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Mr Davey acted to prevent John Hayes, who was appointed in this month’s reshuffle, taking formal responsibility for renewable energy strategy. Mr Hayes has campaigned against wind farms in his Lincolnshire constituency, describing turbines as a “terrible intrusion” on the landscape. Conservative MPs opposed to wind farms saw his appointment to the Department of Energy and Climate Change as a positive sign, hoping that the new minister would try to curb the spread of turbines. Relations between the Coalition parties over energy policy, and wind power in particular, have become increasingly strained and Mr Davey has been fighting attempts by the Treasury to deepen cuts in subsidies for wind farms. In a move that surprised the energy industry, Mr Hayes replaced Charles Hendry, another Tory, in this month’s reshuffle. Mr Hendry had held ministerial responsibility for renewable energy policy, chairing departmental meetings and receiving reports on the issue. Following the reshuffle, Mr Davey told officials that he would take over responsibility for many of the issues that Mr Hendry had overseen. An official Whitehall list of ministerial responsibilities has recently been updated to add “renewable energy strategy” to Mr Davey’s portfolio. Mr Hayes, meanwhile, is responsible only for “renewable energy deployment”, implementing decisions made by his Lib Dem colleague. Speaking at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, Mr Davey said that Lib Dems in government have struggled to work with Right-wing Conservatives who reject Mr Cameron’s agenda, which formerly included a commitment to “green” issues. Mr Davey said: “The issue we have with our Conservative colleagues is they are not all united around the detoxification strategy – some of them want to remain toxic. There is a debate going on in the Tory party. It is not settled.” Mr Cameron has “got some party management to do”, he added.
That being said, children, teens, and adults who can understand what each exhibit is about will get a lot more out of it than toddlers. My little one is a 1 year and 1/2 and she had a blast, but it would have been awesome if she could actually understand what was going on! The museum has 8 galleries, each with a different focus, and an IMAX theater. The museum also offers several programs from Birthday Parties to a badge program for Girl Scouts. The Tech museum is open daily, except for Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, from 10:00am to 5:00pm. Ticket pricing is as follows, but through the end of 2017 Bank of America members get 1 free admission ticket (galleries only) during the first full weekend of the month. This is part of Museums on Us and all you need is your ATM card and ID for the free ticket. General Admission Adult Student/Senior 65+ Child (3-17) Museum galleries $24 $19 $19 Educational IMAX film $10 $8 $8 Combo (galleries plus educational IMAX) $29 $23 $23 Here are some photos from our latest visit! Have you ever been to this interactive museum? If not, would you like to go? Bay Area Beauty Blogger Save Save Save Save Save Advertisements
Welcome to TechSpot's 2013 Holiday Gift Guide! We are taking a more personal approach to this year's tech gift recommendations by asking each of our editors and staff members to provide their own picks on gifts they would like to receive or give. Erik, who manages TechSpot's downloads section is first in line and will be followed by the rest of our staff in the coming days and weeks. Without further ado... Hi there, this is Erik and I’m the one keeping everything oiled up and running over at the downloads and drivers sections. Julio asked a few of us from the staff to “voluntarily participate” in sending our holiday gift suggestions just last week, which is kind of short notice. However, due to the fact I have a one and half year old boy and a four month girl – yes, it’s a close gap – recently I have seen myself doing a lot more wishing than buying so I volunteered to do the first installment of what will be a series highlighting the staff’s personal picks. 1 For a long time I fought the smartphone wave, mainly because I spend a considerable amount of time in front of a computer and felt I needed to disconnect from the matrix once I left the office. However, a close friend gave me a Google Nexus 4 for my birthday and after a couple of months using it I realized I was wrong in fighting. It’s great to know what’s going on all the time and just because you receive an e-mail it doesn’t mean you have to answer it. Once you catch the wave you realize there’s an app for everything on Android. Although $350 is not pocket change, compared to the $650 you have to cough up for the iPhone 5S, it’s a great deal. The Nexus 5 has a better screen, processor, and battery than the Nexus 4, and although I haven’t tried Google’s latest smartphone yet, if its predecessor is anything to go by I’m sure it will turn out to be a top contender and a great Christmas gift. Product Finder score: 88 2 Being outdoorsy, a watch that can take the abuse has been on my list for quite some time, particularly the G-Shock Rescue series. I’m into fishing and diving so features like moon phase and tide indicators are a nice touch, as well as water resistance up to 200 meters which is pretty standard on G-Shock watches. The Rescue series has watches that range from $75 to $150 but if you or your loved one just needs a watch that you can wear without being worried about scratches or the elements, there are cheaper options in the G-Shock family. For the kids be sure to look into the Baby Gs which are relatively inexpensive. 3 Having a tablet around the house is just a must nowadays. There is definitely a gap between smartphones and laptops where tablets fit in quite well. The advantages over smartphones are primarily screen size and battery life, while compared with laptops they also come on top in the portability department and startup times. Although there are quite a few tablets to choose from, the prices for Amazon devices and services they provide are the tipping point for me. Hardware-wise the Kindle Fire HDX has enough punch to deliver HD videos and a mini-HDMI port just in case you want to take that content elsewhere. At $229, the 16GB model seems like a fair deal and once you own a tablet you’ll find more uses for it than expected. In my case that’s been strapping a Kindle to the back of the car’s head rest to play the Mickey Mouse Club on those rides to the beach. Product Finder score: 81 4 This one everyone needs. Right of the bat, with a name like that you know this knife is catered toward the IT professional. I know, I know. It’s never going to replace the tool set in your desk drawer but it’s got everything you need to get out of a tight one. Aside from the usual stuff, a mini LED flashlight and the bitwrench might come in handy in a lot of situations. Those with kids know how often things get thrown in places that haven’t seen the day of light in years and when working with screws not many of them are on the surface. The bit wrench is great for changing batteries in toys, reaching those hidden screws under your car dash, and all electronics in general. The only downside to this gift, is its price. $90 is quite a lot for a pocket knife but it’s a nice gift made to last. If you manage not lose the bits, it could be something you could hand down eventually. 5 GoPro has become a household name in the world of extreme sports and outdoor activities in general. I’m not one to fall for marketing campaigns -- I know this camera won’t make me a hero -- but the camera’s popularity has led to all sorts of interesting accessories and mounts that are hard to ignore. The software is decent and features for sharing content are quite neat. Last time we went diving, a friend brought along his GoPro and while we waited for lunch we were able to watch the videos just filmed on my smartphone thanks to the built-in Wi-Fi. The GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition is a 10MP camera able to capture 1080p videos at 60 frames per second and its compact size makes it quite versatile. The device sells for $299, but this package includes a couple of mounts and pivot arm. The Sony Action Cam offers practically the same features, including Wi-Fi connectivity and goes for $199, but you have to add the mounts and underwater case (an extra $65). 6 As an avid beach-goer, a metal detector sounds like a cool option to switch things up and do something different. The Garrett Ace 250 is a great way to get started in the world of metal detecting. It’s easy to operate, lightweight, and waterproof. Being a multi-tone machine you can single out different metals just by listening to the beeps. I found a couple of retailers online offering this device anywhere from $200 to $230. Maybe with a couple of lucky treasure hunting trips it will pay for itself and then some. 7 No matter who gets this one the entire household will benefit, and I’m sure many are including the PS4 in their wish lists. The home entertainment factor is already present for the most part in the PlayStation 3 (Blu-ray playback and video streaming), so the new games and graphics are the driving force for me. I really look forward to titles like Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Hosts and Need for Speed: Rivals. Although PES 2014 hasn’t been confirmed for the PS4, it’s pretty much a sure thing that the franchise will eventually make its way to the new console. The $399 price tag for the PS4 is easier to swallow if consider you will be putting it to good use for five years or more, or at least until the PS4 Slim comes out. Availability might be an issue come December but hands down if you get this for someone, Christmas 2013 won’t be forgotten in a long time. TechSpot's Holiday Gift Guide 2013 is sponsored by Best Buy.
How you are unlikely to die ON FEBRUARY 15th DA14, an asteroid 45 metres across, will sail past the Earth at 7.8km a second (4.9 miles a second). At just 27,700km away, it is well within the range of communication satellites. It will be the closest encounter on record with an asteroid this big. In 1908 an asteroid estimated to be around 100 metres in diameter destroyed 2,000 km² of forest in Siberia. Thankfully, such events are rare. NASA has identified 9,600 "near-Earth objects" since 1995, but just 861 with a diameter of 1km or more. The greatest threat to Earth currently is the 130-metre wide 2009 FD; but it has just a 1-in-526 chance of hitting the planet, and not until March 29th 2185. More prosaic things are far more dangerous. According to data from America's National Safety Council, 27 people died in 2008 in America from contact with dogs (a one in 11m chance of death). The chart below compares the odds of dying in any given year from choking, cycling, being struck by lightning or stung by a bee. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Correction: We originally identified asteroid AG5 as posing the greatest threat to the planet. But as keen asteroid-watchers know, that rock was given the all-clear by NASA in December 2012. The text was corrected on February 20th.
English NATIONAL MONUMENT MH17 On the 17th of July 2014, the world was shocked by the devastating report that flight MH17, an international passenger flight from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport on its way to Kuala Lumpur, crashed as it flew over Eastern Ukraine. 298 passengers died. This tragic news led to an unbearable loss for relatives all over the world, a disaster that is anchored in our collective memory. GREEN RIBBON Alarmed by the original creator of the living memorial forest for MH17, Arold Jansen, the Nationaal Bossenfonds (National Forest Fund) has developed a proposal for the planting of a memorial forest to commemorate all the victims of flight MH17. The design of the forest monument has been inspired by the form of the black memorial ribbon, which was used as a symbol in the aftermath of the crash, and is also used by Stichting Vliegramp MH17. The layout of the forest has got the form of a green ribbon, 298 trees are planted in this form, each tree representing a person on board of flight MH17. View the artist's impressions. The ribbon is surrounded by a ring of sunflowers, which blossom during the month of July, which radiates a golden glow. The sunflowers also refer to the sunflower fields in eastern Ukraine where some parts of the plane wreckage were found. The opening of the National Monument MH17 was on July 17th 2017. The ceremony can be watched on NPO - Monument MH17. From the18th of July the monument is publicly accessible. A FOREST MONUMENT NEAR SCHIPHOL - LOCATION The monument is situated in Park Vijfhuizen near Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The location is easily accessible for both national and international visitors. The monumental design is selected by Stichting Vliegramp MH17, the united foundation for the relatives of the MH17 victims. TREE SYMBOLISM A tree symbolizes ‘hope’ and ‘future’ in many cultures, a strong symbol. We not only want to honor the MH17 victims, but also want to create a place where everyone can keep their memories of the 298 passengers alive. Every victims life will live on metaphorically through these memorial trees. LOCATION TREES FOR VICTIMS On the 18th and 25th of March 2017 relatives planted the trees for their loved ones at the National Monument MH17. The first tree for the captain of Flight MH17 was planted by the Ambassador of Malaysia, Mr. H.E. Dato 'Ahmad Nazri Yusof, together with the Director of Malaysian Airlines, Mr Tan Sri Mohamad Nor Yusof, and Foreign Minister, Mr. Bert Koenders. The staff of Boomkwekerij Ebben planted the trees that were not planted by relatives. Photos of these days can be viewed on our realisation page. The overview of the trees and the names of the victims that this tree is associated with can be viewed on location trees. TRAVEL DIRECTIONS TO MONUMENT Address: Vijfhuizerweg (behind number 805), 2141 CP Vijfhuizen. By car: parkingspace is available across from Park Vijfhuizen (parking is free). Follow the signs Expo Haarlemmermeer. At the roundabout on the left is the parking lot. You can set your navigation to Stelling 1, 2141 SB Vijfhuizen. From the parking lot you walk back to Vijfhuizerweg and cross over to the monument. There are four parking spots available for the less-abled, these are situated near the monument at Vijfhuizerweg (next to number 805). With public transportation: from Schiphol Airport / Schiphol trainstation, take bus 300 towards Haarlem, which runs every five minutes. Ask the driver to stop at busstop Expo Haarlemmermeer. Walk 30 meters back and cross over to the monument, six minute walk. Travel time is approximately 25 minutes from Schiphol trainstation, 15 minutes from Haarlem station. If you want to receive information about traveling by public transport to the monument and / or do you have limited mobility, you can contact us via the email at friendsof@monumentmh17.nl We will be happy to help you, if desired, in finding accommodation options. A number of local residents offer a guest room, but there are also possibilities in a nearby hotel or accommodation via Air B & B. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to let us know. BOOK PRESENTATION Living On - A book about the National Monument MH17 In of May 2018 the book ‘Living On’ was published. In this beautifully illustrated book a picture is sketched of the realization of the National Monument MH17. This monument, in the form of the symbolic ribbon, with a memorial, was put into operation on the 17th of July 2017 and is located in Vijfhuizen, bordering Schiphol Airport. The personal stories of relatives and those involved and their commitment to the realization of the monument are included with many photographs. Not only of the monument, but also of the disaster and the aftermath that followed. A special book with a hopeful message: live on. From the victims, the relatives and all those who were hit on the 17th of July 2014 and afterwards. € 22.50 23 x 28 cm 144 pages paperback Dutch - English ISBN 978 94 6262 147 3 NATIONAL MONUMENT MH17 INFORMATION FOLDER DONATION Every donation, however small, is still more than welcome. It is a sign of genuine solidarity with the victims. Support that remains important for the relatives and the remembrance of these beautiful people. It ensures that there is a place where people experience that still something beautiful can grow out of grief. Do you want to donate? Deposit your contribution to: Bank Name: SNS Bank Account name: Stichting Vrienden van Nationaal Monument MH17 IBAN: NL90SNSB0705827380 BIC: SNSBNL2A If our address is needed: P.F.H. van Zutphen Flank 6 2141NX Vijfhuizen The Netherlands
As a senator, Barack Obama supported legislation requiring the United States to cut off military aid to countries recruiting and deploying child soldiers. This week as president, Mr. Obama acted to ensure that four countries found to use child soldiers – but which are also considered key national security interests – do not lose their US military assistance. Obama heeded the recommendation of a State Department review and waived application of a year-old law on child soldiers in the case of Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen. In a Oct. 25 presidential memorandum, Obama said he had “determined that it is in the national interest of the United States” to waive application of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act for the four countries. The waiver, issued quietly this week, was another example of what some diplomatic analysts consider to be Obama’s pragmatic approach to foreign policy. But a number of human-rights and international-development groups say the waiver sends a bad signal. “We are very concerned and disappointed with this decision,” says Jesse Eaves, policy adviser on children in crisis for World Vision, a nongovernmental aid organization with field programs in three of the four exempted countries. “It appears to send the message that you can get away with failing to stop using children in combat as long as your country is strategic enough to the US.” White House: It's a warning White House officials say the waivers serve as a wakeup call for the countries to clean up recruitment practices before the State Department delivers its next Trafficking in Persons Report. The annual report serves as the basis for determining which countries employ child soldiers. The 2010 report found two other countries guilty of the practice: Burma and Somalia. Neither Burma nor Somalia receives US military aid or training. Some rights activists say the US could have taken a middle road that would sanction the violating countries while preserving assistance focused on military professionalization and weeding out recruitment. “The basic problem here is that the administration is taking an all-or-nothing approach,” says Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. The US clearly has legitimate interests in these countries, she adds, “but they should have sought a middle ground that allows them to take the law seriously while still taking our cooperation with these countries seriously.” The State Department review notes the important counterterrorism work Yemen is doing, while citing the negative impact defunding would have on force modernization and human-rights training in Chad, Sudan, and the Congo. State: They're on the right path State Department officials would not confirm reports that the waiver decision prompted a heated debate between the department’s democracy and human rights bureau on one side and military affairs on the other. But they emphasized that the waivers do not mean the administration is abandoning the goal of ending the use of child soldiers. “In each of these countries we are working with the governments to stop the recruitment of child soldiers or [to] demobilize those who may already be in the ranks,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said this week. In the meantime, he added, the waivers allow the US to continue valuable training programs. “These countries have put the right policies in place,” he said, “but are struggling to correctly implement them.”
Izvor: N1 Stručno povjerenstvo Sveučilišta u Augsburgu utvrdilo je da doktorski rad bivšeg ministra znanosti i obrazovanja Pave Barišića nije autoplagijat, objavio je u srijedu Jutarnji list za koji je Barišić izjavio kako je sada jasno da je protiv njega bila provođena hajka usmjerena prema premijeru. Na adresu dr. Pave Barišića stigla je obavijest sa Sveučilišta Augsburg u kojoj ga predsjednica te ugledne institucije prof. dr. Sabine Doering-Manteuffel obavještava da je stručno povjerenstvo utvrdilo kako nema govora o (auto)plagiranju njegova doktorskog rada, donosi Jutarnji list koji je objavio preslik te odluke. Nema znanstveno neprimjerena postupanja ”Postupak ispitivanja proveden je zbog sumnje na znanstveno neprimjereno ponašanje na Sveučilištu u Augsburgu. Predsjednik povjerenstva izvijestio me da prema Pravilniku Sveučilišta nema nikakva znanstveno neprimjerena postupanja”, stoji u dopisu koji je došao na zagrebačku adresu hrvatskog filozofa koji je doktorirao u Njemačkoj. U veljači ove godine SDP, HSU i tada oporbeni HNS inicirali su glasovanje o povjerenju ministru Barišiću zbog navodnog plagiranja rada američkog filozofa Stephena Schlesingera. No, glasovanje zastupnika pokazalo je da ministar uživa povjerenje Hrvatskog sabora. Premijer Andrej Plenković je, braneći ministra Barišića u Saboru, kazao da je rasprava promašila "meritum" problema jer nije riječ o plagijatu, već o tehničkom propustu. Podsjetio je da su zagrebačko i splitsko sveučilište utvrdili da nije riječ o plagijatu. Govoreći o pokretanju zahtjeva Sveučilištu u u Augsburgu o (auto)plagiranju njegova doktorskog rada, Barišić ističe kako je jasno dokazano da u njegovu slučaju nema znanstveno neprimjerena postupanja. “Za mene nije bilo dileme od početka. Svi argumenti koje sam do sada iznosio potvrdili su se ovim očitovanjem predsjednice Sveučilišta u Augsburgu. Sasvim je jasno dokazano da u mom slučaju nema znanstveno neprimjerena postupanja”, kaže za Jutarnji dr. Barišić, koji je informirao i premijera da je dobio odgovor iz Njemačke. “Nemam još uvijek potpunih informacija tko je iz Hrvatske pokrenuo zahtjev da se očituje Sveučilište u Augsburgu. Ali iz onoga što sam zaključio iz tiska, to je uslijedilo na inicijativu Ivana Đikića i Jure Zovka. Najzanimljivije je u svemu što je dr. Jure Zovko, kada je objavljena knjige utemeljena na mojoj doktorskoj disertaciji, o njezinu sadržaju pohvalno govorio na predstavljanju koje je održano u KIC-u u Zagrebu 1992. O knjizi su objavljene pozitivne recenzije kako u Hrvatskoj tako i u uglednim njemačkim časopisima za filozofiju". Dr. Barišić nakon svega posebno je začuđen što je dr. Ivan Đikić bio među onima koji su tražili da se ispita je li bilo (auto)plagijata u njegovoj doktorskoj radnji. “U svakom slučaju, to je i mene iznenadilo. Bio sam nazočan kada je s njim razgovarao Plenković. Đikić je tada već najavio da će se uključiti u kampanju protiv mene", izjavio je Barišić. Na kušnju stavljen dignitet mojih mentora "Ono što je za mene bilo dvojbeno za postupanje tako uglednoga znanstvenika, kao što je gospodin Đikić, što se uopće upustio u arbitriranje u području koje nije njegovo”, kaže Barišić koji kaže za Đikića da je istaknuti znanstvenik na području biomedicinskih znanosti, a ovo je polje filozofije. Posebno ga je zasmetalo što je Đikić spominjao i svoje sveučilište u Njemačkoj u traženju da se preispita njegov doktorat. “To je neprimjereno. U ovom slučaju to nije bilo samo pitanje mene kao osobe, već je stavljen na kušnju dignitet mojih mentora, pa u neku ruku i Sveučilišta u Augsburgu. Moj mentor Alois Halder”, tvrdi Barišić, “jako je loše primio prijavu da se preispita Barišićev doktorat. Reagirao je vrlo oštro”. Nakon svega, Barišić kaže da je sada očito da je protiv njega bila provođena prava hajka. “Prijetnja je bila usmjerena na premijera Plenkovića i zastupnike. Na sreću, premijer i većina zastupnika nisu nasjeli na tu priču”, izjavio je Barišić za Jutarnji list. 00:00 Izvor: N1 N1 pratite putem aplikacija za Android \| iPhone/iPad \| Windows\| i društvenih mreža Twitter \| Facebook \| Instagram.
The Dubliner in St. Paul has expanded and is serving up a menu beyond popcorn and Heggies Pizza. The Irish pub (2162 University Ave. W.; 651-646-5551; thedublinerpub.com) has taken over the former Bonnie’s Cafe space next door and this week unveiled a new restaurant. While the pub and cafe spaces are now under one name called The Dubliner Pub and Cafe, they remain two separate operations divided by a wall as the owners look to secure a liquor license for the cafe. While liquor is not on the cafe menu, food from the cafe can be ordered at both places. Eventually, the owners hope to secure a license to serve liquor at the cafe space. The cafe serves breakfast all day as well as separate lunch and dinner menus. Look for things like omelettes and Irish cream French toast and pancakes on the breakfast menu, fish and chips and chicken fried steak for lunch and casual pub fare for dinner. Diner food comes special touches such as red onion marmalade on toast and deviled eggs that are deep-fried. The chef is William Niemer, who runs THAT Cooking School in Lilydale. The cafe space has been given an update, with refinished booths and stools as well as new flooring and windows. Red dining-room chairs from the former Nye’s Polonaise Room have been brought in and tabletops were designed by local artists. “We’re kind of hunters and gatherers. We like to collect things that have stories and history behind them,” said Geri Connelly-Scanlon, who co-owns Dubliner’s with her husband, Tom Scanlon. While Connelly-Scanlon is looking forward to the 33-year-old Dubliner’s next phase, she said it has not come without challenges. Bonnie’s Cafe had loyal customers, and the Dubliner owners have been hearing from some. “We’ve been getting a lot of disparaging remarks. People are saying we pushed them out,” Connelly-Scanlon said. “That’s not true. The lease became available and we said yes.”
As the Obama administration debates belatedly arming the Syrian opposition, military analysts are arriving at an uncomfortable conclusion: the U.S. can't hand the rebels guns or rockets and expect them to topple dictator Bashar Assad. In fact, it may never happen. Yes, the U.S. can provide lots of hardware, from shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to communications systems to armored vehicles. That military gear can prolong the conflict, preventing dictator Bashar Assad from crushing the rebels. It is unlikely to tip the balance of the war toward the rebels so they can decisively overthrow Assad. Obama is considering a range of weaponry to the rebels, as described in the Washington Post, including surface-to-air missiles. The idea would be to ship them the weapons, bolster their war effort, and watch them topple the blood-soaked dictator – without a deeper U.S. military commitment. Except that few strategists consider that realistic. Assad has a variety of advantages – an adaptive military estimated at over 50,000; complete air superiority; chemical weapons – that he will retain even if Obama opens a new arms pipeline. Overcoming those advantages means getting, at the least, U.S. and allied airpower involved – a step the Obama administration, and especially the military, want to avoid. Especially since it might involve shooting down Iranian planes, a fateful step. "The Syrian regime is not collapsing, nor is it on the verge of collapse," says Christopher Harmer, a former U.S. Navy officer and analyst with the Institute for the Study of War. "Everyone has been saying that for about 18 months. It has contracted, and may be forced to contract further; as long as they have control of their chemical weapons, I don’t think there is a collapse scenario." In Harmer's tally, there are a number of weapons systems the U.S. can provide the rebels, in great volume and low cost. The U.S. Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System, a combat net radio that U.S. and allied troops use for transmitting voice and data, would enhance rebel communications and control over their makeshift soldiers. Humvees and five-ton M939 trucks can help mitigate the rebels' transportation problems without being so large and ponderous that they're easy targets for Assad's air power. Anti-armor weapons like the AT-4 or the FGM-148 Javelin can assault his armored vehicles, and the iconic Stinger shoulder-mounted missile will make Assad's planes and helicopters think twice about flying over rebel-held territory. Together, that weaponry would pressure Assad significantly. But the most all those weapons could accomplish would be to force Assad "to cut out Aleppo," Harmer concedes. His forces would retrench to the Mediterranean coastal areas and down southward to Damascus, remaining in power. The stalemate would continue – along with pressure for the U.S. to dig deeper into the conflict. "There's frustration in Washington about being pushed from behind," says Aram Nerguizian, who analyzes the Syria conflict for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "You've got an [administration] effort to try and appear to do more, but beyond that there's a real fear – there's no reason, as far as the U.S. is concerned, to inherit yet another civil conflict in the Mideast." There's another option, one several senators have called for: using American and allied air power to take away Assad's control of the skies. However you construct a no-fly zone – launch Tomahawk missiles from submarines in the Med against Syria's recently upgraded air defenses; use the U.S.Patriot missile battery in Turkey as the basis for an anti-aircraft effort; scramble F-15s, F-16 or F-22s; whatever – it takes away "an indespensible element of Assad-regime survival," Harmer argues. The important thing is to stop the Iranian planes filled with weapons and stop the Beechcraft-sized Syrian planes from conducting aerial intra-theater resupply of Syrian Army forces. Harmer contends that a no-fly zone wouldn't have to become a foreign-provided Free Syrian Air Force: U.S. pilots won't have to provide close-air support for rebel forces or bomb ground targets. But from Harmer's perspective, once Assad's air power is blunted, "the only solution left is a negotiated conclusion, or, more likely, a fallback to the Alawite coastal areas." In other words, the Assad regime as we know it is over. It's an optimistic assessment: many, many analysts have considered airpower the key to breaking an enemy's will, and many analysts have been refuted. It's possible – but it depends on Assad suing for peace, not a suddenly invincible Syrian rebel force on the ground. And its risks are substantial: not least of which, it would mean American pilots shooting down Iranian resupply planes, an act of war. "I don't envy President Obama's decision," Harmer says. The open secret in Washington is that Syria is a war the U.S. military does not want to fight. (Even if other government agencies are active in the conflict.) Yesterday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Syria's air defenses could be overcome for a no-fly campaign, but not without endangering U.S. pilots and at greater campaign length than the 2011 Libya no-fly zone. Last month, his boss, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, warned Congress about getting bogged down in Syria. "We've been sucked into this open-ended arrangement before, and we're not going there again," an anonymous senior U.S. officer told the New York Times last year. The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, recently warned that that while he'd use the unproven F-22 in Syria, his Air Force is spread thin: "there aren't many airplanes. In this business, quantity does have a quality all its own." The military estimated needing 70,000 troops on the ground to secure Syrian chemical weapons alone, a force larger than the one in Afghanistan, and the Pentagon's preference is to only go after those weapons at the behest of a post-Assad government. Lurking in the background: should Obama Americanize the war in the air, and it fails to topple Assad, how will he avoid pressure to use ground troops? All of this ignores fundamental issues like who governs a post-Assad Syria or how to keep U.S. military aid for the Syrian rebels out of the hands of the faction of fighters aligned with al-Qaida. But it illustrates two things. First, there isn't a magic menu of weapons Obama can give that will lead to a rebel victory; missiles, radios and trucks can draw the conflict out longer but not end it on favorable terms. Second, even a move as seemingly low-cost as arming the rebels risks escalating into a commitment the U.S. can find it hard to end. Obama should have thought about that before he started talking about red lines.
Built by Jess Dixon of Andalusia, Alabama. Can fly forward, backward, straight up, or hover in the air. Circa 1940. (source: Kobel Feature Photos on Wikimedia Commons Ask a random person for an example of an AI system and chances are he or she will name self-driving vehicles. In this episode of the O’Reilly Data Show, I sat down with Shaoshan Liu, co-founder of PerceptIn and previously the senior architect (autonomous driving) at Baidu USA. We talked about the technology behind self-driving vehicles, their reliance on rule-based decision engines, and deploying large-scale deep learning systems. Here are some highlights from our conversation: Advanced sensors for mapping, localization, and obstacle avoidance The first part is sensing. How do you gather data about the environment? You have different types of sensors. The main type of sensor used in today's autonomous driving is LIDAR, a laser-based radar. A main problem with LIDAR is cost. However, there are startups that are working on low-cost LIDAR systems. Then, of course, there is GPS, and in addition there is a sensor called the inertial measurement unit (IMU). People today usually combine the data from GPS, IMU, and LIDAR to localize the vehicle to centimeter accuracy. There's one more sensor—a radar— used for obstacle avoidance. It's a reactive mechanism. If all of the above sensors fail to recognize that there's an object in front of you, then this sensor can detect objects five to 10 meters away from you. This radar is hooked up directly to the control system, such that when it detects there's an object in front of you it can drive the car away from the object autonomously. Sophisticated machine learning pipelines for perception To me, perception has three major components. The first component is how you localize your vehicle, and then based on localization information, you can make decisions about where to navigate. The second component is object recognition. Here, deep learning technology is commonly used to take camera data and recognize the objects around your vehicle. The third component is object tracking. You might be in a car on a highway, for example. You want to know what the car next to you is doing. … A deep learning-based object-tracking mechanism is what you would normally use to track the car or the objects next to you. Largely rule-based decision engines The decision pipeline normally includes a few major components. The first one is path planning. How do you want to go from point A to point B and plan your path? How do you issue instructions to the vehicle to go from point A to point B? There are many research papers and algorithms on route planning; the famous A* algorithm is often impractical. The second part is prediction. We discussed that as part of the perception pipeline—there's object tracking to track nearby objects. Then, we have a prediction algorithm based on the tracking results. The algorithm measures the likelihood of crashing into or avoiding nearby objects. Based on these predictions, we derive the object- or obstacle-avoidance decisions. How do we drive away from these obstacles or moving objects such that we don't get into an accident? Today, you’ll find largely rule-based engines, but there are many research projects on the of use reinforcement learning and deep learning networks to make autonomous decisions about prediction, obstacle avoidance, path bending, and so on. Related resources:
Research in social psychology has long suggested that physical attractiveness (PA) is a powerful motivator and potent predictor of positive outcomes across a variety of domains (for review, see Langlois et al., 2000). In the context of close relationships, PA consistently emerges as a highly desirable partner trait (e.g., Buss, 1989, 1992; Gallup & Frederick, 2010; Swami & Furnham, 2008) over which relationship partners strive to maintain positive illusions (Barelds, Dijstra, Koudenbrug, & Swami, 2011; Swami & Allum, 2012; Swami, Stieger, Haubner, Voracek, & Furnham, 2009). Nevertheless, a limited number of existing studies have shown that being physically attractive is not without its liabilities. In the present work, we use a multimethod approach—of longitudinal, archival, survey, and lab studies—to examine the consequences of PA in romantic relationships. In a nonrelationship context, there is limited evidence to suggest that PA does not always confer benefits. Namely, physically attractive individuals are more likely to discount praise from an opposite‐sex evaluator (Major, Carrington, & Carnevale, 1984). Moreover, attractive women tend to be perceived less positively in managerial contexts (Heilman & Stopeck, 1985), be less trusting of the opposite sex in social interactions (Reis et al., 1982), and exhibit lower self‐esteem during puberty (Zakin, Blyth, & Simmons, 1984). In a relationship context, studies on the impact of PA on outcomes have been more inconsistent in their findings. Here, we focus primarily on actor effects, or the effects of a person's PA on his/her own relationship satisfaction.1 In some cases, no relations have emerged between PA and marital satisfaction (Murstein & Christy, 1976), whereas in other cases, a positive relation between husband's PA and marital satisfaction has emerged (Peterson & Miller, 1980). In still other studies, the relation between attractiveness and relationship outcomes depended on sex or relationship type. Both husbands and wives were less satisfied in relationships where the husband was more physically attractive than the wife (McNulty, Neff, & Karney, 2008). However, a recent longitudinal study found that husbands' PA only weakly predicted husbands' initial relationship satisfaction (i.e., more physically attractive husbands were less satisfied with their relationships initially, but that this pattern did not emerge with wives); no changes in satisfaction emerged as a function of actor PA over time (Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, & Karney, 2014a). Furthermore, among men in casual and serious dating relationships, those who were more attractive exhibited increased self‐reported desire for sexual relations with extra‐relationship others (White, 1980). Thus, the work that has examined the role of attractiveness in romantic relationships has largely been equivocal on the precise nature of the link between attractiveness, relationship outcomes, and the conditions under which it emerges.2 Perspectives from fitness‐related evolutionary theories, models of socialization, and social expectancy theories all suggest that those greater in PA are likely to possess, either naturally (i.e., by virtue of good genes) or over time (i.e., by virtual of social forces), more favorable traits (for review, see Gallup & Frederick, 2010; Langlois et al., 2000). Although empirical evidence for the strength of the association between PA and positive traits varies, among adults, attractiveness is reliably linked to popularity, dating, and sexual experience (Perilloux, Cloud, & Buss, 2013; Prokop & Fedor, 2011, 2013; Rhodes, Simmons, & Peters, 2005). Although these traits may serve as resources in certain contexts, we anticipate that they may also stand as relational liabilities insofar as they promote greater likelihood of interest in extra‐relationship partners. It may be the qualities that are associated with being highly physically attractive (sociability, popularity, dating, and sexual experience) that promote initial mate appeal, but that also subsequently threaten the long‐term viability of the ensuing relationship. Consistent with this idea, existing studies have documented that more physically attractive individuals have more relationship partners (Jokela, 2009; Langlois et al., 2000; Rhodes et al., 2005) and attract more short‐term mating interest (Perilloux et al., 2013; van Straaten, Engles, Finkenauer, & Holland, 2008), suggesting higher rates of relationship dissolution. Other studies have shown that being more physically attractive correlates with having more potential relationship alternatives (Schmitt & Buss, 2001; White, 1980), which may also threaten the current relationship. Studies on cheating behavior provide further evidence that PA can come with relational costs. Hughes and Gallup (2003) found that women with low waist‐to‐hip ratios (WHR)—a paradigmatic feature of female PA (Brooks, Jordan, Shelly, & Dixson, 2015; Singh, 1993; Singh, Dixson, Jessop, Morgan, & Dixson, 2010; Streeter & McBurney, 2003; but see also Simpson, Brewer, & Hendrie, 2014)—reported having more extra‐relationship partners relative to women with high WHR. Similarly, men with lower levels of fluctuating asymmetry report having more extra‐relationship partners (Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994). Consistent with these findings, mens' facial and bodily attractiveness correlated with their number of short‐term partners (Rhodes et al., 2005). Moreover, more physically attractive individuals are more frequently the target of poaching attempts (Schmitt & Buss, 2001), and perhaps not surprisingly, more attractive (i.e., taller) men have higher divorce rates (Mueller & Mazur, 2001). Although PA is not the only factor involved in relationship dissolution and cheating (other factors, like sociosexual orientation and commitment are also key determinants of infidelity; see Mattingly et al., 2011), the aforementioned studies suggest that PA plays a major role in promoting extra‐relationship interest. In particular, PA may not only make individuals the target of poaching attempts, but also make such individuals more likely to respond favorably to (appealing) extra‐relationship alternatives and derogate them less. The aforementioned past research has suggested that PA is linked to greater numbers of extra‐relationship pairings and attempts. However, the existing literature has not gone so far as to demonstrate that highly attractive individuals are also more likely to be interested in attractive relationship alternatives and less likely to derogate them. We predict that this crucial link—that more physically attractive individuals are likely to positively perceive attractive alternatives and less likely to derogate them—is an important feature that can play a critical role in relationship processes. In sum, the present research aims to build upon and expand the existing literature in two ways. First, we aim to directly assess the impact of PA on relationship outcomes. Although the existing literature has compellingly demonstrated that PA is linked to extra‐relationship pairing, it remains unclear whether such behaviors necessarily lead to relationship dissolution. A second goal is to unpack the moderating factors involved in the link between PA and relationship processes—namely, to examine how relationship satisfaction and attractiveness interact to predict relationship maintenance behaviors like the derogation of attractive alternatives. At first glance, the prediction that PA leads to worse relationship outcomes may appear to be at odds with the vast body of studies showing the universal desirability of PA in mates. However, the present work does not focus on individuals' desires for physically attractiveness mates, but rather on the outcomes that follow after a mate is already secured. As with other features of the human psyche that have evolved over time, desires and outcomes can be dissociated (e.g., we evolved an originally adaptive desire for foods high in fat and sugar, but pursuing those desires can lead to poor outcomes). The same may be true of PA. Second, the desirability of an outcome may vary depending on the perspective or goals. Although relationship dissolution may be a negative outcome associated with PA from the perspective of the relationship, it may not necessarily be a negative outcome from an evolutionary perspective. Furthermore, the aim of the present research is not to compete with or replace other existing models of close relationships. One of the most robust models of relationship maintenance is the investment model (Rusbult, Agnew, & Arriaga, 2011; Rusbult, Martz, & Agnew, 1998). At its core, the investment model is a theory of dyadic processes in close relationships. The goal of the present studies is to complement its findings by focusing on an intrapersonal factor—in this case, PA—that can influence perceptions of alternatives and relationship satisfaction. Said differently, the present aim is to build upon the investment model by highlighting how an intrapersonal force like PA can shape interpersonal forces like extra‐relationship interest and contentment with the existing relationship. Across four studies, we examined the role of both actual and perceived PA in predicting relationship outcomes (Studies 1 and 2) and the use of relationship‐maintaining strategies—namely, derogation of attractive alternatives (Studies 3 and 4). Here, actual PA refers to ratings by other individuals whereas perceived PA refers to self‐ratings. We predicted that PA would exert a negative effect on relationship outcomes and that this relationship would relate to derogation of attractive alternatives. We expected individuals rated as more physically attractive to be married for shorter periods of time and more likely to be divorced (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, we explored the possibility that more physically attractive individuals are less likely to derogate attractive alternatives, an important relationship maintenance behavior (Study 3). Finally, we tested whether PA interacts with current relationship satisfaction to predict extra‐relationship interest to test the prediction that relationship alternatives are only threatening when the person (the actor) is attractive and dissatisfied (Study 4).
