by hanging, leaving him severely brain damaged, his parents are trying to sort out what happened and where to go from here. Suicidal ideation is a complicated thing. We do know that Michael was bullied for liking My Little Pony, that he was taunted, called gay, and made to feel ashamed for watching a TV show that his peers felt was only appropriate for girls. You can read the full backstory in my first article here, which triggered widespread news reporting on Michael. With intense news coverage around suicide and bullying, it is easy for the quick-to-publish mainstream media to sensationalize the stories and lose focus on the core issues. There is also a very real copycat effect, and the last thing we want is for more kids to attempt suicide, when the whole point of sharing Michael’s story is to raise awareness and provide assistance to his grieving family. So, yes, Michael was bullied, and that is a critical factor in his emotional state. But in my extensive research on bullying, I have learned that bullying alone does not usually lead to suicidal ideation. When bullying is combined with psychological conditions in a child such as depression and anxiety, then we see the increased risk of suicidal ideation. Even then, most kids who are bullied do not attempt suicide. Be sure to let your kids know this, because we don’t want them to think that suicide is a common option if you are being bullied. A better option is to be persistent about asking for help, until it does indeed get better. Because it will. Of course, there is a chicken and an egg component to the combination of bullying and psychological distress. Does a child’s predisposition for depression and anxiety exist prior to the bullying and only become exacerbated by the bullying? Or does the bullying cause the depression and anxiety? It is hard to sort out causality. What we do know is that bullying is clearly associated with psychological distress, and the two together are associated with higher risk for suicidal ideation, so both bullying and depression must be taken very seriously, alone or together. As far as Michael Morones goes, other than expressing sadness about the bullying taking place at school, he was not outwardly exhibiting any warning signs of depression. Prior to that terrible night, he continued to bounce around, play violin, watch My Little Pony, and listen to his favorite music by Pentatonix and Lindsey Stirling. In the absence of other known factors other than bullying that might have been upsetting Michael, there is now heavy pressure being exerted on the Wake County Public Schools to make a public response to Michael’s case. It has come to light that in March 2000, Christopher Joyner, a student at Michael’s same middle school hanged himself in the school gym, apparently because he'd been bullied. Not enough has changed in the fourteen years separating Joyner ‘s time at Zebulon Middle School from Morones’s time there. In 2009, state lawmakers passed a law requiring school districts to have policies against bullying and Wake County's policy is clear. Students should report it. Teachers and staff must report it. As for whether any of that happened, the school district isn't saying, nor are they answering any questions about what led up to Michael trying to take his own life, or what's been done since. If no reports of bullying were ever made to the school, it is difficult to hold the school responsible for the bullying. But if the kids and teachers had knowledge that bullying was occurring, and nobody spoke up, it points to a problem with the culture of the school. Just because there may not be written reports doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening, nor should the school pretend that nothing happened and leave current students to flounder without social workers on hand to talk with them. The tragedy here and the lack of ensuing accountability underlie the importance of making a report to the school if your child is being bullied, so that you have a paper trail of evidence. Additionally, we must continue to educate our young people on that fact that gender stereotypes are harmful and that it is okay for boys and girls to play with all toys, not just the ones marketed to their gender. Michael’s stepfather told me, “In regards to Wake County public schools, my feelings are mixed. While I understand they have policies and procedures they have to follow, I do not understand why grief counseling and additional counselors have not been brought in. Regardless of what the school believes about the bullying, the reality is that a student still tried to take his own life. That is going to make people ask questions, and it's going to confuse and scare the other children in his school. The school should provide those students an outlet to deal with their grief and confusion and the overwhelming sense of fear that they must have right now. And this must be in the context of Michael’s message of forgiveness.” Honoring Michael’s spirit, Michael’s family is more interested in healing than in blame. They are not calling for punishment of the aggressors; rather, they are calling for education, support, and the teaching of empathy. Since research has shown that punitive responses to bullying don’t work anyway, Michael’s family is already on the right track. It is about restoration and restitution. The news reports should focus not on the horrible details of Michael’s suicide attempt but on the way forward to a place of resolution, both for Michael and for his local community. What does the future hold for young Michael? It may be months or even years until the extent of his ability to heal is revealed. Yesterday, he underwent a tracheotomy and a procedure to place a feeding tube. He will be heavily sedated for the next week, and the doctors will not be able to tell how his body reacts to being fed via the feeding tube for at least two days. He has yet to regain a coherent state. The silence of his school has been overpowered by the loud support of people around the world. The geek world, the My Little Pony fans, and hundreds of thousands of others are sending love, ponies, memes, and messages to the little boy who was taunted for liking a cartoon pony. Upon reading my first article about Michael, both Pentatonix and Lindsey Stirling have reached out to help their truest fan during his darkest time of need. They have made private arrangements for Michael to hear their music, in the hopes that somewhere, deep in his consciousness, the beauty will stir in his soul a desire to come back and turn his face toward the light of a new day. Michael’s parents offer the following statement, “The support from everyone continues to flood in. It is both overwhelming and awe inspiring to witness what people have been able to do, starting from the mobilization of what some would consider to be a very small subculture of society. Whether you are a Brony, a member of the 501st, a comic book fan, a movie fan, a pirate fan or any other genre, you are without a doubt the most important part of Team Mighty Michael.” As my young Star Wars-loving daughter says: “Michael, may the Pony be with you.” You can contact Michael's family at michaelmoronesfoundation@gmail.com. Or you may visit this GoFundMe site. Michael’s family intends to donate a portion of any donations to causes such as brain injury research, bullying prevention, etc. May Michael recover and continue to bring joy to his family. Carrie Goldman is the award-winning author of Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear. To continue receiving posts from Portrait of an Adoption, type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. Follow Carrie Goldman on Twitter and Facebook
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on Monday said the group and its allies in the region would renew their focus on the Palestinian cause after what he called their victories elsewhere in the region. Nasrallah called on Hezbollah’s allies to put in place a united strategy “in the field” to confront Israel. The Iran-backed group has been fighting Islamic State in Syria alongside regional allies and the group has been largely defeated. Nasrallah was speaking by video link to a large protest in Beirut over the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there. On Saturday a video was released of the commander of an Iraqi Shi’ite militia allied to Hezbollah visiting Lebanon’s border with Israel, apparently accompanied by a Hezbollah commander. Nasrallah said in June that any future war waged by Israel against Lebanon or Syria could draw in fighters from countries including Iran and Iraq. On Monday he repeated a call he made last week for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel and called on Arab states to abandon the peace process, describing negotiations with the United States as futile. “Today the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah, will return as its most important priority ... Jerusalem and Palestine and the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance in all its factions,” he said. Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s as a resistance movement against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon and they remain bitter enemies. Israel and Hezbollah fought a brief war in 2006 and tensions rose again this year as Israel struck Hezbollah arms stores and convoys in Syria.
A 27-year-old architect had to fly back on a nine-hour flight while sitting next to the lifeless body of her boyfriend after he choked to death on his inflight meal on board a Jetstar flight. RELATED STORIES Mr Robert Rippingale, a 31-year-old New Zealander who worked in aviation logistics in Singapore, was flying home with his girlfriend, Vanessa Preechakul, when he choked on his food. "One minute we were sitting next to each other kissing, holding hands and the next minute he was choking," she said at his funeral on Saturday. Ms Preechakul told The Straits Times that she noticed that he was shaking violently as he was eating his beef dish. Thinking that he was laughing because of a movie, she asked him what was so funny. But he did not answer, and continued to shake. "I thought he was laughing very hard, then I looked at his face and his eyes were rolling and he couldn't talk. His lips were turning purple," she said. A doctor on board failed to resuscitate the man. The pair met in Singapore, where Rippingale had lived and worked for three years. They were going to New Zealand to meet his family and to celebrate his parents' 50th birthdays. A spokesman for the Australian airline Jetstar said the cause of death was unknown.
Image copyright PA Image caption Steven Gerrard faced "demands and threats" for money after the incident A police officer who seized CCTV footage of a street scuffle as a "tool to blackmail" Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard is facing jail. Ex-PC Helen Jones obtained footage of the row involving Gerrard, by "flashing her warrant card" to the boss of a Formby bank in August last year. Jones, 33, admitted misconduct in a public office at a previous hearing. Preston Crown Court heard that after the CCTV was obtained by Jones Gerrard faced "demands and threats" for money. 'Practised and persistent liar' Jones was off-duty and on a career break from Merseyside Police when she got the footage of the fight, which broke out between men in a bar in Formby and spilled out on to the street. It was captured by a camera installed on the wall of a nearby Lloyds bank. Jones claimed she was only helping a "friend of a friend", who had been assaulted in the incident. However, Judge Stuart Baker did not accept this and said the defendant got the footage for "base motives" and described her as a "practised and persistent liar". The court heard businessman Paul Lloyd, 35, who was involved in the incident, issued Gerrard with cash demands and claimed money had been offered by the press for the footage. The judge described Mr Lloyd, 35, from Formby who claimed Gerrard and his friends assaulted him, to be an "unimpressive witness" who "chose not to tell me the whole truth". Image copyright PA Image caption Helen Jones was described as a "practised and persistent liar" Mr Lloyd claimed Gerrard "threw the first punch" but the prosecution said the footballer was acting as a peacemaker. Judge Baker said that although Gerrard had been mentioned, the proceedings were not to "determine who did what to whom" in the fight and his ruling should not be regarded as finding the player had done anything unlawful. Jones, who has since resigned from Merseyside Police, was bailed until sentencing on 9 January but was warned there is a high likelihood she will be jailed.
As the battle between creationism and evolution heats up, some atheists, like Jerry Coyne, have been insisting that it is really a battle between religion and science. Coyne resists any accommodation between religious and non-religious scientists to defend Darwinism. He doesn't want to see them joining forces against the creationist common enemy in case that legitimises religion. In order for his position to make sense, he needs to show that there is some sort of existential conflict between religion and science. So it is unfortunate for him that the historical record clearly shows that accommodation and even cooperation have been the default positions in the relationship. It's true that the popular perception of a historical conflict remains strong. That hasn't stopped all serious historians from queuing up to condemn it. John Hedley Brooke and Peter Harrison at Oxford; David Lindberg and Ron Numbers at Wisconsin-Madison; and Simon Shapin in California have all tried to put the record straight. But as Numbers ruefully admits, "Despite a developing consensus among scholars that science and Christianity have not been at war, the notion of conflict has refused to die." He has edited a new collection of essays, published by Harvard University Press, called Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion which tries to chip away some more from the edifice of popular opinion. A strange thing about the conflict myth is that much of the evidence for it is bogus. Not only are most people ignorant of the real history, but what they think they know about it is actually untrue. Let me give some examples. The old chestnut that the church encouraged the view that the earth is flat has been debunked so many times that it seems pointless to do so again. But despite a hundred years of effort from historians of science, the legend refuses to die. Only this year it has been repeated in The House of Wisdom, a history of Islamic science by Jonathan Lyons. The myth that the Catholic church tried to ban zero has grown more popular in recent years. The journalist Charles Seife managed to write an entire book (Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea) about how zero was banned without ever realising his central argument has no foundation in fact. The same myth was passed on in Peter Atkin's Newton's Finger and Charles Mann's 1492. The church also never tried to ban human dissection. I was amused to hear this story promulgated on the BBC show QI which usually prides itself in puncturing the conventional wisdom. The related myth that Vesalius, author of a famous book on anatomy published in 1543, had a run-in with the Spanish Inquisition, is also discounted by historians. The celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan passed on the nugget that Pope Callistus III excommunicated Halley's Comet in 1456. This would have been a silly thing to do, but thankfully it never happened. The story appears to be based on misreading a contemporary chronicle. Finally, various martyrs for science have been canonised. It is a sad fact that both Catholics and Protestants were engaged in the despicable practice of burning heretics. But no one was ever executed for their scientific views. For a long time it was supposed that the Renaissance thinker Giordano Bruno had died for his science. But we now know he was an occultist whose support for Copernicus was not based on scientific grounds and neither was it a reason for his execution. Pretty much all his cosmological thought can be found in a book by the 15th-century cardinal Nicolas of Cusa. Not even the Catholic church would burn you at the stake for repeating the published thoughts of a cardinal. Only with the trial of Galileo, put under house arrest for life for teaching that the earth goes around the sun, does popular perception have much basis on fact. But even this case was more about the pope's self-esteem than science. The conflict between science and creationism is real enough, but it is the exception, not the rule. For most of history, science and religion have rubbed along just fine. So, if Jerry Coyne really wants to promote evolution, he should be joining hands with the religious scientists who want to help.