OBETZ, Ohio—When Columbus Crew SC play host to the New York Red Bulls in Sunday's first leg of the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs Eastern Conference Championship of the (5 pm ET; ESPN, ESPN Deportes), it will mark the fourth time the teams have met this season. And if the three previous matchups are any indication, the teams could be in for a tight affair. They split the season’s first two matches at MAPFRE Stadium, each earning a 2-1 win, and the Red Bulls took another 2-1 win at Red Bull Arena in October. But Crew SC head coach Gregg Berhalter says he doesn’t think those games have anything to do with Sunday’s match. “They were three completely different games,” he said. “In the first one, their press caught us by surprise. In the second one, our play caught them by surprise. In the third, they took advantage of some mistakes after what I felt was a very good start. To me, it’s going to be interesting how both teams react and what the mindset of both teams are.” Get tickets to Sunday's match at MAPFRE Stadium That mindset will be crucial. New York’s high press disrupted Crew SC’s attempts to build out of the back. Yet Berhalter suspects the Red Bulls, like many away teams this season, might come to Columbus with a more conservative approach. “For us, it’s figuring out, are they going to come out and press us?" Berhalter said. "Are they going to step up high, or are they going to sit back? I tend to think, at our place, they’re going to sit back a little bit. But you never know. They have a clear playing style, and I would expect them to carry through with it.” If the press does make an appearance, Columbus believes they can beat it. “When we’re at our best, we can play through pressure,” said midfielder Wil Trapp. “We just have to be cautious because they’re very good at it. But as long as we can break a couple lines early and get past that midfield pressure – which is really the heart of their team – and get at the back four, we can be dangerous.” Trapp will likely prove an important part of the matchup, and one that was missing during the regular season: Crew SC's midfield metronome missed all but two minutes of the teams’ first two matchups during his struggle with concussion symptoms, and was away with the US U-23 national team for the third. But Berhalter isn’t letting Trapp’s absence serve as an excuse. “They missed a couple guys – they missed [midfielder Dax] McCarty in the game we won, [center back Matt] Miazga in the game we lost there," Berhalter said. "They’ve been missing some guys also in the course of these games, and we have as well. So to me, it’s going to be a very interesting game.” Crew SC’s hope will be that Trapp can help break the press if it comes. Usually positioned in front of goalkeeper Steve Clark and between the team’s center backs, Trapp’s distribution is key for Columbus’ possession. “Being included in the lineup for this one is exciting for me,” Trapp said. “[I can] help a guy like Steve Clark out when we get pressed. We have a great relationship with our movements, as well as the center backs and outside backs.” Whether New York bunkers or attacks, Berhalter says he’ll have his team ready. “We’re prepared for anything,” he said. “We have to have a game plan in place to face both scenarios. If they sit back, it’s fine, we’ll be prepared. And if they press us, we’ll be prepared. So either way, it’s a game we’re looking forward to against a good opponent, the best opponent this year in the league.”
This article is over 5 years old Elders call on Greg Hunt to halt works at NSW mine for 48 hours ‘to save burial sites and sacred places’ from bulldozers Sacred Aboriginal cultural and burial sites will be destroyed by the development of a coalmine in northern NSW, elders say. Gomeroi elders have called on federal environment minister Greg Hunt to implement a 48-hour halt on works "in a desperate attempt to save burial sites and sacred places" from bulldozers at Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek mine project near Boggabri. They say they cannot understand why they have waited more than a fortnight for a response from the minister. "The minister knows the bulldozers have been destroying our culture and heritage all day, every day, including the weekend," the elders said in a statement. "Whitehaven [is] ripping the guts out of our sacred sites right now. We fear that by the time minister Hunt finally decides he has finished looking at our application carefully, it will be too late." Protests against the $767m mine and the damage it will do to a surrounding forest and the Aboriginal sites have been continuing for several weeks. Several activists have been arrested and charged after locking themselves to gates and bulldozers while trying to stop work at the proposed open-cut coalmine. After days of increased action, authorities last Tuesday closed the forest, effectively blocking protesters from entering for fear of fire. Anyone caught entering the forest, which is closed for the rest of the fire season, could be hit with a $2,200 fine. Comment is being sought from Hunt.
Dallas filmgoers have a lot of options. From first-run theaters to independent art houses and repertory cinemas, from dine-ins to drive-ins, we’ve got it all covered. Every month, it’s possible to see classic films and intriguing indie flicks as they were meant to be seen: On the big screen. Just to prove the preceding two sentences, I’ve rounded up some of the best screenings and movie events around town this March. Drag yourself away from the siren song of your home “media streaming devices” — that just sounds antiseptic and awful — and get to a theater this month. Great movies deserve better than a laptop monitor and a buffering Netflix connection. If you know of any screenings I should have included, email me at [email protected] The Texas Theatre The Magnolia Theatre The Magnolia shows classic movies every Tuesday night. In March, you’ve got the 1944 film noir masterpiece Laura on March 8, the original Planet of the Apes on March 15, and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall on March 22. On March 29, the theater is showing Xanadu , the 1980 musical starring Olivia Newton-John as a reincarnated Greek muse come to Earth to spur the construction of a disco-themed roller rink. (They might be stretching the definition of “classic” with Xanadu.) on March 8, the original on March 15, and Woody Allen’s on March 22. On March 29, the theater is showing , the 1980 musical starring Olivia Newton-John as a reincarnated Greek muse come to Earth to spur the construction of a disco-themed roller rink. (They might be stretching the definition of “classic” with Xanadu.) The rest of this month’s programming at the Magnolia. Alamo Drafthouse The Inwood Theatre Tommy Wiseau’s cult film The Room is due for a fresh wave of publicity with the pending release of The Disaster Artist, the James Franco joint about the creation of the most transcendentally bad movie in cinematic history. So, even if the mysterious Wiseau will spend the rest of his bizarre career milking the notoriety of The Room, his appearances at three screenings of the movie — March 11, 12, and 13 — do feel timely. Fair warning: You’ll get a Q&A with Wiseau, but you’ll also have to watch his TV show The Neighbors, which lacks whatever ineffable element made The Room such a fascinating trainwreck. It’s just bad, and not in an interesting way. Miscellaneous
The second biggest Comic Con of the year is currently taking place in New York, giving huge companies such as the LEGO Group the opportunity to push their upcoming products. DC Super Hero Girls is set to be one of next year’s new LEGO themes, and as it’s Comic Con the LEGO Group are pushing the theme alongside the LEGO Batman Movie. As well as showcasing the recently revealed sets, the LEGO stand has been decorated with a variety of builds. Two highlights are the life-sized models of Harley Quinn and Supergirl, which Business Insider had an early look at: Harley Quinn stands 5’3” tall, weighs 63 lbs and is made up of 12,789 bricks: Supergirl, meanwhile, is 5’5” tall, weighs 70 lbs. She’s made up of 14,210 Lego bricks.
Fox Nation got right in the holiday spirit mood over the weekend with a post called, "Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinic Offers Black Friday Discounts." Inside the article, Fox reported that "an abortion clinic in Southern Florida is offering a Black Friday discount -- including $10 a visit to the abortion clinic today." There was a picture of a coupon above the article which gave the impression that coupons were being given out for abortions. Shockingly (not!), it turns out Fox was misleading its readers. The coupon was merely $10 off of any visit (and $5 off emergency contraception). According to their websites, these Planned Parenthood offices, not "abortion clinics," offer HIV testing, STD testing, emergency contraception, Men's Health Care, Women's Health Care (including Pap Smears, Mammograms, and Cancer Screenings), and other services. In no way does the coupon encourage abortions; in fact it doesn't even mention them. Fox's characterization of Planned Parenthood as a revolving door of abortions is reminiscent of Senator Jon Kyl's famous statement that abortions are "well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does" - which turned out to be fantastically and utterly false, and which he attempted to walk back, poorly, by saying he hadn't meant it as a “factual statement.” Maybe Fox Nation doesn't intend all of its articles to be "factual statements" either. In addition to the "truthiness" problems, Fox Nation also put on display some splendid comments. Many readers took to puns, noting that "Black" Friday was an appropriate day for abortions (for discount reasons and for racist jokes about abortion), and injecting "humor" into the normally unfunny topics of abortion and racism. Happy Holidays, er Merry Christmas, Fox Nation. Keep up the holiday tidings!
Xbox Underground was an international hacker group responsible for gaining unauthorized access to the computer network of Microsoft and its development partners, including Activision, Epic Games, and Valve, in order to obtain sensitive information relating to Xbox One and Xbox Live. Microsoft [ edit ] Microsoft's computer network was compromised repeatedly by the Xbox Underground between 2011 and 2013. According to a 65-page indictment, the hackers spent "hundreds of hours" searching through Microsoft's network copying log-in credentials, source code, technical specifications and other data. This culminated in the perpetrators carrying out a physical theft, by using stolen credentials to enter "a secure building" at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters and exiting with Xbox development kits. Group members say they were driven by a strong curiosity about Microsoft's then-unreleased Xbox One console and associated software.[1][2] Beginning in or about January 2011, Microsoft was the victim of incidents of unauthorized access to its computer networks, including GDNP's protected computer network, which resulted in the theft of log-in credentials, trade secrets and intellectual property relating to its Xbox gaming system. p. 4 In or about September 2013, Alcala and Pokora brokered a physical theft, committed by A.S. and E.A., of multiple Xbox Development Kits (XDKs) from a secure building on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington campus. Using stolen access credentials to a Microsoft building, A.S. and E.A. entered the building and stole three non-public versions of the Xbox One console... p. 31 Apache helicopter simulator software [ edit ] The group is also accused of breaching the computer network of Zombie Studios, through which they obtained Apache helicopter simulator software developed for the United States military.[3] David Pokora was quoted as saying: "Have you been listening to the [expletive] that I've done this past month? I have [expletive] to the U.S. military. I have [expletive] to the Australian Department of Defense ... I have every single big company – Intel, AMD, Nvidia – any game company you could name, Google, Microsoft, Disney, Warner Brothers, everything."[4] Members [ edit ] Four members of the group have pleaded guilty to charges.[5] David Pokora, the first foreign hacker ever to be sentenced on United States soil, received an 18-month prison term on April 23, 2014 and was released in July 2015.[6][7] Nathan Leroux and Sanadodeh Nesheiwat were sentenced on June 11 and received 24 months and 18 months respectively; and Austin Alcala was due for sentencing in July,[8] though he went on to cooperate with the FBI in resolving another criminal case involving the illegal trade of FIFA coins.[9][10] Dylan Wheeler (referred to in the indictment as D.W), currently out of reach of the United States, lived in Australia at the time and was charged with a varying degree of charges. He was not convicted, having fled the country, and is currently living in Eastern Europe over human rights and political issues with his trial.[11][12] His mother, Anna Wheeler, was later jailed for more than two years for helping him flee Australia to avoid criminal charges.[13][14] Wheeler alleges that a sixth member, Justin May (referred to as "Person A"), worked with the FBI "to bring down the group".[15] May had previously been placed on pre-trial probation for an earlier offense involving data theft, the agreement of which required him to stay off Xbox Live.[16] He came under renewed interest from the FBI in 2017 after they seized a new BMW coupe and $38,595 in cash that was hidden throughout his home.[10]
American Horror Story S04E01: "Monsters Among Us" When the interdimensional future-aliens arrive on Earth and dig through all the petrified Wendy's wrappers for artifacts—any artifacts—that might reveal what humans were all about, I truly hope they find a complete-series DVD set of American Horror Story. Not because American Horror Story is the most accurate representation of life on Earth, but because it is the greatest achievement in human history. You know, in his day, Michelangelo probably dealt with backlash from haters also. "What's with babydick on David?" So it goes with this masterpiece, but with dickfingers. Freak Show is the fourth season of this thing, and in keeping with the show's tradition, the opening episode was essentially a mixtape of horror references. This year it was Zodiac, Freaks, Moulin Rouge, DePalma, Fellini, Geek Love, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Big Top Pee-wee. EXCELLENT REFERENCES. But unlike the first season's incoherent opener, Freak Show's was elegant, beautifully structured, and frequently astonishing. Also it was insane, obviously. And brilliant. And sad. But mostly insane. With each new project Ryan Murphy unveils, there's been a constant back-and-forth, from both critics and fans, about his talents. But what will it take for people to just accept that he's one of the most important and skilled writer/directors alive? He's easily as talented at distilling homage into original entertainment as Quentin Tarantino, but Murphy's is a language of unapologetically gay sensibility which I'm sure has NOTHING to do with the backlash he seems to provoke. WHOOPS, did I just stumble into a think piece? Because think pieces are boring, and I want to talk about American Horror Story: Freak Show, which is NOT boring and is now basically my favorite thing. I mean, the "Life on Mars" part alone. This show is truly a gift. I'm sure the aliens will enjoy it, but I'm just glad I got to be alive when it was actually on the air and reinventing television every week. This feels like history. Now let's talk about "Monsters Among Us"! We started with a voiceover from a woman who looks like Sarah Paulson walking glumly into some unknown place while being framed by the camera very unusually. WHY the unusual framing, though? Because this episode assumed we didn't see any of American Horror Story's Season 4 promos, I guess. But psych, that was just a flash-forward. Here's the real scoop: A 1950s milk man was entering a house against his better judgment! Then the first laugh of the episode came when, upon finding a mutilated body, the milk man decided to investigate a strange noise upstairs. That's what makes this show so special. Where you or I would be like, "NOPE," this show is like, "OH YEAH." Needless to say, the milk man did not enjoy what he found in a closet. But again the episode pretended like we didn't see the promos, so there was quite a bit more buildup about what was going on: Could it be a TWO-HEADED SARAH PAULSON? I can't spoil that for you just yet, sorry. Meanwhile, guess who? It was Jessica Lange! She's playing a character named Elsa Mars, a German national who came to America to seek fame in Hollywood but who now walks around hospitals and prisons in the finest of furs, bribing candy stripers into letting her meet with freaks. And it didn't take long for her to work her magic on Meryl Streep's daughter! Next thing we knew Elsa was in disguise and on a mission: OMG A TWO-HEADED SARAH PAULSON. I had no idea! Okay fine I won't be a jerk about it, this was actually a very good reveal if only for the amazing the special effects. They look seamless and expensive to me. Good one, American Horror Story. Speaking of good ones, THOSE OPENING TITLES. All sinister stop-motion like a mid-90s Tool video. And what ON EARTH was THIS about: That naked clown ghoul lady has a Doc Marten boot for a penis! Anyway, back to the Siamese twins (question: this is a racist term right? I feel like we should probably sort it out before I use it in every photo recap for the rest of the season): This whole element is next-level. For one thing, Bette and Dot each had very distinctive personalities right away—Bette is nice but a bit of a mouth-breather, and Dot is a straight-up B. Also, the way they're filmed is truly genius. Their dialogue is both spoken out loud and also telepathically to one another. Plus occasionally we saw their P.O.V. in split-screen to indicate where each one was looking. And Sarah Paulson should win two Emmys for these performance, since they were immediately masterful and compelling. I'm definitely all-in with these two. Elsa didn't waste time asking the important questions. Oh, American Horror Story. Doesn't matter the era or circumstances, we will always, always learn about the characters' genitals immediately upon meeting them. Which I treasure. Next: Page 2, featuring a murder clown and Jimmy Darling's dickfingers
It happened a couple weeks ago, but it’s worth a mention: The Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious group on microlending website Kiva have now loaned out over $3,000,000. It’s a fantastic accomplishment. (To be fair, it doesn’t mean they’ve given out a total of $3,000,000+. It means they’ve loaned the money, received some (or most) of it back, and then reloaned it.) It was just over a year ago when the Kiva Atheists were the first group to reach the $1,000,000 mark The more than 13,600 Kiva Atheists have been atop the Kiva community rankings in just about every category for years now — Kiva Christians are ranked second. I’m so proud of that whole team. If you’re not a part of it, remember it’s never too late to sign up. (Thanks to Brian for the link!)
Tuesday night in Los Angeles—and, barring a World Series sweep, again in Game 5 in Houston—the Dodgers will face off against Dallas Keuchel, one of two former Cy Young Award winners in the Astros’ rotation. It doesn’t bode well for the Dodgers that they’ll likely face Keuchel twice in the series, because Keuchel is good (#analysis). It may, however, bode better for the Dodgers than the same assignment would for any other offense. On paper, at least, the Dodgers could be Keuchel’s kryptonite. This isn’t a handedness thing, although platoon performance will be relevant. The main concern surrounding the 2016 Dodgers was their perceived weakness against left-handed pitching; last October, I noted that the Dodgers had posted the worst-ever line against lefties by a playoff team, although I also argued that their stats against southpaws might not reflect their true talent. That vulnerability seemed to persist into the first few weeks of this season, but the team’s platoon polarity soon flipped thanks to the emergence of Chris Taylor and Austin Barnes, the reversals of last year’s fluky reverse splits for righties Justin Turner and Kike Hernández, the phase-out of Adrián González, and the strong left-on-left seasons from Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger. The Dodgers finished the season with MLB’s third-best batting stats against lefties, outstripping their also-solid record against righties. In that sense, then, the Dodgers are well-equipped to take on the left-handed Keuchel. But lumping Keuchel in with all lefties ignores the uniqueness of his pitching approach. Keuchel is one of a kind—and therein lies what may be an even greater susceptibility to the Dodgers. On a league-wide level, pitchers have been fleeing from the strike zone for seven consecutive seasons. In 2010, 50 percent of pitches were located inside the strike zone; in 2017, only 46.4 percent were, as pitchers leaned more heavily on breaking balls and sought to stay away from most hitters’ power centers in a season of record home run rates. Even in an era of strike-zone avoidance, though, Keuchel is just about breaking the curve. From 2014-16, Keuchel threw 42.3 percent of his pitches in the strike zone, but this year, he lowered his aim and upped the ante, delivering only 34.5 percent of his pitches in the zone—the lowest rate in the pitch-tracking era aside from the less illustrious Wade Miley’s 34.3, also from this season. No pitcher throws the ball lower, on average, than Keuchel, who lives on the black and beyond (or below). Skirting the strike zone serves Keuchel well for two reasons. First, his Glavine-like command helps him increase the odds of receiving strike calls (after accounting for location) more than any other pitcher by peppering the periphery of the zone and expanding its edges bit by bit. Second, the probable balls he throws bear enough resemblance to strikes that hitters often expand the zone themselves: Keuchel’s regular-season chase rate ranked 23rd of 134 pitchers with at least 100 innings thrown this year. In theory, though, the Dodgers should be adept at depriving him of that second route to out-of-zone strikes. This year, L.A.’s lineup chased less often than any other team’s. If the Dodgers stay true to form and lay off of Keuchel’s low and outside offerings, they’ll force him up and into the strike zone. That’s the best way to beat him, because Keuchel, whose go-to sinker sits around 90 mph, can’t rely on blowing hittable pitches by batters. The difference between hitters’ results against Keuchel deliveries inside and out of the strike zone this season was nearly twice as large as the corresponding difference against the typical pitcher. wOBA Allowed Inside vs. Outside Strike Zone Group In Zone Out of Zone Difference Group In Zone Out of Zone Difference All Pitchers .338 .299 .039 Keuchel .304 .241 .063 In Keuchel’s second ALCS start, the Yankees gave us a glimpse of what the Dodgers should try to do against the lefty. In his first start in the series, Keuchel threw only 39 percent of his sinkers and 29 percent of his sliders inside the zone, and the Yankees swung away fruitlessly across seven scoreless innings. In Game 5, though, a combination of shakier command and Yankees selectivity led to many more in-zone pitches, including 45 percent of Keuchel’s sinkers and 65 percent of his sliders. In that start, which yielded only a handful of out-of-zone swings, Keuchel lasted only 4 2/3 innings and allowed four runs. History suggests that the likelihood of another subpar start from Keuchel will be elevated against L.A. There’s evidence that the Dodgers do, in fact, hit especially well against pitchers who habitually stay away from the strike zone, and even stronger evidence that Keuchel suffers disproportionately against hitters who don’t chase. The table below shows how the Dodgers did during the 2017 regular season against pitchers with bottom 25 percent or top 25 percent zone rates (or, in this case, a close Baseball Prospectus equivalent dubbed “Called Strike Probability,” which I’m going to refer to for now as “zone rate” for simplicity’s sake), compared to the performance of all non-Dodgers MLB batters against the same classes of pitchers. The header in the right-most column, TAv, stands for True Average, a park- and league-adjusted Baseball Prospectus stat that scales all aspects of performance at the plate into a batting average-esque rate. Low-Zone-Rate Pitchers Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Dodgers 1698 .248 .328 .421 .278 All MLB batters 41523 .253 .315 .416 .259 High-Zone-Rate Pitchers Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Dodgers 1797 .245 .308 .433 .271 All MLB batters 48492 .257 .307 .428 .259 As one would expect, the Dodgers were better than the league as a whole against both groups of pitchers. But while their edge on the league against high-zone-rate pitchers was only 12 points of True Average, their edge against low-zone-rate pitchers rose to 19 points. As we surmised, the Dodgers beat up on pitchers in Keuchel’s class by depriving them of their ability to exploit undisciplined hitters’ temptation. We see something more eye-popping than that when we compare Keuchel’s 2017 performance against hitters who do or don’t chase to that of all non-Keuchel pitchers. Below-Average Chase Rate Hitters Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Dallas Keuchel 283 .269 .344 .443 .265 All MLB pitchers 96025 .259 .340 .439 .272 Above-Average Chase Rate Hitters Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Group PA AVG OBP SLG TAv Dallas Keuchel 269 .179 .231 .254 .168 All MLB pitchers 71786 .265 .323 .443 .266 Keuchel, because he’s good, does better than a league-average pitcher whether the hitter is prone to chasing or not, but there’s an enormous disparity in those splits. Against selective hitters, who are happy to take his low or outside pitches for balls, he’s only a little bit better than the league (seven points of True Average). But against free-swinging hitters, who’ll lunge at pitches out of the strike zone, he’s 98 points better than the league. This difference is so massive that it’s worth trying to put into perspective. As the table shows, aggressive hitters batted .179/.231/.254 against Keuchel this season, which translates to a .168 True Average. For reference, pitchers produced a .134 True Average, which is not a lot lower. Among actual hitters who made at least 100 trips to the plate this year, the closest to .168 was Padres catcher Luis Torrens, a Rule 5 pick who’d never played above A ball prior to 2017. In essence, selective hitters who faced Keuchel hit more or less like their regular selves. Aggressive guys, meanwhile, hit like A-ball catchers. Unfortunately for Keuchel, the Dodgers don’t have many aggressive guys. In short, the Dodgers do well against Keuchel types, and Keuchel does way, way worse against hitters like the ones up and down the Dodgers’ lineup. Worse still for Houston, the Dodgers’ command of the strike zone is only one way in which this matchup leans toward L.A. Prior research has shown that matchups of like against like tend to favor pitchers: Just as left-handed pitchers do better against left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters, fly ball pitchers do better against fly ball hitters than ground ball hitters, and ground ball pitchers do better against ground ball hitters than fly ball hitters. Keuchel is an extreme ground ball guy coming off a season in which he posted the lowest ground ball rate on record (non–Derek Lowe division). That’s the profile of a pitcher who eats up ground ball hitters. In keeping with our theme today, though, the Dodgers don’t have a lot of ground ball guys. As a unit, L.A. posted MLB’s fourth-highest fly ball rate during the regular season (and the second highest in the second half), as well as the league’s seventh-lowest ground ball rate (and the second lowest in the second half). In general, the Dodgers are a low-ball-hitting team. Although they ranked just 22nd in wOBA during the regular season against pitches in the upper third of the zone and above, they ranked fourth against pitches in the lower third and below—and, to get even more granular, second against low pitches from lefties, which they’ll be seeing a ton of when they face Keuchel. To sum up: Keuchel is a left-handed, strike zone–averse, ground ball–oriented starter who loves to stay down, going against a team that hits lefties hard, chews up pitchers who stay away from the zone, launches a lot of fly balls, and punishes low pitches. For all of those reasons, the stats say that the Dodgers should be Keuchel’s worst nightmare—more negative news for an Astros team whose path to victory in games 1 and 5 already runs through Clayton Kershaw, leaving little room for their own starter to struggle. Which takes us to the “past performance is no guarantee of future results” portion of this piece. Even if Keuchel is predisposed to do poorly against the Dodgers, that weakness might not manifest in any single game or series. Only three Dodgers hitters—Logan Forsythe, Chase Utley, and Taylor—have ever faced Keuchel, and only Forsythe has seen him more recently than 2014 or more than six times overall. Maybe the Dodgers, in their first confrontation with Keuchel, will depart from their typical game plan, no matter how selective the scouting report tells them to be. Maybe Keuchel’s command will be even more unerring than usual, or—anticipating that the Dodgers will be waiting him out—he’ll try to take them by surprise and pound the zone for free strikes. Maybe a bunch of hard-hit balls will find gloves. Or maybe—and here’s Houston’s best bet—a combination of Keuchel’s pitch placement and generous umpiring will turn the Dodgers’ discipline against them. In Game 1, Phil Cuzzi—who ranked sixth in umpire strikeout-to-walk ratio during the regular season—will be behind home plate, ready to ring up the Dodgers on borderline calls. And if the series gets to Game 5, the plate ump would be Bill Miller, one of the few umps with a more pitcher-friendly long-term track record than Cuzzi. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, and in this case, L.A.’s enemy might be the umpires, whose strike-calling won’t do the Dodgers any favors if Keuchel is anywhere close to the zone. In many respects, this series resists analysis. It’s a showdown between two teams with triple-digit win totals that spent most of the season as presumptive pennant favorites. Both teams are ultra-talented, and neither roster has a hidden blemish obscured by Spanx or a comb-over. There are only so many flaws for the stats to expose. And in Game 1’s tone-setting tussle between two southpaw Cy Young winners, no one will have it easy: Kershaw will be facing the best lineup in baseball, while Keuchel will be tackling the one almost perfectly constructed to torment him. Thanks to Kate Morrison and Rob McQuown of Baseball Prospectus for research assistance.
Game Informer published the “Smash Bros. Diaries” from director Masahiro Sakurai in its previous two issues. Most of what has been shared thus far is rehash from Sakurai’s Famitsu columns, but this month’s entry does have some very noteworthy quotes. One of the questions Sakurai addresses: “You’ve talked about how you select characters, but why does the roster continue to expand with each release?” Sakurai starts out by stating how when he works on Smash Bros. – or any other project for that matter – he puts in his full effort. “I throw my body and soul into every project with the mindset that this is the last one,” he says. This has led to a huge amount of characters and features “where it’s almost an impossible quantity to work with.” Characters are remade in each Smash Bros. release since there are different development studios working on the games. There is also a higher development cost per character “since it takes work to give characters a wide dynamic range while still sticking to their backstories”. All in all, Sakurai calls the entire process “relentless.” If you’re interested in checking out Sakurai’s full comments, head past the break. For every Smash project, as I’m working on it, I always think to myself, “This is it – the last Smash Bros.!” Of course, after the original game and Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Wii and Nintendo 3DS entries came out anyway, which makes it a bit difficult to deny the possibility of future games. The point I’m trying to make here is that I throw my body and soul into every project with the mindset that this is the last one. As a result, there have been a lot of new characters and features added. It’s to the point where it’s almost an impossible quantity to work with – this lineup of polished characters, each with such a litany of things to implement. The characters get remade every game since we keep switching development studios. And since it takes work to give characters a wide dynamic range while still sticking to their backstories, this leads to more development cost per character. I think, for most games, just having a few new characters would be all one could expect. In a word, it’s relentless. Right now, I have no way to picture whether things will go as well next time. Thanks to Jake for the tip. Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit Tumblr Google More Email Print LinkedIn Pinterest Pocket
By Wow. We are saying some epic rants in the sports world this week. First, Mike Singletary went off on a reporter who dared to ask him a question that everyone was interested in hearing the coach answer. Then, former St. Louis Cardinals player and current team analyst Jack Clark decided that the “Pu” in Pujols is far from the only poo in the St. Louis Cardinals locker room. Just listen: Here is a transcript, sent to me by our co-editor AJ Kaufman who tracked the scent of this putrid story all the way to STLToday.com. “I’m really tired of watching the effort, that’s for sure,” Clark said. “I’m not seeing a lack of (effort) I’m seeing a pathetic effort. These Cards fans deserve much better. That’s just awful. They won’t admit it, that they’re quitters. If you can’t put a better effort out there on the field, take ’em all out, back up the truck, ship ’em all out and get somebody in here that wants to play baseball.” “We’ve got one team here (San Diego) going for the title and we’ve got our team going for the toilet,” he said. “They’ve got poopy in their pants,” and he went on to make another off-color remark about what’s “in their britches.” If Clark would actually look at the picture in that STLToday article, he’d see that the problem is not a reluctance for the Cardinals to deposit their #2s in the correct place outside of their gamewear. Rather, it’s the fact that Tony LaRussa is distracted by getting an eye test in the dugout. That’s just poor timing by his optometrist. But I digress. Things have gone from bad to worse in St. Louis as a disappointing 2010 season winds to a close. I just can’t help but wonder what guys like Chris Crapenter and Colby Crapsmus think when they hear stuff like this from Jack Clark. Probably something along the lines of, “Yeah, we may have some doody in our unis, but at least we don’t look like a giant stuffed talking carrot.”
SINCE 2010 or so, the Tea Party, a Republican insurgency, has turned American politics upside down. It comes in many blends, but most of its members share three convictions: that the ruling elite has lost touch with the founding ideals of America, that the federal government is a bloated, self-serving Leviathan, and that illegal immigration is a threat to social order. The Tea Party movement is central to the conflict that has riven American politics and the difficulty of reforming budgets and immigration laws. Now something similar is happening in Europe (see article). Insurgent parties are on the rise. For mainstream parties and voters worried by their success, America’s experience of dealing with the Tea Party holds useful lessons. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. The squeezed, and angry, middle There are big differences between the Tea Party and the European insurgents. Whereas the Tea Party’s factions operate within one of America’s mainstream parties, and have roots in a venerable tradition of small-government conservatism, their counterparts in Europe are small, rebellious outfits, some from the far right. The Europeans are even more diverse than the Americans. Norway’s Progress Party is a world away from Hungary’s thuggish Jobbik. Nigel Farage and the saloon-bar bores of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) look askance at Marine Le Pen and her Front National (FN) across the Channel. But there are common threads linking the European insurgents and the Tea Party. They are angry people, harking back to simpler times. They worry about immigration. They spring from the squeezed middle—people who feel that the elite at the top and the scroungers at the bottom are prospering at the expense of ordinary working people. And they believe the centre of power—Washington or Brussels—is bulging with bureaucrats hatching schemes to run people’s lives. Mainstream politicians in Europe have tried to marginalise the insurgents, by portraying them as unhinged, racist or fascist. But it is not working, partly because many of the insurgents are making a determined effort to become respectable. UKIP, the FN and the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands could each win the most votes in European Parliament elections in May. In France, 55% of students say they would consider voting for the FN. The Progress Party has joined Norway’s government. Slovakia has a new far-right provincial governor. Count insurgents on the left, such as Syriza in Greece and the Five Star movement in Italy, and mainstream parties in Europe are weaker than at any time since the second world war. The insurgency is doing well partly because the mainstream has done so badly. Governments encouraged consumers to borrow, let the banks run wild and designed the euro as the pinnacle of the European project. In the past five years ordinary people have paid a price for these follies, in higher taxes, unemployment, benefit cuts and pay freezes. This newspaper is sympathetic to the Tea Parties’ insight that the modern state often seems designed to look after itself, rather than the citizens it is supposed to serve. It is true that the EU has no answer to the problem that minorities of voters in many countries feel it lacks legitimacy—a looming threat to the euro. But Europe’s insurgents go further than that. When Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV, calls the Koran “a fascist book” and Islam “a totalitarian religion”, he is endorsing intolerance. When Ms Le Pen demands protection for French firms from foreign competition, she is threatening to impoverish her compatriots. When UKIP promises British people prosperity outside the European Union, but within a free-trade zone of its own devising, it is peddling an illusion. Increasing inequality and growing immigration are the corollary of technological progress and economic freedoms that most people would not willingly give up. Such details do not detain Ms Le Pen who, with the swagger of a politician on the rise, predicts that she will be in the Elysée within a decade. That is highly unlikely, partly because national elections are less susceptible to protest votes than European elections are, and partly because as they get closer to power almost all Europe’s Tea Parties are likely to reveal themselves as incompetent and factional. Yet the insurgents do not need victory to set the agenda or to put up barriers to reforms. That is why Europeans need to see them off. Honesty in all things Attacking the insurgents as fascists worked when Hitler’s memory was fresh, but many of today’s voters rightly see it as mostly a scare tactic. Even as the mainstream demonises the insurgents, it also panders to them by adopting pale versions of their policies—against immigration, global finance and the EU. But the mainstream is inhibited by a sense of what is possible and an understanding of what is legal. So it ends up flattering the idea that something needs fixing, while seeming to lack the courage to do anything. The lesson from America is that if Europe’s politicians do not want the insurgents to set the agenda, they need to counter their arguments. As long as Republican leaders have indulged Tea Party demands to put purity above the work of governing (for instance, by shutting down the federal government) they have sunk lower in the public esteem. The hardline positions of Republican candidates satisfy the party faithful but drive away undecided voters, costing the party Senate seats in recent elections and arguably the presidency in 2012. Politicians need to explain hard choices and dispel misconceptions. Europe’s single market is the source of prosperity: enlarge it. Workers from eastern Europe pay more into government coffers than they take out: welcome them. Politicians prepared to speak out will find that most citizens can cope with the truth. Ultimately, though, the choice falls to voters themselves. The Tea Party thrived in America partly because a small minority of voters dominate primary races especially for gerrymandered seats. In elections to the European Parliament many voters simply do not bother to take part. That is a gift to the insurgents. If Europeans do not want them to triumph, they need to get out to the polls.
With all the WWDC excitement recently, it might have been easy to miss a wonderful new library release from the fine folks at Lickability. It's called PinpointKit and it can completely transform how we collect feedback from users testing our apps. Let's check it out! After integrating PinpointKit into our app via CocoaPods/Carthage, or just manually, we can trigger a new bug report like this: PinpointKit . defaultPinpointKit . show ( fromViewController : self ) We're provided a Configuration struct where we can customize the look and feel, and a PinpointKitDelegate to hook into the state of the feedback being sent. Now, whenever a user reports a bug they'll be able to: Send along system logs automatically (opt-in) Add arrows, boxes, and text to screenshots Redact sensitive info before reporting By default PinpointKit reports via Email, but this, (and just about everything else) is completely customizable. Learn more about PinpointKit at http://git.io/pinpointkit
Earlier this month, Google submitted a document describing the bitstream specification for its VP8 video compression algorithm for publication by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This isn't a step towards standardization, says Google, but a step towards creating a definitive reference for the technology. IETF publishes Request For Comment (RFC) memoranda, used to describe various technologies used on the Internet. RFCs include IPv4, the Internet Protocol, SMTP, used for e-mail, and many others besides. VP8 is the video codec used in Google's WebM specification, a royalty-free technology that Google has proposed for providing video over the web. The codec was developed by codec company On2, which Google bought last year. The bitstream defines the structure of the final compressed data; in conjunction with a description of how to convert that encoded data into usable video, you have a complete description of the compression algorithm. The encoding process—how to turn video into that bitstream in the first place—is typically left unspecified: any process that produces a bitstream that conforms with the specification is acceptable as an encoder. This approach gives developers the ability to develop their own quality-enhancing optimizations even many years after the bitstream specification is published, while ensuring that the resultant file can still be played back by any compliant decoder. The current draft was submitted on January 6. As it stands, the draft is not an authoritative description of the codec: it acknowledges that there may be discrepancies between the draft and the reference source code published by Google. If such discrepancies are found, the document states that Google's source is definitive and overrides the specification. Elsewhere, the specification relies on snippets of C source code rather than describing the structures and algorithms used. This kind of issue would stand in the way of any eventual standardization should Google seek to go that route in the future, but indicates that the company is interested in providing a better specification that allows implementers to support VP8 without having to make reference to thousands of lines of source. For the time being, however, the company has not indicated any intent to go the standards route with VP8. According to CNET, the company says that this move is "independent from a standards track": rather, it is to ensure that there is a "canonical public reference" for the document.
Melatonin has different interactions with opioids including the enhancement of the analgesic effects of morphine and also reversal of tolerance and dependence to morphine. The present study assessed the effect of melatonin on morphine reward in mice using a conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Our data showed that subcutaneous administration of morphine (1-7.5 mg/kg) significantly increased the time spent in the drug-paired compartment in a dose-dependent manner. Intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration of melatonin (1-40 mg/kg) alone did not induce either CPP or conditioned place aversion (CPA), while the combination of melatonin (5-20 mg/kg) and sub-effective dose of morphine (0.5 mg/kg) led to rewarding effect. We further investigated the involvement of the nitric oxidergic pathway in the enhancing effect of melatonin on morphine CPP, by a general nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). L-NAME (1 and 5 mg/kg, i.p.) alone or in combination with morphine (0.5 mg/kg) did not show any significant CPP or CPA. Co-administration of L-NAME (5 mg/kg) with an ineffective combination of melatonin (1 mg/kg) plus morphine (0.5 mg/kg) produced significant CPP that may imply the similarity of action of melatonin and L-NAME and involvement of the nitric oxidergic pathway in this regard. Our results indicate that pretreatment of animals with melatonin enhances the rewarding properties of morphine via a mechanism which may involve the nitric oxidergic pathway.
Nvidia did not reveal the names of phone makers adopting Tegra 2 chips An Nvidia executive on Wednesday said smartphones with the company's low-power Tegra 2 chips will become available in the fourth quarter this year. The launch of phones will come under a year after the mobile chips were officially announced, said Mike Rayfield, general manager for the mobile business unit at Nvidia, during a speech at the company's financial analyst day in Santa Clara, California, which was webcast. Rayfield did not reveal the names of phone makers adopting Tegra 2 chips. However, he said that more than 50 original design manufacturers and device makers are building products around the chips. Nvidia first said that it was developing low-power Tegra 2 chips for smartphones in December. A company spokesman, Ken Brown, on Wednesday said the company hadn't published specifications of the Tegra 2 chips for smartphones yet. However, the chips would "bring the complete Web to the smartphone space" while offering long battery life, Brown said. Earlier this year Nvidia officially announced dual-core Tegra 2 chips for mobile devices with between 5- and 15-inch screens, including low-cost laptops and tablets. Nvidia said the chips would be four times faster than their predecessors. The first Tegra 2 tablets will reach the market in the third quarter this year, Rayfield said. Known as a graphics card vendor, Nvidia brings advanced graphics to mobile devices such as smartphones and low-cost laptops with the low-power Tegra chips. Tegra 2 chips put an Arm-based processor core, a GeForce graphics core and other components on a single chip. Tegra 2 succeeds the original Tegra chips that power devices including Microsoft's Zune HD and Samsung's M1.
The second round of the tender should be complete in August After two months, the procedure of selecting the construction company for the Pelješac Bridge can continue. The State Public Procurement Control Commission has rejected an appeal by one of the companies not selected for the second round, Dulist.hr has reported on May 7, 2017. Croatian Roads, the investor of the Pelješac Bridge, has invited eight companies and consortiums into the second round, those that met the technical, legal and financial requirements. Out of the total of 12 applicants, 4 did not meet the criteria and their names are being kept secret. Croatian Roads have stated that after they receive written confirmation from the state commission, they will forward the tender documentation to the EU Central Financing and Contracting Agency to be verified and expect this task to be completed in a short time. That will enable the second round of the tender to begin, with the 8 candidates allowed 45 and 60 days to send their final offers, to be completed in August when the best offer will be selected, while those not selected will have the right to appeal. With this plan, construction of the bridge could begin in autumn, with the estimated value of works for the bridge and access roads at 1.75 billion kuna.
100% Verified Reviews All reviews are from people who have redeemed deals with this merchant. Celebrate your next special occasion with family-sized dishes from Italy that combine into a uniquely American cuisine. The dishes at Buca di Beppo are meant to be shared by the entire table, and include items such as Veal Parmigiana, Chicken Marsala, Baked Ziti, and a variety of pizzas such as the classic Margherita. Sharing Italian food can bring a family closer, especially when everyone reaches for the last cannoli, bonks their heads together, and laughs. Come together with this Groupon. Promotional value expires May 2, 2016. Amount paid never expires. Not valid for alcohol, delivery or catering. Not valid with any other offers, discounts, or promotional meal deals. Limit 1/person, 1 as a gift. Limit 1/table. Min purchase equal to the full offer value required. Unauthorized internet distribution, replication or resale is strictly prohibited. No cash back or return, unless required by law. Excludes banquet and group menus, merchandise, party pans, and purchase of gift cards. Not valid at Atlantic City location (1900 Boardwalk New Jersey, NJ). Not valid for tax or gratuity. Valid for dine-in only. Not valid w/ Groupon codes. Merchant is solely responsible to purchasers for the care and quality of the advertised goods and services. About Buca di Beppo In 1993, the basement of a Minneapolis apartment building was transformed into an Italian restaurant, becoming the first Buca di Beppo. The owners soon found themselves riding a wave of popularity and marinara sauce as they opened new restaurants across the nation. Today, the eatery occupies over 90 locations nationwide, from San Diego to Times Square. At each location, chefs maintain the northern and southern Italian flavors that made the original so popular, with a few American twists. Then they serve it up in massive, family-style portions, making Buca di Beppo a favorite place for hungry families and groups of friends. For starters, the chefs bake up batches of Cheesy Bread Florentine, a colorful combo of spinach, roma tomatoes, and garlic sprinkled over Italian bread and sealed in place with fresh, melted cheeses. Entrées are prepared with an eye toward quality and quantity, both of size and selection, complete with Veal Parmigiana, Baked Ziti, and classic Italian-American staples like Ravioli and Lasagna. And in keeping with the convivial atmosphere, they also serve truly decadent desserts. The Colossal Brownie Sundae towers above other sweets with six scoops of ice cream and tiers of sundae trimmings.
The 'Girls' star tests out her rapping skills in a Funny or Die video. Lena Dunham chose a new medium to show her support for Hillary Clinton — rap music. In a new Funny or Die video, Dunham dresses up as "MC Pantsuit" and defends "the nation's baddest grandmother." Cynthia Erivo and Charlamagne tha God also take part in the sketch. The Girls creator explains to her friends that she's so angry about the election, she's going to channel it into lyrics. "I get upset when people say that Hillary needs to smile / She's a strong ass f—ing person couldn't even walk a mile / in the heels of this woman had to fight / her life defending everything she does to the left and to the right," sings Dunham. Toward the end of the rap, Dunham strips down from her red pantsuit to a more "sensual pantsuit" — lingerie — and said that's what you do for a candidate you love.
If all the institutions that work with children-- from schools to Scouts to sports leagues -- want to stand together to prevent child abuse, the Catholic Church would "exuberantly welcome" the chance to join in "a major national educational campaign" to prevent abuse, the leader of the American bishops said Monday. The erupting scandal at Penn State brought the horrors of the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis back into the headlines this month and it made the bishops freshly "bow our heads in shame and contrition," said Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, at the annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Monday. The bishops, whose policies and secrecy once allowed abuse to fester for decades, set forth in 2002 to create model screening programs and "safe environment training" for abuse protection and prevention. No such coalition exists -- yet -- Dolan said. He said more than once that the Church is "timid about giving advice," but it stands ready to join any groups that want to take on this society-wide problem. "We haven't been a good example in the past but we are trying to become one," he said. DO YOU THINK ... the bishops' lessons would serve Penn State and other universities and institutions?
The man who allegedly destroyed Donald Trump’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with what appeared to be a sledgehammer early Wednesday morning has been arrested, according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood division. James Otis, 53, was taken into custody Thursday morning, LAPD Commanding Officer Cory Palka confirmed in a statement to Breitbart News. A man was filmed in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning repeatedly smashing Trump’s Walk of Fame star with what appeared to be either a pick-ax or another hammer-like instrument. The man could be seen wearing a construction worker’s uniform in a video obtained exclusively by entertainment news website Deadline Hollywood. The LAPD’s Hollywood division was preparing a press release with additional information Thursday morning. Otis said Wednesday that he had spoken with the LAPD and had been preparing to turn himself in. In an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News published Thursday, Otis, describes himself as a “Bernie Democrat” who plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election in November. The man said he originally planned to remove the star from the Walk intact and auction it off to benefit the women who have accused the Republican presidential candidate of sexual assault. “I was just so fed up, so saddened and fed up by Mr. Trump and how he continues to denigrate women, and he continues to joke and make fun about sexual violence and his own exploits against women,” Otis told the Daily News. “And personally, I have in my own family, several people who have been sexually assaulted, including my brother and it hurts a lot. It doesn’t go away. It’s an issue that’s very important to me.” Otis, who says he has a real estate business and also teaches non-violent social theory, said he had planned the attack on Trump’s star for about six weeks. “It’s just a big joke to him. I have children; I have many women in my life who don’t think it’s a joke. But he does,” Otis told the Daily News when asked what message he would like to tell Trump. “He lies about it, he shuffles and I don’t see, there’s no reason to believe at all that it will ever stop now. He’ll continue to do this, he’ll continue to make women suffer. So that’s what I’d tell him. “You need help. Please understand that.” Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
Gen. Robert E. Lee’s headquarters during the Battle of Gettysburg, a small stone house on Seminary Ridge, has never risen to the high level of interest and protection that the battlefield and other related buildings have been given. Tuesday marks the 151st anniversary of the Gettysburg battle and the Civil War Trust and other preservation and government groups will use that anniversary to announce a national campaign at 10 a.m. at the house to raise $5.5 million to acquire the four-acre site and several buildings. According to a Civil War Trust press release, much of that money has already been raised from private donors and the trust has applied for a Civil War Land Acquisition Grant of up to $1.5 million from the American Battlefield Protection Program. If that occurs, the trust will then have to raise the remaining $1.1 million by the end of this year. The two-story house was built in 1834 and at the time of the battle was occupied on one side by Mrs. Mary Thompson, know locally as the Widow Thompson. The other side of the duplex was empty and it was here that Lee made his headquarters. According to an online history of the house, Lee’s staff chose the building because of its thick walls and its proximity to the center of the Confederate lines. Since 1922, the house has operated as the private Lee Museum, offering tours of the building and a display of artifacts from the battlefield. Nearby is a modern building housing a 48-room Quality Inn and a restaurant. The hotel, restaurant, museum and a brewing company also on the site will continue to operate until the sale is final sometime in early 2015, according to Civil War Trust officials.
July meeting of the Active Transportation Advisory Committee / Government Channel Fayetteville officials are looking to fill 22 positions on 12 of the city’s boards, commissions and committees. The list of vacancies includes volunteer seats on the Active Transportation Advisory Committee, Animal Services Advisory Board, Civil Rights Commission, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, and more. All volunteers must be registered voters who reside within the Fayetteville city limits. Applications must be mailed or hand delivered to the City Clerk’s office or emailed to city_clerk@ci.fayetteville.ar.us by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 23. For more information, call 479-575-8323. » Download an application Seats available: – Two community citizen-at-large terms ending 12/31/18 Description:This committee reviews public comment, and advises city staff on the prioritization and land acquisition/easements for sidewalks and trails within Fayetteville. Members are also responsible for adopting sidewalk and trails master plans. Recommendations relating to trails are forwarded to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board. Recommendations relating to sidewalks are forwarded to the Transportation Division. Meetings: Meetings are held at 5:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month in City Hall. Seats available: – One unexpired pilot term ending 12/31/18 – One aeronautical term ending 12/31/21 – One University of Arkansas term ending 12/31/21 Description: The purpose of this board is to seek both general and technical citizen input and assistance in airport functions, provide and encourage visionary planning and strong leadership for the airport, and assist the City Council in matters pertaining to the operation, improvement, extension, and maintenance of the Airport and other related facilities, property and easements. Meetings: Regular meetings are held at 1:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at the Fayetteville Executive Airport Conference Room. Seats available: – One unexpired licensed veterinarian term ending 6/30/19 Description: This board acts in an advisory capacity on policy matters of the Animal Services Division, and works to stimulate and encourage communication with the community. Meetings: Regular meetings are held the first Monday of the second month of each quarter at 6 p.m. in City Hall. Seats available: – One CPA term ending 12/31/19 Description: The Audit Committee serves in an advisory capacity between the City Council, the city’s independent auditor, internal auditor, and management. The committee will review the city’s financial reports and internal controls regarding finance and accounting. Meetings: The committee meets at least three times annually, or more frequently as circumstances dictate. Seats available: – One business community term ending 12/31/19 – One citizen-at-large term ending 12/31/19 Description: The basic function of the commission is to ensure uniform nondiscrimination protections within the City of Fayetteville for groups already protected to varying degrees throughout state law. Meetings: Meetings are held when needed at the call of the chairperson. Seats available: – One term ending 12/31/18 Description: Board members would oversee the district’s issuance of tax-exempt bonds and loaning of money to property owners using a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing. PACE is a creative financing mechanism that allows property owners to borrow money for weatherization, energy efficiency, renewable energy or water conservation improvements to their property. PACE enabling legislation was passed by the Arkansas Legislature in the 2013 session and signed by the Governor in April 2013. Meetings: Regular meetings are held at 5:30 p.m. on the second Monday of every other month in City Hall. Seats available: – One unexpired community citizen-at-large term ending 12/31/18 – One community citizen-at-large term ending 12/31/19 Description: This committee works to address environmental concerns, to promote a safe and healthy environment, and to maintain the natural beauty of the environment within the city. It makes recommendations to other city committees and to the City Council. Meetings: Meetings are held at 5:30 p.m. on the third Monday of each month in City Hall. Seats available: – One unexpired term ending 4/1/21 Description: The purpose of the Board of Trustees is to provide leadership in performing the mission of the Library; to serve as a liaison between the library and the city; and to ensure the library meets the informational, educational and recreational needs of the community. Meetings: Regular meetings are held on the third Monday of even-numbered months at 4 p.m at the Fayetteville Public Library. Seats available: – One term ending 12/28/21 Description: The commissioners approve by-laws, resolutions, policies and procedures for administering housing programs for low income persons. The Housing Authority operates units of Public Housing and rental assistance in Fayetteville. Both programs are for low and very low income persons. All funds are provided through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Meetings: The board meets at 6 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of each month in City Hall. Seats available: – Three terms ending 12/31/19 Description: This board recommends priorities for capital improvements and means for financing the same, and prepares an annual progress report on parks and recreation activities. Meetings: The board meets at 5:30 p.m. on the first Monday of each month in City Hall. In addition to the regularly scheduled board meetings, there are committee meetings that occur on a regular basis. Seats available: – One unexpired term ending 06/30/18 Description: The board advises the City Council on telecommunication issues and coordinates and oversees telecommunications franchise systems and use of the public rights of way designated for public access, educational, and governmental (PEG) use in the City of Fayetteville as part of the city’s telecommunication infrastructure. Meetings: Regular meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in Room 219 of City Hall. Seats available: – One tree service community term ending 12/31/18 – Three community citizen-at-large terms ending 12/31/18 Description: The purpose and intent of the committee is to advise the City Council on urban forestry and arboricultural related issues as an integral part of the city’s green infrastructure and to sit as the Wildland-Urban Interface: Firewise Advisory Board to advise the City Council on wildland and urban development related issues as an integral part of the city’s fire protection program and green infrastructure. Meetings: Meetings are held at 4 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month at City Hall.
Five top AIG execs are threatening to resign if their pay is slashed significantly by Obama's pay czar, the Wall Street Journal reports today. The executives reportedly sent written warnings to AIG's chief counsel over the weekend; two of the senior staff members have since retracted their threats. Many AIG employees have fought back against the limits proposed by Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's so-called 'pay czar.' In a recent cover story, New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman pointed to a growing sense among many AIG employees that they're being scapegoated for the behavior of just a few traders in the insurer's financial products unit. NYmag spoke to a few AIG executives and traders who accuse Feinberg of painting with too broad of a brush: "If people are angry about the arsonists, it's not a good idea to go out and shoot the firemen," one FP executive says. "There were over 40,000 positions on our books, and less than 125 of them blew up the company," adds an FP executive, who, like many people interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing threats against AIG employees. "It's absurd in the extreme," says another. "Should we punish everyone at FP? Everyone at AIG, everyone in New York? Everyone on Wall Street? Where does it end?" The Wall Street Journal reported that the executives fear further constraints on their pay in 2010, as well as a potential ban on the lucrative severance packages still offered to executives at the company. The Journal suggested that executives, who can be entitled to severance pay if they resign, might leave AIG in order to cash in on their severance payout: "According to terms of the severance plan, which was put in place before the government bailed out AIG, certain executives are entitled to severance benefits if they resign for "good reason," which includes significant cuts in their annual base salary or target bonus. The executives' indignation over potential pay restrictions comes less than a month after AIG's new CEO, Robert Benmosche, made a similar threat to resign in protest over government oversight of the company. Checks on compensation, he told AIG's board, limited the company's ability to attract and retain talent. Benmosche ultimately opted to stay at AIG, and last month his $7 million pay package was approved by the company's board. The federal government, which has committed over $180 billion in support of the insurance company, moved to limit compensation for AIG's top 25 executives last October. Under the provisions, pay was reduced by 57% and base salaries generally limited to $500,000. Another 75 senior executives at AIG could reportedly be added to the list of employees covered by the pay limits. Read the WSJ's full story here.
TRENTON — After days of blistering criticism from the ACLU, the CDC and even the United Nations secretary general over Gov. Chris Christie’s new, 21-day mandatory quarantine policy for all healthcare workers exposed to Ebola, the New Jersey governor has gotten a much-needed vote of support from a heavyweight name in the medical community: Nobel Prize-winning doctor and medical researcher, Dr. Bruce Beutler. Dr. Beutler, an American medical doctor and researcher, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2011 for his work researching the cellular subsystem of the body’s overall immune system — the part of it that defends the body from infection by other organisms, like Ebola. He is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas — the first U.S. city to treat an Ebola patient and also the first to watch one die from the virus. In an exclusive interview with NJ Advance Media, Beutler reviewed Christie’s new policy of mandatory quarantine for all health care workers exposed to Ebola, and declared: “I favor it.” Unfortunately, while the doctor’s support might provide much-needed credibility for Christie as he threatens to quarantine ever more healthcare workers returning from the Ebola fight in West Africa, it also comes with some chilling words. “I favor it, because it’s not entirely clear that they can’t transmit the disease,” Beutler said, referring to asymptomatic healthcare workers like Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone who was quarantined in New Jersey for 65 hours before being transported to her home state of Maine on Monday afternoon. “It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.” In fact, in a study published online in late September by the New England Journal of Medicine and backed by the World Health Organization, 3,343 confirmed and 667 probable cases of Ebola were analyzed, and nearly 13 percent of the time, those infected with Ebola exhibited no fever at all. Why, then, does he think the CDC would so emphasize Ebola is not communicable in patients without symptoms? “There’s some imperative to prevent panic among the public,” says Dr. Beutler, “But to be honest, people have not examined that with transmissibility in mind. I don’t completely trust people who’d say that as dogma.” As such, allowing home confinement for medical workers exposed to Ebola but currently without symptoms was, as Beutler put it, “a move away from goodness,’ as an engineer might say.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday changed direction and called for voluntary home quarantine for workers with the highest risk for Ebola infection. However, it also specified that most medical personnel returning from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea would not need to be kept in isolation, as Hickox had been ever since she arrived at Newark International Airport on Friday up until her release and transfer to home quarantine in Maine early Monday afternoon. “Even if someone is asymptomatic you cannot rely on people to report themselves if they get a fever,” said Dr. Beutler, adding, “You can’t just depend on the goodwill of people to confine the disease like that – even healthcare workers. They behave very irresponsibly.” Christie has repeatedly pointed to the fact that NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, after returning from Ebola besieged West Africa, was spotted violating her voluntary quarantine to get takeout from a Princeton eatery last week. Despite her forced detainment by the New Jersey health department, Hickox insisted hat she was “feeling physically healthy” and except for a single, non-contact thermometer reading that registered her as having a 101 Fahrenheit fever, has had normal 98.6 F temperatures ever since her quarantine began. “These are no arguments at all,” said Beutler. “Anyone could say that about any disease. It doesn’t matter that she was afebrile – she should be quarantined for 21 days.” Hickox has complained that “her basic human rights were violated” and has since retained a civil rights attorney, but Beutner says he is puzzled by the argument. “These people act like they are returning as conquering heroes — and they should be treated as conquering heroes, but part of being a conquering hero means making sure no one gets infected by you. Just look at the the foolish quarantine where astronauts came back from the moon [where there were no germs] and in this case, we know there is an infection.” From a global perspective, it’s unlikely that the virus will take hold as an epidemic in the U.S., but in Africa, Beutler says it already “has gone ballistic – way, way beyond the past epidemics. One could project that maybe millions could be infected. It may be that it won’t spread like wildfire in the United States but even if one or two more people die, it will be too many.” So, does Gov. Chris Christie have it right? “I’d be a little bit more strict than he is being,” said Beutner, “I realize this would be inconvenient, but I don’t think it would prevent treating the disease.” Christie has not been willing to publicly explain how home quarantine would work in cases like, for example, where a healthcare worker also had children at home. “You’re in your home,” Christie deadpanned to the question when asked it was asked of him in Groton, Connecticut Monday night, “and you’re quarantined.” “I know at times that you all would like to make things a heck of a lot more complicated than they are,” said Christie, “In home quarantine means: In-home. Quarantine. If they are asymptomatic, they can be quarantined in their home.” Beutler disagrees with this, saying “the ideal scenario is where a patient is isolated from all family members,” preferably in an specialized hospital ward, not in a home. The thought of an afebrile parent passing Ebola on to a child – as ostensibly can happen 13 percent of the time, “would disturb me. The point of quarantine of is to make sure they [Ebola viruses] are not carried elsewhere. It’s a little bit frustrating. Some of the things that are being done are not completely motivated by safety. For some reason, there’s an imperative to maintain open borders no matter what – to err on the side of total individual freedom rather than on the side of public health,” he said, adding, “If you really want to isolate a disease, then you have to isolate the people who carry it.” Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @claudebrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
A team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers has developed a faster way to engineer synthetic enzymes that target specific DNA sequences for inactivation, repair or alteration. The report from the MGH Molecular Pathology Unit, being published online in Nature Methods, describes a highly effective but less labor-intensive way to generate powerful tools called zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs). "With our approach, called context-dependent assembly, any scientist can use either standard molecular biology techniques or commercial DNA synthesis to design ZFNs for their target gene of interest," says J. Keith Joung, MD, PhD, associate chief for Research in MGH Pathology, the study's senior author. "ZFNs are broadly applicable, powerful tools for manipulating the genomes of cells from various organisms -- including humans -- and may provide a way to efficiently correct gene mutations responsible for human disease, avoiding problems resulting from the imprecise nature of current gene therapy approaches using viral vectors." Most human transcription factors that control whether a genetic signal is translated into a protein bind to specific DNA sequences using peptides called zinc fingers. Zinc-finger nucleases are synthetic "designer" proteins combining a zinc-finger domain, engineered to bind a particular DNA sequence, with an enzyme that breaks both DNA strands at the targeted site. While ZFNs have great potential, creating the customized proteins has been challenging. In the simplest approach, called modular assembly, individual peptides are linked together like beads on a string to create a multi-finger protein theoretically able to recognize long DNA segments. Joung and others have shown that, in practice, modular assembly has a very low success rate for creating multi-finger proteins. This high failure rate is most likely due to "context-dependent" effects that individual zinc fingers can have on the DNA-binding activities of their neighboring fingers. Assembling peptides that don't work well together would be like trying to put together jigsaw puzzle pieces that don't fit. In 2008, Joung and colleagues at the University of Minnesota and other institutions, members of the Zinc Finger Consortium, reported developing a method called OPEN (Oligomerized Pool ENgineering), which takes these context-dependent effects into account. But although OPEN works well, it can be labor intensive and extremely time consuming -- requiring up to a year for a lab to establish the technology and two months of work to generate desired ZFNs. To address these limitations, the MGH research team has assembled an extensive archive of zinc fingers known to work well when positioned together -- in essence puzzle pieces that already have been put together. Using this context-dependent method, the investigators were able to assemble dozens of ZFNs in as little as four days. "With this archive in hand, any researcher can easily generate their own ZFNs in less than a week, and no special expertise is needed," Joung explains. "In addition to being much faster, context-dependent assembly can generate large numbers of ZFNs simultaneously, which is hard to do with OPEN because it is more labor intensive." As was the case with OPEN, the Joung lab and the Zinc Finger Consortium will make the software and reagents required to practice context-dependent assembly available to all academic laboratories. "One of the holy grails of genetics is the ability to make targeted changes to individual genes," says Laurie Tompkins, PhD, who over sees genetics grants at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health and a major supporter of this study. "Dr. Joung and his colleagues have developed an extraordinarily simple, efficient strategy for using zinc finger technology to swap out altered versions of genes for normal ones -- or vice versa -- providing basic scientists and clinicians alike with a broadly applicable research tool." Adds Joung, an associate professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, "At this point, I believe that context-dependent assembly will have the biggest impact on researchers using ZFNs to genetically manipulate model organisms, possibly even models developed from pluripotent stem cells. Other big impacts should be enabling researchers to create knockout mutations in a large series of genes involved in a common pathway or related to a specific disease and to use ZFNs to create comprehensive collections of mutants for every gene in an organism." Joung is also a member of the MGH Center for Computational and Integrative Biology and Center for Cancer Research Jeffry Sander, PhD, of the MGH Molecular Pathology Unit is lead author of the Nature Methods report. Additional co-authors are Elizabeth Dahlborg, Mathew Goodwin, Jessica Blackburn, Stacey Thibodeau-Beganny, Morgan Maeder, Cyd Khayter and David Langenau, MGH Molecular Pathology; Lindsay Cade, Randall Peterson and Jing-Ruey Yeh, MGH Cardiovascular Research Center; Feng Zhang, Shaun Curtin, Yiping Qi, Christopher Pierick, Robert Stupar and Daniel Voytas, University of Minnesota; Daniel Cifuentes, Ellen Hoffman and Antonio Giraldez, Yale University; and Deepak Reyon and Drena Dobbs, Iowa State University. Support for the study includes grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Then these spotlessly “clean” young brains are like blank pages at the disposal of the state’s paintbrush. Only then can a new version of history and a new image of reality be painted on these pages according to the taste of the state. Naturally, the innocent children who have been deprived of the chance of knowing what really happened in the past accept the artificial version of history and grow up malnourished in their understanding of the past. As time goes by, the state’s absolute power becomes a matter of fact and this marks the triumph of state administered amnesia. Our tolerance to this type of amnesia originates from the state’s carrot-and-stick strategies that are designed to achieve the nation’s memory loss. Thirty years ago, the instruments used against people who resisted state-sponsored amnesia were ropes and chains. Now, as China’s economy grows and the state has an enormous amount of money at its disposal, it skillfully uses financial incentives to entice people into giving up their memories and to compromise with the state. In this country money now has an almighty power that can seal people’s lips and dry writers’ pens. It can also force literary imagination to fly in the opposite direction of truth and conscience. It doesn’t matter whether you are a writer, a historian or social scientist. You will be awarded power, fame and money as long as you are willing to see what is allowed to be seen, and look away from what is not allowed to be looked at; as long as you are willing to sing the praises of what needs to be praised and ignore what needs to be blanked out. In other words, our amnesia is a state-sponsored sport. Let’s look at literature and art. Almost all awards in China in the fields of literature, art, news and culture are administered within state-approved boundaries. They encourage people to exercise their creativity within the state-approved boundaries. The ones who achieve success within these boundaries are rewarded. Naturally, we thus replace the forgotten past with fiction and build splendid lies over reality. And we do this without feeling any sense of moral guilt — it’s all in the noble name of artistic creativity. Consequently, truth is buried, conscience is castrated and our language is raped by money and power. Lies, meaningless words and pretentious-sounding blather become the official language used by the government, taught by our teachers and adopted by the world of art and literature.