This popped up in my Tweetdeck saved searches column: Cycling steadily falling in #Bristol, DFT figures show pic.twitter.com/HTPdnYFyYJ — Fabulous Gee (@fabulousmrg) December 23, 2015 It caught my eye because I’m quite ready to be critical of Bristol. And I will be. But first, some reassurance. These numbers are (a) just a levelling off after years of growth, (b) probably not representative of the real situation in Bristol, and (c) probably a load of rubbish. The numbers come from the Department for Transport. Here’s how they look when plotted as an index relative to 2000, alongside motor vehicles (beware, truncated y axis): So this “decline” should be seen in the context of cycling journeys still being higher in number than in the last decade. But actually this probably isn’t the right data to even tell you whether there has been a levelling off. You might get a clue from the fact that this data puts cycling’s mode share at 1-2% in a city that claims several times that much cycling. It’s because this is Department for Transport traffic count data, and the DfT only count on main roads. Roads like these: The biggest, busiest and fastest roads in the city, including several where cycling is not even legal. But Bristol’s strategy for cycling has largely neglected the main roads. (That is itself one of my criticisms of the city, but we’ll get to that.) Bristol’s rise as a cycling city is built on the foundations of its off-road routes on post-industrial corridors — the Railway Path, harbourside, greenways and towpaths. And in recent years its main policy developments have been slower speeds and filtered permeability on residential streets and in the city centre, as well as the development of additional joined-up off-road arterial routes. So one could almost hypothesise that a fall in DfT main road traffic counts are what you’d expect to see in a city where the policy has been about creating alternative routes to the main roads. Finally though, even for the dataset that it is, these numbers need to be taken with a big pinch of salt, because they are DfT traffic counts. The clue is in the fact that the line for cycling is really all over the place. These are based on a single day per year sample, probably collected by folk sat by the side of the road with pencils and paper, and so subject to big sampling noise. That doesn’t mean Bristol’s doing alright In 2012, we took the Cycling Embassy to Bristol to admire the Railway Path, the Living Heart Campaign for city centre filtered permeability, the then newly completed Concorde Way arterial route and the harbourside. Since then there have been some developments. Bristol had just voted to replace its ineffective council-led model of local government with the mayor-led model, and there were high hopes that the city might start seeing some progress after years of plodding along. Hopes were higher still when independent George Ferguson was elected later that year with a mandate for improving cycling in the city. Ferguson’s policies even promised to finally start addressing the main roads, and thanks to the volunteer-run Bristol Cycling Campaign, there’s even a network plan ready prepared to work through. So three quarters of the way through his term, what have we got? The Baldwin Street cycle track and the Clarence Road cycle track (2 years late and with the council instantly pandering to incompetent motorists by reducing its defences). Two very welcome schemes. But that’s three years for a kilometre of tracks, not even fully connected to the wider network. At this rate it will take centuries to complete the network. But far more worrying than what hasn’t happened is what has. Bristol is still designing crap like this — and building it, despite the countless warnings they’ve received: Busy, narrow, discontinuous shared use footways of the kind that should have been consigned to Crap Facility of the Month 15 years ago. This is not the stuff of a “cycling city”. Bristol is still doing far better than — and doing nothing quite so embarrassing as — the likes of Birmingham or Leeds or Manchester, of course. But that should go without saying. That should go without saying. Bristol is expected to be better than Birmingham and Leeds and Manchester. But it’s certainly not exceeding expectations. It’s not moving forward or graduating from the low-hanging fruit of greenways to the hard work of fixing main roads. When London is building the NS/EW superhighways and many more kilometres of good stuff besides, nothing Bristol is doing looks exciting anymore. And I think that’s because Bristol doesn’t appreciate what it has got, or understand how it got it. It has fallen for its own myth that it is an alternative city, and takes it for granted that the cool, green, self-reliant people of Bristol have a cycling culture. In fact, that culture arose alongside its off-road routes, and it could disappear just as quickly. Worse even than the crap facilities on new roads is closing the Ashton Bridge for a year, severing greenway routes, to build a busway — diverting anyone who is left willing to cycle onto a dual carriageway. Or closing the Railway Path for months with similarly inadequate diversions. Over the past few years the city has variously proposed destroying the Railway Path entirely, destroying the riverside “chocolate block” path, and destroying part of the harbourside, all in the pursuit of mediocre bus systems serving the outer suburbs. It is clear that council officers in the city have no appreciation of how absolutely critical these kinds of routes are — how dependent the growth in cycling modal share has been on them, how much they contribute to the city’s mobility, and how easily and how totally the city can be set back by allowing such routes to be destroyed. But outside the council there’s a complacency too. I don’t think many people quite appreciate just how critical the harbourside routes are, for example, because they exist by default as spaces left behind by industrial decline, rather than as something that had to be fought for, paid for, planned, designed and built. Yet they tie together the city’s radial routes in the centre — a vital function that other cities can struggle with immensely. I could go on. Bristol is still far better than Birmingham or Leeds or Manchester. But it’s not radical. And it needs to start taking its cycling infrastructure seriously. Because mode share can go down as well as up — and the fall can be faster than the ascent. Advertisements
A week after a federal judge lifted a cloak that protected Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw from a possible multi-million-dollar verdict, the agency on Tuesday agreed to pay $550,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former U.S. marshal who claimed he was attacked by deputies after he stopped to aid victims of a fatal wreck. With the case set to go to trial next week, attorney Stuart Kaplan, who represents ex-federal agent Shawn Conboy, said U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks’ decision was key to settlement talks. Parting with decisions of other federal judges in similar excessive force lawsuits, Middlebrooks said Kaplan could try to persuade a jury that Bradshaw violated Conboy’s constitutional rights by repeatedly failing to rein in rogue deputies. “It was a significant factor,” Kaplan said of Middlebrooks’ decision. “In any of the other cases, the agency’s exposure has been nominal – up to $200,000,” he said. As a result of Middlebrooks’ decision, he said, “the sky was the limit.” Kaplan was referring to a state law that places a $200,000 limit on the amount governments can be forced to pay for wrongdoing unless the Florida Legislature passes what is known as a claims bill to lift the cap. However, if a government agency is found to have violated someone’s constitutional rights, the caps don’t apply. Once Middlebrooks set the stage for what could have been a sky-high verdict, Bradshaw’s attorneys rushed to the bargaining table, Kaplan said. Neither the sheriff nor his attorneys were immediately available for comment. The settlement means the agency has paid roughly $2.21 million since January to settlement five excessive force lawsuits. In the previous 16 years, it paid out a total of $1.7 million to those who were wounded or killed by sheriff’s deputies, a Palm Beach Post analysis found. “There seems to be an increasing willingness on the part of the sheriff to recognize the exposure he faces as a result of his pattern and practice of violating people’s constitutional rights,” said attorney Jack Scarola. In February, Scarola won a $22.4 million jury verdict for 22-year-old Dontrell Stephens, who was left paralyzed when he was shot by Deputy Adams Lin in 2013. However, unlike Middlebrooks did in Conboy’s case, a federal magistrate rejected Scarola’s request to let him go after Bradshaw for violating Stephens’ constitutional rights. That means that without a claims bill, the most Stephens can collect is $200,000. While the sheriff’s office is appealing the jury verdict, Scarola is appealing Magistrate Barry Seltzer’s order. Scarola said he has sent the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a Middlebrooks’ order to show that “two judges from the same district court arrived at different conclusions.” Like Kaplan, Scarola said he cited many instances where deputies shot or beat suspects or ordinary citizens and were never disciplined. While Middlebrooks said the examples were sufficient to indicate the sheriff may have created an atmosphere that caused deputies to feel they had license to use excessive force, Seltzer disagreed. In Conboy’s case, the 56-year-old Broward County man claimed Deputies Seth Perrin, Ronald Cercy and Robert Stephan threw him against the hood of a car and shot him twice with a stun gun after he questioned why he had to wait more than an hour to give a statement after witnessing a fatal 2013 crash west of Boca Raton. He said he and his then-girlfriend were treated more like criminals than witnesses after they tried to help those involved in the accident. Deputies charged him with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest, attempting to deprive officer of protection or communication, corruption by threat against a public official and disorderly intoxication. But prosecutors declined to pursue the charges. Still, Conboy lost his $103,000-a-year job as a security manager for Florida Power & Light. He was so troubled by the incident that a psychologist said he now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, Kaplan said. “He was ready to move on, to close that chapter,” Kaplan said of the reasons Conboy decided to settle the lawsuit. “His biggest issue is to get his life back on track.”
Republicans still fundraising for Scott DesJarlais The anti-abortion Tennessee GOPer once pressured his mistress to get an abortion Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais was the center of a controversy some months ago when it came to light that the social conservative, anti-abortion Republican once pressured a mistress to get an abortion. But, luckily for DesJarlais, national Republicans are still helping him fundraise. The National Journal reports: Advertisement: But unlike some other scandal-wracked politicians like Anthony Weiner, Eric Massa, or Eliot Spitzer, DesJarlais hasn’t become an outcast at all. Republican leaders haven’t punished him. He still holds positions on the Agriculture and, yes, the Oversight and Government Reform committees. Even more glaring: He’s getting fundraising assistance on Tuesday from six influential colleagues, including three committee chairmen (GOP Reps. Darrell Issa of California, John Kline of Minnesota, and Frank Lucas of Oklahoma) and two potential Senate candidates (Kline and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia). In October, The Huffington Post reported that in the course of divorce proceedings, it was revealed that DesJarlais pressured his mistress, also a patient of his, to get an abortion. Despite pressure from conservatives in his state, DesJarlais won reelection - only for it to come out that he and his wife decided to have two abortions before their divorce. Though Republicans back in Tennessee are lining up to primary DesJarlais, House Republicans remain unfazed: “Congressman DesJarlais’s hard work and outstanding contributions to congressional oversight on issues ranging from the devastating impact of Obamacare on small business to job-killing regulations in Tennessee have earned him Chairman Issa’s support,” said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill. “Chairman Issa looks forward to continuing to work with Congressman DesJarlais as he pursues the best interests of his district and our nation.” "Congressman Kline has a working relationship with all of his committee members," a spokesman for Kline told NJ.
A protester holds a sign at the March Against Monsanto in Washington, DC, October 12, 2013. (Photo: Stephen Melkisethian) This story was updated at 10:20 a.m. EST on April 3. It’s been a tough few weeks for Monsanto. Late last week, companies “such as Monsanto” were implicated in a watchdog group’s petition to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on behalf of anonymous scientists within the agency who say their research is suppressed when it upsets powerful agrichemical interests. The allegations enraged the industry’s critics, who have been busy touting recent reports linking popular herbicides often used in tandem with genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, to cancer and antibiotic resistance. Both controversies are renewing calls for tougher restrictions on certain herbicides and mandatory packaging labels for groceries containing GMO ingredients. “If true, this is a major scandal at the USDA,” wrote Gary Ruskin, director of the pro- labeling group US Right to Know, in a March 30 letter to the US House and Senate agricultural committees demanding an investigation. “It is not the proper role of the USDA to engage in a cover up for Monsanto and other agrichemical companies.” Is the USDA Suppressing Science? The petition, filed by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), demands that the USDA reform its so-called “scientific integrity policy,” which PEER claims contains broad language that enables the agency’s managers to suppress and alter research that has negative policy implications for big business, regardless of its merit. The petition alleges that companies like Monsanto “have access to top agency managers” and are “invited to lodge complaints” about the work of USDA scientists. In response, USDA scientists told PEER that managers order employees not to publish data and even rewrite and retract some scientific papers, while indefinitely delaying the approval of others. Scientists producing work that could cause regulatory headaches for the industry faced disciplinary actions and lengthy, intimidating investigations. “Scientists who are submitting works on neonicotinoids or the long-term effects of GMO crops, trigger corporate complaints back through the chain of command, and finally find that their careers are in jeopardy,” said PEER executive director Jeff Ruch. Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides thought to be at least partially responsible for declining populations of pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies. Ruch told Truthout that the USDA’s integrity policy lacks clear procedures for protecting whistleblowers and those who file internal complaints or produce work that is controversial, so it should come as no surprise that the agency’s embattled scientists are choosing to remain anonymous. “They are worried about backlash and the fact that there are no protections,” Ruch said. “And so it would be career ending, so I don’t think that anyone would come forward unless they are in the process of leaving the agency.” A senior scientist in the USDA’s agricultural research service seemed to confirm the allegations in a recent interview with Reuters. “Your words are changed, your papers are censored or edited or you are not allowed to submit them at all,” said the scientist, who asked not to be named. The USDA did not respond to Truthout’s request for comment on the petition by the time this article was published, but last week a spokesman told Reuters that the allegations have no merit and the agency values the work of its scientists. Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Marie did not specifically comment on the petition’s allegations that Monsanto and other companies are putting political pressure on federal regulators, but said that, “we believe that those conducting objective and data-driven scientific work should be allowed to do so without undue influence from others.” Cancer and Antibiotic Resistance The allegations are certain to become cannon fodder for environmentalists and food safety advocates who have been on the offensive since mid-March, when the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research arm classified glyphosate, the world’s most popular herbicide and main ingredient in Monsanto’s blockbuster weed killer Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a panel composed of cancer experts from across the world, reviewed existing studies on glyphosate and found “limited” evidence that linked the herbicide to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and DNA damage in human cells, along with “convincing evidence” that the chemical causes cancer in animals. The announcement quickly made headlines across the globe. Farmers and consumers in hundreds of countries use glyphosate to kill weeds, and the vast majority of GMO crops grown worldwide are engineered to tolerate the herbicide, including more than 90 percent of the corn and soy grown in the United States. Monsanto quickly dismissed the findings and accused IARC of “cherry picking” data to fit its “agenda-driven bias.” The company said the conclusion is inconsistent with decades of ongoing safety reviews conducted by regulatory agencies in governments across the world. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to conduct its regular safety review of glyphosate, and, with Monsanto’s influence over regulatory agencies already in question, environmentalists and even lawmakers are demanding that the WHO findings be taken seriously. On March 30, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy requesting that the agency include the IARC findings in the reassessment. Environmental and GMO labeling groups sent similar letters to the EPA in late March. “Senator Markey’s call for the EPA to weigh this new evidence in its own assessment of the toxic herbicide is absolutely the right call,” said Gary Hirshberg, chairman of the Just Label It campaign. “The explosion of GMO crops has resulted in a surge in glyphosate use on millions of acres of farmland throughout the US.” Small amounts of glyphosate and other herbicides can be found on foods, but most herbicide-resistant GMO crops are processed into biofuel, animal feed and junk food, and farm workers are considered most at risk of overexposure to the chemicals. It remains to be seen if the EPA will place tougher restriction on glyphosate, but environmental advocates say any changes would most likely only impact the way the chemical is handled by farm workers. Combining Glyphosate With 2,4-D Environmentalists also want the EPA to reconsider Enlist Duo, a controversial combination of glyphosate and the herbicide 2,4-D developed by Dow Chemical to combat the epidemic of so-called “superweeds” that have developed a resistance to glyphosate alone. The combination herbicide is already approved for use in six states, and on Thursday the EPA approved its use in nine more. “This poorly conceived decision by EPA will likely put a significant number of farmers, farm workers and rural residents at greater risk of being diagnosed with cancer,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “The agency simply ignored a game-changing new finding from the world leading cancer experts, and has instead decided the interests of biotech giants like Dow and Monsanto come first.” Studies have also linked 2,4-D to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and a study released in late March by a team of scientists in New Zealand found that 2,4-D, glyphosate and another common herbicide called dicamba all caused E. coli and salmonella bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics. The New Zealand team concluded that the “combination of high use of both herbicides and antibiotics in proximity to farm animals and important insects” could potentially be a factor in the increased use of antibiotics, adding that further research is needed because their study is one of the first of its kind. Marie said Monsanto is taking a “closer look” at the antibiotic study. Environmentalists say that Enlist Duo is simply a chemical solution for a problem caused by the overuse of chemicals in the first place. In the United States, the dependence on GMO crops treated with glyphosate has caused many weeds to become resistant to the poison, and now the industry is turning to older, more toxic chemicals to address the problem. Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist and director of sustainable agriculture at the Center for Food Safety, said products like Enlist Duo are part of a “pesticide treadmill,” and scientists are already seeing weeds that are resistant to multiple herbicides. “Even those conventional weed scientists are concerned that we are running out of options, kind of like what’s happening with antibiotics, because there are no really good, effective new herbicides in the pipeline,” Gurian-Sherman said. “That’s one reason why they are going back to chemicals like 2,4-D and dicamba, which are new versions of old chemicals.” Instead of using more chemicals, Gurian-Sherman said, farmers should turn to more sustainable farming methods such as crop rotation to control weeds. “It’s beyond even a question of what’s better to do for the environment and public health, which should be paramount anyway, but even in terms of effectiveness in even the immediate and longer term, we may be faced with substantially reduced effectiveness if they don’t transition to these ecologically based farming systems,” Gurian-Sherman said. Sustainable farming techniques don’t generate profits for chemical companies like Dow and Monsanto, and that’s why advocates are currently fighting at both the state and federal level to put labels on products containing GMOs. Labels, they say, would allow consumers to vote with their dollars. “In a free market, consumers have the right to know and choose how their food is made, especially if it’s contributing to cancer risks among people,” Hirshberg said. “Only mandatory labeling guarantees that right.”