The murder of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own guard has prompted an ever growing witch-hunt, driven by religious groups but controlled by no one. The threat of this uncontested vigilantism posing as Islamic empowerment should be taken as seriously as the Taliban. There was a moment last weekend that juxtaposed beautifully with the latest crisis faced by Pakistan. As hundreds of thousands – Islamists and Marxists, centrists and otherwise apolitical working men and women – marched for democratic regime change in Egypt, 40,000 mostly men marched in Pakistan's heartland city of Lahore to protest against changes to the country's controversial blasphemy law regime. Protesters in Lahore threatened to cause greater anarchy if the blasphemy laws were changed – threats reminiscent of the Pakistan Taliban. It is important to note that, as an instrument for protecting the honour of Islam, Pakistan's blasphemy laws have been an abject failure. As rights groups point out, the laws are vaguely defined and do not require accusers to prove criminal intent. Police rarely investigate before arresting alleged blasphemers. Taseer's murderer may say he killed him for committing blasphemy, but there is no evidence he ever did anything of the sort. Taseer's only crime was to highlight the severe failings of the blasphemy laws, a point lost on many who endorsed his murder. "If a campaign were to be carried out on all the electronic media explaining exactly what the blasphemy laws are, the fact that vigilantes have murdered other people due to political, economic or other rivalries and motives, people would not favour it," says veteran journalist and human rights campaigner Beena Sarwar. Since the current laws made defiling the Qur'an and defaming the prophet crimes punishable respectively by life imprisonment and death in 1986, anywhere between 300 and 3,000 people have been accused of blasphemy. Of these, roughly 50% belong to religious minorities, a group that constitutes only 3% of Pakistan's 180 million population. But the blasphemy laws do not just target religious minorities and the poor. The slain Taseer, a wealthy businessman and key ally of President Asif Zardari is testament to that. But even Muslims are not safe from the witch-hunt. During a visit to a village in the Punjab late last year, I was told that local Sufi Muslims had charged "a young Wahhabi" with blasphemy for arguing that Prophet Muhammad was a human being and that prayers should not be directed to him or venerated saints but only Allah. Last Saturday a magistrate remanded a 17-year-old boy on charges of blasphemy after he allegedly wrote insulting comments about the Prophet during an exam more than eight months ago. Most disturbing, the charges were brought by the intermediate board of education in Karachi. The board noted that the boy confessed to the "unpardonable sin" and blamed it on frustration over inability to answer an exam question and the influence of a discussion about Islam he had with some cousins from Norway. In a society where the law and order system is already fragile and amenable to vigilantism, the blasphemy law has opened up a Pandora's box of opportunities for people to take the law into their own hands, or force fearful police and courts to provide a rubber stamp to their vendettas. None of Pakistan's major politicians or its powerful army chief, not traditionally averse to making public statements on matters of national interest, has condemned Taseer's murder or the misuse of the blasphemy laws. Political parties were glaringly absent from public prayers organised for the slain Taseer over the weekend. In response to a request to attend one of them, Senator Abdul Rahim Khan Mandokhel from Balochistan said, "he [Taseer] met his fate. This is our religion. You have to accept it or leave Pakistan." In an open letter, a broad coalition of citizens called the Citizens for Democracy condemned the remarks and urged the president of the senate to take disciplinary measures against Mandokhel if he did not offer a public apology. Others have called on the courts and police to charge people who have publicly called for victims of the blasphemy laws or advocates for their reform to be murdered. It is arguable that even more dangerous are those like Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer's murderer, who act out of a genuine belief that, armed just with God's command, any citizen has the right to commit murder based on rumour and slander. On Monday, Pakistan's prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani reiterated his government's refusal to amend the blasphemy laws, noting proudly that it was his predecessor Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who "introduced this law in Pakistan". True, Gilani's government is besieged and in no position to pick a losing battle. But if more Pakistanis do not wage a war for sanity all of us will lose.
Draft Napolitano For President Why Judge Andrew Napolitano? Judge Napolitano is a Constitutionalist, pure and simple. When Fox News needs a constitutional scholar, they call their constitutional watchdog Andrew Napolitano. He speaks the truth no matter the consequences. He understands and eloquently articulates the Founder’s vision for America as the “Land of Liberty” and knows the limits of the Federal Government at home and abroad. Judge Napolitano will serve as President; not rule as President. Judge Andrew Napolitano is the single best person to ignite a peaceful American Revolution in the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans. I believe he is our last best hope to reverse course and get us headed back in the right direction as a Constitutional Republic. Judge Napolitano is a man of principle. There is no other person in the country as respected and popular within the both Liberty, Conservative & Civil Liberties Movements as Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former jurist, constitutional scholar, New York Times best-selling author and TV celebrity. Napolitano can reach outside the confines of the Establishment Political Powers to inspire and capture the hearts and minds of Americans from every corner of life. Judge Napolitano is a Constitutionalist. We are dedicating as long as it takes to Draft Judge Napolitano to run for president. America needs The Judge as its new helmsman, and the country needs The Judge as its inspiration and its leader. Judge Napolitano would be a candidate, perhaps the only candidate America could rally round enthusiastically and who really could win the presidency on principle in 2016. Judge Napolitano initially may try to ignore the Liberty Movement’s call to run, and if he does, we must say, “Run Judge, run.” He may say “No,” and we must say, “Yes Judge, run.” He may resist again, and we must say, “Read our lips Judge, run; no other candidate will do.” Why Judge Andrew Napolitano? Judge Napolitano is a Constitutionalist, pure and simple. When Fox News needs a constitutional scholar, they call their constitutional watchdog Andrew Napolitano. He speaks the truth no matter the consequences. He understands and eloquently articulates the Founder’s vision for America as the “Land of Liberty” and knows the limits of the Federal Government at home and abroad. Judge Napolitano will serve as President; not rule as President. Judge Andrew Napolitano is the single best person to ignite a peaceful American Revolution in the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans. I believe he is our last best hope to reverse course and get us headed back in the right direction as a Constitutional Republic. Judge Napolitano is a man of principle. There is no other person in the country as respected and popular within the both Liberty, Conservative & Civil Liberties Movements as Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former jurist, constitutional scholar, New York Times best-selling author and TV celebrity. Napolitano can reach outside the confines of the Establishment Political Powers to inspire and capture the hearts and minds of Americans from every corner of life. Judge Napolitano is a Constitutionalist. We are dedicating as long as it takes to Draft Judge Napolitano to run for president. America needs The Judge as its new helmsman, and the country needs The Judge as its inspiration and its leader. Judge Napolitano would be a candidate, perhaps the only candidate America could rally round enthusiastically and who really could win the presidency on principle in 2016. Judge Napolitano initially may try to ignore the Liberty Movement’s call to run, and if he does, we must say, “Run Judge, run.” He may say “No,” and we must say, “Yes Judge, run.” He may resist again, and we must say, “Read our lips Judge, run; no other candidate will do.”
66 hi I'm writing from Israel, I'm Jewish, and I agree that NOTHING in the world beats a good bowl of chicken soup, especially when it's winter and/or you're not feeling well. HOWEVER, I must add a... I love matzo ball soup!...but while the balls float, they don't seem to expand. Instead of turning out large and fluffy, they're smaller with tough insides. Any advice? TRUE_QUEEN 0 1 hi I'm writing from Israel, I'm Jewish, and I agree that NOTHING in the world beats a good bowl of chicken soup, especially when it's winter and/or you're not feeling well. HOWEVER, I must add a... Read more Leah Renee Bartlome 36 6 I love matzo ball soup!...but while the balls float, they don't seem to expand. Instead of turning out large and fluffy, they're smaller with tough insides. Any advice? Read more HHERNAND 87 1 This recipe was fantastic! This was my first time making matzo ball soup, and it turned out perfectly. I used the lightly salted matzo and added a little extra butter. Note that this recipe m... Read more Sue Dakimowicz Klingenberg 50 18 I rated this 5 stars because this is THE BEST Matzo Ball soup I have ever had!!! I made my own chicken broth (used only chicken necks, celery, carrots, onion and water) on Saturday, strained th... Read more LEMASNEY 100 2 You have to have some big honkin pots sitting around to do this recipe justice, but it's worth it - a great outcome to be sure. Considerations: I used olive oil instead of butter, 5 finely proce... Read more LINDA MCLEAN 3k 2k In my heart, chicken soup will always be the perfect comfort food because my "Oma" made the best, except she used noodles. As an adult, I'm totally addicted to matzo ball soup and now my kids ar... Read more kathycook 156 3 I separated the yolks from the whites. I whipped the whites until stiff and after mixing the ingredients I folded in the whites. All of the Matzo Balls floated to the top!! Great recipe!! Read more RJTABER 18 23 I used one onion, green onion, garlic, and parsley to roll into this mixture. In general matzo ball soup is bland, but this really kicked up the flavor. Read more
Walking down College Avenue, James Liu appears to be a typical college senior. If he is not on campus, it is probably because he is traveling to a tournament to advance his professional video game career. Liu, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, is a professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player. He boasts a No. 1 ranking in New Jersey, and No. 31 worldwide. Liu, known by the tag, "Swedish Delight," began his video game career in eighth grade. “My brother wanted to get involved with the game, and he made me play with him,” Liu said. “Then I took it up on my own.” Liu and his brother traveled to tournaments together throughout high school, where they competed with players from across the nation. Liu said he will never forget his first major tournament, Revival of Melee, held in March 2009. His mother was uncomfortable with him and his brother traveling to New York alone, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. “She actually came with us to make sure we were safe,” Liu said. Much has changed since then, with Liu traveling to Michigan in October to compete in The Big House 5 where he captured 13th place. He was also invited to Los Angeles to compete in the 16-player invitational Smash Summit last November. Most recently, Liu attended GENESIS 3, the largest overall Smash tournament, where he placed third in doubles with teammate Anthony "Slox" Detres. His success began his first year as a Rutgers student when he became known in the tri-state area. He started receiving national recognition this past year, Liu said. To Liu, Smash stands out from other video games because of its communal nature. “There’s a good community around it,” he said. “You can’t play online — you have to play right next to the person so you have to interact with them.” Liu is also the founder and president of Scarlet Smash, a club that brings together Rutgers Super Smash Bros. fans to meet new people and enjoy the game. “We thought it was a good idea to have a Smash club because we were all broken up,” Liu said. “We wanted to get everyone together.” Unlike most professional video game players, Liu only spends an average of two hours a week practicing his skills. “I just mentally get tired or get bored,” Liu said. For the majority of college, Liu said he prioritized school and only attended the biggest tournaments. This past semester, he decided to devote more time to the game. “It was my senior year, and I was like ‘I won’t get this chance again,'” Liu said. Liu plans on going to medical school either right after he graduates or after taking a year off. Regardless of his post-graduation plans, Liu will keep playing Smash for at least a year and attend tournaments during breaks. “I definitely can’t get away from it,” he said. Liu has not allowed his video game career to detract from his college experience. In addition to reviving the Rutgers Chemistry Society and participating in the Olympic Weightlifting Club, Liu has been a member of Sigma Pi since his first year at the University. Liu also holds a part-time job at Colgate, where he works in oral care developing toothpaste. The job has allowed him to take care of the travel expenses and other costs that come with his video game career. “Before, it was my parents helping me out because I didn’t have an income. I’m pretty self-sustainable now,” he said. Though he is unsure of where the future will take him, he believes Smash has provided him with valuable skills to help him through life. Most importantly, he has learned how to interact with people of all different backgrounds and ages, he said. His video game career has also taught him the value of perseverance when working toward a goal. “What I’ve learned is that if I’m really pressured in situations, I’ll keep on going. I don’t fall back,” Liu said. ___ Manya Goldstein is a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student majoring in journalism and media studies and political science. She is a contributing writer for The Daily Targum. She can be found on Twitter @ManyaG18.
Source: http://forum.worldoftanks.asia/index.php?/topic/25228-get-your-112s-while-they-are-hot-d/ I normally don’t post SEA news, but this is just brilliant :) You know, how they introduced the 112 and T-34-3 in 8.8? Well, SEA server management decided it would be a brilliant idea to actually put the 112 and T-34-3 into the gift shop BEFORE the patch 8.8 – but wait, that can’t be right, that won’t work, right? Well, it does work, because the model is already there. It’s just that the 112 doesn’t have the 8.8 stats, it has the 8.7 (supertester) stats, that are overpowered as hell (300 pen shells etc). And the result? Well… About an hour ago, the tanks were pulled back from sales, but not before whole bunch of folks bought them and started trolling the battlefields. Way to go :)
A reminder that the Tony Awards are Sunday at 8, and I'll be tweeting and watching and writing and rooting for hometown favorite Billy Porter. Thought I'd share this just-in e-mail saying that the recently released cast recording of "Kinky Boots" -- which, including Porter for lead actor in a musical, is the most nominated show of the Broadway season, has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard’s Top Broadway Albums Chart and at No. 51 on Billboard’s Top 200 Chart. That's the highest charting Broadway cast recording in more than two years. Music and lyrics are by Broadway first-timer Cyndi Lauper. The recording is produced by Lauper, Stephen Oremus, William Wittman and Sammy James Jr. The show, based on the British film, features a book by Harvey Fierstein and is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell. Watch for reviews of more nominated shows and stars in the PG Sunday Magazine, including Tom Hanks in "Lucky Guy," Nathan Lane in "The Nance" and CMU's Patina Miller in "Pippin." That's Patina with fellow Carnegie Mellon alum Billy Porter, at a gathering of Tony nominees atop the Empire State Building.
by It all began in 1835 when the British Empire sent a German-born naturalist and explorer to conduct geographical research in the South American territory it had colonized and named British Guiana. In the course of his explorations, a map was drawn that well-exceeded the original western boundary first occupied by the Dutch and later passed to British control. Sparking the interest of the Empire’s desire to expand its borders into the area west of the Essequibo River that was rich in gold, the British government commissioned the explorer to survey their territorial boundaries. What became known as the “Schomburgk Line”, named after the explorer, Robert Hermann Schomburgk, usurped a large portion of Venezuelan land, and provoked the beginning of a territorial dispute that has remained unresolved to this day. In 1850, after decades of arguing over the boundary line dividing Venezuela from its colonized neighbor, both sides agreed not to occupy the disputed territory under further determinations could be made. But as the demand for gold and other natural resources grew in the region, the British again tried to claim the territory declaring the Schomburgk Line the frontier of British Guiana, in clear violation of the previous accord with Venezuela. Ironically, Venezuela appealed to the United States government for help at the time, using the Monroe Doctrine as a justification to prevent further colonization by the British Empire in the hemisphere. US President Grover Cleveland eventually declared the matter of US interest and forced Great Britain to sign a Treaty of Arbitration with Venezuela in Washington in 1897. Two years later, the Arbitration Tribunal, which had no representatives from Venezuela but instead two arbitrators from the United States said to be acting in Venezuela’s interest, ruled in favor of Britain. Venezuela rejected the decision, alleging there had been political collusion and illegal pressures in favor of the other side. These claims were supported by a letter written by Severo Mallet-Prevost, the Official Secretary of the US/Venezuela delegation in the Arbitration Tribunal who revealed the President of the Tribunal, Friedrich Martens had pressured the arbitrators to decide in favor of Great Britain. More than half a century went by until the dispute was re-introduced on the international stage, this time at the United Nations. Venezuela denounced the corruption that had led to the arbitrators decision in 1899 and reiterated its claim over the territory known as the “Essequibo”. In February 1966, at a meeting in Geneva, all parties to the conflict – Venezuela, British Guiana and Great Britain – signed the agreement to resolve the dispute over the border between Venezuela and British Guiana, known as the Treaty of Geneva. They agreed neither side would act on the disputed territory until they could resolve a definitive border, acceptable to all parties. Months later, in May 1966, Guyana achieved its independence from the United Kingdom, further complicating matters. On subsequent maps of Venezuela and Guyana, both countries claimed the territory as part of their sovereign land. Despite minor disagreements since 1966, the dispute did not become the source of escalating regional tensions until 2015, when a large oil discovery was made by Exxon right smack in the middle of the Essequibo, and claimed by Guyana. OIL The Cooperative Republic of Guyana is the second poorest country in the Caribbean, only surpassing desolate Haiti in per capita income. The country’s main economic activity is agriculture, specifically rice and sugar production, which account for over 30% of export income. Despite being surrounded by vast oil and gas reserves in neighboring Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet in its Orinoco River Basin, and nearby Trinidad and Tobago, up until recently Guyana had no known oil reserves within its territorial boundaries. Enter Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, and a declared enemy of Venezuela. Until 2007, Exxon had a significant investment through its Cerro Negro Project in Venezuela’s Orinoco River Basin. Initially, U.S. oil and geological experts had classified the oil-based substance found in mass quantities in that area to be bitumen, a thick black tar-like asphalt, therefore rendering it not subject to the 1976 Hydrocarbons Law in Venezuela that nationalized oil and gas reserves. After President Hugo Chavez suspected the area actually contained huge oil reserves, he had his own research done and was proved right: the Orinoco River Basin was certified with over 300 billion barrels of heavy-crude petroleum. On May 1, 2007, Chavez officially declared all hydrocarbons in that region subject to the prior nationalization laws, legally binding any foreign companies operating there to engage in joint-ventures with the Venezuelan public oil company, PDVSA. The law required a minimum of 51% ownership by the Venezuelan state, with a maximum of 49% for foreign companies. Only two companies refused to cooperate with the new laws. Both were from the United States: ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. Both sued Venezuela over the nationalizations. ConocoPhillips’ claim was significantly smaller than Exxon’s, which demanded over $18 billion for the expropriation. Venezuela offered market value and the case went to an international arbitration tribunal that eventually ordered the Venezuelan government to pay Exxon $1.6 billion, a mere fraction of what the US oil giant had expected. In an apparent act of revenge, Exxon found a way to get Venezuela’s oil without following Venezuela’s rules, albeit through illegal and potentially dangerous channels. EXXON-US AGENDA As the Obama administration was amping up hostility against Venezuela, declaring it via Executive Decree an “unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security” and imposing potentially vast-reaching sanctions on government officials, Exxon was making a deal with Guyana to explore oil deposits in the disputed Essequibo territory. In May 2015, just as Guyana was swearing in a new president, the conservative military officer David Granger, a close U.S. ally, Exxon was making a huge discovery in the Atlantic Ocean near the Venezuelan coast. According to reports, the deposits found by Exxon in the ’Liza-1 well’ hold over 700 million barrels of oil, worth about $40 billion today. The find could be a major game changer for Guyana, representing more than 12 times its current economic input, that is, if the oil actually belonged to Guyana instead of Venezuela. On January 26, 2015, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden hosted the first Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, bringing heads of state and high-level officials from Caribbean nations together with multinational executives in Washington. The stated goal of the new initiative is to help Caribbean nations “create the conditions to attract private-sector investment”, but Biden made the true objective clear when he declared, “…whether it’s the Ukraine or the Caribbean, no country should be able to use natural resources as a tool of coercion against any other country.” Without mentioning it by name, Biden was referring to Venezuela and its PetroCaribe program that provides subsidized oil and gas to Caribbean nations at virtually no upfront cost. PetroCaribe has been fundamental in aiding development in the region during the past ten years since its creation. And clearly, its perceived as a threat to U.S. influence in the Caribbean, and an affront to traditional corporate exploitation of small, developing nations. In addition to the Obama administration sanctions aimed at isolating Venezuela in the region and portraying it as a ‘failed state’, the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative takes a direct stab at Venezuela’s lifeline: oil. In the U.S. Senate Report on the Department of State’s Foreign Operations Budget for 2016, $5,000,000.00 was recommended for “enhanced efforts to help Latin America and Caribbean countries achieve greater energy independence from Venezuela”. Falling oil prices have already done damage to Venezuela’s economy, but forcing it out of the regional oil trade would hurt even more. The main conundrum of figuring out how to replace Venezuelan oil in PetroCaribe was resolved with the stroke of a pen by Guyana’s new president, a former instructor at the U.S. Army War College who made a secret trip to the United States just three days after taking office in May. Hours later, Exxon’s oil exploration rig, Deepwater Champion made its first major lucrative discovery in the large Stabroek Block in the disputed coastal territory. The Venezuelan government warned Exxon to leave the area, citing its claim over the Essequibo territory and the ongoing dispute with Guyana subject to UN mediation. But Exxon paid no heed to Venezuela, following President Granger’s lead in openly defying the Geneva Agreement and Venezuela’s calls to solve the conflict through diplomacy, involving the UN Good Offices in the resolution of the centuries-old dispute. UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon has pledged to send a commission to both Venezuela and Guyana to seek resolution for a problem that now, as Washington hoped, is dividing the region. President Maduro and his Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez have been making their case before regional leaders, encouraging other Caribbean nations to support their claim over the Essequibo, or at least approve the involvement of the UN to arbitrate the dispute. In the meantime, Guyana continues to aggressively push forward with Exxon to pursue what could become the largest oil theft in the Americas.
First Fallout got a tabletop strategy game, now it's getting a proper family night board game. Er, if your family doesn't mind irradiated mutants and gory deaths, I mean. Publisher Fantasy Flight Games has revealed Fallout, "a post-nuclear board game for 1-4 players" and speaking as a long-time fan of all things power armor and super mutant, it looks pretty radical. If you're not already familiar, Fantasy Flight is one of the biggest names in tabletop gaming. In fact, the company brought us a splendid board game based on Doom (another Bethesda property) just last year. Unlike that game, you'll be able to play Fallout solo, though it supports (and will probably be more fun with) up to four players. Players can select one of five characters, including a vault dweller, a ghoul, and a super mutant, each with their own special characteristics; for example, the Ghoul has relatively low HP but is healed instead of harmed by radiation. Then you can take them into one of the scenarios based off of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4: The Capital Wasteland, The Pitt, The Commonwealth, and Far Harbor. Significant spots like Diamond City have a set location every time, but the places between them are randomized for unpredictable adventures. I also choose to believe that the hex-shaped location tiles are a subtle callback to the grid-based isometric worlds of Fallout and Fallout 2. By exploring these regions and completing missions in the main storyline or side quests, your character will grow using a simplified SPECIAL system and competing factions (like the Railroad and the Institute) will advance their agendas. Enterprising players have multiple ways to win - or lose, if the factions move too fast and decide they don't need you any more. The Fallout board game will arrive in the fourth quarter of 2017. In other words, it'll be around in time for the holidays. And yes, I am very tempted… though, if I'm being 100-percent honest, I might want it for that Ghoul miniature in the dapper suit and tie alone. Check out our list of the best Fallout 4 settlements for more wasteland fun.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch authorities may take legal action against an exporter for violating EU sanctions on Iran by shipping equipment to the country on behalf of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the Economics Ministry said on Friday. The International Atomic Energy Organisation (IAEA) had sent the equipment to a banned recipient, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, as part of a technical cooperation agreement with the Islamic Republic, a ministry spokesman said. In Vienna, the IAEA confirmed it had ordered a helium leak detector for a cancer project it was running in Iran, but said the project had been approved by its 35-nation governing board, which includes several European Union states, in 2007. “The objective of this technical cooperation project is to prepare therapeutic sources, radiocolloid particles and radiopharmaceuticals for cancer treatment,” IAEA spokesman Ayhan Evrensel said in a statement, without giving further details. The issue appeared to highlight an unintended consequence of tightening Western sanctions against Iran over nuclear work the West suspects is aimed at making bombs, a charge Tehran denies. The Dutch ministry said the halting of equipment was due to the tougher EU rules agreed upon in July even though the detector was an instrument not necessarily for nuclear use. “In this case the use is not relevant to us. The recipient — Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran — is responsible for the disputed nuclear programme in Iran,” the spokesman said. Cranking up pressure on Iran, the United States and the European Union have imposed punitive measures in recent months that go well beyond the latest round of United Nations Security Council sanctions adopted in June. The EU measures limit the export of goods to Iran which can used be used to develop or produce weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, chemical or biological arms, the Dutch Economics Ministry said on its website. It said the helium detector was illegally transported through the Netherlands, but it did not name the exporter nor the country of origin. An investigation had been launched to see if there was enough evidence to prosecute the exporter of the detector as well as the exporter of a separate shipment to Iran of pressure metres for its gas and oil industry, the Dutch ministry’s spokesman said. Diplomatic sources in Vienna said the helium leak detector was widely used in industry and was not considered a so-called “dual use” item, which might also have military applications.
News that Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth Doctor in “Doctor Who” will be the main headline that comes out of today’s live special to announce the newest Doctor. Overall, the special was the type of fluff reserved for basketball players announcing where they will next take their talents: Thirty seconds of news took up nearly thirty minutes of airtime, which was filled with breathless analysis from people with varying degrees of connection to the show’s overall history. The two primary individuals most closely associated with the latest incarnation of The Doctor–Matt Smith and Steven Moffat–spoke only in pre-recorded bits, ostensibly to allow Capaldi as much limelight as possible and also to avoid any fanatical viewer that might have rushed the stage in joy/anger. But honestly, by the time Capaldi was announced, I had all but resolved to never watch the show again. On the surface, it’s hard to argue with the casting of Capaldi. He has a fantastic resume that includes stints on “In The Loop” as well as a major part in “Torchwood: Children Of Earth”. The fact that the show went with a much older Doctor that Smith suggests that youthful sexiness isn’t the presiding factor when casting The Doctor, and having the oldest Doctor since Russell T. Davies restarted the show in 2005 gives the show a lot more interesting room to play within the confines of The Doctor in the modern era. But it’s these very confines that have me wishing the show had decided not to simply expand the established parameters but blow up the entire paradigm. In Capaldi, the show went “older,” but still stayed “white” and “male.” When news broke that Matt Smith was leaving the show, floods of unsolicited responses came flooding from the show’s rabid fanbase, and those suggestions ran the gamut of age, race, and gender. For every Capaldi there were calls for Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lara Pulver, Jessica Hynes, and countless others that don’t fit into the mold of the previous eleven doctors. To be clear, as my colleague Linda Holmes noted on Twitter: “questioning exclusion” and “demanding entry” are two different things. Those that choose to believe that anger over casting choices today boil down to, “You only would have been happy with a woman,” are missing the point so badly that engaging with such an argument is pointless. I have only so many breaths on this earth, and wasting them trying to correct that argument is a bad use of those. Had Moffat come out and said, “You know, I heard all of those suggests for a female Doctor. And they bring up a good point! Changing things up is part of this show’s DNA. Had I thought of a good way to bring that into the story organically, I would have leaped at the opportunity. But instead of change for change sake, I went with an actor who filled my idea of the next Doctor.” Those that wanted change would have grumbled, but at least felt as if the showrunner heard and understood cries for a Doctor that was different from its predecessors, even if the show ultimately went a different way. Instead, Moffat chose to actually attack those that suggested that a female Doctor would be a good thing. Singling out Helen Mirren, who told him once that it would be good to have a female play the role, he said, “I’d like to go on record: I think it’s time that The Queen were played by a man.” Let’s just unpack this, shall we? First of all, the false equivalence here is startling, especially from a man as purportedly brilliant as Moffat. There is no way in which a male actor playing the Queen of England is the equivalent of a female actor playing The Doctor. Apples and oranges to say the LEAST. Second of all, if it’s a joke (as many in the in-house audience, who laughed, took it as), it’s a really terrible joke: since it’s impossible to equate the two, it boils down to utter nonsense. But lastly, if it’s NOT a joke, as I suspect it isn’t, then Moffat essentially said this: “It’s nice to want things. But you don’t always get what you want, and you will never get a female Doctor under my watch.” Thus we come to the crux of the problem, and Holmes’ smart and succinct separation of the issues here. The issue is NOT that Moffat didn’t cast a woman (or a non-caucasian of either gender). It’s that the thought of casting one NEVER SEEMED TO ENTER INTO THE EQUATION. It’s as ludicrous to him that a woman would be the Doctor as a man would portray The Queen. Both represent a type of drag performance that might be amusing but certainly not authentic. And given that science fiction/fantasy is a place where “what if” and “why not” have their safest homes, it’s disheartening to see limitations put on a show that is, by its design, utter limitless. And here’s the thing: Moffat’s comments didn’t slip out accidentally during the live show. They were part of a pre-taped discussion about Capaldi’s casting, which meant that 1) the thoughts were carefully thought out, and 2) no one in the BBC thought the optics of that statement were remotely problematic. It’s just mind-boggling that a jibe at those wishing for a female Doctor were overtly dismissed and met with laughter from the in-studio crowd. I don’t think those laughing are a bunch of sexist jerks that celebrate the reaffirmation of men within the world of “Doctor Who.” But I do think that it’s illustrative that so many hard-core fans find the idea of a female Doctor so confusing and strange that laughter was the only response they could muster upon being confronted by the idea. Here we arrive at the central distressing thing about today’s announcement: It missed an opportunity to push the boundaries of what not only “Doctor Who” can achieve, but science fiction serialized storytelling in general. The show’s growing popularity isn’t a reason to keep things status quo, but an opportunity to change things up and have something to say to its ever-growing fanbase. It’s not just women that would benefit from a female Doctor. Men would benefit equally, if not more, from a strong, smart, silly female Doctor who is permitted to have as many flaws, quirks, and assets as the previous eleven Doctors did. The qualities that make The Doctor one of the most powerful and popular figures in science fiction have NOTHING to do with him being male. Demonstrating this by placing those long-standing qualities into someone who looked like Michelle Dockery would push this conversation past the theoretical and into the practical, which is often the only way these asinine debates get squashed at all. I think it’s telling that when I expressed some of these thoughts on Twitter earlier today, I got many responses that boil down to, “It’s for the best: I wouldn’t want Moffat writing the first female Doctor anyways.” I have no way of knowing what’s in Moffat’s mind other than what he says publicly (thus my harping on his comment about The Queen), but it’s true that the female Companions during his run, along with River Song, have functioned more as enigmas to be solved rather than humans with whom to share adventures. Amy, River, and Clara largely existed as things for The Doctor to unpack, which in turn transformed “Doctor Who” into an increasingly elaborate box puzzle box. Wordplay, misdirection, and perplexing prophecy replaced solid character work that in turn made the show something to be solved instead of something to be enjoyed. I’m not convinced this structure means Moffat has been sexist all along; if anything, it shows his increased obsession with trying to top previous scripts in terms of complexity, something that has rubbed off to much more solid effect on “Sherlock.” Then again, “Sherlock” is essentially a romance between two men, which could further bolster those that suggest Moffat isn’t a fan of female characters. Had I not heard these rumblings before today’s special, Moffat’s comment about The Queen probably wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. Had Moffat’s companions been strong, independent figures that weren’t ignorant of their own origins, Moffat’s comments would have gone unnoticed. Instead, his comments formed a triptych along with the other two elements that suggest a large, systemic problem that has absolutely no bearing on Capaldi’s capacity to play the Doctor but everything to do with Moffat’s ability to steer that ship. Instead of focus on the new Doctor, maybe we should be focused on getting a new showrunner. The TARDIS can go anywhere in time and space. But Moffat seems stuck on the same patch of antiquated soil.