Egyptian cleric Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, 44, shows a dark scar on his arm during his first public appearance since he was released from Egyptian custody last week, at a court house in Alexandria, Egypt, on Feb. 22, 2007. An Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents off the streets of an Italian city and taken to Egypt said he was tortured in an Egyptian prison. (Photo11: Nasser Nasser, AP) A former CIA officer says Portugal's top court rejected her final appeal and she will be extradited to Italy to serve a prison sentence for her alleged role in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003 under a U.S. extraordinary renditions program. Sabrina de Sousa told the Associated Press by email Wednesday that she was waiting to be told when she would be taken to Italy, where she was convicted in absentia in 2009 and faces a four-year sentence. In a related move, the European Parliament on Wednesday expressed serious concerns for what it said was "apathy" shown by some member states and EU institutions over recognizing "the multiple fundamental rights violations and torture" that took place in CIA “rendition” operations on European soil between 2001 and 2006. Under the U.S. rendition program, instituted after the 9/11 attacks, terror suspects were kidnapped and transferred to centers in various countries where they were interrogated and tortured. President Obama later ended the program, which also came under Congressional scrutiny. At issue in the de Sousa case is the 2003 kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street in a highly choreographed CIA operation. The radical cleric, who lived in Milan, was part of an Islamic opposition group wanted by Egyptian authorities for his involvement in Jemaah Islamiah, a network of Islamic extremists that sought to overthrow the government in the 1990s, according to The Washington Post. After the snatch in broad daylight, he was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He was held for a year and released in 2004. De Sousa was among 26 Americans convicted in absentia for their alleged role in the operation. None of the defendants, who fled the country, has been in Italian custody. Those convicted include the former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, whose original seven-year sentence was increased to nine years on appeal. The other Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA officers or operatives, also saw their sentences stiffened on appeal, from five to seven years. De Sousa, who was working in Italy under diplomatic cover as a CIA officer, insists she was not involved in the abduction. She also argued she could not use confidential U.S. government information to defend herself. Portugal's constitutional court said in a ruling posted on its website late Tuesday that it rejected her appeal on the issue of extradition. The court will send its decision back to the lower court, which will inform the police and start the extradition process. De Sousa, a naturalized U.S. citizen from India, told the AP she had "no idea" when she might be sent to Italy. In an interview with Newsweek in 2012, De Sousa expressed bitterness over her legal situation, which kept her under virtual house arrest in the U.S. "The people responsible (for Abu Omar’s kidnapping) are sitting on corporate boards and living comfortable lives, traveling," she said of the senior CIA officials who planned the abduction. She said at the time she missed her mother and other relatives who live in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India. Risking arrest on international warrants, De Sousa was in Portugal on a trip to visit her relatives when she was detained at Lisbon airport. De Sousa's Italian lawyer previously said he is hopeful of obtaining clemency from Italy’s head of state in the case, which also implicated Italy’s secret services and proved embarrassing to successive Italian governments. President Sergio Mattarella granted clemency to other defendants convicted in the case. De Sousa said she sent a letter to Pope Francis on Wednesday through the Vatican’s embassy in Lisbon urging him to speak out against the extraordinary renditions used by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks, the AP reported. The pontiff already condemned the practice in a 2014 speech. The convictions in Italy after a three-and-a-half-year trial were the first involving the CIA program. The resolution by the European Parliament called for more fact-finding missions to members countries, like Lithuania, Poland, Italy and Britain, identified as "complicit" in the CIA's detention and interrogation program, The parliament said it regretted that more than a year after the release of a U.S. Senate study of the renditions program, "no perpetrators have been held to account and the U.S. government has failed to cooperate with EU member states." Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Xacnsh
They call it “social” media – but popular stereotypes say that, in reality, it’s leaving us alienated from one another. Kids these days, everyone says, don’t go outside, are introverted, plastered to their screens, and don’t have any social skills at all. But the truth is more interesting. Social media connects in new ways that weren’t possible before the age of the Internet. What is new might also be scary and hard to understand – but that doesn’t always mean that it’s bad! Social media and Internet users are, in fact, more likely to go outside, more likely to have a diverse group of friends, and less likely to feel socially isolated! But they’re also more likely to feel depressed by a form of “social stress,” too. Get the details and break free from stereotypes with this infographic!
Four years ago, Bill Ford, heir to the Ford family business, stood onstage at TED and said, “When you factor in population growth, it’s clear that the mobility model that we have today simply will not work tomorrow.” Now he’s putting action behind his words. The venture firm he funded, Fontinalis Partners, has invested in ride-hailing service Lyft’s Series E, alongside activist investor Carl Icahn, whose participation was announced last week. Fontinalis Partners isn’t disclosing how much it invested in Lyft. A spokesperson from Lyft told Re/code, “The investment from Fontinalis is included in the $150 million we announced last week.” Since Icahn has said that he invested $100 million, that means the Fontinalis investment is $50 million or less. At first glance, it’s an unusual partnership. If they’re successful in their expansion plans, ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber could hurt the car industry by replacing people’s need for vehicle ownership. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has frequently said that’s his goal. Bill Ford may be the executive chairman of Ford Industries, but he’s admitted that individual vehicle ownership may not be the future. At TED, he said that his great-grandfather, Henry Ford, stood for the idea of mobility, not cars. As such, his venture firm’s declared strategy is to invest in “the next-generation mobility ecosystem.” Its portfolio includes other startups in the transportation space, like RelayRides, which does peer-to-peer rental cars, and Zendrive, which allows ride-hailing companies to track whether their drivers are speeding or texting while driving.
Rob Newman tackles the mysteries of nature with a unique audio A-Z, taking in everything from altruistic amoebae and dancing squid to Richard Dawkins wrestling naked with a postman. One of Britain's finest comedians, Rob Newman, with a witty, fact-packed series mixing stand-up and sketches, challenging notions of Survival of the Fittest and The Selfish Gene with a new theory that's equal parts enlightening and hilarious. Rob is our guide on a journey through a unique audio A-Z of nature that takes in everything from altruistic amoebae and dancing squid to Richard Dawkins wrestling naked with a postal worker. Piecing these fragments together allows Rob to correct some major distortions of Darwinism, as well as rejig the theory of natural selection in the light of what we now know about epigenetics, mirror neurons and the Flintstones. Written by Rob Newman Starring Claire Price, with Jenni Murray as the voice of the Encyclopaedia. Producer: Jon Harvey Executive Producer: Richard Wilson A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
ASHBURN, Va. -- If Albert Haynesworth can use air quotes to describe his injury, so can Donovan McNabb. The Washington Redskins quarterback poked a little fun at the disgruntled defensive tackle Wednesday. McNabb twice mimicked Haynesworth while talking about the sprained left ankle that will keep him out of Friday's preseason game against the New York Jets. "They told me it was just a 'sprain,'" said McNabb, slowing down to emphasize the word while holding fingers in the air to simulate quotation marks. Haynesworth, while making critical remarks of Redskins coach Mike Shanahan, used air quotes Saturday to describe the "headaches" he supposedly had been having a few days earlier. Haynesworth said he had been suffering from more than just headaches but that the organization wanted to make him look bad. McNabb, known for his playful nature in the locker room, was having fun with it. "It want to make sure I do the 'right things' to get myself healthy," McNabb said, using the air quotes again. As for the state of his ankle, McNabb said it feels much better and that he would "possibly have a chance" to play next week against the Arizona Cardinals. However, Shanahan said the chances of McNabb playing in that game are "slim" because the coach usually doesn't like to use his starting quarterback in the preseason finale. This week's game is the dress rehearsal for the regular season, but Shanahan and McNabb said they didn't believe the injury would be much of a setback for a quarterback learning a new offense. "We'd like him to have as many reps as he possibly could to feel comfortable with the system," Shanahan said. "A lot of it has to do with terminology, when it becomes second nature for him, where he can think and not react. But he can still work on that and not play." Rex Grossman will start the game and play the first half, possibly into the third quarter. As for Haynesworth, he remains with the backups after missing numerous practices because of a failed conditioning test, a sore knee and then the illness he had last week. Haynesworth has made it through all three practices this week. Shanahan said Haynesworth will play more at defensive end this week, rather than nose tackle. "He likes to play that position," Shanahan said. "We'll get to see him in action." Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press
Louis Gachot has moved to Van Amersfoort Racing ahead of a second season in ADAC Formula 4. Gachot, son of former F1 driver and 1991 Le Mans 24h winner Bertrand, competed last year for the US Racing team that took Marvin Dienst to the inaugural series title in 2015. It took him until the final race of the season to score a solitary point however, leaving him 29th in the final standings. The 17-year-old, who previously scored a podium in French F4 in 2015, joins Brazilian Felipe Drugovich in the line-up at VAR, which helped Joey Mawson to the 2016 crown. “Van Amersfoort Racing is the team to be [with] in the ADAC Formula 4,” Gachot said. “They were always competitive and won the driver’s championship in 2017, so I am looking forward to learn from the team. “Combined with the experience of a full season in German F4 it is my goal to be a regular top finisher this season. Team boss Frits van Amersfoort added: “We are delighted to have Louis join us for the coming season. “As a team we relish working with youngsters and make them improve their performance. “We do things different to others and it is our goal to give Louis the package to grow as a racing driver. “It doesn’t make me any younger, but it is an interesting situation, as in the mid-’80s, as a team, we used to race against Louis’ father, Bertrand, in FF-2000. I am quite happy that we are now both on the same side of the fence!”
by Nikkie Gray January 30, 2015 from Collective-Evolution Website Dolores Cannon is a hypnotherapist, UFO investigator, and paranormal researcher who has been sharing information and insights into the findings of her extensive work for the past 40 years. She is a master hypnotherapist who takes her clients to the somnambulistic level where, as she states, most hypnotherapists don't dare to go. She has brought to light a whole host of ancient knowledge which has either been lost to or hidden from the human population for various reasons. This article has been almost a year in the making, as I first discovered Dolores around March 2014. Jeff Roberts, a very talented CE writer, wrote an article about her which you can view here . I had heard about Dolores in 2011 but wasn't able to find the time to look into her work, but as always in life, we tend to come upon things just when we need them. I found Jeff's article, and after reading it I watched as many YouTube videos of Dolores' lectures as I could find. I avidly took notes while watching, because many of her talks were answering questions I already had regarding the planetary shift that is happening right now, among other things. I knew I had to get some of her books, and I did! I read many of the comments posted on Jeff's article and immediately noticed a trend; either they knew of Dolores and were happy to see an article written about her, they dismissed her as crazy, or they were simply unwilling to believe. It seemed like the ones who dismissed her work had never even taken the time to look into any of it. She's been doing this for 40 years so there is plenty of material to look into - it can be a bit overwhelming, for sure - but I think it's really important when researching this kind of work to be open-minded. When I first began writing this article I was going to call it, "Why this is the most important time in the history of the Universe," ...to continue the discussion that Jeff started and to perhaps help clarify and share further information on her work for those who didn't have the time to do the research or the money to buy her books. However, while in the midst of writing this article in October of last year, Dolores passed away, and my writing was put on hold. I felt like I had lost a great mentor and the world had lost a valuable conduit. I know death is not the end though; Dolores is guiding us still and her work carries on. I just hope that by sharing what I have learned and the questions that were answered for me, it might answer some of your own questions in turn and inspire you to buy some of her books research further into her fascinating work. The Awakening/Planetary Shift I awakened in January 2011. I'm not going to go into detail about what that was like though. It's a pretty cool (but long) story awakening10and I'm sure many reading this article are already familiar with the process. After I awakened I asked the question, "Now what?" I didn't know what my next steps were going to be. I believed there was a planetary shift happening but I didn't know the reason behind it, what it meant for our species and others in the galaxy, or what the end result of it would be. That conclusion is what really interested me. Today I find that many of the people I speak with from all around the world are in a similar state of confusion that I was in 4 years ago. "It is not so much to be with those in a higher vibration because they can fend for themselves. And it is not for those who are in deep negativity that we must be next to either. It is for those who are in the midst of confusion, but are perhaps ready to make a jump, that we can be most helpful to." (The SC = Sub-Conscious that speaks through Dolores' clients) - The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth I hope this information will bring some clarity to those who desperately need it and are ready for it. Here's what I have learned... When The Awakening Started The Awakening or the shift started more or less in the 1960s. As explained through Dolores's work, souls that had never been to Earth before began incarnating on the planet (Jeff also explains this in his article). Their frequencies were not like ours. They were higher, and their presence began to raise the vibrations of the people and the planet. There were three waves of these pure souls, and if you look back at the social climate of that time, you can see their influence. The 60s were a time of great change and social upheaval, and so the idea of the Awakening at this time really resonated with me; it just made sense. Earth was created to be a school for all beings wishing to achieve accelerated soul growth. We incarnate on the planet to learn lessons, to have experiences, to grow and to play. We also have been trying to get out of the karmic cycle, but that is a separate and lengthy topic that you can read more about in her books. We also plan our lives, but again, that is too much of a digression - I did write an article about it though which you can view here. The time we are experiencing now is what would be called graduation. We are graduating to the next step in our soul evolution; the next stage of consciousness. For many, the evolution started with the Quickening. Even people who have no clue about the awakening are saying that they feel like time is going by extremely quickly. The Quickening is being caused by the vibrations moving at a faster rate. You can either go with the vibrations and match it, making yours faster (the Quickening) as well, or you can get stuck. Many people on Earth are refusing to make their vibrations faster, causing them to become an opposing force. The people who have raised their vibrations can feel this opposing force, and in raising their vibration, they allow their very DNA to be changed. We are graduating, and graduation is a choice. It's a pretty exciting time to be living in! Why The Awakening Started When the first atomic bomb was set off, a call was put out to the universe that the Earth was in trouble. This call was answered by many souls who volunteered to come to Earth, many of whom had never been here before. Some were asked, with the option to say no, but they all came (however hesitantly). Earth is one of the hardest planets to incarnate onto, one of the hardest schools so to speak. So after the first atomic bomb detonation, these volunteers began being born with one goal, and that one goal was to shift the energy and the consciousness of this planet and its people, because we were headed down the wrong path as a species and beginning to harm the planet irreparably. The pure souls have been successful I feel and Earth is now shifting into her next incarnation and taking her best students with her. If you've done research into ancient cultures from around the world, you might have found that this evolution has happened before with different groups of people. Dolores does touch on this in some of the books I've read., along with Spirit Science and many others. (When speaking about a whole group or civilization that shifted from 3rd dimensional reality to another dimension.) "By coming and taking on the physical and being forerunners. It's very important to create a mold, to create a track. People can entrain to what has happened. The first ones, it's more difficult, then it becomes easier. You have a term for that: the hundredth monkey. You make it easier for others if you've made the path. And time is all one. So it's always been known there would be a time for the need to ascension of sorts, of shift, of transformation, of transcendence." The SC - The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth How to know if You Are in The Process of Awakening Physical Changes of The Body and Why Your DNA Will Be Changing Our DNA is changing to hold new energy and the new frequency. The infusion of higher vibrations on to the planet is causing dormant DNA to be activated. As our DNA is activated, our bodies begin to change. Dolores: "Is this changing of DNA going to have an affect on psychic abilities?" SC: "Yes. People will become more much more telepathic. No need for words, communicating through the heart and the thought blocks. No way to lie or cheat. You won't need to." By raising our vibrations our bodies begin to change, and we will begin to reject certain things and lifestyles that once seemed normal. The awakening symptoms article goes into great detail about these changes but one thing I can't stress enough to make the transition easier is changing your diet. Many people have a hard time with this, but if you are truly dedicated to shifting into the next stage of your evolution then it's something you must consider. "Throughout my work, my subjects are being told that they must change their diet in order to make the adjustment into the new world. Our bodies must become lighter, and this means the elimination of heavy foods. During the sessions, my clients are repeatedly warned to stop eating meat (beef and pork especially), mainly because of the additives and chemicals that are being fed into the animals." - Dolores Cannon, The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth "Dolores: "Will we still consume food?" SC: "Well, you're going to stop killing animals to eat them because eating the vibrations of a creature will now make you very, very sick. You will eat more watery things, and when you plant your food, you're going to plant not with quantity but a quality of love and it will bring in the higher vibrations when you plant your trees and the fruits are going to be higher vibrational, so you don't need to eat as much anymore." For further study of how to change your diet for the better, please watch the Documentary 'Origins'. I'll leave a link below to access the films website. One thing the documentary shares is the importance of eating raw foods. I have implemented this into my life and I feel amazing. I have also been a vegetarian since I awakened in January 2011. Those Being Left Behind From what I understand of the people who will not go is that whether they are conscious of it or not, it is their choice to go to 5th Dimensional Reality. The choice is made by your vibration and through that, your reality is set. One thing I thought was so cute about Dolores is that as she is discovering that people will be left behind and the SC is telling her this, she is just shocked and thinks it's totally un-fair which I felt the same too when I first started reading about it until I understood that it's not really them being left behind, but actually they are choosing not to go. SC: "… time flew for the Gaia to graduate and take her best students with her and leave behind the destruction and corruption and negativity and darkness. It's like she's splitting off, morphing into two." Dolores: "The ones who are left behind… their DNA has not been changed? SC: "No, they won't allow it." Dolores: "So it's a personal choice then?" SC: "Yes" "Those who have not become enlightened will have to return to another, denser planet that is still involved with negativity, to work out their remaining karma." – Dolores Cannon - The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth Extraterrestrial Influence ET influence is far greater than I think anyone could ever imagine. After I read the book, my mind was "pretzeled," as Dolores calls it. I just did not know how to accept the information being presented to me. The first thing I thought is, "Can all that actually be possible and if it is, Holy $@#%!" The book talks about Earth's origins : who created the Earth why it was created how aliens have been a part of everything since creation Visions I had were validated through the SC and Dolores. I never told anyone about the visions I had because it was just way too out of this world to even speak about, yet here they were, the things that I had seen, written in this book. Aside from the origins, I also learned about ET influence (much more than I could even imagine) and about the difference between good aliens (ones that help), neutral aliens, and not so good aliens (ones that don't help). SC: "There are beings that we consider not very spiritually evolved. That does not mean they are negative. We have no negativity within the Universe. There is no positive and no negative. There is only the beauty of the One. What we have are beings who have not evolved spiritually as we would wish, but we would not call them negative. I wanted to bring out, for example, the ET beings that are working with your government. Those beings are here for their own purposes to get metals from the Earth and different chemicals, elements and things that they can use. Sometimes they take out more of this than they tell the government. We don't approve of this, but we have allowed them to come because the vibration of the planet is lower and they can come into this vibration and communicate with governments. This does not mean they are negative. They are growing spiritually. And we allow them to come in. They are not harming the planet because they have learned that they must give. And they are giving technology to the government. So it's a give and take. We disagree, but they are not negative. Some beings here think on terms of good or evil, and that is really not the way to look at it. It should be looked at in terms of spiritual advancement. Some of these beings just aren't as spiritually advanced." – The Three Waves of Volunteers and The New Earth The last sentence is what really got me to look at it in a different way. Over the years I have read about the underground bases and the atrocities that are going on at the hands of alien beings (supposedly) and I was sickened. After reading the book, I began to view the aliens in exactly the same way that I view humans who do "negative" things; I used to be sickened by what humans did at one point too. A couple of years ago I found out that humans play roles, and that the "negative" roles (people who do really bad things like hurt, oppress, violate, etc.) are nothing more than that - roles - for inside there is still a perfect, beautiful, good natured soul wishing to experience soul growth, create it for others, or clear up karma. I then started to view aliens the same way. If these beings are truly doing horrible things to humans, while I don't condone their actions, I believe that like all things in life, we create our own circumstances and choose to participate in them, whether consciously or otherwise. I know many people will have a hard time accepting that but I believe it's true. Like all things created, we created it for many reasons. How I Am applying What I learned to My Life The main thing I got from all of her work is that we're moving from our 3 dimensional reality to the 5th. This process is not just life changing and beautiful but also destructive and extremely hard. I mean really, really hard. But I've learned that it's my choice to raise my vibration and I can do so by making great changes in my life, such as forgiving others and myself, being of service and generous to those who need me, and being conscious of my actions and words. I can also be aware of what I put into my body and be mindful of who I am and why I am here - to graduate to my next level of consciousness. Even if by chance none of what Dolores talks about is true and it's all complete fantasy, it doesn't matter, for I will have created for myself the best life any person could ask for. Applying what I've learned to my life has made me a better person and I feel like if I died tomorrow, I would be filled with gratitude, not regrets. How could I ask for more than that? Also, I don't know about you, but I've been pretty tired of this 3rd dimensional reality. There are so many horrible things happening around the planet, and everything we come into contact with is poisonous. In all honesty, I find it completely overwhelming most of the time. Plus our beautiful planet is being destroyed. People have asked me what will happen to the greedy and corrupt people in positions of power, or people who are just generally negative, and as I understand it, they will be left with what they've created. If they are in a low vibration, they will stay in 3rd dimension reality along with our dying eco-system, horrors like Fukushima , and all the other messes they have created. I think those that are playing the "negative" roles knew they weren't going to shift because they hadn't cleared up enough karmas to go on, so they volunteered to play those roles to help us. I don't hate those that oppress us, human or non-human. I feel grateful to them. Dolores' books changed my life. I've read a couple of them and I plan to read more. I'm not saying that everything she says is true and you must believe it all. It's up for you to decide what you wish to believe and what you feel resonates with you the most. I think her work offers valuable information and another possibility for truth. It has not only answered some of the questions I had that I couldn't for the life of me find the answers to, but has also validated visions I had and things my spirit guides said. More importantly, (and this is what really did it for me) it was all synchronistically done is such a crazy way that I can't deny it. I hope that those who are searching for answers and some clarity in the midst of all this confusion (because there is tons) will find that and I believe Dolores Cannons' work is a great start. I'd like to end this with my favorite quote from her. "The choice of transformation is Ours - and all possible worlds are waiting to be explored." Thank you Dolores and to all those close to her that help carry on her work. She is a beautiful soul and I'm glad I found her work. It truly did change my life. Return to Consciousness and The Conscious Universe
About Recording Credit: Alpha Beta Gamer Update - 11/28/17 We are now supporting add-ons; pledge the respective amount on top of whichever base tier you would like. At the end of the campaign surveys will go out for how you would like to allocate funds. Guest Artist Poster - $15 Guest Artist T-Shirt - $40 Guest Artist Bundle -$50 Mei Mouspad - $30 Acrylic Standee - $15 We are honored to have Anime Tamae creator and japanese illustrator Rebis Dungeon as our featured guest artist. For previews on add-ons, check out our latest update. ------------- Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is a 2.5D game inspired in design by Clock Tower and Fatal Frame, and story-wise by sci-fi classics like Bladerunner as well as heavily from Traditional Asian Folklore. Set in the year 2083 in Neo Hong-Kong, the story follows Mei-Lin Mak, a young woman with cybernetic eyes pulled into the maelstrom of an unsolved supernatural mystery from centuries past. As she peers deeper into the mystery, her perception of reality slowly crumbles around her, leaving her to question every intricacy of her surroundings. Under the neon lights of a cyberpunk dystopia lays the ruins of the Chung Sing Building; an obscured reminder of a bloody mystery illuminated by both the innovations of the future and the traditions of the past. Caught in the midst of a conspiracy from years past, our protagonist Mei-Lin Mak finds herself stuck in these crumbling ruins, trying to decode a mystery whose answer may reach past what even the technology of the future could produce. In an industrial world stricken with fierce division between government and individual, rebellion and order, and human and machine, Mei finds that there may be a greater division undiscovered; the division between normal and supernatural. If there is any hope of escaping this nightmare, Mei-Lin must explore this complex, piecing together the stories of 14 lost souls, and discover the truth of her own family curse. With careful attention to pacing, atmosphere and storytelling, Sense hopes to return the horror genre to its roots; celebrating the slow, fearful creep of dread instead of turning to action and jump scares. Mei is not a trained agent; she is a programmer and not a soldier; the ghosts - the glitches of reality - are spirits and not spectral zombies; and the scares are from within, not from the horrors around. Interaction: The player will need to search and examine every nook and cranny of the world around them in order to progress. Some items may not be visible until specific chains are completed, and some items may be hidden from Mei's cybernetic eyes at all times, as if spirited away by the ghosts stalking her. Dialogue: NPCs will be heavily populating a few areas of the full game, but there may be some wandering the halls with you. Talking to them can reveal information about the world, the mystery at hand, and even some unexpected secrets. Zooms: Some interactions require a closer look, zooms allow for a different view of items, areas, and puzzles. Make sure to search every inch. Lore: The world of Sense is huge and complex, each location will reveal details about Neo-Hong Kong and the surrounding world. From Geo-Politics to inter-character relationships don't be afraid to click on anything that looks interesting. Ghosts: The ghosts of the Chung Sing building can hurt you, but can you hurt them? Short answer is no, but you can help them pass on. Shrines, offerings, and solving mysteries will be your only weapons. Shinrei Spots: The 14 lost souls of the Chung Sing building are not the only spirits lurking the halls. Dozens of hidden ghost photos fill the locations of Sense. Finding them all may reveal a secret! Death and failure: Like all the best games, failure and mistakes should be punished, but in a heavily narrative game how do you do that? How do you promote stakes and risk? The answer is simple, fill the world with dangerous events and deadly spirits. Just make sure to record your progress at the occasional TV, there are NO checkpoints or autosaves in the Chung Sing building. Replayability: Sense will be filled with secrets, only some of them will be revealed in a single play through. Some secrets wont be able to escape the spirit realm until the "Plus" appears. Sense utilizes a Hand-Painted 2.5D style for its art, which combines the benefits of 3D - such as shifting perspective - with the intricate, colorful style of 2D illustration. Sense also happily embraces eroticism and fan-service in it's art, which can especially be seen in character designs. Our biggest inspirations for character design is the legendary Masamune Shirow, Creator of Ghost in the Shell and Dominion Tank Police and Chifumi Suzuki, the character designer at Tecmo Koei responsible for the last several Fatal Frame and Dead or Alive titles. Sense's locations are heavily inspired by futuristic environments, especially drawing from the architecture of Asian cities and buildings. The aesthetic includes lots of bright, colorful neon lights, a stark contrast to the dark, brooding streets and back alleys of the dystopia that Mei finds herself in. Locations are also fully animated to bring out their full potential, letting players immerse themselves in the world and observe the little details that bring Neo Hong-Kong to life. Our soundtrack is done by Andy Andi Han, a composer with significant experience in games, and the co-composer of the famed visual novel Katawa Shoujo. Sense will feature an immersive, atmospheric and brooding soundtrack, drawing the player further into the ghostly cyberpunk world of the game. With influences from John Carpenter, Vangelis and traditional Chinese Opera, the synthesizer-meets-eastern sound provides a lasting and memorable auditory experience. The music isn't just along for the ride- the musical experience is an essential sensory element, accompanying the journey through Neo Hong-Kong's moody, neon filled streets... and wherever else it may go. Long before Sense even began development, I knew I wanted this game to reflect my dream project, rivaling AAA games. So when it originally came time to develop the game myself, the time restraints, sheer technical requirements, and minimal budgeting made many of those ideas impossible. Instead of scrapping the idea, I tried to do what I realistically, rather than promising something I could never make a reality. Scaling back and focusing on what I CAN do instead of what I wanted to do was essential to success. After lots of drafting, feedback, and help from an established publisher and fellow developers, I think I found a solid look and feel, and most importantly, I feel was finally able to craft something unique and exciting; with Kickstarter however, I can work in some of my true dream ideas and deliver the clearest version of my original concept to your screens. Things like high quality animations for character movement and interaction, more dynamic lighting and higher quality art, more advanced and in depth coding and gameplay, fully animated cutscenes, 3D environments, and a larger and longer game can be done but will require funding and support. With your help I can hire and contract more experienced people to bring all of those ideas to life so that I can focus solely on my strengths; art and narrative. With or without Kickstarter I will continue to develop Sense - A Cyberpunk Ghost Story into a memorable and high quality experience that I expect of the games I love and the quality I demand of myself, but with your pledges I can make it into something truly groundbreaking and unique. $5 Name in Backer Credits Exclusive Wallpaper Access to Backers Only Forums & Updates $20 Previous Rewards Digital Copy of the Game $30 Previous Rewards Early Access to Game Builds Exclusive Art Goodies $50 Previous Rewards Digital Artbook Digital Soundtrack $75 Previous Rewards A3 Character Art Poster Physical Art Goodies $100 Previous Rewards Physical Copy of the Game $150 Previous Rewards Physical Artbook Physical Soundtrack $350 Previous Rewards (except physical game/artbook/soundtrack) Collector's Edition Boxset $750 Previous Rewards (except physical game/artbook/soundtrack) (except physical game/artbook/soundtrack) Collector's Edition Boxset Create a Character & Custom Character Print $1500 Previous Rewards (except physical game/artbook/soundtrack) Executive Production Credits & Goodies DRM-Free copies will also be distributed. 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Fair warning: there will probably be some spoilers for the Mad Max film coming up. I've been lucky enough to play a little chunk of the Mad Max game already. I was also lucky enough to see the magnificent, deranged Mad Max: Fury Road over the weekend. The timing of the two is less than coincidental, but watching Fury Road has made it clearer than ever that, while the game is anything but a licensed spin-off, they share some distinct DNA. When I visited Avalanche to see the game, the developers talked with huge enthusiasm about how they'd been left to craft their own story, their own Wasteland, with series mastermind George Miller simply acting as an early consultant. Since watching Fury Road, it's become clear that by "consultant", they meant "guy who tells us little details from the film we should copy, like how the baddies will carry around bombs strapped to sticks". Here are ten similarities between the two. Bombs strapped to sticks Fury Road's War Boys are rarely seen without a crude explode-o-spear in their hands for the duration of the film. In a world where ammunition is stuck at a "limited edition Beanie Baby" level of scarcity and consumer demand, this makeshift missile is about as handy as it gets. While some of the game's pre-release art shows a scene suspiciously similar to the one above, in gameplay we've only seen said sticks in a melee combat capacity. Certain classes of enemies will run at you waving them - whereupon Max can disarm them, shove it through their chest cavity and boot them into a crowd of their soon-to-be minced mates. War Boys Speaking of the antagonistic hench-goons, War Boys make a prominent appearance in the game, too. They're the fighting force of dominant faction leader, Scrotus, and you'll run into them all over the Wasteland - primarily protecting conquerable Camps. The film presents them as a sort of shock-and-awe squadron, raised from birth to drive cars and cause havoc. They're also pretty messed-up, both mentally and physically (most of them have a couple of tumours to speak of, and Nicolas Hoult's Nux needs to be supplied with Max's blood just to get around for most of the start of the film). Don't be surprised to find a similar backstory in the game. Gastown And speaking of Scrotus (I promise I won't do this on every slide, I'm just segueing like a pro right now), the game's lead antagonist lords it over one of Fury Road's locations. The film's Immortan Joe rules over the Citadel, which trades resources with two other locations: the Bullet Farm and Gastown. Fury Road's Gastown is looked after by the grotesque People Eater, but it appears in very similar fashion to the game's version - namely as a smoke-belching blot on the Wasteland's dusty horizon. Expect to get much, much closer up in the course of the game. Factions One of the new film's neater updates was in introducing distinct groups of people to its world. The old Mad Max films tended to lump people into "good guys", "bad guys" and "Max" - Fury Road made it clear that the Wasteland has a lot of agendas rubbing up explosively against one another (even the Citadel, Bullet Farm and Gastown show signs of friction). Any video game fan worth their salt knows that different factions need their own unique vehicles. Imperator Furiosa's would-be rescuers are clearly a bike-only gang, and there was that one scene where there were people on limb-stilts for a bit. The game pulls a similar trick. While Scrotus' War Boys are the dominant presence, other gangs do exist - the most obvious so far are the red-eyed, spike-vehicled bastards who come out only at night. Convoys Fury Road is set entirely around a routine convoy gone wrong. In the game, you're the one who makes it go wrong for them. The map's peppered with dynamically-generated strings of vehicles, ripe for the totalling. Each one comes with a War Rig-style boss vehicle, and every other car is there for one purpose: kill anything that gets near it. My favourite part of playing the game so far came with one of these - Avalanche has captured the sense of never-stop-driving speed-action that the film makes its greatest asset, cars peeling out of formation to side-swipe you, boarders leaping onto your hood and things generally going badly for everyone involved. Dust Hurricanes Oh my god this scene. In a film so rooted in the physicality of practical effects, the sickening crunch of metal-on-metal, there was something quite lovely about one scene of all-out CG nonsense. Tornadoes! Lightning! Explosions! In the game, this isn't a set piece, it's just a thing that can happen. Where most games treat dynamic weather as a tool for making your tyres a bit slippy, Mad Max occasionally makes whole portions of the map insanely dangerous to enter - and just as useful to pull a Furiosa and lead an entire group of pursuers to an electrical/wind-based death. Harpoons In a single scene of Fury Road, a car with a harpoon mounted to its back end pulls the spiked armour plating off of another car, allowing it to be blown up from within. That's seemingly the basis for one of the game's central mechanics. Your Magnum Opus is fitted with a harpoon early on, and it's used to pull down structures, drag enemies from perches or driver's seats and, yes, pull spiked bits of armour plating off of other cars so that they can be blown up from within. It plays totally to Avalanche's strength as a developer who really likes to mess about with physics when objects are exposed to high-tensile metal cords. A changeable Wasteland Another of Fury Road's changes to the original films is in the landscape it portrays. It might begin in the same burnt-yellow sand plains as the first movie, but it quickly crosses into mountains and stagnant swamps. The game was always going to have to do this, just to keep a player interested - its Wasteland begins on the bed of a vapourised ocean, but we've gotten stuck in a tar marsh and climbed great mesas. Gastown looks like another location entirely - closer to an entirely industrial city and a stark contrast to the the ramshackle shanties of the early game. A beefier Max Tom Hardy is no Mel Gibson. And we mean that in all the good ways it can be perceived. Mel's original Max was a lithe, sinewy sort - Hardy's is a more grizzled type, like some boxer gone slightly to seed, but still able to take your head off with a punch. Avalanche's Max might be a little more together than Fury Road's tortured, wide-eyed lead, but he definitely leans towards the new film in terms of stature. He's wide-of-shoulder and slow-of-punch, better suited to smashing War Boys teeth into walls than dodging around their strikes. Grotesque hood ornaments Max spends the beginning of Fury Road muzzled, his blood being forcibly pumped out of him and attached to the front of Nux's weaponised hot rod. He's little more than a massive, grunting Rolls Royce angel for whole scenes at a time, while everyone else gets to look cool and shout things to one another. While the game won't let you go quite as far (or at least we don't think it will), every boss character you defeat will reward you with an associated object to stick on the front of the Magnum Opus, proof of your badassery. If it ends up that your reward for dethroning Scrotus is Scrotus, we'll be even more excited. But no women? Fury Road's been rightly praised for its portrayal of women, a neat reinvention of action tropes that sees its female characters putting one in the eye of a literal patriarchy. The game, so far, has included one woman. As a voiceover. Let's not get too bent out of shape this early - it was never clear quite how important Furiosa, the Wives and the Many Mothers would turn out to be until the film was out - but of what's left of my Mad Max wishlist, some strong female characters is right at the top.