Jonathan Parnell is the lead pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis–St. Paul, where he lives with his wife, Melissa, and their seven children. He is the author of Never Settle for Normal: The Proven Path to Significance and Happiness Jonathan Parnell is the lead pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis–St. Paul, where he lives with his wife, Melissa, and their seven children. He is the author of Never Settle for Normal: The Proven Path to Significance and Happiness Not everyone will believe the gospel. Why? “God desires all people to be saved,” 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us. “God does not take pleasure in the death of anyone,” Ezekiel 18:32 says. Then why are there some who refuse to trust in Jesus and therefore die lost in their sins? There are two different answers to this question. But we should understand that these two answers go beyond making sense of God’s will of decree and will of command. Those “two wills” in God describe a biblical distinction that’s been expressed various ways in the Scriptures and throughout the centuries. God’s “two ways of willing,” writes John Piper, “implies that God decrees one state of affair while also willing and teaching that another state of affairs should come to pass” (Does God Desire All to Be Saved?, 16). This means that though God desires all people to be saved (his “will of command”), only those chosen in Christ will believe the gospel and be saved (his “will of decree”). But true as it is, this explanation still falls short of getting to the why. Why is this the case? Why does God not decree all that he prescribes? And here is where we face those two different answers. One answer is that there is something more powerful than God that is able to frustrate his will. It says that God is nice to desire all people to be saved, but he doesn’t have the strength to make it happen. The second answer says, in Piper’s words, “God wills not to save all, even though he ‘desires’ that all be saved, because there is something else that he wills or desires more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all” (emphasis added, 39). The second answer is one that both Calvinists and Arminians can affirm. Both say that God doesn’t save everyone because he is committed to something more than saving everyone. The difference between Calvinists and Arminians is seen in what that higher commitment is. Piper explains, The answer the Arminians give is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace. The answer the Reformed give is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Romans 9:22–23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Corinthians 1:29). (39) So one explanation says that the higher commitment is God leaving the destiny of our eternal souls up to our own decision-making. The higher commitment is God securing our right to let our choices be the decisive factor in where we spend eternity. The other explanation — the Calvinist answer — says that God’s higher commitment is the full display of his glory. God’s glory wins, which means that his just wrath is poured out on all unrighteousness, and his mercy is lavished on all whom he loves. God’s highest commitment — beyond his moral will that all people everywhere repent —is that the full panorama of his glory shine forth. That glory is his mercy, grace, steadfast love and faithfulness, and his refusal to by no means clear the guilty . . . so that the vessels of his mercy might know the riches of his glory (Exodus 34:6–7; Romans 9:23).
Last night, Kris Bryant became the first player in Major League history to hit three home runs and two doubles in the same game. His offensive barrage was part of a five homer attack by the Cubs — Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo also went yard last night — in their 11-8 win over the Reds. But while Bryant’s game was indeed spectacular, we also shouldn’t be too surprised that it came in Cincinnati, because the Reds staff is allowing dingers like no pitching staff in baseball history. Through 77 games, the Reds have allowed 129 home runs, 23 more than any other team has allowed this season. That works out to 1.7 homers allowed per game, a pace that would shatter the all-time record for home runs allowed if the Reds were to keep serving longballs at this rate. The title of the most homer-prone pitching staff in history currently belongs to the 1996 Detroit Tigers, who allowed 241 homers, or a rate of 1.5 homers per game. They edged out the 2000 Royals, 2001 Rockies, and 1999 Rockies, all of whom were attempting to pitch during the height of baseball’s “Steroid Era”, when home run records were falling left and right. To break the record, the Reds would have to allow 113 home runs over their remaining 85 games, a 1.3 home run per game pace that would be somewhat formidable for most pitching staffs. But for this particular group of hurlers, it’s actually not that hard to imagine them breaking the record. Over on our Reds depth chart, we currently have 25 different pitchers projected to throw at least a few innings for the Reds over the rest of the season. The forecasts for those 26 pitchers looks like this. ALL Pitchers Reds Not a stellar collections of names there; the Reds plan for pitching this year was to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what stuck, but all they ended up with is a bunch of broken noodles. But even with a pitching staff of replacement level of arms, it is remarkable just how homer prone the entire group is. Of the 25 guys on that list, exactly one — Blake Wood — is forecast to allow fewer than one home run per nine innings pitched. For context, 17 of the 23 pitchers projected to throw for the Nationals over the rest of the season are expected to allow fewer than one homer per nine innings; finding guys who can keep the ball in the park isn’t as hard as the Reds are making it look. Of course, even with a poor group of pitchers, our forecasts still only call for the Reds pitching staff to allow 102 home runs over the rest of the year, which would leave them with 231 home runs allowed, 11 shy of the 1996 Tigers record. But there is a pretty good reason to believe that the Reds pitchers might give up more homers than our forecasts expect. You’ve probably noticed that home runs aren’t only flying in Cincinnati right now. After a long stretch of dominance by pitchers, batters turned the tables in the second half of last year, and started launching home runs left and right, and that trend has continued so far this year. Thanks to the second-half homer surge last year, the league HR/FB rate reached 11.4% in 2015, and that carried over to April of this season as well. But then in May, it jumped again, up to 12.8%. In June, the league average HR/FB rate has been a ridiculous 13.9%, and at this point, we really have no idea when this is all going to level off. We’re now going on six straight months of a big surge in home runs, with the trend increasing upwards at a rapid pace. The average HR/9 in MLB this year is the same as it was back in 2000, and higher than it was in 1999 or 2001, the years that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds surpassed Roger Maris on the all-time single-season home run list. For reasons that no one has been able to entirely explain — a more tightly wound ball makes the most sense, but representatives of the league swear they’ve tested the ball and found no changes — we’re currently seeing the ball fly out of parks at record rates. And our forecasts aren’t based on that kind of extreme run environment, so if you think this home run surge is here to stay, those HR/9 projections for the Reds pitchers are probably too low. It doesn’t take much adjusting upwards in the league-average HR environment to push the Reds expected HR/9 rate from 1.2 to 1.3, and that’s the mark they’d need to reach in order to break the Tigers record. Of course, there’s still a half season to go, so maybe the Reds will find a pitcher who can figure out how to avoid throwing batting practice before the year is up. And given that they’re pitching in a year where seemingly everyone can hit bombs, perhaps setting the all-time record for home runs allowed isn’t entirely their fault. But if you’re a Reds fan looking for hope that opposing teams will stop bombarding the outfield seats at Great American Ballpark, well, I don’t have much hope for you. If nothing else is that much fun about this Reds season, at least the fans who buy tickets out there have a good chance at going home with a souvenir.
There was a great story on Radiolab about Summer Ash, whose heartbeat became really loud and powerful after her heart surgery. So loud that it could be heard by a microphone a few feet away. So powerful that if she rests her chest on a table, a glass of water will ripple like the scene from Jurassic Park. She would feel every single beat of her heart during the day, and sometimes it was so loud at night it would wake her up. And this continual awareness of her heartbeat made her feel really anxious. This is actually a common problem during meditation, especially for young people. (It seems that as you age, your awareness of your heartbeat diminishes.) You’ve probably developed negative associations with feeling your heartbeat, because it’s probably been a part of many intense experiences, like recovering from exertion, feeling strong fear or anxiety or feeling intense pressure. The advice typically offered by meditation teachers is to ignore it. Let your heartbeat be one sensation of many, and give it no particular energy or attention, they say. Meditation is about paying close attention to your inner-world, as a way of discovering your true nature. There is a lot to discover about the nature of your body, your thinking process, your memory, your self-image, your feelings and your attitude. It’s good to approach meditation with the idea that everything that happens within you, happens for a reason. Everything in you has a meaning and a purpose. The purpose is probably not what you think it is initially, because everything has layers. What then is the meaning of your heartbeat producing a feeling of anxiety? There is an important message in the beating of your heart. There is a reason why the heart has a more prominent tactile and auditory signal than any other vital organ—you need a liver, too, but my guess is that you haven’t ever really felt your liver. The reason is that the heartbeat rhythm is an incredibly important driver of your entire nervous system, having a wide variety of physiological effects from the endocrine system to your brainwaves. Your heart has a complex set of neural cells within it (yes, actual brain cells—about 40,000 of them), whose job is to determine if your heart should speed up or slow down. Your heart is exquisitely sensitive to outside stimuli, but also to inner stimuli. A thought or feeling has a big impact on your heart rate, but the effect tends to be brief, so you don’t notice it. You’ve probably heard the expression, “My heart skipped a beat.” That’s a real thing, and it describes a rapid change in your heart rate very accurately. The changes in your heart rate are called Heart Rate Variability, and it’s a positive thing. If your heart rate doesn’t change, your HRV is totally flat, and this is very unhealthy—in fact, flat HRV is highly-correlated with heart disease and mortality, so much so that doctors use it as an early-warning sign. The pattern of your HRV is associated with the activation of your vagus nerve, which is a vital part of your parasympathetic nervous system—which helps you recover from stress and feel relaxed and revitalized. Given that your physical heart beat is such an important driver of your physiological state, maybe there is a good reason to listen to it. But there are other good reasons, too. For thousands of years, the heart organ has been seen as a spiritual and energetic center, or chakra. The heart is the center of your emotions. Since meditation is about understanding yourself, meditation should help you to deeply explore your emotions, which have many layers; you are only aware of a tiny portion of your feelings, yet they drive most of your decisions. By focusing on your heartbeat, you stay focused on your emotions. So my advice to you is to embrace the feeling of anxiety and discomfort. Try to enhance it. Dive into the feeling. Yes, it’s an unpleasant experience, right now, but by embracing it, you make it more intense, but that intensity will be short-lived, and the feeling will change. Neuroscience teaches us that the strongest emotional waves appear in the brain for only 60 to 90 seconds. You will need to make your breath strong, deep, and rhythmic to give you the strength to go deeply within. This way of breathing is an art-form, and takes time to develop, but it will give you tremendous energy and vitality. Breathing rhythmically creates a coherent, wave-like pattern of HRV, which is associated with a healthy vagus nerve—which again, is central to your ability to deal with stress. When we stop resisting and embrace the feeling of our heartbeat, we will come to feel the same way as Ms. Ash, with her booming heartbeat. She came to feel that her heartbeat is her friend, and the rhythm became soothing and comforting rather than fearful. ~ Relephant Read: ~ Author: Dr. Asatar Bair Editor: Travis May Photo: Deviant Art
The Florida Orchestra is off to the races for its first-ever concert at Sebring International Raceway in March as part of TFO’s state residency program. The free performance kicks off the track’s biggest race week of the year for the 65th Annual Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida. The speed-themed concert will be in the racetrack infield on Saturday, March 11, at 4:30 p.m., with music from Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, William Tell Overture, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 and Flight of the Bumblebee, all conducted by Music Director Michael Francis. Gates open at 3:30 p.m., and the audience is encouraged to bring picnic baskets, blankets and chairs. “Sports car racing often links to the ‘wine and cheese crowd,’ so we encourage everyone to bring a picnic basket and spread out on the lawn to kick off the 65th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida,” said Wayne Estes, president and general manager of the raceway. “Presenting a Florida Orchestra concert here at Sebring will launch this historic event in a brand new way: a free concert on the lawn and everyone is invited.” Over the past six decades, Sebring has attracted the world’s finest drivers and cars on the third Saturday in March, when the motorsports world turns its attention to the track nestled among the orange groves and cattle ranches of Highlands County. Sebring hosted its first “12 Hours of Sebring” sports car endurance in 1952, with drivers competing on the grueling road course that still includes runway sections of the World War II B-17 training base known as Hendricks Field. “Sebring International Raceway has been an amazing and supportive partner among many we have found in Highlands County,” said TFO Community Engagement Director Erin Horan. “We are so thrilled to be able to kick off Sebring's 65th 12 Hour Race with a program inspired by speed and endurance that we really think the community will enjoy.” TFO’s state residency program is a combination of classical, community and youth concerts and builds on Michael Francis’ vision of extending TFO’s reach into the community and across the state to support symphonic music and education. It is sponsored in part by the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of Arts and Culture and the State of Florida. More about TFO’s 2017 state residency About Music Director Michael Francis About The Florida Orchestra The Florida Orchestra is recognized as Tampa Bay’s leading performing arts institution, the largest professional symphony orchestra in Florida, and one of the most vibrant and innovative orchestras in America. Under the leadership of Music Director Michael Francis, it performs series of classical, popular, rock and morning coffee concerts in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, as well as free Pops in the Park concerts. Dedicated to bringing music to all people, connecting to the community is a priority, with pre-concert talks, family and youth concerts and other educational activities. Kids and teens get in free to classical Masterworks concerts with Classical Kids tickets. To subscribe or buy tickets: 727.892.3337 or 1.800.662.7286; floridaorchestra.org.
Galveston immigration letter from 1910 reveals stringent rules for would-be Texans Image 1 of / 87 Caption Close Galveston immigration letter from 1910 reveals stringent rules for would-be Texans 1 / 87 Back to Gallery If you wanted to make it into Houston through Galveston in the early 1900s, you needed to come correct, according to this memo from 1910 that Slate uncovered this week. Criminals, polygamists, and anarchists need not apply, for starters. Those with a history of insanity weren't allowed into the U.S., nor were those of lesser mental capacity. Commissioner of Immigration William Williams, who wrote the letter, served as the immigration commissioner at Ellis Island for most of the first 15 years of the 20th century. These days, the letter reads very ugly and offensive, in regard to those with handicaps, but immigration officials in 1910 believed they were doing the country and state a service. They didn't want people joining American society if they couldn't work or support themselves legally. Prostitutes and pimps ("procurers," if you are so inclined) were also not wanted. So, it was a little like building a fantasy football league. Of some interest is the requirement that immigrants arrive with at least $25, which was thought to be enough to get by in their first days in America. Officials also didn't want immigrants to arrive already under a manual labor contract. This was thought to help cut down on businesses in the U.S. farming out cheap labor to people from other countries. Presumably they preferred immigrants to come to the country and find work organically, or through family already landed and planted. The letter was drafted by the Department of Commerce and Labor’s U.S. Immigration Service for use by the inspector in charge in Galveston, though the letter was originally meant for his Ellis Island counterpart in New York City. Congress chose Galveston over New Orleans as the site of a major new federal immigration station in 1906. According to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 2010, over 150,000 immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa entered Texas and parts north through the Port of Galveston from 1845 to 1924. Chances are many of you reading this have ties back to the Port of Galveston in your bloodline.
Rapper Kanye West spoke to Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club Friday, saying he is developing a video game inspired by the single, “Only One,” which is about his late mother. Kanye told the radio show’s hosts he wrote “Only One” after his mother and grandmother, who has also passed away, spoke to him through a vision about his daughter, North West. That’s when Kanye gave the scoop about the game, which he says will allow gamers to assist his mother in finding her place in Heaven. Right now I’m working on a video game for Only One, and the idea is, it’s my mother going through the gates of Heaven, and you gotta bring her to the highest gates of Heaven by holding her to the light. “You know, we’ve been working on it for like six months,” he finished. West has reportedly had an interest in video game production since he was 12 years old. In an interview with Details Magazine in 2009, Kanye described a previous idea for an adult-themed Super Mario Bros. adaptation: “My game was very sexual. The main character was, like, a giant penis. It was like Mario Brothers, but the ghosts were, like, vaginas,” he said. Mind you, I’m 12 years old, and this is stuff 30-year-olds are programming. You’d have to draw in and program every little step — it literally took me all night to do a step, ’cause the penis, y’know, had little feet and eyes. In the hour-long Breakfast Club interview, West also spoke to the show about his clothing line, his “angst” for the world, and his wife Kim Kardashian, whom he described as “a visionary.” “Only One” was released in December, and is a collaboration with former Beatle Paul McCartney. Watch Kanye’s entire interview below:
Kristen Stewart once again showed off her edgy new buzz cut as she stepped out in New York on Thursday, shortly after admitting she came out on Saturday Night Live because it "worked for the joke" she was telling in her monologue. Currently promoting new film Personal Shopper, the 26-year old actress - who has previously been romantically linked with singer-songwriter St. Vincent - caught the eye in an on-trend bomber jacket as she exited her Manhattan hotel. Displaying her abs in a matching black crop top, Kristen proved to be an engaging sight while making her way onto the sidewalk. Scroll down for video Stepping out: Kristen Stewart exited her New York hotel on Thursday after revealing she came out as gay on Saturday Night Live because it "worked for the joke" she was telling in her monologue A frayed, thigh-skimming skirt exposed her slender legs, while a pair of polished dress shoes from Ariat rounded things off. Keeping her eyes shielded behind a pair of heavily tinted circular sunglasses, Kristen listened to music through a pair of wireless headphones she took a break between promotional commitments on behalf of her latest film. Her latest appearance comes after she told Saturday Night Live viewers she was "so gay" while hosting the television programme in February. Close shave: The actress once again revealed her dramatic buzz cut as she continues to promote new film Personal Shopper Stylish: Kristen caught the eye in an edgy black bomber jacket and matching crop top Finishing touches: A frayed black miniskirt and polished Ariat shoes completed another fashion forward look Shady: Keeping her eyes shielded behind a pair of heavily tinted circular sunglasses, Kristen looked typically stylish as she took a break between promotional commitments on behalf of her latest film Kristen made the admission in front of a live audience as she lambasting US President Donald Trump, who heavily criticized the star in 2012 over her reported fling with director Rupert Sanders, while she was still in a relationship with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson. Reflecting on her decision to come out on the show, Kristen told E! News: 'Honestly, I thought it was just funny. 'Not to diminish the point because I think that saying things sort of bluntly is absolutely important, but at the same time, the only reason I haven't ever done that is because there is an ambiguity to that and I wanted things to be really real for me. But honestly, it just worked for the joke.' Laid-back look: The Twilight actress later ditched her skirt and slipped into distressed denim jeans Toned tummy: Kristen still showcased her taut torso in the street chic attire while sticking with her revealing cropped top Stepping out: She also decided to change into a pair of comfortable black sneakers and ankle socks She comes in peace! Kristen flashed the peace sign as she made her way through the Big Apple While the actress didn't purposely use the platform to do something that was going to be "so important", she admitted to being "utterly proud" that people have thanked her for speaking publicly about her sexuality. 'It wasn't like this, "Let's do this thing that's going to be so important", I just thought it was a nice slight. And also yeah, 100 percent, I'm so utterly proud that I've had so many people be like "Thank you", and I'm like "No, thank you". It's kind of mutual. It's full circle.' Discussing her decision to shave her head, Kristen revealed on The Today Show on Thursday: 'I’m doing a movie in a couple of weeks called Underwater, and I play a mechanical engineer that’s working on an oil rig on the bottom of the ocean floor, so, for me, it was like, it’s practical. 'I’m not going to be able to have touch-ups once I have the helmet on. I must shave my head. I wanted to do this for a long time for novel sake. 'At some point in your life you want to be able to do that [rubbing her head].The director suggested it. I was like: "That’s a great idea! You should take credit for that one, and I am game…It feels amazing. I just want to head bang all day."' During her SNL appearance the actress quoted several tweets by the president, in which he accused her of cheating on Pattinson 'like a dog' and urged the actor to break up with her. At one point, Trump even invited Pattinson to the Miss Universe pageant - prompting Kristen to say the mogul must have had a crush on the British actor. Kristen also accidentally used the F-word during her opening monologue, clasping her hand over her mouth when she realized what she'd said, and joked that the president probably wouldn't like her because she was 'so gay'.
Chinese animal lovers release rescued dogs that were supposed to be sold as meat in 2011. He kills dogs by firing a poisoned dart from a crossbow. But a dog meat vendor in Hunan province died while demonstrating how to use it to members of his operation - after accidentally shooting himself with the same thing, the South China Morning Post reported. The incident reportedly happened in June 2013. The vendor was hit in the leg and died on his way to hospital. Over 1,000 dogs killed Chinese media updates said five other members of the group were later arrested. They had confessed to killing more than 1,000 pooches as part of the operation and froze the carcasses so the meat can be sold later. The meat is popular in Hunan and in cities in Zhejiang , Guangxi and Guangdong provinces. Some Chinese believe eating dog meat will dispel evil ghosts and ward off disease. It is widely believed the meat can boost a man's sexual performance. But aficionados face pressure from China's animal rights groups, who have been campaigning to end dog meat festivals. Sources: South China Morning Post, AFP
This information has been compiled by the Minecraft community on the Minecraft wiki. Please visit the Hardware Performance wiki page for the most up to date information, or to compare your computer's hardware and software with other users' computers listed as being able to play the game. If you are unsure of whether or not your computer is powerful enough to run Minecraft, it is highly suggested that you try the demo before purchase. A computer with the minimum requirements should be able to play Minecraft: Java Edition. However, for the best experience, please consider the recommended requirements. Minimum Requirements: CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz / AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz or equivalent RAM: 4GB GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Ivy Bridge) or AMD Radeon R5 series (Kaveri line) with OpenGL 4.4* GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series with OpenGL 4.4 HDD: At least 1GB for game core, maps and other files OS: - Windows: Windows 7 and up - macOS: Any 64-bit OS X using 10.9 Maverick or newer - Linux: Any modern 64-bit distributions from 2014 onwards Internet connectivity is required for downloading Minecraft files, afterwards offline play is possible. Recommended Requirements: CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent RAM: 8GB GPU: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series (excluding integrated chipsets) with OpenGL 4.5 HDD: 4GB (SSD is recommended) OS (recommended 64-bit): - Windows: Windows 10 - macOS: macOS 10.12 Sierra - Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards Software Requirements: Minecraft Release 1.6 or newer. Older versions will need to be updated to current versions Please note that some users experience issues playing Minecraft while using a mismatched version of Java for their operating system (32 or 64 bit), while using certain versions of Java 7, or while multiple versions of Java are installed Starting from Minecraft 1.12, Java 8 will be required to run Minecraft. If you don't know whether you have Java 8, don't worry - our installers supply Minecraft with its own version of Java by default. A stable internet connection is required for Minecraft to download game files, authenticate usernames, and connect to multiplayer servers. Minecraft will not run on a toaster (despite some actually using Java), your car (feel free to prove us wrong, though), Windows RT tablets or a Chromebook. Information on system requirements for running a Minecraft server can be found on the Minecraft wiki.
Washington (CNN) Donald Trump dismissed Tuesday President Barack Obama's mocking of the the GOP presidential candidates' criticism of the CNBC moderators in the last debate. Trump, whose campaign decided to continue dealing directly with the TV networks rather than forming a united front with other presidential campaigns, said he "doesn't care too much" about the debate format, instead knocking Obama's handling of the country. "They've been hitting me one way or the other. I just want to have the debates. I like the debates. They can ask tough questions. ... I just want to answer the questions and be done with it, frankly," Trump said on ABC's "Good Morning America." Of Obama's criticism, Trump added, "He can't handle the country. He's doing a terrible job running the country." Obama ripped into the GOP's field of 2016 hopefuls on Monday night, noting that while they've knocked him for being "weak" on the international stage, "it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators." Read More
The 2016 plug-in electric hybrid Volt will be revealed Monday morning. “We believe our engineering prowess combined with data from thousands of customers allows us to deliver the most capable plug-in vehicle in the industry,” GM North America President Alan Batey said in a statement. (Photo: Chevrolet) General Motors Co.'s second-generation Chevrolet Volt features a sporty and more premium appearance, adds a fifth seat and boosts electric range by about 30 percent, to an estimated 50 miles. Total range with its gasoline engine increases from about 380 miles to 420 miles. The 2016 plug-in electric hybrid Volt, heavily influenced by customers' feedback, will be revealed Monday morning, the first press preview day at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But the star of Chevy's reveal is expected to be a concept car, the Chevrolet Bolt, that would get 200 miles or more of electric range and could be a game-changer in easing motorists' "range anxiety." "The 2016 Chevrolet Volt provides our owners with a no-compromise electric driving experience," GM North America President Alan Batey said in a statement. "We believe our engineering prowess combined with data from thousands of customers allows us to deliver the most capable plug-in vehicle in the industry." CLOSE The unveiling of the 2016 Chevy Volt and the Bolt EV concept Clarence Tabb Jr/The Detroit News While the Volt has been hailed by GM and the industry for its innovation and bringing new, wealthy and highly satisfied customers to the Chevy brand, it has not met sales expectations. Former CEO Dan Akerson wanted production to hit 60,000 a year by 2012, and GM at one point set a sales goal of 45,000 for 2012. Total U.S. sales since the Volt went on sale at the end of 2010 have surpassed 73,000, but 2014's 18,805 sales fell 18.6 percent from the year before. The all-electric Nissan Leaf sold 30,200 last year in the U.S. Its sales rose 33.6 percent from 2013. GM is not talking about its volume expectations for the Volt 2.0 or its sticker price. Steve Majaros, director of Chevrolet marketing, would only say that Chevy was adding content in an efficient way, that the price will be competitive and "we know the space where we need to be." The Volt's $40,000 price was cut by $5,000 in 2013 to help boost sales. Majaros said Chevy will be targeting more tech-friendly people with the new Volt, in addition to early adopters of technology and current Volt owners. He said low gas prices won't deter sales, and Chevy will increase marketing spending to get the word out on the new Volt. IHS Automotive senior analyst Stephanie Brinley said Chevy has a pricing issue with the Volt. The brand has to convince people that buying the plug-in hybrid at a time of cheap gasoline will save them money in the long term. "The trick is to find people who are willing to accept that more efficiency comes at a higher cost, but that more efficiency for its own sake is important," she said. Plug-ins and electric vehicles represent about 3 percent of the U.S. market, and Brinley said dropping the price of the Volt won't necessarily make its sales grow. She said it appears GM isn't focused on driving huge volume growth for this car and understands growth will take time. Brinley said the boost in electric range is a "good jump" and gives a cushion for the majority of drivers who average 40 miles a day. But some automotive industry analysts such as Dave Sullivan of AutoPacific Inc. had hoped to see electric range closer to 60 miles or even higher. He previously told The Detroit News that if the car's electric range came in at less than 50 miles, it wouldn't wow anyone. Sullivan said the Volt's price needs to drop below $30,000 to increase sales volume. The second-generation Volt still features its hatchback design, but the rear is more tapered. The car also has a more sculpted and flowing shape that Chevy says was inspired by elite athletes such as marathon runners. "The Volt is really about endurance, mileage, going the distance," said John Cafaro, executive director for Chevrolet global design. Inside the Volt, the interior also is quieter, sportier and more functional, with a simplified center stack and separate climate controls. Cafaro said the interior is spacious, has more curves, is more inviting and uses soft, premium materials. It features a standard rear-vision camera, charging enhancements, longer center armrest, available heated rear seats and steering wheel, optional wireless smartphone charging and OnStar 4G LTE embedded Wi-Fi hotspot. Volt customers wanted a fifth seat, so Chevy added one. But with the T-shaped battery pack running underneath, and rear cupholders, a passenger would have a tough time sitting in that seat for very long. "It's not something you'd want to travel cross-country in," said Andrew Farah, the Volt's chief engineer. The Volt is built on a new architecture and has a new propulsion system, with a two-motor drive unit that is up to 12 percent more efficient and is about 100 pounds lighter. It also has a 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine that will get a combined 41 miles per gallon fuel economy, up from 37 miles per gallon today. Its expected to have a 102 miles per gallon equivalent rating. The gas engine will operate on regular-grade gas; the current-generation Volt requires premium. Acceleration improves at slower speeds, with drivers reaching 30 miles per hour in 2.6 seconds and zero to 60 mph in about a half second faster at 8.4 seconds. Horsepower and torque also improve. The battery system is 20 pounds lighter, and better battery chemistry and lithium-ion cell design improves density by 20 percent, while the number of cells has been cut to 192 from 288. Battery charge time for those using a 120-volt plug (more than half of Volt customers today) increases to 13 hours from 10 hours because of the size of the battery, GM says. Chevy says that more than 80 percent of customer trips in the first-generation Volt are all-electric, and it expects to boost that percentage to 90 percent with the new Volt. GM CEO Mary Barra last week wouldn't comment on whether GM was able to cut $10,000 in cost out of the Volt, but said the company "made substantial improvements." The Volt, the first of five significant Chevy launches this year, will be built at GM's Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. It's expected to go on sale in the second half of 2015. mburden@detroitnews.com (313) 222-2319 Twitter.com/MBurden_DN Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1IEj9en
Lampard scores from the spot seven minutes from the end to seal Chelsea's win Frank Lampard's late penalty earned Chelsea victory and condemned leaders Manchester City to their first Premier League defeat of the season. Lampard - once again excluded from Chelsea's starting line-up by manager Andre Villas-Boas - came off the bench to score the winner with seven minutes left after Joleon Lescott handled Daniel Sturridge's shot. Mario Balotelli gave City a lead their early domination deserved but Chelsea forced their way back into contention through Raul Meireles's equaliser before half-time. Roberto Mancini's side were reduced to 10 men early in the second half when Gael Clichy was sent off, leaving Chelsea to make the most of their numerical advantage and record a third win in succession to leave City with a two-point lead over neighbours Manchester United at the top of the table. Media playback is not supported on this device Title bid back on track - Villas-Boas City will regret not putting the game out of reach in an imperious opening spell - but Chelsea demonstrated the resilience of old to survive that siege and emerge with a win that puts them only seven points off the Premier League summit. Villas-Boas insisted Chelsea were showing signs of a revival after beating Newcastle United and Valencia following a torrid spell. This, however, was a serious examination of their recovery and they passed the test successfully. And Lampard, pushed to the margins in the last two games, proved his character to step up under pressure in the closing minutes to convert that vital penalty. Villas-Boas revealed afterwards that Juan Mata had been the designated spot-kick taker, but after a brief discussion with the Spaniard Lampard took responsibility. City's unbeaten league run came to an end after 15 games - now Mancini and his players must regroup ahead of Sunday's meeting with improving Arsenal at Etihad Stadium. Chelsea made one enforced change, with Jose Bosingwa replacing the suspended David Luiz - while Balotelli was recalled to instant effect for City. CITY'S 10-MAN BAND Manchester City have now had three men sent off in the last six Premier League games Sergio Aguero must take much of the credit with a turn that left John Terry trailing and a sublime pass with the outside of his right foot into the path of Balotelli. The young Italian may be turbulent elsewhere, but in the penalty area he is calmness personified, as he proved by dismissing the attentions of Branislav Ivanovic to round Petr Cech to score. City were in command and should have doubled their lead after 14 minutes when Aguero brushed aside Bosingwa and wrong-footed Ashley Cole, only to drag his shot wastefully wide. David Silva then appealed for a penalty when he fell under Bosingwa's challenge - but referee Mark Clattenburg waved play on while declining to punish the Spaniard for diving. Media playback is not supported on this device Mancini disappointed to see unbeaten run end Chelsea, as much by force of will as any real superiority, dragged themselves into a game which had been completely in City's control and were rewarded with an equaliser 11 minutes before the break. Once again the goal owed almost as much to the creation as the finish, with the impressive Sturridge escaping from the toiling Clichy before crossing for the incoming Meireles to volley powerfully past City keeper Joe Hart. Former Manchester City player Sturridge was one of Chelsea's leading lights on a stormy evening and he was only just off target with a rising drive a minute after the restart from Mata's free-kick. City went down to 10 men just before the hour when Clichy, who had been booked early in the second half for fouling Sturridge, tripped Ramires to earn his second yellow card. It capped a miserable night for the defender, who had suffered in the face of Sturridge's pace and threat. Media playback is not supported on this device Lampard salutes Chelsea spirit Chelsea, having been outplayed in the early stages, now sensed victory and Villas-Boas introduced Lampard with 17 minutes left in an attempt to make their numbers count. Mancini appeared to have settled for a point by removing Aguero for Kolo Toure and sending on Nigel de Jong for Silva - but Chelsea were not to be denied. And Lampard it was who put Chelsea in front with seven minutes left. There were few complaints from City after Sturridge's shot hit the raised hand of Lescott - leaving Lampard to drill the penalty straight down the middle before celebrating with the supporters behind the goal in the Matthew Harding Stand. Live text commentary
Britain looking at blockchain for tracking taxpayer money, payments LONDON: The British government is exploring using the blockchain technology that underpins the bitcoin currency to increase efficiency in the distribution of taypayers´ money such as grants, a minister said on Tuesday. A blockchain works as a decentralised ledger that is verified and shared by a network of computers, and can be used to record data as well as to secure and validate an exchange of assets, such as currencies or commodities. Banks and other financial institutions are increasingly investing in blockchain technology, reckoning it could cut their costs and make their operations faster and more transparent. Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock said the government was examining how the technology could be used to manage and keep track of the distribution of public money, such as grants and student loans, saying it could "foster a new culture of trust". "Government cannot bury its head in the sand and ignore new technologies as they emerge," Hancock, who holds the post of paymaster general, said a blockchain networking event in London. "That is partly what happened in the past in government with the web. We cannot let (that) happen again by standing still. "Britain has had a patchy record with government IT systems. Previous IT problems have hit the passport agency, the tax credit system and most notably the National Health Service which was forced in 2011 to announce the abandonment of a multi-billion pound scheme to computerise every patient record.
This is the second part of a 3 part series on what to expect from JavaScript in 2017 taken from our whitepaper, "The Future of JavaScript: 2017 and Beyond". You can download the entire whitepaper for free at http://www.telerik.com/whitepapers/kendo-ui/the-future-of-javascript-2017-and-beyond. To read about our predictions for 2018, please refer to our newest whitepaper, The Future of JavaScript: 2018 and Beyond. 2016 was a pivotal year for JavaScript developers. That seems rather ironic considering that every year is somewhat of a pivotal year since JavaScript and the web platform seem to be in a state of constant evolution. The best practices of yesterday are today's anti-patterns; yesterday's libraries, today's technical debt. This makes it all together frustrating to feel like one has ever really "mastered" JavaScript and has even garnered a catch word of its own in the industry known as " JavaScript Fatigue". While change is inevitable and moving forward is always the best path, it is worth revisiting the past so that we can learn from it. It's in that spirit that we look back on how JavaScript evolved in 2016, and what it's trajectory is for 2017; so that we can ready ourselves for the next big changes for JavaScript. Libraries And Frameworks It's no longer debatable that JavaScript has amassed a popularity that is unmatched in the software development world. This manifests itself largely by the sheer number or open source frameworks that are released each year for JavaScript developers. The site javascripting.com attempts to catalog each of these different frameworks and their popularity. There are 73 pages of libraries available. While there are innumerable JavaScript libraries for various pieces of functionality (User Interface, Date Parsing, Data Storage, Ect), developers will be primarily familiar with the so-called JavaScript Frameworks ; those libraries whose purpose it is to help you compose the different pieces of your application. In the State of JavaScript Survey from Sasha Greif, the libraries that made the cut for awareness were React, Angular, Ember, Vue and Backbone. In addition, Aurelia gets a nod on the strength of its repeated occurrence as a write-in candidate. For those reasons, we're going to look at each of these frameworks, substituting Aurelia for Backbone given the age of Backbone and its likely appearance as a legacy. We'll also look at Kendo UI since we make that UI framework and therefore have a unique ability to predict it's future. Looking back can help us determine how each of these frameworks impacted web development in 2016, as well as where they are likely headed. First, it's important to recognize the fundamental way in which the model of open-source has changed. An Open Source Shift JavaScript has long enjoyed an almost entirely open-source pedigree. Up until now that was primarily on the strength of some remarkable individuals, such as John Resig ( jQuery), Jeremy Ashkenas (Backbone, Underscore), Thomas Fuchs ( Zepto, script.aculo.us), Mihai Baizon ( Uglify), Eric Schoffstall ( Gulp), Ben Alman ( Grunt), and a host of others. The community would rally around these projects and remarkable things were accomplished. The entire web was run primarily on the work of thousands of individuals who had never even met. Angular was the first open-source library to change this model. The Angular project is primarily built and controlled by Google. There is a team of developers, marketers and the like that are paid by Google to work on this project full time. React became the second entry in this category of "Corporate Open-Source". Initially created at Facebook, it is heavily promoted and marketed by Facebook who also pays a team of developers to work on React and React based tools and frameworks, such as React Native. Despite this, both frameworks are truly open-source in the classical sense that they have enormous communities that surround and contribute to their success. The defining difference is that at the end of the day, large corporations pour millions of dollars into these projects and therefore ultimately own and make the decisions on these projects. Why they do it is the source of some debate, but it is always safe to assume that corporations invest in the future of their bottom line. Doing otherwise is counter to the health of the entity. Open Source Predictions For 2017 Given the now large corporate involvement in open-source, we will likely see this trend continue in 2017. Look for players such as Microsoft and even Apple to join in the fray with their own large open-source offerings for JavaScript developers. Angular We opened last year's discussion of frameworks with React, but 2017 likely belongs to Angular, so we'll start there. Last year we predicted that Angular 2 would be released in the first quarter of 2016. A release candidate was announced in May at ng-conf, but there ended up being 5 release candidates and each was a large breaking change from the previous, which did continue the instability of Angular through to the middle of September when Angular 2 Final was released. "What does "final" mean? Stability that's been validated across a wide range of use cases, and a framework that's been optimized for developer productivity, small payload size, and performance. With ahead-of-time compilation and built-in lazy-loading, we've made sure that you can deploy the fastest, smallest applications across the browser, desktop, and mobile environments. This release also represents huge improvements to developer productivity with the Angular CLI and styleguide. " Jules Kremer – Angular Team In addition to the core framework, the Angular team also released a command line interface tool to help with controlling the complexity of an Angular applications and scaffolding out commonly used boilerplate. Angular Predictions For 2017 Given the amount of interest in Angular despite it's rough road to final release and dozens of breaking changes, it's clear that Angular enjoys a level of trust and adoption that virtually guarantee that Angular will be the dominate framework in 2017. Angular has some concepts that make it remarkably unique, including module theory and it's complete de-coupling from the DOM. This makes frameworks such as NativeScript possible so that developers can build native mobile apps with the same knowledge that they use to build web applications. The end of 2017 will see 2 major version releases of Angular. However, versioning for Angular is now semantic, so the major version changes will be taken in stride. However, each major version will be an opportunity for the team to introduce necessary breaking changes, but we will not see the API change drastically the way it did between versions 1 and 2. React React was an anomaly in 2015, and that trend continued with force in 2016. React is only a portion of the full front-end framework solution that most developers are looking for, which is the major difference between it and the other frameworks discussed here. That makes it very hard to draw a direct comparison. In 2016, we predicted that React's popularity would continue to grow, especially with consumer facing applications. This turned out to be extremely accurate. While the enterprise seems to have been slower to adopt React, public facing applications are lining up with big names such as Airbnb, Dropbox, eBay, Expedia, and even internet behemoths such as Netflix. We predicted that there would be continued controversy around JSX, which is the way React mixes HTML in JavaScript in an XML like fashion. However, this melted into a complete non-issue in 2016 with nobody even batting an eye at this concept anymore. We predicted that 2016 would be the year of the commercial React ecosystem. This turned out to be incorrect. While the open-source community is quite large, it is still very difficult to find complex, commercial grade React components from well-known vendors. We predicted that enterprises would continue to watch React from a distance. This turned out to be largely true with the RC and Final releases of Angular completely overshadowing React in the enterprise. This list of companies that use React confirms this assumption. React Predictions For 2017 Considering that React does the few things that it does so well, it's not likely that we will see a new or different version of React in 2017. Given that Facebook weighed in on the React Starter Kit landscape by releasing the "Create React App" package, it's likely that we may see them release other official React components. It's easy to speculate that the React Router project may be merged into the official React repo at some point. It's also somewhat likely that React will release its own UI component framework in 2017. This is because Facebook itself has a lot of standard UI and CSS components. Given the recent trend to package and open-source virtually everything they do, I would not be at all surprised to see a Facebook Bootstrap of sorts. Vue didn't even make our cut last year when we made framework predictions, and that's because it simply wasn't on the radar at that time. Since then, Vue has garnered a decent amount of attention from the JavaScript community. As of the time of this writing, Vue is trending on GitHub with 122 stars just today and over 35K all time. Compare that with Ember which has 17K stars and Angular with 53K. There is no denying that Vue is a contender. Vue is different from all the other players in this article primarily due to its simplicity. Vue is likely the easiest of the modern JavaScript frameworks to work with. Its API is similar in some ways to Backbone (such as specifying elements and data for chunks of HTML) and there is also some influence from Angular in terms of using special custom HTML attributes to easily bind the DOM to Vue models. It also doesn't eschew classic web development the way React does with JSX. Its single script include is a breath of fresh air in an era of JavaScript build systems that tend to cripple developers with their complexity. Vue Predictions For 2017 Due to the intentional simplicity of Vue, its grass-roots success and the constant draw of web developers back to the core concepts of the browser, we predict that Vue will unseat React in 2017 as the light-weight front-end framework of choice for consumer facing applications. That may seem like quite the statement, and is probably the wildest prediction of this article, but Vue contains all the elements of projects past that have taken the web by storm (see Bootstrap, jQuery), and unlike React and Angular, it is not built by a for profit corporation, which is more true to the basic tenants of the open web. Enterprises will continue to favor Angular due to its strong corporate backing element. In 2016, we didn't say much about Ember, other than that it was a "sleeper" framework and would continue to be just that. This is largely the case. Ember has a loyal cult following, but it tends to be like a musical act that everyone has heard of, but few people listen to. However, those that do will swear that it's the best band of all time. We predicted that Ember would be the popular alternative to React for those consumer-facing applications, but it appears that honor has gone to Vue. It should be noted that it is technically possible to use React alongside something like Ember. This is because React only solves part of the full stack JavaScript problem – specifically the view part. That means that it can also be used with Angular, although we typically do not see developers mixing React with another large-ish framework – Flux and Redux not withstanding. Ember Predictions For 2017 We don't have any predictions for Ember in 2017. Much like jQuery and Backbone, this is a framework that is mature and unapologetic in its implementation. The only prediction one could safely make is that none of this will change. Aurelia made our list last year and we had several predictions for the somewhat niche front-end framework. Aurelia frequently shows up in requests from customers that we talk to. It shows up more often than any other framework in this article aside from Angular. What is it about Aurelia that developers seem to love so much? It could be the fact that it comes from the creator of Caliburn.Micro which enjoyed massive success inside of the .NET community. It could be because it relies almost entirely on just plain JavaScript contructs and doesn't involve a lot of boilerplate. Whatever the reason, Aurelia has won the hearts and minds of some section of developers and deserves investigation by anyone looking for their next JavaScript framework. In 2016 we predicted that developers would adopt Aurelia in droves in 2016. While Aurelia seemed to hang on to its dedicated core, we did not see strong increase in the interest of Aurelia over 2015. The Google search trends show roughly the same sentiment over 2016. We also predicted that Aurelia might see a native counterpart, such as NativeScript or ReactNative. This also did not turn out to be true, despite Aurelia's explicit goal to be more than just a web framework. "We've always seen Aurelia as a platform and ecosystem for building rich interactive applications on every device. In 2016, you'll see the next phase of that vision realized as we move beyond Aurelia's v1 release and on to other things we're planning," Rob Eisenberg – Creator of Aurelia We predicted that large enterprises would begin to adopt Aurelia since it was an officially supported product. This also turned out to be largely incorrect as Angular continues to dominate the enterprise JavaScript spectrum. Rob Eisenberg recently published an article on the future of Aurelia which makes it much easier for us to speculate on the future. Of note from his article was the intention to create UI components specifically for Aurelia. Aurelia Predictions For 2017 Aurelia is a fascinating alternative to Angular and React, and we're continually inspired by the work that Rob and his team do on the project. However, the sheer dominance of Angular and React (or Vue) leave little room for anyone else besides niche players. While not much of a prediction, our guess is that this will remain the case for Aurelia in 2016. We also think that it will likely lose developers to Angular, which shares some concepts with Aurelia, such as using plain JavaScript classes as the binding context. While not a front-end framework like the rest of the items in this list, Kendo UI is a bit of an anomaly. It is first and foremost a UI library of widgets and components. However, the version of Kendo UI based on jQuery does contain portions of full stack framework features, such as two-way binding, routing and view management. This qualifies it for inclusion in the article. In 2016, Kendo UI release Kendo UI For Angular 2 Beta, which was a complete re-write of Kendo UI to use Angular as the underlying framework for DOM manipulation, binding, routing and the like. This allows Kendo UI to leverage all the advantages of Angular, such as… Binding speed Ahead of time compilation Dependency management Kendo UI Predictions For 2017 To be fair, we make Kendo UI so we know a bit about where it's going. To that end, expect a full release of Kendo UI for Angular, which includes all the widgets in the Kendo UI portfolio, by May of 2017. We will also continue to work on Kendo UI For jQuery in 2017 as we don't see jQuery going anywhere and it's still the most popular way that our customers build their applications. In addition to the UI framework itself, Kendo UI will release Kendo UI Builder, which is a visual tool for designing user interfaces composed of Kendo UI components. While currently limited to OpenEdge data sources, a mature Kendo UI Builder would connect to any data source to allow easy drag-and-drop composition and configuration of user interfaces with real time visual feedback. We'd like to close out our section on frameworks by discussing what may be the most important technology that the web community has yet to adopt: Web Components. We've lumped Polymer in here as well because it is Google's polyfill library for Web Components which are largely unusable cross-browser without it. Web Components are a standard for the way that developers build and deploy components for web applications. These are typically thought of as visual components, or rather custom HTML elements, but they can also include processes that occur in the background, such as AJAX. Web Components are so critical because they are the only thing that will be able to curtail the Cambrian explosion of JavaScript libraries, all of which may implement components in a different way and are usually only usable with a specific JavaScript framework. Unfortunately, React inadvertently put the brakes on Web Components by creating a simple and elegant component model that worked across all browsers without polyfills or hacks. The rapid adoption of React meant that developers' interest in Web Components was negated by their frenzy for React, which offered a similar yet much slimmer solution. It also highlighted that web components in their current state are still not meeting developers where their needs are. In 2016, we predicted that all major web browsers would support Web Components by 2016. This is simply not the case. The following chart shows the state of browser support for Web Components as of the time of this writing. Basically, Chrome is still the only browser that fully supports Web Components. Firefox has put HTML imports on hold and Custom Elements and Shadow DOM are still behind flags. Safari has remained annoyingly silent on HTML Imports, but in a surprising pivot decided to ship an implementation of Shadow DOM. While Edge appears to be the holdout, they have announced intent to ship support for HTML Template elements. They have not, however, fully committed to Web Components, citing that they will instead ship support for features as they become stable pieces of the Web Components Standard. "Following template support, and after completing the DOM rewrite, the next goal is to implement Shadow DOM, the second-hardest feature to polyfill, followed by Custom Elements. We plan to evaluate the rest of the first generation of Web Component specs after that. Naturally, as the specs continue to evolve and additional web component-related technologies rise in importance we may shuffle priorities along the way." Travis Leithead and Arron Eicholz – Microsoft Edge And Web Components We also predicted that JavaScript frameworks would begin to swap out their own component implementations in favor of Web Components. Given that Web Components aren't fully baked, this has not happened. However, Angular was designed from the beginning to support Web Components. They even ship their own Shadow DOM emulation. In other words, when Web Components are ready, only Angular is specifically designed to use them. This is another reason that we are building many of our own components on Angular's infrastructure, so that when Web Components are ready, our own leap won't be nearly as far. This is the first part of a 3 part series on what to expect from JavaScript in 2017 taken from our whitepaper, “The Future of JavaScript: 2017 and Beyond“. You can download the entire whitepaper for free at http://www.telerik.com/whitepapers/kendo-ui/the-future-of-javascript-2017-and-beyond Other articles in this series:
But one area where they do not fall short is in the power stakes, with them pumping out much more horsepower than the V8 power units that they replaced. They easily charged past the 900bhp figure, and there are now indications that the benchmark engine produced by Mercedes is giving out as much as 1000bhp during qualifying laps. Of course, the figure will not be confirmed, with the technicians led by Andy Cowell at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains obviously keeping details about its state-of-the-art engine a secret. However, sources with good knowledge of the situation suggest that the latest specification Mercedes engine that was introduced at the Belgian Grand Prix is producing 980bhp. But a manufacturer not currently involved in F1 conducted a data-gathering exercise at the Singapore Grand Prix to check on the progress on the current power units. Using sound analysis to compare the performance of the engines – allied to calculations of the electrical energy boost – an interesting aspect came to light. The results of the sound testing, which have been supplied to Motorsport.com, suggest that at peak power the Mercedes is able to reach an impressive peak of 1000bhp This is during the final qualifying efforts, when its drivers are able to make use of a special setting to get a power boost for 50 seconds to aid their qualifying performances. The magic button Estimates suggest that this 'magic button' boost for qualifying – which changes the mapping of the engine – is worth around 80bhp. We know from the Belgian Grand Prix that Mercedes customer Williams was left three-tenths of a second down when neither Felipe Massa nor Valtteri Bottas could use this qualifying setting on Saturday afternoon. Even using the 980bhp figure, which includes the 160bhp that comes from energy recovery from the MGU-H and MGU-K, it means the internal combustion engine is producing around 820 bhp. That in itself is hugely impressive considering it is just a 1.6-litre engine and has strict limits in terms of a fuel flow rate of 100 kg per hour at 10,500rpm, plus a number of exotic materials that could help improve performance are banned. If you take away the 80bhp boost that Mercedes is estimated to have for qualifying, it means that in the races, the Mercedes is producing 750bhp from its engine – a figure that is not much greater than Ferrari's 061/1 – while Renault and Honda are a little further away. What seems to make a big difference to the Mercedes performance is that it has more peak power available when it is needed in qualifying and certain race situations. At the restart at the Singapore Grand Prix on lap three, Nico Rosberg was instantly able to open up a lead over Daniel Ricciardo to get himself out of the DRS zone – before the engine was wound back down to allow him to maintain the gap. Ferrari's form this season appears to show that it is in a position to match Mercedes in race settings – but falls back when it comes to deliver a qualifying boost. It is an area that the engineers at Maranello have been working exceptionally hard at trying to address to allow Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen to challenge the pace-setting Mercedes. Reliability concerns It will be a tremendous achievement by Andy Cowell if Mercedes is now pushing on past the 1000bhp barrier, for it is something that Ferrari has not been able to achieve because of reliability concerns. Mercedes' reliability has been pretty strong over the second half of the campaign – despite early issues this season for Lewis Hamilton which resulted in him needing to take extra power unit components at Spa. Ferrari still has much work to do to be able to unlock a qualifying boost, with a clever system last year of storing fuel past the fuel flow meter to deliver an extra boost when needed having been clamped down on by the FIA. There have also been rumours that gains can be had by using trick chemicals in the oil to boost power in the fuel chamber, but whether this is truth or fantasy is unclear. What we do know, however, is that Mercedes is the class of the field in power stakes right now, as F1's engines return to the peak levels of power that were last witnessed in the mid-1980s.
Man Charged With Terrorism-Related Murder In Attack At London Mosque Enlarge this image toggle caption Metropolitan Police via AP Metropolitan Police via AP Police have charged Darren Osborne with terrorism-related murder and attempted murder over an attack in which investigators say Osborne drove a van into a crowd of people leaving a mosque in north London early Monday. Osborne, 47, is scheduled to appear in Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday afternoon. One man died and eight people were sent to hospitals for treatment after the attack, which took place shortly after midnight. The van, a rental vehicle, struck a crowd of people who had gathered as a man was receiving first aid. Osborne, a father of four, is from Cardiff, Wales, police say. As The Two-Way reported earlier this week, Osborne's family released a statement saying, "We are massively in shock, it's unbelievable, it still hasn't really sunk in. We are devastated for the families, our hearts go out to those who've been injured." Osborne is accused of killing Makram Ali, 51, in the attack in the Finsbury Park neighborhood, which is home to many immigrants. Ali had come to the U.K. from Bangladesh when he was 10. "He was married with four daughters, two sons and two grandchildren," London's Metropolitan Police said earlier this week. "He regularly attended the local mosque and enjoyed visiting the local park with his grandchildren." In the wake of the attack, the Pontyclun van rental company, a family-owned business whose vehicle was used by the London attacker, issued a statement expressing its sympathy — and condemning "despicable comments" that the company said were made online by the son of one of its owners. Police in South Wales arrested Richard Evans over the comments — in which he said it was "a shame they don't hire out steam rollers or tanks could have done a tidy job then" — on the grounds that his message was "likely to stir up racial hatred," the BBC reported. His father, Len Evans, said, "I want to condemn in the strongest possible terms these ill-considered Twitter comments, which in no way reflect my own view or indeed of anyone else in the family."
ARLINGTON, Tenn. - A high school graduation ceremony turned into a brawl Tuesday. The video that shows people punching and shoving each other -- even pulling hair -- has gone viral. The chaos apparently started over an argument about saved seats. In the video, a man shoves a woman in a brown dress. That woman shoves the man back, another person throws water, and then things escalate. Several more shoves ensue between the two groups sharing the same pew. The profanity-laced video rolls on, as attempted punches are thrown and others try to separate the two sides as women begin fighting and then tussling on chairs. [WATCH: Tennessee high school graduation fight] Things don't slow down as the woman in the brown dress continues her aggression. She's seen pulling another woman's hair and landing several punches before the two are separated. All of this happened before the Arlington High School graduation procession. "I'm sitting here, going, is this really happening right now, in the church?" Octavius Adams said. Adams recorded the rumble and posted it to Facebook. The social media site took it down Wednesday. "I think it was important because most people have (the) general idea that things like that only happen in certain areas. They think it only happens towards a certain race, but my thing is behavior is human behavior, it's not race behavior," Adams said. In a statement, an Arlington Community Schools spokesperson said: "It was unfortunate that a couple of adults in the audience exhibited the behavior they did prior to the ceremony beginning and thus has caused a distraction from the celebration of our students' accomplishments. "The graduation ceremony was not affected by this incident due to the actions of Bellevue's security team who promptly removed the adults from the ceremony." Local police and sheriff's officers say their officers were not called in to assist and that no one filed a report, and there were no arrests. Ian Burdick allowed KPRC to use his video. Download the Click2Houston news app in your app store to stay up-to-date with the latest news while you're on the go. Sign up for KPRC 2 newsletters to get breaking news, sports, entertainment, contests and more delivered straight to your email inbox. Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.
AFRIN, Syrian Kurdistan (Kurdistan24) – A top Syrian Kurdish official in the country’s north-west district of Afrin said on Thursday that Russian forces asked them to allow the Syrian army enter Afrin in order to stop the Turkish attacks on the region. In an exclusive interview with Kurdistan24, Bahjat Abdo, a senior commander in the Syrian Kurdish YPG forces and the Head of Defence Authority in Afrin, said they would never allow the Syrian regime to return to Afrin. “Russians say if we allow the Syrian regime forces enter Afrin, they will stop the Turkish attacks,” he said. “We drove the Syrian regime out of Afrin five years ago, and it is impossible to allow them back,” Abdo further added. The western and eastern countryside of Afrin, which is held by the Kurdish YPG forces, has been bombarded by both Turkish-backed Syrian militants and the Turkish military since the US-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) tightened the noose on the Islamic State (IS) in Raqqa two weeks ago. According to the Kurdish YPG press office in Afrin, dozens of civilians were killed and wounded in the Turkish bombardment on Afrin and Shahba district in Syria’s north-west. Abdo attributed the Turkish attacks on Afrin to Turkey’s failure in futile attempt to stop Kurdish expansion in northern Syria. “The current attacks on Afrin Canton and Shahba district is a result of the Turkish failure,” he said. “Turkey tried in various ways and through extremist movements to thwart the Kurdish revolution in Rojava,” Abdo said referring to the Syrian armed groups backed by Turkey. Abdo further criticized the Turkish policy in handling the situation in Syria. “Through supporting the radical and extremist forces [in northern Syria], Turkey lost its historical values,” he said. “This is why Turkish government has gone crazy in its policy and actions,” he further explained the reason behind the Turkish attacks on Syria’s Kurdish-held areas. Additionally, Abdo attributed the attacks to the losses of IS in Raqqa to the SDF of which the YPG is a key component. “Because Daesh [IS] is losing its last stronghold in Syria, Turkey is making all this chaos in the region,” he said. Abdo also criticized the Russians’ position towards the attacks on Afrin. “Russians say they are supporting us when their forces enter Afrin, but unfortunately when the Russians entered Afrin, the Turkish attacks increased,” he said. “Russians and Turks want to create more chaos and disturb people's lives and forcibly displace them,” he added.
San Diego, CA (June 22, 2017) IDW Games announced today that, in its continued relationship with Nickelodeon, it will release tabletop games based on The Legend of Korra television series, the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. The first game planned for release is The Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena. Designed by Sen-Foong Lim (Akrotiri, The Godfather: A New Don) and Jessey Wright (Pocket Adventure), The Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena aims to capture the excitement of the pro-bending sport found in season one of the show.Focusing on the rivalry between the Future Industries Fire Ferrets and The White Falls Wolfbats, The Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena has two players each take control of a team, draft card decks for their benders, and then play cards to place elemental tokens around the board in an effort to overwhelm their opponent. As in the show, pro-bending matches are a game of push and pull, with the objective to be the team that has either advanced the farthest forward, or completely knock their competitors out of the ring. “We’re thrilled to be working closely with Nickelodeon on The Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena,” said Jerry Bennington, VP of New Product Development at IDW Publishing. “The relationship has truly helped hone the game into an experience that can be enjoyed by all tabletop gamers, but will also be an exciting addition to The Legend of Korra universe that fans love.” Nickelodeon and IDW Games previously collaborated to release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past. The Legend of Korra: Pro-bending Arena will launch on Kickstarter this summer, with a retail release this fall and an expected MSRP of $49.99.
April 16, 2010 CFTC Approves Media Derivatives, Inc. Designated Contract Market Application Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today approved the application of Media Derivatives, Inc. (MDEX) for designation as a contract market. The Commodity Exchange Act requires the Commission to approve such applications if the applicant meets criteria enumerated in the Act. MDEX also has requested approval from the CFTC of a contract related to motion picture box office receipts. The Commission is still considering that issue. Moreover, given the novel nature of the contracts that MDEX has proposed trading, the CFTC has requested, and MDEX has agreed, that rather than self-certifying such contracts, MDEX must submit all new classes or categories of media-related contracts it lists for approval by the Commission. The Commission has not approved the trading of any futures or options related to box office receipts at this time. Media Contacts Scott Schneider 202-418-5174 R. David Gary 202-418-5085
Page Content Desperate to fill open positions, some employers are beginning to soften zero-tolerance drug policies, particularly for jobs where safety is not an essential function. Low unemployment and increasing use of illegal drugs are narrowing the pool of qualified workers in many regions and industries. State laws allowing medical and recreational use of marijuana are complicating recruiters' efforts to find drug-free employees, as is the continued abuse of prescription opioids. [SHRM members-only policy: Drug and Alcohol Policy] There are no indications that employers are relaxing standards for jobs that are safety-critical. Some such positions, including airline pilots and truck drivers, are regulated by the federal government and have strict prohibitions against drug use. However, HR and drug testing industry leaders say some employers are taking a new look at—and in some cases relaxing—their drug policies for positions that entail relatively low risk of injury or error, such as clerical and knowledge economy jobs. "Anecdotally, there are some employers who have relaxed their standards. It's unclear how widespread it is," said Rick Farrant, a spokesman for Northeast Indiana Works, a nonprofit workforce development organization based in Fort Wayne, Ind., that assists mostly health care and manufacturing employers. "There's more flexibility out there. There's not a bright-line policy like there used to be," said Robert Capwell, chief knowledge officer of Baltimore-based pre-employment screening firm Employment Background Investigations Inc. "It's based on individualized assessment." Drug abuse remains rampant in the U.S. Marijuana and opioids are not the only problems. Cocaine and methamphetamine abuse continues to rise nationally, according to the Quest Diagnostics 2017 Drug Testing Index. The percentage of job applicants who test positive for illegal drugs in the U.S. is also increasing, according to Quest, a major testing company based in Madison, N.J. It was 3.7 percent in 2012, 3.8 percent in 2013, 4.0 percent in 2014, 4.2 percent in 2015 and 4.4 percent in 2016. When all reasons for testing are combined, almost 5 percent of the general workforce tested positive for one or more drugs in 2016, compared with 2 percent for those in federally regulated safety-sensitive positions. Conversations Needed Before relaxing zero-tolerance drug policies, make sure everyone in the company leadership supports the move and how to deal with the consequences. "Make sure these decisions are pushed up the chain. Consider your risk tolerance for the workforce, and consider your risk tolerance for litigation," said Matthew F. Nieman, a principal in the Washington, D.C., region office of law firm Jackson Lewis. "Zero tolerance still has a place. But you don't want that policy just because you've always had it." "When you have a zero-tolerance policy, you are putting a flag in the ground and taking a really strong stand," said Adam R. Calli, SHRM-SCP, founder and principal consultant of Washington, D.C.-based Arc Human Capital. "If that's what you want to do, that's OK. It can be a good thing. It sends a cultural message." But Calli cautioned: "You are taking away your flexibility. You might want to think it through." For example, an employer might not consider a positive drug test for marijuana use an automatic disqualifier if the applicant has a state-issued card permitting medical marijuana use and if the job does not demand excellent reactions and dexterity, such as operating a crane on a high-rise building. "There's clearly much more of a fitness-for-duty component now," said Barry Sample, senior director, science and technology for Quest Diagnostics, regarding employers' approach to drug use by job applicants. "With a more clerical type of position, you'll be less concerned about prescription opioids." "There's nothing wrong with tailoring your drug testing to the job," Calli said. Sample said he has seen no significant changes in which drugs employers test for in states where marijuana use has been sanctioned. Nationwide, he said, almost all employers use a basic drug test that screens for amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, PCP and some opioids. About half of tests include one or more additional drugs. Opioids pose a unique dilemma for employers. An applicant or employee might test positive for one such drug, but if he or she presents a valid prescription—typically to a medical review officer that works for a third-party vendor—the test result will be considered irrelevant and the recruiter or manager likely will never know of it. Making It Clear Experts said applicants who use illicit drugs yet take pre-employment drug tests anyway might be hoping that employers are relaxing standards or that they will get lucky and fool the testers. Calli said that some employers are revising their job application forms to state clearly on the signature page that any job offer is contingent on drug test results, so as to minimize the frustration of finding a promising candidate but having to disqualify the person. Some employers are also reconsidering their responses to a positive drug test by someone already on the payroll. "Some smaller employers desperate for local employees are treating cannabis much like alcohol in the sense that, as long as it's not being used on the job, it's not necessarily a cause for termination," said Laura Handrick, HR analyst at New York City-based Fit Small Business, which operates a website that serves small businesses. However, none of the changes in employer policies and practices excuses an employee who is impaired while working. Showing up for work intoxicated or falling asleep on the job cannot be ignored. After an incident—particularly one involving property damage—the employer can send the worker for a drug test if its policies authorize such action. Farrant noted that employers face high benefits costs for impaired employees and liability for accidents and workers' compensation claims. "There's too much riding on it" for employers not to deal with such employees. Capwell said employers should improve supervisors' training so that they are able to identify possible signs of impairment among workers. In addition, he urged companies to review their policy on drugs at least once a year. Maintaining productivity and protecting fellow employees are important reasons for testing applicants. "Most employees like working in a place that has drug testing," Handrick said. No one is predicting a sudden solution to the problem of drug abuse—or how employers should react. "It's going to get messier before it gets better," Capwell said. Steve Bates is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area. Was this article useful? SHRM offers thousands of tools, templates and other exclusive member benefits, including compliance updates, sample policies, HR expert advice, education discounts, a growing online member community and much more. Join/Renew Now and let SHRM help you work smarter.