In a slum in Pune, the dusty lanes lead to a small "chawl" in gali number 3 - housing tenements crowded close together. There are remnants of puddles of stagnant water, mosquitos swarming above them.Past the local market, in a small, blue one- room home, a ten-year-old, wearing a short and a shirt sits on the floor completing homework.He introduces himself in French. Then in English, Hindi and Marathi.This is Rizwan Sheikh. And he knows exactly what he wants from life. "I want to be a scientist just like Abdul Kalam."His father sells vegetables off a handcart, his mother works as a maid for two different families. Together, the couple earn about Rs 5000 a month.Rizwan is the older of their two sons.In May this year, as Rizwan's father, Janmohammed was returning after dropping his son to school in the NIBM road area, a speeding autorickshaw hit him from behind fracturing his leg. "He was on crutches till just 15 days back, so it was only my income of about Rs 3000 that we were running the house. The school has been kind enough to even take care of our house rent which is Rs 3500," explains Rizwan's mother Ruksar.When he was five, Rizwan answered questions used in the civil services examination. His father, himself a topper in his school in a small village, recognised Rizwan's potential."I realised that this boy had something special. I would teach him tables and he would grasp so quickly. You ask him any table from one to 100 and he will answer. I then started getting general knowledge books for him and he learnt all the questions," Janmohaamed says proudly. "In fact, he had started reading books that many graduates would study for competitive examinations."But his parents couldn't afford schooling for Rizwan. A report in a Pune local daily in 2007 praising his IQ attracted the attention of a local police officer who asked to meet the boy. He was impressed and introduced Rizwan to a German company which had a large office in Pune. The firm decided to sponsor Rizwan's education. And for five years, he attended and topped the city's prestigious RIMS International School.The elite school wasn't a great fit to start with. But Rizwan was determined to make the most of its facilities and opportunities. "Initially, when I went to the school, some children would make fun. They would call me a beggar who brings vada pav for lunch. But now they have become my friends."But the global economic slowdown has hit both his sponsor and Rizwan. The company said a month ago that it can no longer fund him.His father, Mohammed, says collecting 1.5 lakhs - the school's annual fee - is impossible for him. The school has admitted Rizwan's younger brother Ayyan at a discounted fee. But it says it cannot have two children from the same family getting special assistance.If you would like to make a donation to help Rizwan, here are the details of his bank account:Account number: 3017548042-6Account holder's name: Master Rizwan Rajmahammed ShaikhBank name: State Bank of IndiaBranch: Dhankawdi, Pune (5413)
Bullying is on the decline, but more work remains to continue the trend, according to a new longitudinal study. “Although promising, it is important to emphasize that a large proportion of youth are still experiencing bullying and the current prevalence rates continue to be of great concern,” authors said in the study “Ten-Year Trends in Bullying and Related Attitudes Among 4th- to 12th-Graders” (Waasdorp TE, et al. Pediatrics. May 1, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2615). With increased attention to bullying in recent years, the authors set out to quantify the problem. Previous studies on bullying focused on older students over shorter time periods and used fewer indicators of bullying, authors wrote. In this study, they surveyed 246,306 Maryland students in grades four through 12 from 2005-’14. The team used World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions for bullying. They asked students about 13 indicators around different types of bullying and attitudes as well as their school’s climate. They found high schools showed the most improvement, while bullying peaked in middle school. Looking collectively at all ages, researchers saw statistically significant improvement in 10 of the indicators. In 2014, 13.4% of students reported being bullied in the past month down from a peak of 28.8% in 2007. Roughly 7.1% of students in 2014 reported bullying other children, down from 21.3% in 2005. Both metrics went down nearly every year and were at or near their lowest in 2014. About 42.7% of students said they witnessed bullying in 2014, down from a high of 66.4% in 2005. Roughly 88.5% of students in 2014 said they felt safe in school, up from a low of 76.4% in 2006. Cyberbullying, which has received much of the attention in recent years thanks to new apps and social networks, fell to 3.6% in 2014 compared to a high of 7.8% in 2010. However, the authors said this area should be studied in greater detail as technology evolves. When students were asked about whether adults do enough to stop bullying, there were significant improvements in the unadjusted but not adjusted models. Still, increased attention to bullying intervention in schools in recent years may have contributed to the bullying declines, authors said. They called for more study in this area as well. In a related commentary https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2017-0504, the authors noted the study’s “commendable rigor” and called on pediatricians to be vigilant for signs a patient is being bullied. They also recommended talking to families about establishing support networks and ongoing communication at school, home and among friends. “While the notable improvements over the past 10 years in rates of bullying should provide us with encouragement, we need to sustain our focus to continue the decrease of bullying and victimization in schools across the nation,” they wrote. Resources
Subsys is a form of fentanyl, a narcotic that is often used when other painkillers fail to provide relief. The product, which is sprayed under the tongue, begins working in as little as five minutes, which is useful for patients who experience sharp bursts of pain. But it carries a high risk of dependency and can cause respiratory distress — and death — for those who are not using painkillers regularly. Image Insys Therapeutics, manufacturer of Subsys, a powerful and addictive narcotic, made large payments to pain specialists who recently faced legal or disciplinary action. Several of the highest-paid doctors said they spoke on behalf of Subsys because they believed in the product. “I’m not a big ‘talk for companies’ kind of guy,” said Dr. Somerville, who noted that he was a former president of the Texas Pain Society. “They liked my personality and how I approached things, and I liked their product.” Dr. Somerville, who was a top prescriber of Subsys, said Insys representatives never questioned him about the Texas Medical Board’s ruling, and he continued speaking about Subsys for a few months after the board’s decision. Insys officials said they removed him as a speaker after learning of the disciplinary action. Dr. Somerville took issue with the medical board’s claims, saying the board did not have evidence that he contributed to the patients’ deaths and that the action was the result of a vendetta against doctors who frequently prescribe opioids. “I’m very aggressive in trying to help my patients,” he said. “I’m a very caring doctor. I like money, but that’s not my god, O.K.?” Other top speakers for Insys have also faced regulatory or legal trouble. Dr. Paul Madison, a pain specialist in Chicago, was indicted in 2012 on federal fraud charges after the authorities claimed that the surgical center he owned billed insurers for procedures that were never performed. Insys paid Dr. Madison nearly $33,000 in 2013. Another top Insys speaker, Dr. Steven Y. Chun of Sarasota, Fla., paid $750,000 in February to settle federal charges that he had billed for procedures he did not perform. Dr. Chun received $45,000 from Insys in 2013, according to the database. Dr. Chun said that he admitted no wrongdoing in the federal settlement and that he provided excellent care to his patients. Dr. Madison said he had done nothing improper; both doctors declined to comment further. Insys officials said Dr. Chun and Dr. Madison were not accused of improper medical care. Dr. Awerbuch, the Michigan neurologist who was arrested on Medicare fraud charges, declined to comment through his lawyer. Insys said it ended its arrangement with him after his arrest.
Dortmund move for Inaki Williams By Football Espana staff Borussia Dortmund are willing to trigger the €50m release clause of Athletic Bilbao forward Inaki Williams, say reports in Spain. According to Diario AS, the Bundesliga side are intent on spending the majority of the initial €105m they received for Ousmane Dembele’s sale to Barcelona. The Ghanaian-born Spanish international – who has scored 26 goals in 123 appearances for Athletic Club – is said to be happy in Bilbao and has no intention of forcing a move, having signed a new deal at the San Mames last year. "I have always said, and I maintain, that I am where I want to be and that I am very happy in Bilbao," Williams told Marca in January. "I do not want a change of pace, my family is very comfortable here, my teammates are happy with me and I am very happy to be with them. My first choice will always be Athletic. "I am where I want to be and also very happy. Having a contract [until 2021] gives stability but I am not satisfied with what I have achieved. I always aspire to have more. I want more renewals [with Athletic] to come in the future."
14 November 2017 00:00, UTC While everybody was busy assessing the growth of Bitcoin Cash and what to do about it, another altcoin has also shown some very positive dynamics. Dash grew from $275 on November 7 to $435 16 hours ago, and now it’s $417.30 (a relatively small correction). This might be connected to its recent protocol update that is, as all cryptocurrency updates usually are, focused on improving the speed of transactions. This update made Dash transactions cost less than a cent. Dash is also, as some media outlets suggest, successfully expanding its influence on Asian market. However, this cryptocurrency market sentiment is overall bullish this year, as one can verify by looking at the statistics from Coinmarketcap. CoinDesk experts suggest that if the currency manages to consolidate at $380-400 in the near future, it can lead to yet another rally above $500. Altcoin creators, while fully aware it would be hard to compete with Bitcoin by now without offering anything new, often focus their projects on a particular theme. ZCash and Monero, for example, offer good privacy methods, with Monero becoming so successful in this that it, sadly, became one the main digital currencies hackers use today. Dash, in turn, offers user friendliness and on-chain scalability. Found a mistake? Select the text and press CTRL+ENTER Share: Read the best crypto news analysis here! bitnewstoday.com Bitcoin, investments, regulation and other cryptocurrencies
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to give back 5 percent of his pay in a gesture of solidarity with government workers who must take unpaid leave as a result of deep spending cuts that went into effect last month. U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about tightening gun regulations during a visit to the Denver Police Academy in Denver, Colorado April 3, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque The president’s self-imposed pay cut would be effective from March 1, when the spending cuts began, and would last through the end of December, an administration official said on Wednesday. Obama earns $400,000 a year. The official said the president decided on the 5-percent reduction, which would total $20,000, because it would be similar to the level of cuts to non-defense government agencies. Defense and non-defense discretionary spending has shrunk across the board as a result of reductions under a process known as sequestration. To maintain critical functions, many agencies are making workers take unpaid leave, or furloughs. “The President has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling with the president in Colorado and California. The president’s gesture comes after the top Defense Department official said he would return part of his salary in an amount equal to pay lost by civilian employees. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will give back the equivalent of 14 days worth of pay to the government, about $10,750, his spokesman said on Tuesday. Obama’s decision was first reported by The New York Times. Sequestration was originally designed as an outcome so harsh that budget negotiators would find another way to narrow trillion-dollar deficits. However, Obama would not back away from his insistence that any spending cuts be paid for in part by higher tax revenues, while Republicans, who had conceded higher tax rates on the rich in a budget deal in January, refused to agree to any tax hikes. The $85 billion in overall cuts went into effect after the two sides reached impasse.
Ruan Sims: "I couldn't have asked for a better childhood." Credit:Louise Kennerley She played for Brothers Ipswich and made the south-east Queensland emerging squad, and Ruan said it was only a matter of time before she was joined by her sister in the Jillaroos team. "I'm not retiring after this World Cup, I'll continue to play on and I really hope that I'm fit enough and strong enough and good enough to play when she comes through, because I have no doubt she'll make the Jillaroos in the very near future," Ruan said. "She's only been playing rugby league for three months, she's a raw talent. "She went to Canada for the women's gridiron World Cup in June this year. She was one of the co-captains and she learned a lot out of it and I really hope to get her converted full-time to rugby league so we have five siblings playing the one sport." No one in the rugby league world would be surprised to hear Canecia is on the path to rugby league success. She partook in "Friday Night Fight Night" like the rest of the Sims clan growing up. After swim class, parents Jacqueline and Peter would drive their kids home, cook dinner and then push the couches back in the lounge room to set up the arena. The wrestling rules were simple enough as the fireplace crackled in the background – open-handed slaps were allowed but no punching, biting or kicking. Jacqueline and Peter oversaw the whole thing as referees. Then on Sunday afternoons, the Sims' spacious Gerringong backyard was the place to be. Children from the neighbourhood would frequently stop by for a game of footy, but sometimes it was just the Sims kids. "It'd be Ashton and I playing against the three little ones, or it'd be myself and CJ [Canecia] playing against the boys," Ruan said. "Ashton tells a really great story. Apparently I'd tackled Korbin and I'd got him a bit high and Korbin was a bit upset and Ashton was fired up because I'd hurt his little brother. "Ashton was like 'That's it, I was all fired up and I was coming off the back fence and I was going to run right over the top of her and I took off and the next thing I knew I was on my back, looking at the sky'." Their father Peter walked up, patted Ruan on the back and kept going. It's this kind of brutal defence the Cook Islands can expect against the Jillaroos on Thursday, and what awaits England and Canada over the coming week. Ruan said she and her siblings owe everything to their parents. Growing up they went without commercial television, so their rugby league fix at a national level came via either the ABC on a Saturday afternoon, or on Grandstand through the radio. Sims now works for the network at various NRL games as a sideline commentator and analyst. "I can't describe it any more than our parents didn't pigeonhole us because we were boys or girls, they just wanted us to be active so they got us involved in everything," Ruan said. "I couldn't have asked for a better childhood. I didn't know what The Simpsons was until I moved out of home. "You had to [hold your own], five kids fighting at the dinner table for the nice food and fighting it out in the backyard to survive. The grocery bill would've been phenomenal for mum and dad, I believe that's where my love of carbohydrates started at a very young age. Loading "Mum and Dad won't take any credit for it because that's the people they are but we've achieved what we've achieved because of the way they brought us up and we've become who we are because of our siblings and our family and our parents." The women's Rugby League World Cup pool games and semi-finals will be played at Southern Cross Group Stadium in Cronulla, while the decider will be played before the men's final in Brisbane on December 2.
Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.35 percent. “Bond yields nudged mortgage rates slightly lower this week, with the fixed-rate mortgage rates falling to three month lows,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. But FBR's Paul Miller pegs it more on the government buying mortgage backed securities. "If the Fed backed out of a liquidity stance, treasuries would scream," says Miller. "I think the government will try to keep it right around 5 percent." That's because the government needs low mortgage interest rates to support a housing recovery, especially now, as the first time home buyer tax credit expires Nov. 30. But will rates go any lower? Or did we all miss the boat last spring, when rates hit record lows? "Treasury yields and mortgage rates have pulled back on concerns about the sustainability of the economic recovery, particularly with household income and consumer spending weak," says Bankrate.com's Senior Financial Analyst Greg McBride. "However mortgage rates are very dependent on the Fed's purchases of $300 billion in Treasury debt that will expire in October and $1.25 trillion in mortgage bond purchases that will expire at year-end. Unless the economy stumbles, we're likely to see higher rates in the fourth quarter."