Record drought puts Agrisure Artesian corn technology from Syngenta to the test – trials show yield advantage of 16.8% 12.04.12 Drought-resistant hybrid corn seed outperforms trial averages by 16.8%, or an additional 10.9 bushels/acre, in severe and extreme drought conditions, as observed in 1,100 field trials in 2012 Increases crop yields during water-stressed growing conditions all season long Effective risk management tool that helps growers stabilize yield and grow more corn Minnetonka, Minn., U.S.A. — Syngenta announced today that results from extensive field trials during 2012 confirmed that under severe and extreme drought conditions, hybrids with Agrisure Artesian™ technology produced 16.8% higher yields compared to the plot average. The trial database included competitor hybrids with and without drought tolerance technology. In a widespread drought like the one experienced in the 2012 season, one quarter of the corn crop could have conceivably been affected by at least severe and extreme level drought. A 16.8% yield increase on these acres would translate to enough corn to fill a train of railcars more than 1,315 miles long, or long enough to span the entire Corn Belt – from Ohio to Colorado. “This year corn farmers faced one of the worst droughts in decades, inflicting incredible water stress on crops and significantly impacting yields,” said Duane Martin, Ph.D., Syngenta product lead, commercial traits. “In extensive field trials, our Agrisure Artesian technology performed extremely well in these conditions and showed that it will serve as a cost-effective solution to help maximize corn production in less-than-ideal growing conditions.” During 2012, corn hybrids containing Agrisure Artesian technology were tested extensively in more than 1,100 on-farm trials across the Corn Belt. Field trials included a wide range of production environments, from highly-productive conditions to extreme drought stress. Under severe and extreme drought conditions1 corn hybrids containing Agrisure Artesian technology produced 16.8%, or 10.9 bushels/acre, higher yields compared to the plot average, showing that hybrids containing Agrisure Artesian technology offer an effective risk management tool that can help growers stabilize yields in uncertain conditions. In cases of extreme drought conditions, hybrids with Agrisure Artesian technology produced yields of 48.4% or 15.1 bushels/acre, versus the plot average. These hybrids, in some cases, nearly doubled the yield of hybrids without the Agrisure Artesian trait. Additionally, hybrids with Agrisure Artesian technology matched or exceeded the yield of comparable hybrids in good growing conditions or moderate drought stress, showing the ability to maximize yields for top return in typical years. Proven to maximize yield when it rains, and increase yield when it doesn’t, Agrisure Artesian technology is available for planting in most areas of the Corn Belt for the 2013 season. Agrisure Artesian was developed using proprietary Gene Blueprinting™ technology. As a result, Agrisure Artesian contains multiple genes that have been identified and selected from corn’s own genome. The genes work in complex ways to help plants use water more efficiently at every growth stage to provide season-long drought protection, setting this technology apart from its competitors. Please Click Here For more information about Agrisure Artesian technology, to see side-by-side comparison photos and to hear from growers who have used this technology,, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook Yield of Agrisure ArtesianTM hybrids vs. plot average by yield environment 1. For this research, Syngenta defines a yield environment of 50–99 bu/acre as “Severe” and fewer than 50 bu/acres as “Extreme”. # # # About Syngenta Syngenta is one of the world's leading companies with more than 26,000 employees in over 90 countries dedicated to our purpose: Bringing plant potential to life. Through world-class science, global reach and commitment to our customers we help to increase crop productivity, protect the environment and improve health and quality of life. For more information about us please go to www.syngenta.com Media Contacts: Jodie McClement 336.632.2489 Lisa Martin 919.870.5718 Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as ‘expect’, ‘would’, ‘will’, ‘potential’, ‘plans’, ‘prospects’, ‘estimated’, ‘aiming’, ‘on track’ and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. We refer you to Syngenta's publicly available filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for information about these and other risks and uncertainties. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors. This document does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitation to sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer, to purchase or subscribe for any ordinary shares in Syngenta AG, or Syngenta ADSs, nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract thereof. ©2012 Syngenta. Agrisure®, Agrisure Artesian™, Gene Blueprinting™, the Alliance Frame and the Syngenta logo are trademarks of a Syngenta Group Company. Crops or other material produced from Agrisure Corn Traits products can only be exported to, used, processed and/or sold in countries where all necessary regulatory approvals have been granted. Performance evaluations vs. competitive products based upon interpretation of publicly available information, public presentations, regulatory submissions, and/or field observations.
Engineers at Brown University have developed a system that cleanly and efficiently removes trace heavy metals from water. In experiments, the researchers showed the system reduced cadmium, copper, and nickel concentrations, returning contaminated water to near or below federally acceptable standards. The technique is scalable and has viable commercial applications, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields. Results appear in the Chemical Engineering Journal. An unfortunate consequence of many industrial and manufacturing practices, from textile factories to metalworking operations, is the release of heavy metals in waterways. Those metals can remain for decades, even centuries, in low but still dangerous concentrations. Ridding water of trace metals “is really hard to do,” said Joseph Calo, professor emeritus of engineering who maintains an active laboratory at Brown. He noted the cost, inefficiency, and time needed for such efforts. “It’s like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.” Heavy Metal Removal That may be changing. Calo and other engineers at Brown describe a novel method that collates trace heavy metals in water by increasing their concentration so that a proven metal-removal technique can take over. In a series of experiments, the engineers report the method, called the cyclic electrowinning/precipitation (CEP) system, removes up to 99 percent of copper, cadmium, and nickel, returning the contaminated water to federally accepted standards of cleanliness. The automated CEP system is scalable as well, Calo said, so it has viable commercial potential, especially in the environmental remediation and metal recovery fields. The system’s mechanics and results are described in a paper published in the Chemical Engineering Journal. A proven technique for removing heavy metals from water is through the reduction of heavy metal ions from an electrolyte. While the technique has various names, such as electrowinning, electrolytic removal/recovery or electroextraction, it all works the same way, by using an electrical current to transform positively charged metal ions (cations) into a stable, solid state where they can be easily separated from the water and removed. The main drawback to this technique is that there must be a high-enough concentration of metal cations in the water for it to be effective; if the cation concentration is too low — roughly less than 100 parts per million — the current efficiency becomes too low and the current acts on more than the heavy metal ions. Another way to remove metals is through simple chemistry. The technique involves using hydroxides and sulfides to precipitate the metal ions from the water, so they form solids. The solids, however, constitute a toxic sludge, and there is no good way to deal with it. Landfills generally won’t take it, and letting it sit in settling ponds is toxic and environmentally unsound. “Nobody wants it, because it’s a huge liability,” Calo said. The dilemma, then, is how to remove the metals efficiently without creating an unhealthy byproduct. Calo and his co-authors, postdoctoral researcher Pengpeng Grimshaw and George Hradil, who earned his doctorate at Brown and is now an adjunct professor, combined the two techniques to form a closed-loop system. “We said, ‘Let’s use the attractive features of both methods by combining them in a cyclic process,’” Calo said. It took a few years to build and develop the system. In the paper, the authors describe how it works. The CEP system involves two main units, one to concentrate the cations and another to turn them into stable, solid-state metals and remove them. In the first stage, the metal-laden water is fed into a tank in which an acid (sulfuric acid) or base (sodium hydroxide) is added to change the water’s pH, effectively separating the water molecules from the metal precipitate, which settles at the bottom. The “clear” water is siphoned off, and more contaminated water is brought in. The pH swing is applied again, first redissolving the precipitate and then reprecipitating all the metal, increasing the metal concentration each time. This process is repeated until the concentration of the metal cations in the solution has reached a point at which electrowinning can be efficiently employed. When that point is reached, the solution is sent to a second device, called a spouted particulate electrode (SPE). This is where the electrowinning takes place, and the metal cations are chemically changed to stable metal solids so they can be easily removed. The engineers used an SPE developed by Hradil, a senior research engineer at Technic Inc., located in Cranston, R.I. The cleaner water is returned to the precipitation tank, where metal ions can be precipitated once again. Further cleaned, the supernatant water is sent to another reservoir, where additional processes may be employed to further lower the metal ion concentration levels. These processes can be repeated in an automated, cyclic fashion as many times as necessary to achieve the desired performance, such as to federal drinking water standards. In experiments, the engineers tested the CEP system with cadmium, copper, and nickel, individually and with water containing all three metals. The results showed cadmium, copper, and nickel were lowered to 1.50, 0.23 and 0.37 parts per million (ppm), respectively — near or below maximum contaminant levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency. The sludge is continuously formed and redissolved within the system so that none is left as an environmental contaminant. “This approach produces very large volume reductions from the original contaminated water by electrochemical reduction of the ions to zero-valent metal on the surfaces of the cathodic particles,” the authors write. “For an initial 10 ppm ion concentration of the metals considered, the volume reduction is on the order of 106.” Calo said the approach can be used for other heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, and tin. The researchers are currently testing the system with samples contaminated with heavy metals and other substances, such as sediment, to confirm its operation. The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, through the Brown University Superfund Research Program.
A slide from one of the training materials used at the Joint Forces Staff College which openly advocates using terrorism to fight terrorism. (Click to Enlarge) Madison Ruppert, Contributor Activist Post Recently released documents, including full presentations, dealing with the training soldiers received at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, reveal that our military is actually advocating the use of terrorism in an attempt to fight terrorism. As insane as it sounds, it is quite unfortunately true, as you will realize as you read on. Even more unfortunate is that this is actually far from isolated, evidenced by former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani advocating terrorism, the Israeli Vice Prime Minister supporting terrorism, and the training of terrorists by both the United States and the Israeli Mossad. Let us first examine the definition of terrorism. The only problem is that there is no consensus either in academia or the international legal system as to what terrorism even is. Clearly, this presents a problem when trying to deal with this subject, but since we will be dealing with the government of the United States of America in this article, we’ll have to settle with their definition. United States government’s official definition of terrorism, as written in U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d) is as follows: (d) Definitions As used in this section— (1) the term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than 1 country; (2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents; (3) the term “terrorist group” means any group, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism; (4) the terms “territory” and “territory of the country” mean the land, waters, and airspace of the country; and (5) the terms “terrorist sanctuary” and “sanctuary” mean an area in the territory of the country— (A) that is used by a terrorist or terrorist organization— (i) to carry out terrorist activities, including training, fundraising, financing, and recruitment; or (ii) as a transit point; and (B) the government of which expressly consents to, or with knowledge, allows, tolerates, or disregards such use of its territory and is not subject to a determination under— (i) section 2405(j)(1)(A) of the Appendix to title 50; (ii) section 2371 (a) of this title; or (iii) section 2780 (d) of this title. One glaring problem here is the vague nature of the definition, which is hardly accidental. Just as the USA PATRIOT Act uses intentionally vague language to leave plenty of room for government misconduct, the definition of terrorism is left intentionally vague in order to be able to apply to anyone and everyone who the government sets their sights on. However, this also allows us to include the military as “subnational groups or clandestine agents” and thus, as you will see, the methodology being taught to our soldiers at the Joint Forces Staff College is clearly advocating using terrorism to fight terrorism. The materials obtained by Wired’s Danger Room and given to soldiers as a part of this course are just now emerging (and can be seen below), and the Department of Defense has supposedly canceled the class, but the perspectives revealed in these documents are nothing short of disturbing. Among other things, the military actually taught soldiers that in order to protect America from Muslim terrorists, they must wage a “total war” against all of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Indeed, one of the options promoted in Lieutenant Colonel Matthew A. Dooley’s presentation, “A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model” is “taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.” In Lt. Col. Dooley’s model, the claim is made that “due to the current common practices of Islamic terrorists” the Geneva Convention IV 1949 standards of armed conflicts and UN endorsements of it are “no longer relevant or respected globally.” Dooley goes on to claim that this gives us the ability to attack civilian populations, citing “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, [and] Nagasaki.” Dooley indeed realizes how repugnant his position is, although he puts it lightly in writing, “Some actions offered for consideration here will be seen as not ‘politically correct’ in the eyes of many, both inside and outside the United States.” Yes, Dooley, that is because you’re advocating terrorism and the outright slaughter of civilians in order to further your cause. No matter how you wrap it up or frame it, you are promoting terrorism. Plain and simple. One interesting tidbit included in one of the documents which many so-called conspiracy theorists will likely get a kick out of is the mention of transitioning the Muslim world “to 21st Century, representative, democratic, ‘globalist’ values.” Disturbingly, Lt. Col. Dooley of the Army still holds his position at the Joint Forces Staff College pending an investigation. Steven Williams, the Joint Forces Staff College spokesman, refused to discuss Dooley’s course or his status at the college. When Williams was asked if Dooley was responsible for the material in the course, he responded with an even more disturbing answer, “I don’t know if I would classify him [Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Major General Joseph Ward. Danger Room rightly points out, “That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material.” Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets If Williams was correct in his statement, this belief that terrorism should actually be considered as an option goes all the way to the upper ranks of the military. Also quite troublesome is the fact that the damage has already been done. The officers, including colonels, lieutenant colonels, captains, commanders, etc. who attended his course have already been moved up in the military ladder without being “deprogrammed,” as it were. The most glaring problem – aside from advocating killing civilians – is that Dooley fallaciously conflates all of Islam with what is known as “Islamism,” or the fundamentalist and sometimes radical or militant interpretation of Islam. Dooley and the other instructors who produced this laughably imbecilic and at times highly offensive material do this through a wide variety of methods both subtle and overt. One of the most overt comes when Dooley reminds us that his model (which is “not the Official Policy of the United States Government or the DoD, nor are they in any part listed within the current NSS, NDS, QDR, QDDR or any official DoD document” except their training materials of course) promotes “a direct ideological and philosophical confrontation with Islam.” “This confrontation will likely make anyone who sees the world in morally equivalent and/or religiously equivalent terms very uncomfortable,” he added. I truly hope that no one looked over these materials before Dooley used them in his classes, and I also hope that at least one student questioned his positions. Not only because he is clearly saying that we should consider using terrorism to fight terrorism, but also because these materials are so painfully moronic that I almost find it hard to believe that Dooley and the others were allowed to teach at all. One glaring example is that he claims that the United States was founded under “a ‘judeo-christian’ [sic] ethic of reason and tolerance.” He then goes on to claim that deconstructionist philosophies have instilled in us that “Islam and its ideology/politics of hate/violence are just as legitimate as Christianity, capitalism or representative democracy.” Either Dooley is one of what I like to call “Christians In Name Only” (CINOs) or he simply forgot that whole “Thou shalt not kill” part of the Ten Commandments. Maybe the irony of him claiming that deconstructionist philosophies and moral relativism are flawed while claiming that we should consider targeting civilians and invoking Christian philosophy is lost on him, but it certainly is not lost on me. Dooley and others in the American intelligence, law enforcement and, of course, military communities – who Danger Room collectively refers to as “a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts” – have been attempting to shift the focus from “terrorists” to Islam itself. Like other intellectually stunted individuals in government, Dooley claims, “We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” a claim which is wholly unfounded. As I previously reported, a survey conducted last year actually found that Muslims categorically reject violence against civilians more often than so-called Christians (who are, of course, CINOs if they ever accept such a tactic in any circumstance). “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction,” Dooley concluded. Once again, Dooley seems to miss just how ironic it is to call Islam a “barbaric ideology” while saying that the United States should seriously consider targeting civilian populations. Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today! Dooley was not the only one spewing hateful rhetoric during his eight-week course. Others included: Shireen Burki, an “independent consultant/trainer and writer on subjects relating to as [sic] South Asia/Middle East; counter terrorism and strategic communication” (according to this bio) who called Obama “bin Laden’s dream candidate” and called Islam “an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.” Stephen Coughlin, an individual who was fired from his position consulting the military Joint Staff who said that al Qaeda helped overthrow Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi as part of a scheme to take over the world while mocking those who disagreed. John Guandolo, a former FBI employee who told World Net Daily that Obama has fallen under the influence of Islamic extremists and attempted to justify the Crusades by saying they “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.” An investigation into how Dooley was able to present this course, which was “an official Defense Department-sanctioned course,” according to Danger Room, is to reportedly to be conducted by Major General Frederick Rudesheim, the results of which are due May 24. Unfortunately, as was the case with the insane FBI memo which instructed agents that they could “bend or suspend the law” the vast majority of the damage has already been done. These intellectually bankrupt ideas have already been placed in the minds of soldiers who were under the impression that they were being trained by an informed individual and assumedly integrated the information accordingly. All we can do is hope that none of them took any of these insane ideas to heart. Furthermore, we can only hope that these ideals are not shared by many, as if that was the case we would have a military replete with soldiers who believe terrorism could actually be the answer to terrorism. To read the JFSC Training Manuals click HERE. Did I forget anything or miss any errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to contact me at [email protected] with your concerns, tips, questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your fancy. Please support our work and help us start to pay contributors by doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store. This article first appeared at End the Lie. Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected] var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’
TOKYO: Japan is promoting programs to produce computer hackers as the country needs about 80,000 more information security engineers to deal with cyberwarfare, a report said. More than 160,000 of the 265,000 already involved in the service need further education, The Mainichi reports quoting government panel of experts on information security. In addition to increasing the number, it is imperative to secure “manpower with outstanding abilities,” the panel stressed. In August, 41 high school and university students, aged 16 to 22, gathered at a training institute in the city of Chiba for a five-day “security camp” hosted by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, or IPA, to learn from experts about computer viruses and cyberterrorism. The participants, chosen from 250 applicants based on computer-related knowledge and skills, also engaged in a hacking competition. A 20-year-old female student from OkinawaPrefecture said the annual camp offered programs that were of “high levels I’ve never experienced.” Masahiro Uemura, head of the information security policy section at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry which oversees the IPA, said, “It is essential to have young hackers with initiative to cope with sophisticated (cyber)attacks.” The ministry supports Japan’s biggest hacker competition, launched in August, in a bid to recruit young talent. The ministry has added a plan to its budget request for fiscal 2014 to establish a task force in the IPA to hire a dozen young hackers every year and send them to companies suffering cyberattacks.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post that went if not viral, then just a little bit sick. It was one of those popular outbursts we see people have on social media wherein I told folks (in this case, those who believe that Islam is intrinsically evil) to go and fuck themselves. I did this in part because I find sentiment of the type lacking in logic, but mostly because a Muslim pal was copping shit. Since muggins here did her thing on Facebook, several people have sought permission to republish the post and many more have published it in any case. Someone even asked me if they could set it to music. I said no. Because I regret writing it, and I wanted to explain why. (Have a cuppa, this is not going to be short. You know me. I fucking go on.) Let me say that the post was a fair summation of how I feel about intolerance of the type. As an address in a public forum, however, it does not represent how I think about intolerance of the type. Telling people to go and fuck themselves is wrong; and not just because it’s impolite. It is wrong because it locates intolerance of the type in the individual, and not in the society that produced that intolerance. I write unstintingly with the difference between a society and an individual in mind, except on the day I wrote that post. Understanding this distinction and this relationship is central to my worldview. In hundreds of articles a year that few people read, I talk about society and plead with people to think that individualism is an ideology, and not a natural thing that just is’. And when I posted that “go fuck yourself” thing, I addressed individuals and made them responsible for a social disorder. Because I was in a mood and not thinking clearly. And it’s probably going to stand as the most “shared” item I’ve ever written. Shit. I believe those of us who are concerned about the rise of intolerance of the type must return, again and again, to this idea of society, and not individuals, producing such sentiment. And, no, I am not letting deeply intolerant or fact-averse people off the hook here. I am not saying we need to love them or talk in a reasonable way if they are doing something awful. But I am saying, for the sake of the future and the fuck, that we MUST think about what we are doing when we criticise them, instead of criticising the society that produced that sentiment. It is at about this point in my argument that someone always says “This is bullshit. Society is made of individuals, Razer is a suckhole and I am cancelling my subscription.” But, there is a real difference, and I think you can see it if you try. Societies are machines. They are not individual people. They are big and they have their own logic which often overwhelms individual intervention. You may be able to think about this in terms, say, of the nations from which a lot of asylum seekers are currently fleeing. You may permit yourself to understand how some people in Iraq might be coerced by economic and social factors and opportunistic leaders into thinking a certain way about the west . But,what you may not see so clearly is that some people in the west can be coerced by economic and social factors and opportunistic leaders into thinking in a certain way about Iraqis. You say that it’s all their fault. As though that fault were produced just by the individual, and not by the society the fault serves. Intolerance serves a (terrible) purpose. Just as intolerance of the west serves ISIS, intolerance of Islam serves Australia’s investment class. All these people blaming Islam for the shit that they find themselves in, never blaming the rent-seekers who actually put them in the shit. This works really nicely for society’s richest people and entities. Yay, the underclass is fighting itself. If I were to meet, say, a young Iraqi man whose desperate parents had given him to a radical mullah as a boy because, you know, the US and its allies have bombed all the schools in Iraq, and I spoke to him reasonably about his loathing for my nation, I wouldn’t achieve much, right? If I said, “Habibi. We’re not ALL like that,” he wouldn’t give a shit. It is unreasonable to expect him to give a shit. It is unreasonable to expect him to lift himself in an instant from years of ideology (I would say at this point that Islam is not an ideology, it’s a faith, but that’ll just provoke more intolerance in the comments) formed in poverty and war. If I gave him an awareness ribbon, if I told him to “just love” or if I told him to go and fuck himself, none of this would work. Okay. Well, it doesn’t work on people who can’t afford air-conditioning in mining electorates, either. There are SO many things that produce intolerance. A lack of needs-based education funding for starters. A stagnant wage. Experience of domestic violence, which occurs more often in impoverished homes. (Cue, feminist comment saying “all women suffer equally under patriarchy”. No, they don’t.) The knowledge that you’ll never have anywhere permanent to live. Insecurity (real insecurity, I’m not talking about vague-fear-of-terrorism Sonia Kruger insecurity here) makes people insecure. And, you know, it is really fucking difficult to think and to love, especially when you’ve got little education and no aircon and dad’s whacked you and called you a poofter again. Some of the world’s best minds grapple with the stuff of society and how its arrangement produces particular attitudes, and they’re still confused. So, you tell me how some poor white kid in western Sydney is going to think about this complexity. When someone comes along, like P Hanson, and not only gives voice to your sense of persecution but gives you what feels like a big, social solution to your very shitty life, you might think, “Yeah. It’s the brown people and those gays with scholarships getting all the stuff that belongs to me”. The young man from Iraq. The young man from Mount Druitt. They’ve got more in common than you think. Like a lot of terrible things, intolerance is pretty complex. It does not arise for a single reason. It does not have a simple history. As such, it does not have a simple solution. I know that people mean well when they write or say or broadcast something simple and emotional. When they declare “My answer is to love everyone” or, as was my answer, “everyone go and fuck yourself”, they mean well. But the road to hell is paved with passionate posts on Facebook. (And I should have kept my Strong Feelings to myself. I guess what I’m saying is, ergh, “Sorry”.) I do not claim to have diagrammed all the causes for intolerance. I don’t have a nice infographic I can post. But I will say that if we do not consider harsh economic conditions as a significant factor in the rise of intolerance in Australia and in other western nations, then we are fools. I am from a white working class family. However, I am not an intolerant person (well, not of social categories of people, just of fucking everything) due largely to the social wealth I experienced. I grew up in a time when my parents, neither of whom finished secondary education, could afford to buy a home. Four doors down was a pretty decent state school. I am legally blind and like many disabled kids back then, I was afforded extra funding to make my education useful. Close to us was a nice library, built from the belief that citizens who pay taxes deserve knowledge, inter alia, in return. It genuinely never occurred to me for the first nine years of my life to think of brown people as inferior, dangerous or somehow more or less persecuted than I was. Then, I heard some white kid call a brown kid a bad name and when I asked my dad what it meant, he said, “It means that the kid that said the bad name comes from a poor family”. And, much of the time, that’s still what it means. And we fucking alleged “progressives” very rarely take this into account. We correct their spelling, we call them idiots and we say “why don’t you check your facts”. I don’t know. Maybe after ten hours on the floor at Target, all you have time or inclination to do is smoke a bowl. And, no. To be gracelessly clear, I am not saying that you should feel sorry for such persons. I am not saying they get a free pass because life is tough. No more than, say, Islamists should. I mean, do I need to actually say to my tens of readers that some persons in aspiring Islamist states became extreme in their views because they didn’t have a choice? And I know bombs aren’t raining down in Lindsay, but things are pretty shit there, all the same. And they are shit in a way that I, having been educated reasonably well and produced by good social policy settings that have now been switched in favour of investors, cannot imagine. But, we must try to imagine why people are becoming so intolerant and blaming their lot on a particular ethnic or religious group. And you must think how fatuous you seem are and how extreme your privilege appears when you urge them to use “respectful” language. They see, and not without reason, such verbal shifts as the hobby of a class with greater leisure. They think that if you have enough time on your hands to chastise them for wearing Native American headdress to a costume party or to ask them not to use “gay” as a slur, that you’re on a better wicket that they are. And you know what? Much of the time, they’re right. Individualist progressivism is a middle-class pursuit. It’s also an ideology. We “progressives” no longer think about solidarity with people whose lives and labour conditions have been screwed. There are certain of these people we might lend our support to, sometimes. But we largely consider the chief measures of progressivism to be things like respectful language and same-sex marriage and being “culturally sensitive”. We have little interest in fighting for wealth equality and even less than in admitting that this lack of equality is, in part, what produces intolerance. We are culturally sensitive but we are no longer socially and economically sensitive. The ALP took the decision more than twenty years ago to turn its back on its working class base. They appeal to people like you and me who have evolved or inherited a middle-class sensibility and just love it when Shorten says something to Corey Bernardi like, “At least I’m not a homophobe”. Now, I am a queer person and I have very good reason to loathe homophobia. But I am also a citizen of a nation so busy talking about cultural sensitivity, it has no obvious interest in economic and social reform. Why is Shorten wasting his time trading personal insults with an idiot, when he could be talking trade? Which has FUCKED us. And has fucked so many people so badly, they become intolerant. And, no. I am not saying there was a golden time in Australia. I know, I know. The White Australia Policy. But, if we can preserve what is good about our cultural sensitivity and let it, please, take a back seat for a while to social sensitivity, we could drive into the future without crashing. Progressives will not admit these culturally insensitive people to their movement. Progressives have come to believe in the idea of the good individual. All this “It all starts with you” shit. Fucking, balls. I think the idea of the good individual is an ideology as extreme as Islamism or as intolerance of the type I’ve been describing. And I know it’s extreme, because so many people who believe it can’t recognise it as a belief. (N.B. I recognise my beliefs as beliefs. I might come across as smug. That is largely because I am an arsehole. But still, an arsehole who acknowledges her beliefs.) You think an intolerant person or an Islamist thinks they’re extreme? No, they don’t. They think they’re utterly logical. So do the “It All Starts With Me” and “If I Can Touch Just One Person” mob who make up the progressive rainbow army of the present. It might feel all nice and fluffy and right-minded, all this compassion talk. But, I’m telling you, this individual shit is extreme. We can use the respectful language. We can do the eco-tourism. We can buy fair trade chocolates and teach our children that some people have two mummies and tell newcomers that we’re very interested in their culture. But we must not expect that everyone can do this before we see them as our comrades. We cannot demand of a white underclass in Australia “be tolerant” unless we offer them solidarity and solutions in return. Which we do not. Because we’re so far up our own fundaments with awareness ribbons and respectful this and compassionate that, we do not consider their problem of poverty a problem. Notwithstanding that poverty is, in large part, responsible for their intolerance. We progressives really do think of them as the undeserving poor. (Not all of intolerance is down to poverty. As I said, intolerance is complex. Especially in the case of that directed toward this nation’s indigenous peoples. That’s some deep psychological shit, as well as economic. I’ve already gone on too long. But. Just. FFS. Follow the money, people.) If I were wired just a little differently, I am pretty sure I’d be on the wrong side of the culture war, right now. I would look at my pay packet and see the loss of my leave, superannuation and right to a steady job and say, “It’s the foreigners”. And, it is the foreigners, although not the ones an intolerant person might think. It’s a very small group of them who have accumulated a great deal of wealth and, with it, immense power. That’s how I, and others, see the world. And we see it this way largely because we had access to a comprehensive education. And this education stops us from going completely bonkers when we watch someone experiencing or administering intolerance, because we feel we have some idea of the social conditions that produced such acts. We believe that we can change the settings if only we have a true solidarity. These days in Australia, most progressives see only the intolerant individual, not the society that produces intolerance. And for just as long as we remain fixated on individual morality and not the kind of social policy that will buy a blind kid a typing tutor or a mother a home, we will not be a progressive movement. You don’t just break someone out of ideology with kindness OR the instruction that they should go and fuck themselves. However, on this occasion, I am telling those who believe in individualism as an account of society to go and fuck themselves, just a bit. And, yeah, I am sorry that I wrote that thing.