THE Liberal premiers have let politics get in the way of helping the disabled. That was the only conclusion to be drawn yesterday when only Labor leaders were willing to stake up some dollars for trials of the proposed national disability insurance scheme. No wonder Ted Baillieu and Barry O'Farrell looked defensive; even Queensland's Campbell Newman, who had been the most bolshie before the meeting about providing no money, stressed (with a hint of apology): ''Do we want to put more in? You betcha. Can we put more in right now? Well, I'm afraid we can't.'' Prime Minister Julia Gillard meets with students during her visit to Black Mountain School. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The premiers know that their communities are likely to think badly of them for not chipping in. Just consider: Victoria was being called on to provide just $10 million a year for four years. Not to put too fine a point on it - that's peanuts in a state budget. The Victorian government was being asked, for the people in the trial, to increase its current annual spending of just under $16,000 a head to about $20,700, with the federal government topping up to about $35,000. The Victorians had worries about compliance setting a precedent for future funding (they were told it doesn't) and, when discussion turned to possible compromise, that there was not enough time to work through it before they were hassled to a joint news conference. But surely there had been lots of opportunity for negotiations before yesterday's formal meeting.
I feel like I have written variations of these words hundreds of times over the last few years; too many times I have typed them to online friends who have just lost their child in pregnancy or stillbirth. I strive to find the right words to comfort the newly bereaved, knowing words are never enough but they are all I have to work with. Dear New Loss Mother, I am so very sorry for your loss. Whether you knew you were pregnant for a few days, a few weeks, carried to term a baby that was born still, or lost your sweet child any time after birth, that was your child that was lost. I grieve with you the loss of your beloved child, the loss of your hopes for your child, and the loss of the future you envisioned for your child. Your emotions are likely all over the place and that is understandable. Over the coming days, you will experience a range of emotions. Forget what you learned in high school psychology; grief does not have linear defined stages. You may find yourself angry one minute, depressed the next, and you will discover that numb is an emotion too. Give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you feel. Don’t deny those feelings but let yourself experience them as they come up. I will ask you to fight one feeling, though, and that is the feeling of guilt. Almost every loss mother I have spoken with tries to blame herself, at least a little. If only I had called the doctor sooner, stayed on progesterone longer, taken this medication or stopped that medication. Those “if only’s” will crush your soul if you let them. You did the best you could. No one could have loved your child more than you. You are not to blame. It is not your fault. I know you are arguing with me already. I’ve argued with that sentiment too, desperate to find something or someone to blame, even if it’s myself. But you didn’t cause your baby’s death. You did the best you could with the knowledge you had. Please take those words to heart and remind yourself of them during the dark times. I wish I could give you a timetable of when the dark times will end and you will start to feel more like the old you. The reality is that you will never go back to being the “old” you but you will find a new you over time. The process won’t be linear. Even two years out from my last loss, there are times the grief takes a stranglehold on my heart. But the times do go fewer and farther between. Allow yourself the time to grieve and the freedom to grieve. Don’t try to rush the process. Most especially, don’t allow others to rush you. Surround yourself with those who will support you in your grief, whether it is family, friends or online support. Those who ask you if you are “over it yet” can be (not so) politely told to do unspeakable acts with farm implements to themselves. There are some things that you never “get over” and losing a child certainly tops that list. Distance yourself from those that just don’t understand and aren’t capable of empathy. Allow yourself to be “selfish” in your grief. Too often we women put pressure on ourselves to always be there for others and put ourselves last. This is the time to put yourself first. Don’t let others push you to do things you aren’t ready for, like attending baby showers. Protect your heart from unnecessary pain and free yourself from feeling guilty over skipping family events that just serve to highlight your loss. Be gentle with yourself. Do not expect yourself to carry on with life as normal. There may be days where breathing is all you can accomplish. And if you made it through that day, then you did well. Understand that grief can affect you in ways you may not expect, like a lack of focus. Set your expectations of yourself low. Grieve with your husband, when possible. He is grieving too, so encourage him to grieve with you.. It may be a generalization that men are “fixers” but it is often true. So your husband may be feeling helpless that he can’t fix this. So tell him how to help you grieve, whether that’s just to hold you while you cry or to help you plan a memorial. Above all, seek out those who will support you in expressing your grief, for as long as you need. Find a safe place where you can let those feelings out. Find support with your friends, a local support group or join an online support group. There is a sisterhood of women who have experienced a loss like yours who will sit with you in your grief. It seems simple but there is comfort in knowing you are not alone. We grieve with you.
A Triumvirate of Gods Liquid C9 Mang0 (4th): Mang0 is hot off a first place finish at Super Smash Con. It wasn’t looking too good for Mang0 after EVO, placing 3rd at Mang0(4th): Mang0 is hot off a first place finish at Super Smash Con. It wasn’t looking too good for Mang0 after EVO, placing 3rd at Clutch City Clash after losing to SFAT back-to-back. But he has since regained his composure, striking vengeance in winners’ semifinals against SFAT, beating him 3-1 at Super Smash Con. He went on to take the tournament without dropping a set. His combo game and aggressiveness were unbelievably on point against Hungrybox, and it showed. FOX MVG Gatekeepers PG G2 Tempo WFX Key Holders Secret Won't be attending EVO this year. Instead I'll be working 10+ hour days, mostly in the burning sun ;_; — otto bisno (@SilentWolf444) July 1, 2016 Selfless CLG M2K and SFAT at SSC, a superb Melee set CLG SPY Tempo Wildcards DNL Kingsmen This weekend, from August 26th to 28th, “Shine” will see its series debut in Boston, MA. Over 1600 players from all over the country will meet in Southern Boston to compete in.,and. Thecompetition is looking fierce, with juggernauts such as Joseph “” Marquez, Juan “” Debiedma and Jason “” Zimmerman in attendance among a cohort of other Top 100 players.Shine 2016 is a superb finisher to the month of August, and as this September is to be a stagnant one in terms of tournaments, all players are looking to end the month with a bang before entering the hiatus. Below are summaries detailing the more recent performances of all the competitors mentioned above. It is up to you to judge the information provided and decide who has that best chances of taking the tournament.Hungrybox(2nd): Coming off his huge EVO win, Hungrybox suffered a crushing defeat against Mang0 at Super Smash Con . Hbox lost to him 3-1 in winners’ final only to lose to him again in Grands with a decisive 3-0. It was utterly one sided, but a great set nonetheless.Mew2King(5th): Mew2King has been having a fantastic August. He won his first National in 3 years ( Clutch City Clash ), tore through losers bracket at Super Smash Con before losing to Hbox in losers’ final, and placed first at Endgame , a recent Illinois regional.Plup(7th): Plup has competed in one tournament since his 3rd placing at EVO, Polarity , where he placed first after beating Colbol in Grands. He did not lose a single set. At Evo Plup beat Hungrybox 2-0 in winners’ semis before losing to Armada and having to face him again in losers’ finals. That time Hungrybox took the set 3-1. Plup has one of the most refined Shieks in the game, having taken sets off 5 of the Top 6, with the lone exception of Armada.Westballz(8th): Westballz has been having an okay month. He placed 7th at Clutch City Clash, taking out Lucky 2-0, The Moon 3-1, and S2J 3-1 before Mang0 delivered a fatal 3-0 in losers’ final. Westballz was sent to losers early by Texas smasher by the name of MT in winners’ round 2. At Super Smash Con, Westballz was sent to losers by Eric “ESAM” Lew in Phase 2 of pools. He again made an impressive losers run, beating Sami “Druggedfox” Muhanna, Mustafa “Ice” Akcakaya and James “Mafia” Lauerman before being stopped by M2K in Top 8. Westballz has never beaten M2K.Axe(9th): We saw an impressive showing from Axe at Super Smash Con. After losing to Mafia in pools, he commandingly beat Stephen “Abate” Abate, MacD and Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett, securing himself a spot in Top 8. There he beat PewPewU and Shroomed until he faced his demon in Mew2King and lost 3-2. He placed 4th. Axe has always struggled against M2K, with last years set count being 12:4 in Mew2King’s favor. However this year they are even at 1:1. Can he win a set at Shine against M2K and have the set count advantage for the first time in his career?Shroomed(10th): Shroomed placed 5th at Smash Con after losing 3-1 to Hungrybox in winners’ semis and 3-1 Axe losers’ quarters. Despite what the game count may suggest, Shroomed played extremely well versus Hungrybox and it was in fact not all too one sided. However, Axe was a different story. Shroomed would have gaping leads against Axe but then he would allow him to comeback and win the game. It seemed as if Axe had Shroomed’s number. Shroomed’s journey to winners’ semis was impressive, but he had a relatively easy bracket getting there. This weekend we will see if he will be able to pull it off again.Silent Wolf(11th): We last saw Silent Wolf on July 23rd at Emerald City 4 , where he took first against Theodore “ Bladewise ” Seybold. Being unable to attend EVO due to “an intense school program”, it has been a while since Silent Wolf has picked up the sticks in tournament. We will see how this dry spell affects him this weekend. He has one of the most premier Fox’s in the game, having taken sets off Mew2King, William “Leffen” Hjelte, and Kevin “PPMD” Nanney in the past.Lucky(12th): Lucky’s last tournament foray was Clutch City Clash. After losing 2-1 to SFAT in winners’ quarters, he was sent to losers to face Westballz, who eliminated him with a 2-0. Lucky finished at 9th place. If Lucky wants to place well this weekend, he’ll have to develop a new strategy against the other players near his rank, as he has a negative set record against SFAT, PewPewU and Silent Wolf.SFAT(13th): After beating Mang0 back to back and attaining 2nd place at Clutch City, SFAT went on to place 5th at SSC, beating S2J and PewPewU in the process. He was stopped short of his run in winners’ semis by Mang0 although it was a very close set, and had to face his bane in Mew2King in losers’ quarters. Despite their set count being heavily in Mew2King’s favor, the set was extremely close and SFAT had a decent chance of winning had his spawn points not been so unlucky. Although he doesn’t look like too much of a threat on paper, SFAT is more than capable of taking down most of the competition at this tournament, and I daresay even a god.PewPewU(14th): PPU, a 7th place finisher at EVO 2016, had something of a breakout performance at Super Smash Con. He pulled a decisive 2-0 victory out of his hat against Mew2King’s Sheik in pools, something that would appear to give him huge momentum the rest of the tourney. And it did, somewhat. He managed to reach winners’ quarters where he unfortunately had to play SFAT, someone he has constantly struggled against this year. He lost 3-2 and moved into losers’ bracket where he beat Masaya “aMSa” Chikamoto to advance to Top 8. Waiting for him was Axe, whom has a history of utterly decimating PPU in tournament, beating in 3-0 in virtually every set they’ve played. Unfortunately for him, this time was no different as PPU fell out of the tournament after a 3-0. This by no means indicates he is out of the running, though. PewPewU has shown notable improvement in his gameplay so I would not be surprised if he reached Top 8 again.MacD(15th): MacD has been sporadic with his tournament appearances, before Super Smash Con we last saw him play at GOML earlier in May, where he finished in the Top 16. At SSC he again placed in the Top 15, losing to Axe in Losers Round 2. His best placing this year was at EGLX , where he placed 4th. Do you think we will see another EGLX-esque performance from MacD this weekend?S2J(16th): S2J has one of the most renowned Falcons in Melee and at 16th, is the highest Falcon player on the rankings. After a stellar 5th place performance at EVO 2016, beating Westballz in a set for the first time ever before losing to Hungrybox, he attended Clutch City Clash, where Westballz got his revenge. S2J finished 5th after a 3-0 by Westballz. At Super Smash Con his luck wasn’t much better as he lost to Kalindi “KJH” Henderson in losers round 1, placing below top 20. All in all though, S2J is having a good year and hopefully he is able to negate his last placing with a better one at Shine.Duck(22nd): We haven’t seen his Samus since his 9th place finish at EVO, but it is certainly still a threat. And with his recent joining of Denial , we can expect to see all sorts of things from him. We have seen how in the past how a sponsor can launch a player into better performance, and Duck is no exception.The Moon(28th): The Moon has been having a solid month, placing 7th at Clutch City Clash and an impressive placing at Heir 3 , placing only second behind Adam "Lindgren . He reached winners' finals without dropping a set prior but Armada took him out with a swift 3-0. Waiting in losers' final was Daniel "" Rodriguez who, after an intense 3-2 set, ultimately loss at the hands of The Moon. The Moon played extremely well and on point the entire tournament and he will be riding the momentum of this placing well into the weekend.Swedish Delight(31st): Placing 9th-12th at EVO 2016, Swedish Delight has since ceased to attend any tournaments, Shine 2016 being to be his first since July. He has one of the best Sheiks in the game, having placed fourth at Pound 2016 after forcing Mang0 to Game 5 in losers' semis and he double eliminate Mew2King at Smash N' Splash 2 . He is a top contender who I believe capable of defeating a sizable chunk of the Top 20.VwS Professor Pro(34th): Hailing from London is Professor Pro, who is currently ranked 1st on Englands Melee PR . He placed 3rd at Dreamhack Summer 2016 and 5th at Heir, losing to Ice and RobertoIglesias, respectively.So now that you know all about the biggest threats at this tournament, who do you think has the best shot of winning it? Or who would you like to see win the most? Tell us in the comments!
The cold-weather months may be light on road racing, but they do provide an excellent opportunity to take stock of the big performances of the past season with an eye for future potential. Looking at the big picture of races from January all the way up to October, we can get a pretty good idea of the riders that made the most emphatic arrivals this season, and also of those already-known up-and-comers who took clear steps forward into the spotlight with high-visibility results. This sort of prospective retrospective is always nice to have in the middle of the following season, as a barometer of which rising stars are on track in their progression, and which have fallen short of expectations. It’s hard to see anyone other than Fabio Aru as the year’s most emphatic arrival. He had been touted as Italian cycling’s next big thing for some time (in last season’s post-year retrospective, I named him as a likely break-out candidate), but he’d never even been on the podium in a WorldTour race before this year. Hard to believe, given that he’s now a three-time Grand Tour stage winner and two-time Grand Tour Top 5 finisher at age 24. A pure climber with an aggressive streak, Aru has the right combination of talent, racing acumen, and guile to pick up victories with bold long-range strikes on the sport’s most challenging slopes. The long, flat time trials are a major weakness in his game, but as chrono-light routes become more and more en vogue, Aru should continue to thrive in the Grand Tours. Interestingly, he doesn’t have much in the way of one-week stage race results to his name, but his skillset would seem well-suited to those too. In short, Aru should be primed for plenty more success as he continues to develop, and continue to develop he will: he doesn’t turn 25 until after the 2015 Giro. Teammate Vincenzo Nibali may have gotten the lion’s share of Astana publicity this season (and his Tour de France victory certainly represents a worthy career progression), but Aru really took a quantum leap forward in his two Grand Tour appearances. Where Aru made his arrival the in three-weekers, newly crowned World Champ Michal Kwiatkowski made his statements in the one-day and one-week races, racking up a slew of stellar performances in the early part of the season (winning in Strade Bianche and putting in big rides in Pais Vasco, the Ardennes, and the prologue of the Tour de Romandie, his first WorldTour victory) and then coming back with a vengeance in September, winning a stage in the Tour of Britain en route to 2nd overall and then, of course, taking the rainbow jersey in Ponferrada. It’s more of a giant step-up than an arrival, as Kwiatkowski did flash serious ability in 2013, but he turned Top 10s into podiums and victories this year. For all-around talent, Kwiatkowski rivals Alejandro Valverde in versatility. Pais Vasco was an early expression of that versatility for the young Pole: he was 2nd to Alberto Contador on the General Classification thanks to his climbing legs and his stellar ITT, but he also won the Points Jersey after being in the Top 3 in five of the six stages of the race. After narrowly missing out on the Top 10 in last year’s Tour de France, Kwiatkowski’s ride from Leeds to Paris this season was a bit of a disappointment, but it may be that Kwiatkowski just isn’t a Grand Tour GC contender at this point in his career, and with the way he has performed in the shorter races, that may be okay with him given his ability to contest all manner of one-day and one-week events. Giant-Shimano’s Tom Dumoulin was another 1990-born all-round talent to take several steps forward this season. Dumoulin, like Kwiatkowsi, showed promise with several big rides in 2013, but he took his game to a new level in 2014, racking up a few time trial victories in big races (including the Eneco Tour) and taking third in the ITT World Champs, and also delivering several strong road race performances. Wins eluded him, but he came very close in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec, passed by Simon Gerrans just a few meters before the line. He also climbed well enough to hold onto 5th overall in the Tour de Suisse after getting into good position on GC early in that race with strong chrono rides. His time trial has been his biggest strength throughout his young career, but he made significant strides on the hills and at the finish line this season, and looks primed for big things on all sorts of profiles in 2015. Alexander Kristoff has enjoyed a textbook progression over the last few years, steadily earning more and more success as he has carved out a niche on the road; in last season’s post-year impressions piece, I said that he had “established himself as a serious contender for hardman sprinter’s races going forward.” He delivered on that promise this season, winning a Monument Classic and two Tour de France stages and picking up plenty of other big results on the way. John Degenkolb, another hardman sprinter (who should challenge Kristoff on the tougher profiles for years to come), took a major leap forward this season as well. The German announced himself with five Vuelta stage wins in 2012 and had a strong 2013, but his victory in Gent-Wevelgem this spring, along with a runner-up ride at Paris-Roubaix, another collection of stage wins at the Vuelta, and several other major successes cemented his position as an elite rider on the tougher sprinters’ days. The emergence of Kristoff and Degenkolb will be a major challenge for Peter Sagan to overcome in the sprinter-friendly classics moving forward. Stepping away from WorldTour teams, the Europe Tour provided a down-to-the-wire battle for overall supremacy between two of the year’s biggest arrivals: Topsport Vlaanderen’s Tom van Asbroeck and Bardiani – CSF’s Sonny Colbrelli. Both riders put in impressive performances at major WorldTour events early in the season (van Asbroeck in Gent-Wevelgem and Colbrelli in Milano-Sanremo), and top result after top result in the bigger Europe Tour races on the year. WorldTour-level action was limited for both of them, but the talent (and top-end speed) is there: Van Asbroeck has a bright future in the classics, especially those where fast finishes are likely, while Colbrelli looks well-suited for bumpier sprinter-friendly days. Van Asbroeck should have plenty of opportunities to go up against prime competition next year, having signed a two-year contract with Belkin, who will appreciate his addition to their classics squad with the departure of Lars Boom. Colbrelli will stay with Bardiani – CSF, but he should continue to have chances to shine in MSR and the Giro, among other races. 23-year-old Tim Wellens has been with Lotto Belisol since 2012, but something clicked for him this season. The Giro offered the first hints of an impressive puncheur’s engine lurking under the hood; Wellens was active in long-range moves in Italy and came close to victory on multiple occasions, though a pair of 2nd places was all he had to show for his efforts. However, he didn’t have to wait too long to make good on that promise. Sitting 16th overall and 49 seconds down on GC, Tim Wellens struck out for glory from afar on Stage 6 of the Eneco Tour and held on for a decisive stage win and, ultimately, the time gap necessary to secure overall victory. He again put those punchy legs on display with a Top 10 in Plouay, and a 4th place finish in Il Lombardia among very impressive company. Lotto Belisol will be able to mount a potent two-pronged attack with Wellens and Jelle Vanendert in next year’s Ardennes and other hilly classics. Orica-GreenEdge was able to enjoy the highly visible arrivals of multiple squad members. The Australian outfit knew that they were getting a wealth of talent when they signed the Yates twins, and both showed ability this season, with Adam Yates in particular having a breakout year. The 22-year-old took a stage and the overall victory in the Tour of Turkey and kept the foot on the gas for his next several starts, landing 5th in the Tour of California and 6th in a hotly contested Criterium du Dauphine (ahead of Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali). He won Italy’s GP Industria & Artigianato and was in prime position in a leading group of five in the final kilometers of the Clasica de San Sebastian before a crash took him out of contention. With explosive climbing legs and a willingness to take chances, Yates had plenty of success in 2014 and looks ready for more in 2015. OGE saw yet another major breakout season with Johan Esteban Chaves, a pure climbing talent with an affinity for the tough mountains. Chaves had a promising 2012 but his 2013 was derailed by an early-season crash that left him with a number of serious injuries (including a fractured collarbone and cheekbone). He got back on track in style this year, climbing to stage wins in the Tour of California and 3rd overall in the Tour of Beijing. He likely still needs to get some mileage as a WorldTour pro before he can put in a challenge in the Grand Tours, but he’s ready to contend in the one-week races right now. Suddenly Orica-GreenEdge has multiple options in the mountains. French cycling enjoyed a renaissance year, and Romain Bardet‘s emergence as a top-level threat was a big part of that. After a strong 2013, his progression wasn’t necessarily unexpected, but a nation of cycling fans was pleased to see him deliver on his early promise. His impressive climbing legs took him to 6th overall in the Tour (he was a flat tire in the final ITT away from 5th), and he also displayed a surprising knack for one-day success, landing in the Top 10 in Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the GP Montreal. He has a surprising kick and should make waves in the shorter climber-friendly races as he continues to develop for the Grand Tours. Cannondale may be going through a merger/takeover, but the final year of the team as we know it saw a few impressive stage racing performances from rising stars. Neo-pro Davide Formolo, just 22, climbed to 4th in the Tour of Turkey and then a month later, against several top GC-style riders nearing their Tour de France peak form, he finished 7th overall in the Tour de Suisse. He strung together a nice collection of results in smaller one-day races as well. He should continue to develop with the new Garmin-Cannondale squad. Meanwhile, another Italian talent wearing Cannondale green took major strides forward in the Vuelta. Damiano Caruso had never been in the Top 10 in the General Classification of a WorldTour race until this season, but he picked up his first WT Top 10 in style at the Vuelta a España, where he consistently hung with the best climbers in the bunch most of the way up that race’s toughest mountains. BMC, running a bit low on GC guys as Cadel Evans retires and Samuel Sanchez nears the end of his career, will be glad to have the infusion of talent as he joins them for 2015. Speaking of BMC, Silvan Dillier put together a nice season, picking up results in a wide variety of races and contributing to his squad’s World Championship TTT ride as well. He thrives during hard days in the saddle and has a fast finish to boot. The same could be said (and more emphatically) of the skillset of Garmin-Sharp’s Ramunas Navardauskas. He picked up an impressive win with a late attack in the Tour de France, and he was 3rd in Quebec and 4th in Montreal. He’s always been an aggressive rider with a knack for getting clear on the harder profiles, but an improved finishing kick allowed him to contest a number of sprint finishes this year. He’s now won two Grand Tour stages, and at age 26, he’s just hitting his prime. Michael Valgren of Tinkoff-Saxo gets the final mention. The 22-year-old has been a high-profile prospect for some time after delivering several big results in U23 and national events, but this season he sailed to a convincing victory in the Post Danmark Rundt and put in several other strong rides in big races. He was a visible figure at the Worlds Road Race, taking several shots from afar. He has a wide array of talents and a lot of raw power in the tank, and at just 22, he should be on track to land plenty more big results in 2015. This is, of course, not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it makes for a useful catalog of the year’s biggest arrivals and most improved up-and-comers. For many of them, breakout success will lead to more focused scrutiny in 2015, which should offer plenty of interesting storylines for the upcoming season as these young rising talents try to cope with pressure to perform. To face that challenge, they will hope to get in as much recovery this offseason as possible, but January and the start of the WorldTour in Australia get closer every day. -Dane Cash Photos by Alberto Brevers and moz278.
WA wave energy project turned on to power naval base at Garden Island Updated The world's first wave-energy farm connected to the electricity grid has been switched on in Western Australia. The project by Perth-based Carnegie Wave Energy will provide renewable electricity for Australia's largest naval base, HMAS Stirling, on Garden Island. The same system is also used to run a small desalination plant, which will be used to supply up to one-third of the base's fresh water needs. Carnegie has placed buoys beneath the ocean surface off Garden Island and when waves move the buoys, it creates hydraulic pressure that is delivered to a plant onshore to be converted to power for the base. The project cost about $100 million and has two operating units, with a third to be added, for what will be a three-megawatt project. Carnegie CEO Michael Ottaviano said the units provided enough energy to power the equivalent of between 1,500 to 2,000 households. "It's the only operating wave power station in the world," he said. "We're really excited to be putting power into the grid to supply HMAS Stirling on Garden Island. "It's a culmination of about 10 years work, about $100 million in funding, most of it from shareholders, and also with the support of the Federal Government and the State Government of Western Australia, and the Department of Defence." Challenge is about 'scale and cost' Mr Ottaviano said it was not easy to secure financing. "It's never a linear path to get to a point like this when you're developing a new technology," he said. "Eight, nine years ago we were an idea in need of about $100 million and some serious innovation, and that's really what we've been able to deliver. "Through the ups and downs - we've had the global financial crisis in the midst, we've had renewable energy supported, not supported, and in amongst all that, the team has been able to deliver a world first." The CEO said wave energy provided a very reliable source of energy 24/7. "The challenge from here on is really about scale and cost. We need to make the technology bigger, we need to make our projects bigger because that's what allows you to get your costs down," Mr Ottaviano said. "If you built a one-megawatt coal-fired power station, it would be the most expensive... in the world. "Likewise with wave energy - we need to be building 20 megawatts, 50 megawatts, 100, 200 megawatt power stations and we would be cost-competitive. "We've specifically designed the technology to be scalable and one of the main aims of this project was to show you could plug multiple wave units together and have them operating in sync. "So, if you can do it with two or three, and it's actually harder to do it with two or three than it is with 100 because the variability is quite high - if you've got 100 units, it's much to easier to control and the footprint's very small." He said the WA site was chosen specifically. "Our wave resource in Western Australia is the best in the world, and theoretically the resource that hits our coastline every day could power the state 10 times over," Mr Ottaviano said. "Across the country, it's the best in the world as well, and the resource there could power the country twice over, so the opportunity is huge and Australia should be a world leader in this particular technology because we've got the best resource." WA's Energy Minister Mike Nahan said the plant could operate in a variety of conditions. "This technology... can operate in a variety of water depths, swell directions and seafloor conditions and can generate power for both onshore and offshore consumption," he said. The WA Government had contributed $9.96 million from its low-emissions energy development fund towards the development of the technology and the project. Topics: alternative-energy, tidal-energy, electricity-energy-and-utilities, garden-island-6168 First posted
Two years ago, journalist Anand Giridharadas took the stage at the TED Conference and told the attendant techno-solutionists that they were, in fact, part of the problem. Literally, that’s what he said. Here, I’ll quote him directly: "If you live near a Whole Foods, if no one in your family serves in the military, if you're paid by the year, not the hour, if most people you know finished college, if no one you know uses meth, if you married once and remain married, if you're not one of 65 million Americans with a criminal record – if any or all of these things describe you, then accept the possibility that actually, you may not know what's going on and you may be part of the problem." Seen from today, as Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president, Giridharadas’ message joins “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.” as one of the great unheeded warnings of the 21st century. That socioeconomic despair was profitably channeled to elect a president who—beyond his politics—represents a threat to most of the values the technocracy holds dear: transparency; multiculturalism; expertise; social progress. And, in the greatest of ironies, he used the tools and language of the technocracy to do it. At least since the 1960s, the computer—and, beyond that, the Internet–has been a symbol and tool of personal liberation. Stewart Brand called the computer revolution “the real legacy of the sixties”–—an outgrowth of the “counterculture’s scorn for centralized authority.” The ideology was codified by WIRED alum Steven Levy in his 1984 book Hackers, in which he summarized the Hacker Ethic: Access to computers should be unlimited and total. All information should be free. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better. These precepts inspired a worldview that saw institutions and middlemen as malign forces that mostly constrained human potential, and that placed unlimited faith in unshackled individuals to improve the world and their own lives. For much of the past three decades, that philosophy has borne out. It has become an unspoken truism of corporate and civic life. But Trump’s inauguration provides a damning counterargument, an example of how each of those ideas can be exploited to advance the very values they were created to oppose. Universal access to computers created a greater audience for Trump’s culture-jamming Twitter feed. An outpouring of free information sowed confusion and created cover for half- and untruths. Trump used anti-authoritarian rhetoric to sow mistrust of the very institutions that might have provided a firewall against his own authoritarian tendencies. Democratizing the tools of creative production created not just ennobling art but a million shitposts and Pepe memes. In the wake of the election, some despairing technologists have wondered how to improve the products and systems that led to this result. “There are things we were optimizing for that had unintended consequences,” says Justin Kan, a venture capitalist at Y Combinator and co-founder of Twitch. In designing to maximize engagement, social networks inadvertently created hives of bias-confirmation and tribalism. There are things we were optimizing for that had unintended consequences. Justin Kan, Y Combinator Or consider the effect innovation in computing has had on employment. “Thirty or 40 years ago, you could have a good, steady paying job without a college education,” says Ben Parr, cofounder of Octane AI and author of Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention. “There aren’t as many of those jobs any more, and a large part of that is because tech has changed the world over the last 40 years, and Silicon Valley played a big part in that.” No doubt. But it might be time to ask even bigger questions. Questions like: Is technology always an ennobling force? Questions like: Does allowing humanity untrammeled access to one another always result in a better world? Questions like: Are individuals capable of processing all the information that they once relied on institutions to process for them? Questions like: After people free themselves from their social and cultural shackles, then what? If it’s any consolation, Trump-era Americans will not be the first to ask themselves these questions. During the Second World War, psychologist Erich Fromm asked in Escape From Freedom why, despite an overarching trend toward greater personal freedom, large chunks of the western world had embraced authoritarianism. It was tempting, he argued, to consider this an aberration, the fault of a few madmen who “gained power over the vast apparatus of the state through nothing but cunning and trickery,” and who rendered their constituents “the will-less object of betrayal and terror.” But Fromm argued against this attempt to shift blame. There was something inherent in humanity that feared true freedom, that preferred to be dominated. In other words, Fromm thought this was a feature of human nature, not a bug. Thirty or 40 years ago, you could have a good, steady paying job without a college education. There aren’t as many of those jobs any more, and Silicon Valley played a big part in that. Ben Parr, author and venture capitalist To explain this tendency, Fromm distinguished between two kinds of freedom: negative freedom, casting off the shackles of social, political, and cultural restrictions; and positive freedom, finding a truer expression of self and identity. When the former occurs without the latter, he wrote, “the newly won freedom appears as a curse; [mankind] is free from the sweet bondage of paradise, but he is not free to govern himself, to realize his individuality.” This distinction might sound familiar to students of the Iraq War and the Arab Spring—when dictators, toppled in the name of “freedom,” gave way to chaos, power vacuums and warlordism. It also might help explain Trump’s ascendance. In casting off many of the middlemen, sclerotic corporations, and bureaucracies that throttled human accomplishment, people have achieved negative freedom. But without the tools or power to forge a more meaningful society—a positive freedom—some have plunged back into the comforts of authoritarianism and domination. This is the world the tech industry now faces, a world—at least in part—of its own creation. The machinery and language of personal liberation have been colonized and subverted by the very forces they were intended to topple. By all accounts, governmental doublespeak, authoritarian intrusion, and state-sponsored surveillance promise to define the coming era. Americans may be able to resist these trends—maybe by reclaiming the technological forces that have carried the country this far. But Americans also now know that’s not enough. The tech industry has achieved negative freedom. The question now is: What do people do now?
The lodge owner at Gumbo Limbo saw us coming; how could he miss us? Eight exhausted people, covered head to foot with mud, in two Land Rover Defenders that were now mud brown adorned with jungle vegetation. That we looked like a military convoy had crossed our minds. As we pulled up to the bar at the lodge two locals made a scampering b-line for their puck-up and raced down the driveway. Going for the police perhaps? That’s the last thing we needed, as it was well past happy hour. The morning had begun deep in the Chiquibul rain forest in Southern Belize on the fabled Camp Six road. It was day two of our traverse and we’d already turned back. By beginning of day two, I’m being very clear; Nick managed to navigate the lead truck out of our campsite and all of three meters down the track before the Pro-Comp tires lost traction and forward progress halted. Out came the winch line.
Colin Holmes never planned for his brain to go viral, but it's showed up in 800 scientific papers and it's being used in over 1,000 labs. WATCH: The man with the most famous brain in science WAUKESHA, Wis. — “We used the Colin 27.” “What’s a Colin 27?” “It’s a brain atlas standard.” advertisement “OK, but who is that?” “Who?” “Colin 27.” “I dunno. Probably a guy named Colin.” And that’s how I first met Colin Holmes — or, rather, his famous brain. Kareem Zaghloul, of the National Institutes of Health, had put it up on a projector screen during a visit to his lab last year. Colin 27, he said, was great for helping to map out epileptic hot spots in the brains of his patients. And it’s not just Zaghloul’s patients. Holmes has the most notable brain in science. Also known as “Average Colin,” it has appeared in over 800 scientific papers — and more citations come in almost every week. It’s been featured in studies of stroke, HIV, Alzheimer’s, and even the brain benefits of eating fish. Holmes also noted that over 1,000 labs around the world use his brain in some way. Newsletters Sign up for our Daily Recap newsletter Please enter a valid email address. Privacy Policy Leave this field empty if you're human: But while Colin 27 is known widely throughout neuroscience, Holmes’s personal identity has been a mystery to most scientists. “I’m not a promotional person,” he said in a recent interview. It has been more than 20 years since Holmes, now 52, laid in stiff repose, undergoing more MRI scans than most of us will have in our lifetimes. At the time, he was 28 and a graduate student at the Montreal Neurological Institute. The hours of voluntary work were all in the name of making a better image of a living brain — his own. Today, you could get a high-quality MRI in about 10 minutes. But back then, it was real work. If Holmes breathed too deeply: wrecked scan. If he sneezed: wrecked scan. If he moved his eyes: wrecked scan. He said he still has a sore spot on the back of his head — an occupational safety science hazard, perhaps. In the end, he was able to combine 27 10-minute scans to make one high-quality average — hence Colin 27. Holmes is now a director of product management for GE in Waukesha, and often bumps into his brain while traveling for work. “I’ve seen it all across the United States. I’ve seen it in Japan, Korea, all over Europe,” he said. Holmes has never received royalties for the use of his brain image, and had no idea it would be so widely applied. He said he’s just glad his brain has been useful to science. “It still surprises me that every other day I get an announcement of someone citing that work, even though it’s from 1998.” In June, Holmes recreated his original scan, just to see what has changed in his skull after two decades. He said he was hoping not to see any “massive gaps” or “shrinkage” in his cortex. “I’m still pretty young, we’re hoping,” he said. About an hour later, he was checking back in on Colin 27. His reaction? Relieved. “I think I’ve got some time left.”
4.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print This article was submitted to the CopBlock.org Public Submissions Page by Dylan Donnelly of Cop Block Fresno, CA. Date of Incident: December 13, 2014 Department Involved: Fresno Police Department Dept. Phone Number: (559) 621-7000 Original Article ~ CopBlock Fresno On December 13th 2014, Fresno Police Officers killed a family’s pet dog, after profiling a 19-year-old and his friend. Felicia Rodriguez told Cop Block Fresno that her teenage son and his friend were wrongfully detained at gunpoint while standing in front of their own home. Responding to shots fired somewhere in the neighborhood, F.P.D. detained the boys, opening a gate to do so, and letting the families pet dog, Eazy, out of the yard. When Eazy walked out of the open gate, he came in contact with a K9 officer and did what playful dogs do. The K9’s handler shot Eazy five times, killing him in front of his family that adored the companion for seven years. Rodriguez writes: “He didn’t charge or attack the dog nor any officers. He was never trained to be that way and he did nothing but be loveable and playful with anyone he came in contact with. While my son was detained, he had to watch helplessly while as they murdered his best friend in cold blood. “ While the teenagers were witnessing the murder of their four-legged friend from the back seats of police cars, Fresno police officers ransacked the home without consent or a search warrant. After no guns were found in the house, the boys were free to go and the police left the scene, leaving the family traumatized. “…and to add insult to injury, they ADMITTED to us they had the WRONG ADDRESS… and because of their negligence, our beloved Eazy had to pay with his life. This has turned our world upside down. My 19 year old is scarred for life, my 10 year old is deeply heartbroken over the loss of his companion too.” F.P.D. told Felicia Rodriguez the dog “charged officers”, but the family insists the dog was friendly and wanted to play. The family is demanding justice for their murdered loved one via Facebook on the page “Justice for Eazy”. From Justice for Eazy on Facebook: “A police officer is no better than those of us not in uniform when committing such a horrendous act.” “The FPD should be held accountable for their actions. The Fresno Police Department has a shameful history of police brutality, unnecessarily shooting people and dogs and not being held accountable.” The Fresno Police Department has declined to respond to my inquiry into this incident. I have since sent a CPRA request (California Records Request Act); Cop Block Fresno will continue to cover this story as it develops. CopBlock Fresno Website ~ CopBlock Fresno Facebook ~ Justice for Eazy Facebook ~ K-9 CopBlock Facebook Dylan Donnelly – Cop Block Fresno, CA copblockfresnoca@gmail.com 4.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print EPN Vintage Stratton Campaign Trooper Blue Straw Hat 7 7/8" Chin Strap Gold Band New $4999.0 Swiss & Other Foreign Police Hat Collection - 43 Hats And Rare $2590.0 Ww I Uruguayan Police Officer Full Dress Kepi Hat Cap With Red Pom Pom Very Rare $850.0 Luxembourg Chief Inspector Police 1920 Extremely Rare Hat Kepi Kremer Bertrang $800.0 Vintage Soviet Russian Russia Ussr Army Police Kgb Mvd Uniform Coat Visor Hat $750.0
The Girl Scouts recently added a locavore badge that girls can earn, and Grist joked that it was earned by "the cookies that your neighbor's kid sells." Yep, it's that time again. Girl Scout cookie time. As I learned when I posted recipes for Girl Scout Cookie clones, just the mention of Girl Scout cookies can elicit many responses — some positive, some negative and many stories of others' experiences in the scouting organization. I got an earful about Girl Scout cookies from one of my best friends recently (who shall remain nameless — I wouldn't want any retribution from a rogue Girl Scout fanatic to fall on her or her daughter) about selling the cookies. Her daughter is in second grade; let's call her MM. The minimum amount MM needs to sell to earn her basic cookie badge is 26 boxes. So MM and Mom went around the neighborhood taking orders (just like Mom did when she was a little girl) and sold 26 boxes. Mom was rather surprised to see that other girls, all in second grade, were able to sell hundreds of boxes — or rather their parents were able to sell hundreds of boxes at their workplace. "That's not the way we play," said Mom. "If MM is going to earn something, she is going to earn it." I'm with you, Mom. I didn't think to ask Mom if her daughter had any success selling the newest cookie in the Girl Scouts' repertoire, the Savannah Smiles. These small, lemon-flavored cookies are dusted with powdered sugar. They were added this year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts. Girl Scout cookies are obviously not the healthiest choice around, but at the beginning of each new year, it's hard to avoid them. I actually did successfully avoid them last year, and I hope to again this year. (But it also wouldn't surprise me if my seventh-grader, who now has his own disposable income, brought a box or two of Thin Mints into the house.) Have you had the opportunity to try the new Savannah Smiles? Thoughts? Do you look forward to indulging in a box of Girl Scout cookies each year or do you avoid the cookies (and the little girls who sell them outside the grocery store) as best you can? Girl Scouts celebrate 100th anniversary with a new cookie Savannah Smiles is the newest addition to the line of cookies.
I bought this for the original Nexus 7 in July 2012 and have used it on it ever since. The Nexus fits snugly inside the case and is held tightly by a hidden velcro strap, and the magnetic closure system (with no external magnets visible) continues to work perfectly. The magnetic wake/sleep function has rarely failed in 18 months and has never turned it off when the lid has been folded back. The stand function has two positions once the lid is inserted into the slot/catch on the back and is pretty stable - even on a less than perfectly flat surface it's usually possible to find a way for it to work e.g. on my chest when I'm lying flat in bed! I've looked after it well but the case does not look scruffy after all this time and there are no problems with any of the stitching. My only small concerns are these: 1. there are holes punched in the back for the speaker but I don't know how much effect this has, if any, on reducing volume levels (I probably should have done a test but I didn't!). 2. The power and volume control buttons are a bit fiddly to get at, the former not really an issue because of the effective sleep-wake function but it's sometimes a pain to get at the volume buttons and would I guess be more so if you had bigger fingers than I have. 3. By virtue of its design, the case covers the bezel almost entirely, in contrast to those cases that grip the Nexus only in the corners where the full face of the tablet remains visible. Either an important point or not, depending on your visual preference. Comparing it to the New Asus Google Nexus 7 2 II Tablet (Launched July 2013) Case-Executive Multi Function 360 Degrees Rotating PU Leather Stand Case Smart Cover which we now have for the 2013 Nexus, there's some swings and roundabouts - principally, the MOFRED has a much better closure system as far as I'm concerned - magnetic vs. an elastic strap, but the rotating case has precisely that advantage - the stand can be set either horizontally or vertically. In conclusion, I can't speak for the 2013 version but for the 2012 Nexus this MOFRED case has been a solid performer now for 18 months. Reluctantly I wouldn't give it 5 stars simply because I have to push the side of the case out a touch to get at the volume controls but I'd give it 5 for everything else, if you see what I mean. Well worth what I paid for it.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to run long distance. I also thought it would be a good idea to run longer than a marathon distance (42.2 km). I will be running the Surrey Hills Ultra 60km Challenge on the 24 September. It is a 60km (37.2 miles, that is from the London Eye to Staines and back!) race with 2050m of elevation, for reference the UK's tallest peak Ben Nevis is 1345m! If that wasn't bad enough, it is also a 6 AM start, so no lay in for me! It starts in Haslemere and finishes just past Dorking. I aim to complete this challenge in 8.5 hours. I am partaking in this activity on behalf of Animal Free Research UK (formerly Dr Hadwen Trust). There are many procedures performed on animals in the UK which just do not have the same results on humans. There is more on them below. Animals and humans are different.In the UK in 2015, 4.1 million research procedures took place on animals. We’re redefining research, investing in scientists so they can make the breakthroughs that push medicine forward without the use of animals.Since 1970, we have awarded grants to over 200 projects. These include research into cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, diabetes, kidney, heart and liver disease, to name only a few.With your amazing support, we can advance human health and end the use of animals in medical research!
Nike SB Dunk High “Year of the Horse” 0.00 / 5 0 VOTES This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. The opinions and information provided on this site are original editorial content of Sneaker News. For many Sneaker News readers, the opportunity to open a new red envelope means a fresh Netflix arrival. In China, it’s a tradition to give red envelopes including gifts for special occasions like the Lunar New Year. Another special occasion related to the holiday is coming up after the turn of the year with the Nike SB Dunk High ‘Year of the Horse’ resembling the aforementioned festive packaging. These ditch the obvious pony hair treatment in favor of a rich red suede with golden hits on the Swoosh outline and sockliner. Stick with Sneaker News for details on the YOTH Dunk High SB and let us know your first impression with a comment below. Source: Stashed Boxes//boyfanfootball
How well can you get to know someone from what they leave behind? That is the question at the heart of this project. Inspired by a cassette tape diary from the 1970s, the film will consider the different ways that our memory can be interpreted and come to influence people we’ve never met—even decades later. The origin of Unwound In the summer of 2011, filmmaker Michael Marabella stumbled upon an unlabeled cassette tape in a thrift store. The tape contained the collected thoughts and musings of a young woman who referred to herself only as “K.R.,” recorded over a four-month period in 1976. The entries are often simple—K.R. frets over an upcoming astronomy test, comments on the weather, drinks with friends—yet they offer a poignant look into the life of this young woman. Weeks after first listening to the tape, Michael managed to piece together the identity of the mysterious K.R.—and learned that she passed away shortly before he found the cassette. It was a profoundly affecting moment. “After countless times listening to the 90-minute tape, I felt a strong connection with K.R.,” he recalls. “I felt I really knew her, and now she was gone.” About the film Michael’s experiences with the tape, and sharing it with others, inspired him to create a film that would explore the way a voice from years in the past can echo in the present. Unwound will feature four different entries from the K.R. tape adapted for film, with each entry conceptualized and executed by a different cast and crew. Each director will work from the source material of the 1976 cassette tape, but their segments will be influenced by their own impressions of K.R., and the themes they find in the entries of the tape. Likewise, each segment will feature a different actress interpreting the role of K.R. Our goal is to show not only the ways one person can appear in the eyes of others, but also the ways that the memory of a person can come to influence others—even complete strangers, separated by many years. We want our audience to leave with their own impression of this young woman, this voice from nearly forty years ago—and also to question the impression their own lives make on others. We need your help. We are so excited about this project. K.R.’s story is one we feel deserves to be told, and we believe we can produce a provocative and truly unique film to tell it. But we can’t do it without your help. In order to produce Unwound, we need to raise funds to cover the costs associated with securing locations, transporting and feeding our casts and crews, and editing together the four different segments into one, cohesive film. That’s where you come in. Every pledge you make will go towards covering the costs of completing this film. Kickstarter will only release the money to us if we meet our $10,000 goal—if we don’t reach our goal, you get your money back. So we ask that you please donate, even if it’s just a little. Every contribution brings the film that much closer to reality. We also ask that you please share this page among your friends and family, even if you can’t donate yourself. “This tape recorder can only get the words. No videotape or film could capture three-dimensional life: the life, the reality, the real world.” —K.R. Unwound will offer four distinct perspectives on K.R. and her story. But we don’t want to stop there. We want to see how far we can go in telling this story, and we want to see it expand into as many different forms of media as possible. That’s why we want to invite you to share your own perspective on K.R.’s story. Donate $30 or more through Kickstarter and we will send you a segment of the tape, which you can use to create your own Unwound-inspired work of art. Submissions can be in any medium—painting, video, performance art, mixed media, or anything else you can think of—as long as it is based off the tape. Any work of art you submit will be featured on the Unwound Archive website, and at all future screenings, gallery shows, and events that we will be hosting in support of the project. What we want is to expand Unwound into a platform for showcasing the work of as many different artists as possible. That means giving you a way to get your work seen, heard, and experienced. We really believe that there is a lot of potential in this project and we would love for you to get involved. We will be posting more updates on how you can do just that over the next few weeks, so watch this space!
Smart Cities Are The Future Tim By \| Just earlier this year, my city, Austin, TX applied for the federal Smart Cities Grant. This was a new opportunity for one American city to focus on future technologies and their impact on everything from traffic to environmental conservation. Unfortunately we didn’t get the $40 million grant, Columbus OH won, but at least smart cities are on the radar of the US government. What is a smart city? How will smart technologies improve our urban life? Today’s graphic has those answers and more. First off, self-driving cars are no pie-in-the-sky achievement. Just recently the US government has published detailed requirements for autonomous vehicles. Uber has already started giving rides in self-driving cars in Philadelphia and could be worldwide by 2020. Not just transportation will have a facelift, water conservation, green energy, pedestrian safety and real-time infrastructure will change. This means governments will be able to change traffic lights for emergency vehicles, remotely brighten street lights where accidents, or crime occur, and smart displays informing citizens on a multiple aspects of city news. Are smart cities our path to a better future? because the smart cities of tomorrow are starting to emerge now. If smart cities are the future, we might even want to start at home, with these 9 gadgets for the apartment. Tim Co-Founder After a quick stint in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Tim moved to Austin, Texas at the ripe age of one. He then spent the next 17 years there experiencing all that Austin had to offer. Nightlife, music, ... 19.1k

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