OK, here's the long and the short of it. First of all you have to remember that the series was pretty much a dramatic story culmination of actually mysterious event and legends that are still unexplained. The episode on number stations is about a legitimate mystery that exists. As such while, no there is no book called The First People, I gather that it is based on numerous stories and books that do exist. I know because my own interest in the supernatural and associated topics led me to many stories about ancient technologically advanced races that are said to have said to have existed before all of recorded history but have somehow disappeared without a trace. One such story is that of the lost continent of MU which is said to be pacific counterpart to Atlantis. As stated in the series there have been numerous extinction level events prior to man's first appearance on the earth so the idea of an ancient race that no longer exists is quite plausible. I recommend going to youtube and searching for a video call "Artifacts of the Lost Global Civilization". The speaker talks about recent evidence that not only support the idea of ancient lost civilizations but also the biblical story of the tower of Babel. That is the long of it. The short of it is that no the book from the series doesn't exist but in a sense it does in the form of other books and legends on the same topic. I hope this was helpful. ? · 5 years ago 0 Thumbs up 0 Thumbs down Report Abuse
Legendary event reward : Grand Admiral Thrawn Here's sorted by the number of same gear required, all the gear you need to promote the upcoming character : Grand Admiral Thrawn to gear 11 This data is coming from the video content released during the EA Play convention. Thanks to my teammate Arderal for bringing that up ! Please find raw data at the end of the post This character will require a lot of effort to gear !! 5x Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array 4x Mk 4 A/KT Stun Gun 4x Mk 4 BAW Armor Mod 3x Mk 5 Loronar Power Cell 3x Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller 3x Mk 3 Sienar Holo Projector 3x Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun 3x Mk 4 Fabritech Data Pad 2x Mk 3 TaggeCo Holo Lens 2x Mk 3 Chiewab Hypo Syringe 2x Mk 7 Merr-Sonn Shield Generator 2x Mk 2 Carbanti Sensor Array 2x Mk 7 Loronar Power Cell 1x Mk 8 BioTech Implant 1x Mk 1 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars 1x Mk 6 Nubian Security Scanner 1x Mk 1 Zaltin Bacta Gel 1x Mk 6 CEC Fusion Furnace 1x Mk 2 SoroSuub Keypad 1x Mk 7 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars 1x Mk 3 Zaltin Bacta Gel 1x Mk 1 Nubian Security Scanner 1x Mk 6 Merr-Sonn Shield Generator 1x Mk 5 Nubian Design Tech 1x Mk 2 TaggeCo Holo Lens 1x Mk 1 BioTech Implant 1x Mk 8 TaggeCo Holo Lens 1x Mk 1 Carbanti Sensor Array 1x Mk 7 TaggeCo Holo Lens 1x Mk 1 CEC Fusion Furnace 1x Mk 9 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars 1x Mk 1 BAW Armor Mod 1x Mk 10 TaggeCo Holo Lens 1x Mk 4 SoroSuub Keypad 1x Mk 1 Sienar Holo Projector 1x Mk 1 Czerka Stun Cuffs 1x Mk 3 BAW Armor Mod 1x Mk 1 Merr-Sonn Thermal Detonator 1x Mk 1 TaggeCo Holo Lens 1x Mk 5 Athakam Medpac Raw Data for your spreadsheet Gear Level XI Mk 6 CEC Fusion Furnace Mk 7 Merr-Sonn Shield Generator Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Gear Level X Mk 7 Merr-Sonn Shield Generator Mk 9 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars Mk 8 BioTech Implant Mk 3 Zaltin Bacta Gel Mk 5 Athakam Medpac Mk 10 TaggeCo Holo Lens Gear Level IX Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 7 TaggeCo Holo Lens Mk 8 TaggeCo Holo Lens Mk 7 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars Gear Level VIII Mk 5 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller Mk 3 Sienar Holo Projector Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 6 Nubian Security Scanner Mk 4 A/KT Stun Gun Gear Level VII Mk 6 Merr-Sonn Shield Generator Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 4 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 7 Loronar Power Cell Mk 3 Sienar Holo Projector Gear Level VI Mk 4 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 4 A/KT Stun Gun Mk 5 Nubian Design Tech Mk 4 SoroSuub Keypad Mk 2 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 3 Sienar Holo Projector Gear level V Mk 2 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 1 Zaltin Bacta Gel Mk 7 Loronar Power Cell Mk 3 Chiewab Hypo Syringe Mk 5 Loronar Power Cell Mk 4 BAW Armor Mod Gear level IV Mk 1 Carbanti Sensor Array Mk 4 Fabritech Data Pad Mk 3 Chiewab Hypo Syringe Mk 5 Loronar Power Cell Mk 4 BAW Armor Mod Mk 3 BAW Armor Mod Gear Level III Mk 4 Fabritech Data Pad Mk 4 BAW Armor Mod Mk 1 Merr-Sonn Thermal Detonator Mk 4 Fabritech Data Pad Mk 5 Loronar Power Cell Mk 4 BAW Armor Mod Gear Level II Mk 2 TaggeCo Holo Lens Mk 3 TaggeCo Holo Lens Mk 2 SoroSuub Keypad Mk 1 Sienar Holo Projector Mk 1 Czerka Stun Cuffs Mk 3 TaggeCo Holo Lens Gear Level I Mk 1 Neuro-Saav Electrobinoculars Mk 1 BAW Armor Mod Mk 1 BioTech Implant Mk 1 TaggeCo Holo Lens Mk 1 CEC Fusion Furnace Mk 1 Nubian Security Scanner
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts joins the elite club of US governors to claim a Site Selection Governor’s Cup, by virtue of his state winning the Cup for most capital investment projects per capita — 101 such projects for 2016. Which is not to say it’s Nebraska’s first Cup. It won the first Governor’s Cup for projects per capita, awarded in March 2014, for the Cornhusker State’s 2013 economic development success, which resulted in 109 projects that year. Kentucky won the Cup the next two years and places second in 2016, with 227 projects. That’s more than twice Nebraska’s number of projects, but it’s a per capita contest. Rounding out the top five are Ohio (515), Louisiana (169) and Illinois (434). Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claims his third Governor’s Cup for total qualified projects — 642 — in 2016, and the Lone Star State’s fifth consecutive such Cup. Texas’ winning streak began when it wrested first place from Ohio in 2009. Including for its 515 projects in 2016, the Buckeye State has placed second in total projects ever since. Rounding out the top five in this category are Illinois, North Carolina (289) and Georgia (271). The Governor’s Cups reflect yearly project totals as tracked by the Conway Projects Database. Qualifying projects must meet one or more of these criteria for inclusion in the database: a minimum capital investment of $1 million, 20 or more new jobs created, and 20,000 or more square feet of new space. All Cylinders Running When Site Selection recognized Gov. Abbott and his economic development team in March 2016 for his state’s success in 2015, a Texas signature industry — energy — was down a quart. It’s a good thing the state has more than one, the governor tells Site Selection. Texas “The Texas economy is very resilient, and that is evident from what has happened this past year,” he relates. “It was about a year ago when oil hit bottom. Despite that, Texas still added well over 200,000 new jobs this last year, and we have more Texans with jobs today than ever before in our state’s history. The reason is we have continued to diversify our economy in areas and sectors that have nothing to do with energy. The high-tech sector is in high growth in Texas, and our healthcare sector and innovation in life sciences are growing very rapidly. These are areas that because they are sectors of the American economy that are growing so rapidly will continue to spur our economy.” Gov. Abbott points to healthcare and IT giant McKesson Corporation’s March 2016 announcement that it is consolidating and expanding operations in Irving, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, as a prime example of this. McKesson’s $157-million expansion is projected to create at least 975 new jobs. “This expansion is yet another testament to the power of Texas’ low-tax, low-regulation economic climate that continues to attract industry leaders, innovators, and job creators from around the globe,” noted the governor at the time of the announcement. “I am confident McKesson’s leadership in the pharmaceutical and healthcare technology sectors will serve as an invaluable contribution to the Texas economy.” Not that it needs one, but financial services is fast becoming a Texas secret weapon where capital investment is concerned, whether the energy sector is doing well or not. In August 2016, Charles Schwab Corp. unveiled plans to invest $100 million in a new, regional campus on 70 acres in Westlake, also in the Metroplex, that will include more than 500,000 sq. ft. of commercial space. At least 1,200 new jobs will be housed at the complex over the next 10 years. “We’re excited to have this opportunity to expand our presence in Texas, and we’ll be ramping up our recruiting efforts from among the great wealth of employee talent in and around Westlake,” said Schwab Executive Vice President Dennis Howard at the project announcement. “Like Austin, where we already have approximately 1,500 employees, and El Paso where we are building our presence, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is an important location for Schwab to better serve our clients. We look forward to significantly expanding our footprint there over the coming years.” Schwab will join State Farm Insurance, Fidelity Investments, Liberty Mutual and dozens of other insurance and financial services companies with significant Metroplex and Texas operations. By one measure, about 10 percent of jobs in the Dallas region are in financial services. On the Legislative Docket While the governor and the state’s economic development apparatus were welcoming McKesson, Schwab and hundreds of other companies to Texas, he was showing the door to some factors that had overstayed their welcome: “We cut taxes, particularly the business franchise tax, 25 percent,” he explains. “Even though Texas has no corporate income tax, the cost of doing business in Texas decreased even more because of that. Also, we have methodically continued to reduce regulations in Texas, making the business climate even more favorable. We also cut occupational license fees, making it easier for 600,000 Texans to start a job or a business or grow a business.” Part of Abbott’s legislative agenda for the 2017 session is to get rid of the business franchise tax altogether. “I want to continue the reduction of that tax and move toward its elimination. There are bills filed now and bills that will be filed in this session in which I will be pushing that tax reduction.” The heavy lifting on tax reduction will involve lowering Texas’ high property taxes, which in large pay for state and local services in the absence of a state income tax. Forbes recently ranked Texas the fifth best state in the US for taxes, which is enviable. But families relocating to Texas will soon learn to budget more for property taxes than they used to — fly in the business climate ointment that has not gone unnoticed by the governor. “Property tax is a hot topic in Texas,” Gov. Abbott tells Site Selection. “One of my focal points this session is to pass laws that put strategies in place to cap and reduce property taxes. You can expect property tax reform legislation coming out of this session that will end at the end of May. We want to make sure our property taxes will not be a burden on Texans, and we have strategies to reduce the impact of property taxes on their wallets.” Chances for passage in the legislature? “Our constituents are in agreement [that it has to be done], and my feeling about lawmakers is that an overwhelming majority of them support containing property taxes in Texas and that we will take action this session to get control of that.” The governor says his discussions with CEOs already in Texas or considering a Lone Star location for future operations don’t involve that — at least in the context of companies’ chief reasons for establishing or growing operations there. "Preparing the next generation of Texans to enter the workforce is paramount to ensuring that both employees and businesses continue to thrive in the Lone Star State.” — Texas Governor Greg Abbott "Preparing the next generation of Texans to enter the workforce is paramount to ensuring that both employees and businesses continue to thrive in the Lone Star State.” “I ask them, ‘Why Texas?’ Almost to a person they say the key reason is the quality of our workforce,” says Abbott. “That’s something we’ve spent a lot of time and effort improving.” In September, Gov. Abbott announced the launch of the Texas Industry Cluster Innovative Academies as part of his Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative established in March 2016. The initiative, created to address the governor’s goal of meeting local workforce needs, will provide competitive grant funding to establish Innovative Academies within Texas high schools to provide students with learning opportunities in high demand occupations while earning college course credit prior to high school graduation. The grant program will promote, engage and expand the development of partnerships between regional employers, independent school districts, community colleges, universities, local workforce boards and local industry. “Preparing the next generation of Texans to enter the workforce is paramount to ensuring that both employees and businesses continue to thrive in the Lone Star State,” said Governor Abbott at the program’s launch. “With these Innovative Academies, Texas will lead the way in forging partnerships across a variety of industries and educational institutions to find the most effective solutions to the challenges we face in the 21st century economy.” Grants for the Innovative Academies will be used to develop program models that can be replicated or scaled across other campuses or different regions of the state. Each Innovative Academy must serve as a partnership between a public high school, an institution of higher education, and a high-demand industry partner. A combined total of $7.2 million in grants from the Texas Workforce Commission, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will be offered for the Innovative Academies. The academies will target specific course work and educational opportunities that lead to direct employment in high-demand occupations for the following industry clusters: Advanced Technologies and Manufacturing Aerospace and Defense Biotechnology and Life Sciences (including Healthcare) Energy Information and Computer Technology Petroleum Refining and Chemical Products Restocking the Pond Right up there on the governor’s to-do list with capping or lowering property taxes this legislative session is securing funding for incentives. Specifically, Abbott is seeking $108 million for extending the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) and $40 million for Governor’s University Research Initiative. A TEF grant offer of $9.75 million was extended to McKesson Corporation, and one of $6 million was extended to Charles Schwab. The latter will create the largest number of new jobs by a TEF grant recipient since the beginning of Governor Abbott’s administration. “These funds have proven to be so successful,” Abbott stresses. “Importantly, we have reformed the way these [incentives] funds operate, so there is greater transparency, greater accountability, and they are used solely as deal-closing funds. We don’t believe in using funds like these to pick between winners and losers, and we eliminated some programs that do that. We want the companies for whom these funds are meant to make Texas the winner and other states the loser. To do that, we need to have the Enterprise Fund so we can have a deal closing fund to attract more job creators to Texas.” Is securing all $108 million feasible? “It’s deserving,” Abbott asserts. “We’re dealing with a tight budget, and we’ve proven we can live within tight budgets. But I think everybody in Texas agrees that one way that we can best stimulate our economy and grow more jobs is by funding the Enterprise Fund.” The Governors University Research Initiative is about adding stars to Texas’ higher education and research institution firmament. “We are bringing in the best and brightest minds in the country in science, technology, engineering, math and medicine,” says the governor. “We lured away one of the premier engineering researchers from Princeton to Texas A&M who will be working on the next generation of aerospace engineering technology in a way that dovetails with national security. Nine have been brought in so far. The point is simple: research and intellectual capital is finding a new home in Texas. Texas for a century now has been the home of energy. Going forward, we are very swiftly becoming the home of innovation. This is something the entire state of Texas is committed to, and we will be leading in the sectors going forward that will attract the next generation of jobs.” Meanwhile, in Washington In which state will new policy concerning cross-border trade with Mexico — NAFTA or otherwise — have a greater impact than in Texas? None. A shift to bilateral trade agreements from TPP-style multilateral trade pacts is just one example of changes taking shape on the horizon under a new administration in Washington. Governor Abbott’s take: “There are two main stimuli related to what’s happening in Washington that will be very beneficial to the Texas economy. One of the hamstrings imposed by the prior administration was heavy-handed regulation that limited the energy sector. It has been declared that those regulations will be reduced, and that should stimulate our energy sector even more. It’s not just production of oil and gas, but the innovation being used that is improving our economy. We are looking to increase the export of oil and gas. I’ve had in my office leaders of countries around the globe who want to get in line to be on the receiving end of LNG that will be exported from Texas. The state is putting LNG export facilities online beginning this year and next year that will be a boon to our economy and support the price of natural gas and will strengthen our coffers even more. “Regarding the border,” he adds, “Texas has great trade with Mexico, which is good for the economy of Texas, the United States and Mexico. If you understand what the president has talked about, he has an overarching goal, which is to create more jobs and to have fair trade. I believe if you look at his ultimate goal, if policies were implemented that would be bad for trade and hurt jobs, he wouldn’t do it, because that would cause him to fail in his goal. When you get down to the push points of the deals that will be done, they will be deals that are good for trade and good for jobs in Texas and the United States.” Should NAFTA be reworked? “NAFTA has been in existence for a long time, so it’s always good to go back and refresh it and refine it,” says the governor. “There are always ways to make it better. Like the president said, he wants to add another F to NAFTA, which is not just free trade but fair trade. We can improve on NAFTA in ways that will be beneficial to Texas and the US on the one hand and Mexico on the other.” Nebraska Now that Nebraska has reclaimed the Governor’s Cup for projects per capita, Gov. Pete Ricketts won’t relinquish it easily. And he has several plans for winning it again in the future. One is to leverage his state’s leading industry — agriculture — into an industry of the future rather than take it for granted. Another is to make Nebraska a low-cost state in which to do business, and one where it is easy to do so. Ag revenues are down, he acknowledges, but that’s no reason to delay taking steps to make Nebraska the go-to location in the Heartland for companies in any sector. Tax relief is the governor’s chief priority in early 2017. “My goal is to do tax relief every year I’m governor,” Ricketts tells Site Selection. “Two years ago, we increased the property tax credit relief fund by over 45 percent, because we were able to control spending. Last year we came back with 200 bills with regard to property tax relief, largely around expense control. We got some of that, and some went to the property tax relief fund. “This year we’re coming back with two bills,” he continues, “one that is fundamentally changing how we view ag land for property tax purposes. It’s changing from the current market sales assessment we do today to an income potential assessment that will link that property tax valuation more closely to what the income potential of the land is. It will be more fair to our farmers and ranchers and more standard across agricultural states. South Dakota went to this a few years ago, North Dakota is using it, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio. They all use this as a way to help their farms and ranches be more competitive in the marketplace. It’s a major structural change for us; we’re planning to implement it in January 2019 in the bill.” A More Level Playing Field The other bill the governor is championing is about income tax relief, specifically taking Nebraska’s top rate of 6.84 percent down about a 10th of a percent at a time over a period of eight years, starting in 2020 to get to 5.99 percent, which will make it more competitive with other states. “The rate will come down automatically every year we have a forecast of revenue growth of 3.5 percent or more,” Ricketts explains. “That trigger is there so we can manage it within the budget. Some states have cut the tax rates but didn’t control spending, so they ended up in budgetary trouble. We’re doing it the other way around. We’re controlling our spending first, and then we’ll take those tax rates down over time as our economy bounces back and revenues start to grow. We’ll still have to have a balanced budget, but this gives us a schedule for taking those tax rates down.” A key beneficiary will be small businesses, he adds, “because most of them pay on that individual income rate. It will allow them to invest more money back into their businesses. It’s middle class tax relief, because it allows people to keep more of their own money. It’s about being more competitive when we’re talking about companies looking at our state; we don’t want to be left off site selectors’ lists because our tax rate is too high. And we want to be more competitive for small businesses who pay on this rate to be able to invest in their companies.” The state needs to spend less too, says Gov. Ricketts, while delivering services in a way that will lure businesses to Nebraska and away from competitive locations. "Every business has to find ways to serve the customer better and bring down costs at the same time or they will go out of business. No one will put the State of Nebraska out of business, but we have to work by the same philosophy.” — Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts "Every business has to find ways to serve the customer better and bring down costs at the same time or they will go out of business. No one will put the State of Nebraska out of business, but we have to work by the same philosophy.” “Before I became governor, we were growing the state budget at 6.5 percent per year, and that’s just not sustainable,” he points out. “We have to get that spending down. In my first budget, we cut spending to 3.6 percent, and with farming revenues down, we have to tighten our belts even further. In the budget I proposed, we’re only growing government at 1.7 percent for the next two years. You can see we are controlling our spending.” As for the second objective, Ricketts is “focused on doing a better job delivering our services. Every business has to find ways to serve the customer better and bring down costs at the same time or they will go out of business. No one will put the State of Nebraska out of business, but we have to work by the same philosophy. This is a huge culture change for government, because usually bringing costs down means cutting service. I’m saying they’re not mutually exclusive. We can do both — a better job of delivering services while bringing our costs down. That’s what the private sector does.” Ricketts is serious about his commitment to making Nebraska a more business-friendly location. “I went to our Department of Environmental Quality to see how long it took them to issue permits,” he illustrates. “They weren’t even measuring it. But by measuring that and posting it online, the time to issue permits started coming down. In one case, it took permitting time down from weeks or months to days. Yahoo was our first customer using this process, and we were able to issue them a permit to expand their data center here in two days. They told me in another state they had already waited eight months and were expecting to wait another eight months. By being more customer-friendly, and putting this process online, we’re providing a higher level of service.” Much More Than Agriculture Agriculture still reigns as the leading industry in Nebraska, but it’s also a hotbed of high-tech innovation and manufacturing. “One project that is very significant is our partnership working with Costco and Lincoln Premium Poultry on a chicken processing plant in Fremont,” notes Ricketts. “That’s about a $1.2-billion investment. It will not only create about 1,000 jobs in Fremont. It will also create a network of growers that will help our farmers and ranchers in the neighborhood. A farmer can sign up to contract with Premium Poultry raising chicks, helping them diversify their revenue stream at a time when prices are down. Farm income in general in Nebraska has gone from $7.5 billion in 2012 to about $4.5 billion. With farm income declining 39 percent, we want to find ways for our farmers and ranchers to diversify their revenue stream that results in a huge economic benefit to the state.” Meanwhile, look for more startups to emerge from the Jeffrey R. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. HUDL, a pioneer in the sports software industry, came from there. HUDL is partnering with Nelnet on a video analysis venture and is building a new building in the Haymarket district in Lincoln. "Tax relief allows people to keep more of their own money ... We don’t want to be left off site selectors’ lists because our tax rate is too high.” — Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts "Tax relief allows people to keep more of their own money ... We don’t want to be left off site selectors’ lists because our tax rate is too high.” “It will be a work environment people are looking for — something that looks like Silicon Valley — non-traditional workspaces and so forth,” says Ricketts. ”That’s a great example of how we’re looking at innovation and technology to help create opportunities for our young people. Jeff Raikes, a former executive at Microsoft, sees a huge opportunity for us to be able to apply technology to agriculture and create agribusinesses and biotechnology and other things around how we continue to drive industries. By 2050, there will be 2 billion more people on Earth. Because of the rising standards of living, we will have to double the food supply. That means we will have to have more productivity and more innovation. Applying technology to current practices is one of the ways we can do that — we’re already doing that with regard to agriculture, but also with biotechnology and other research going on in the state, like hybrids that will be more productive and how to use less water when growing corn. Those apply to our lead industry here, but will help grow the state as well.”
It's Mega Magical Meta Monday, the day when VP brings you a featured post of awesomeness! You can find other featured posts by checking out the "featured-posts" tag. Our goal here is to diversify our discussions and membership, and to enrich your VP experience.As my friend Tom astutely pointed out after a mutual friend had his wallet stolen, "who would steal the identity of a transsexual?"The irony is not wasted on how incredibly tragic it is to steal someone’s identity after they have fought their entire lives to claim it as their own.Tom’s comment has stayed with me as I had been pickpocketed myself just a few days prior at a bar in the east village, the boiler room. I was in the process of initiating a five way kiss between me, two friends of mine, some nice fellows we’d met. What could have lead to an unforgettably freeing night of strangers becoming close friends and close friends becoming lovers was derailed when I noticed my back right jeans pocket feeling empty.Moments later, after accepting the loss, punching a nearby brick wall outside the entrance to the bar, I was enveloped by my momentary lack of faith in humanity, which I have been continuously fighting to overcome. Earlier at the bar I had stood up for one of the friends after someone questioned his gender identity; I was feeling that night we could now all feel safe and have a good time. I was braver than I thought. Then selfishness sunk in and I was struck by was how difficult it had been to get my New York ID (and other cards including an EBT card) in the first place, as though everything I’d gone through was for nothing.I imagined the person who took the wallet, holding my “proof of existence,” having no idea... I’d been petsitting for friends, living from one place to the next, having difficulty staying afloat. The security I had hoped to find at a bar that evening with friends quickly evaporated and I felt more invisible than before.Just three years earlier it was a chore everyday reminding people that I was “male,” which seemed to fit far more than “female” had felt in the prior 27 years. Trying everything under the sun so I could fit in and feel normal. It was beyond sexuality, it was my body itself. And in a different way than the usual peer pressure, everyone feels left out kind of way. This was when I looked in the mirror and quite simply, did not see myself.I was doing everything right, or so I thought, so why did I feel so bad? Transitioning - which can be a continual, everlasting process for some - was pushed so far down that I only grew strong enough to face it out of pure desperation because I had run out of other ways of staying alive. It was easier lying to myself and not having to investigate what I feared could be real.As there are more of us than we will ever know, our experiences are completely unique. While being interviewed by CBS News reporter Josh Landis, I clearly stated “gender affects everybody.” A colleague and I were interviewed about being “transmen” as Chaz Bono had just come out. The quote was not included in the segment (the mainstream media has ads to sell, not people to educate), yet if I had heard that when I was younger I wonder how much more secure I would be now.There is good news - folks who have questioned their gender and actively follow what they know is right about themselves are 2000% more badass than those who haven’t. It’s true - I did a study. This is where those depressing stats about transpeople come in handy. I read somewhere that the combination of suicidal ideation and transphobia is so common that the average lifespan for trans-identified people is 23. 23!! Instead of feeling sad about this - think of how awesome it is for those who have made it past 23 (and there is a lot of us!!) Time spent thinking we don’t have a place in the world is time not spent making a place for ourselves and our sisters, brothers, and non-gender specific comrades. So let’s start celebrating that we are alive.We had to put up with violence, denials, anger from others, ourselves, people who identified as friends and family, though showed no sign of either because somehow the idea of someone “changing their gender” is unusual, yet marriage and procreation are not only considered “normal” but encouraged. If people are battling to stay alive, there will definitely be no marriage and no children.There are different priorities. As an activist and friend, Kim once said a a Trans Rally, “Marriage would be nice, but can I get some life first?”This is how it is. Now that I find I am more comfortable with my body (though I could use a haircut and could stand to be in better shape), my goal is more to pull those up from where I have been, because I know how difficult it can be. I was fortunate enough to have many supportive friends and family members. Yet even words with kind intentions can still come across as hurtful.The idea of being born in the “wrong body” is an insult to everyone. No one’s body is “wrong” It’s just what my friend Sean calls his “skin bag.” we travel through the world in this costume of sorts. My body is the same body I was born in. I didn’t go anywhere.For a culture that continually warns us against identity theft, there is little that is said about the identity that’s been stripped from us since birth by the world we’ve had to conform to in order to survive.Growing up people are still assumed to be heterosexual, cisgender, able to see and hear and move around perfectly, and if not, it is assumed that everyone is able to access ways to “fix” what’s not considered “normal.” People who are read as “different” in whatever way that is, are forced to spend time defending themselves and caring for others undergoing the same harsh treatment.Transitioning for most people is not just one step. It’s not that easy, if anything, I discovered more of how we’re tied into our identities according to the state. Emotions don’t go well with bureaucracy. Changing my name and gender (though I think in one state the ID says male and in another I’m female. Ha! Gotcha!) like that of anything else, is a pain more than anything, using time and money under the illusion of security. While many aspects of the name change (made much easier thanks to the kind folks at tldef), helped in myriad ways, it was mostly in reassuring myself and others I am who I say I am, IDs are one more thing to have to buy, to lose, to carry around, to worry about someone stealing. This piece of plastic holding more power over us than our own will. As though people are trained to trust documents more than other people, “Well it says here you’re ____”The idea of being told who we are what we are comes as soon as we enter the world. Lives are spent either trying to conform to this image or overcoming what we've been told about ourselves. The gender binary serves to divide us further, based on what our bodies have become and how we should behave, who we should be attracted to.People don’t question their own gender or sexuality and then assume those of us who have done the work are wrong. There is some security in it, I suppose. But only if you’re asleep.
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. July 5, 2016, 3:17 AM GMT / Updated July 5, 2016, 12:22 PM GMT By Alex Johnson PBS was pummeled on social media after it acknowledged having spliced in video of previous years' Washington, D.C., fireworks in its live "A Capitol Fourth" broadcast Monday night. Hundreds of viewers complained on the annual show's Twitter and Facebook pages that the fireworks display couldn't be live because the images were in clear weather: An image from PBS' 'A Capitol Fourth' Independence Day show Monday night. Washington, however, was heavily overcast and foggy Monday night — which was readily apparent as the pyrotechnics faded into dense clouds: Fireworks explode Monday night over the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. AP About 10 p.m. ET, the show's Facebook and Twitter pages acknowledged that the supposedly "live" show was, in fact, " a combination of the best fireworks from this year and previous years." Reaction online was swift and savage: PBS representatives didn't immediately return NBC News' calls for comment Monday night.
I'm now getting started on airship-to-airship boarding, which is the major new feature in the next development release. With boarding, you can send air marines to enemy ships to disrupt them and even take them over. The actual sending over part is a bit tricky, because crew members move inside the grid of their airship. This means there is currently no way to represent someone not inside a ship. To allow air marines to jump or glide or grappling-hook across the gap between two ships, I will have to introduce a second system of tracking people's position. The second system will be in the same coordinate system as the ships itself, and will have to deal with physics, collision detection, etc. So for now, I'm just going to ignore all that and make the crew teleport over! I even added a completely pointless particle effect for it. Why? Because I want to get to the more fundamental part first: what happens during boarding? Air marines boarding an enemy ship should try to disrupt its operation, and if there are enough of them, even take it over. These two goals are somewhat at odds, since the fastest way of disrupting an airship would be to make its suspendium chambers stop working, making it fall out of the sky. But I doubt that the air marines would be inclined to make the ship they're in crash. Instead, I decided that the marines will target weapons systems, propulsion, and command centers, rendering the ship harmless but still afloat. So once an air marine has boarded a ship, he will path to the nearest "interesting" module - a gun or propeller or bridge, and start shooting the crew in there. The other question is how taking over a ship happens. Airships are complex entities, so what does it mean for one to be taken over? The rule I decided on: if there are no crew members of the current owner in any of its command centers (bridges or cockpits) and at least one crew member (air marine) of the opposing side in a command center, the ship's owner flips. The invading marines get added to the crew list while any surviving defending marines are now considered the new invaders. The normal air sailors are set to be "under occupation", which means they will only perform a subset of duties needed to keep themselves alive: they will put out fires and run suspendium chambers, but nothing more. The occupying air marines will have to do any fighting duties. Having figured things out, it was time to start building! Air marines will have to perform normal crew duties in occupied ships (and they can also help out in your own), so they should be a type of crew. So first off, I introduced a concept of "crew type" to distinguish between marines and sailors. These have different sprites and different competencies: sailors are more efficient at working in airships, but much weaker in combat. Next, I added a new module type, the barracks, which was pretty straightforward. The game also has to keep track of whether someone is on board a ship as an invader or as a crew member, so I added a separate list of boarders, and got to work on rewiring the crewmember and airship classes to make this difference clear. A lot of questions like "how many crew are in this ship" had to be made more precise. Next, I implemented a "board" command for airships, borrowing liberally from the existing "target" command and fiddling in GIMP until I got a decent-looking grappling hook for an icon. So I got to the first tests: the marines would teleport over to random locations on the other ship - and then just stand there, going "Oh, that is a nice cannon you have here. And it is indeed shooting at my ship. oh well, carry on!". I needed them to actually go and do some mayhem, so next up was pathing: identify the modules of strategic interest and move there. Pathfinding was already available from the code for air sailors, so this was pretty quick. And of course, once they got to their targets, it was time for them to shoot things! The game already has a concept of shots from ship-to-ship fights, so I reused and extended this. It's cleaner than introducing another mechanic, plus it potentially allows for things like boarders shooting ships, ships shooting boarders, etc. This meant extending the shot class so it can come from a crew member as well as a weapon, and differentiating whether it comes from inside the ship or not. (Shots from inside the ship don't get held up by armour.) Now I just had to tell boarders to shoot crew and vice versa, and a fight for the ship finally happened! And, as it turns out, a rather silly bug: I forgot to tell marines that they can't move when badly injured or dead, so now I had casualties and corpses sliding around on the floor and impossibly climbing ladders while prone, slowly moving to the next place to conquer. Having fixed that, combat now proceeds reasonably: the boarders go and shoot up the bridge and cannons of the enemy ship, weakening it. Next up will be the takeover phase: boarders converging on the bridge, and the ship's allegiance switching over. No doubt boarding will need a lot of balancing work. Right now, it feels way too powerful, but this may be because it's very easy thanks to the temporary teleporting. In the end, boarding should be one tactical option in your arsenal that works in certain circumstances, much like ramming, sniping with rifles from high up, grounding your ship, forcing down an enemy, and so on. Join me next time when I put in the ship takeover mechanic and start figuring out how to make the marines move between ships!
Tourist Visa (L Visa) is issued to an alien who comes to China for sightseeing or visiting family members or friends or for other personal affairs. Ⅰ. Please submit the following materials for your application: 1.A valid passport as well as a copy of its information page: Your valid passport must have at least six (6) months of remaining validity and at least one blank visa page in it. 2.Application form: One completed Visa Application Form. 3.Photo: one recent photo of 2x2 square inch (black & white or color is acceptable) glued or stapled on the application form. 4. First time applicants whose former nationality was Chinese, shall write down his Chinese name in the application form and submit his original Chinese passport and the photocopy of the information page of the passport. Applicant who was formerly Chinese and has acquired a new US passport, if there is a Chinese visa in the old passport , shall submit his old US passport or the photocopy of the Chinese visa . 5.Chinese-American child born in US applying for Chinese visa,please read 在美国出生具有中国血统儿童赴华签证须知 . 6.About Multiple Visa: ▲ US citizens may apply for a Single Entry (valid for 3-6 months), Double Entry (valid for 6 months), Multiple Entry (valid for 6 months or 12 months) "L" Visa as needed. ▲A Chinese-American born in China (Taiwan, HongKong and Macau included)may apply for a Multiple Entry "L" Visa valid for 24 months.The photocopy of the personal information page of his/her passport is required to provide. ▲F oreign spouse and children of a Chinese citizen may apply for a Multiple Entry "L" Visa valid for 24 months.The original and photocopy of relevant Marriage Certificate,Birth Certificate, Kinship Certificate and other necessary documents are required to provide. 7.Temporary foreign visitors with a valid US visa or foreign residents with legitimate status in the US, may apply for Chinese visa to the Visa Office of the Chinese Embassy. The visa officer may ask the applicant to provide the original and photocopy of their US Green Card,Work Permit,I-20 Form, valid US Visa or other additional documents and make a decision on whether to issue the visa case by case. Ⅱ.How to apply 1.You may submit the application to the Visa Office of the Embassy or Consulate -General which holds consular jurisdiction over the state where you reside; 2.If you cannot come in person, you may entrust someone else or a travel/visa agent to drop off your application at the visa office of the Embassy or Consulate -General which holds consular jurisdiction over the state where you reside; ▲No appointment is required. ▲Mailed applications are not acceptable and will be returned. Ⅲ.Processing Time 1. The regular processing time is 4 working days. 2.Express service: 2-3 working days processing, additional fee of $20 will be charged per visa. 3.Same day rush service:emergency only, additional fee of $30 will be charged per visa ( applications shouldl be submitted before 12:30pm, and may be picked up between 2:30pm-3:00pm on the same day). Ⅳ .Visa fees 1.Please pay by Visa, MasterCard, Money Order, Cashier's Check or Company Check . Cash or Personal checks are not acceptable. 2.Please make the company check, cashier's check or money order payable to Chinese Embassy . 3.Fee list: Number of Entry American Citizens of other countries* Single Entry $130 $30 Double Entry $130 $45 Multiple Entry for 6 Months $130 $60 Multiple Entry for 12 Months $130 $90 Multiple Entry for 24 Months $130 $90 *Visa fees for Romanian passport holders are: $75 for s ingle or double entry, $150 for multiple entry. Ⅴ . Visa Validity and Duration of Stay Usually the validity of a Single Entry or Double Entry "L" visa is 90 days or 180 days from the date of issue. This means the holder of the visa shall enter prefix = st1 / China no later than 90 days or 180 days from the date of issue, otherwise the visa will be expired and is null and void. Normally the duration of stay of a "L" visa is 30 days, which means the holder of the visa may stay in China for up to 30 days from the date of entry. If your estimated stay in China is longer than 30 days, please make it clear in the application form and ask for the Visa Officer's approval when you submit your application.. Ⅵ.Additional Information 1. If the visa application form is not filled out completely, correctly and legibly, your visa application may be delayed or rejected. 2.Usually applicant submit his visa application one month earlier before his trip. 3.Visa Officers are empowered to make final decision on the validity,duration of stay and times of entry of a visa and may require the applicants provide relevant documents. 4. Any person suffering from a mental disorder, leprosy, AIDS, venereal diseases, contagious tuberculosis or other such infectious diseases shall not be permitted to enter China.
Yasiel Puig slays rookie ball, earns promotion to Rancho Cucamonga He reported to their camp in Arizona, started getting in baseball shape and then joined their rookie team in the Arizona League -- where, after going 0-for-4 in his first game, quickly became a man among boys. This would be the guy the Dodgers signed for $42 million in June after he defected from Cuba, and who had not played competitive baseball in over a year. Seems he's picking it back up. The curiosity that is Yasiel Puig officially has been promoted from the Arizona Rookie League to the Quakes in the high-level Class-A Cal League. Say this for the last-place Rancho Cucamonga Quakes: Their final 21 games just got a lot more interesting. Understand, the 21-year-old outfielder played only nine games before his promotion. Nine little games. But it should be noted that in those nine games he went 12-for-30 (.400) with four home runs, three triples, six walks and 11 RBIs. That gave him a staggering on-base percentage of .500. And a slugging percentage of 1.000. Otherwise, rookie ball seemed a real struggle. The Dodgers saw enough and advanced him to the Quakes, who are off Monday before hosting Stockton for three games beginning Tuesday. He is certainly on a fast track, though it's not all that surprising. Not for $42 million. Anyway, it shouldn't be. Former Cuban teammate Yoenis Cespedes signed with the A’s for $36 million in the off-season and went directly to the majors, where he's batting .306 with 14 homers and 56 RBIs. Because the Quakes aren't going to be in the post-season, it's possible Puig could get another promotion and get some playoff action with either double-A Chattanooga or triple-A Albuquerque, both currently in first place. Then there is next season, and naturally the faithful have visions of the powerful, speedy, 6-foot-3 215-pounder claiming left field, which would put a damper on Shane Victorino's ambitions. More likely the Dodgers will want to see him play more baseball, at least during the first half of the season. Nothing is for certain with this kind of apparent talent, however, so plans are being written in pencil. Meanwhile, nine rookie games in, the curiosity factor only grows. And for the Dodgers, that's a good thing. ALSO: Can Clayton Kershaw repeat as NL Cy Young Award winner? Dodgers' Hanley Ramirez shows old form in return to Miami Chris Capuano loses no-hitter in 7th, but Dodgers down Miami
Chrystal Evans Hurst is a writer, speaker and worship leader and the daughter of respected pastor and teacher Dr. Tony Evans. Chrystal’s upbringing was rich in love and God’s teachings, but even with that foundation, she still experienced uncertainty, fear and pain in her life. She describes how God was always the author of her story, even though the times that were difficult, and how she has been shaped for the better by those experiences. Our second segment features author Edie Sundby– a woman who was given 3 months to live–and how she overcame this death sentence by her faith in God and a determination to start walking to keep living. Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling podcast. Today we speak with writer, speaker and worship leader Chrystal Evans Hurst. Chrystal grew up as the daughter of Dr. Tony Evans and was surrounded by the Word of God her entire life. Although her upbringing was rich in love and God’s teaching, when she ventured out on her own–she experienced missteps, pain, and disappointment–but the truth that God was still a part of her story, no matter the circumstances, kept her ever resilient. She has written about her experiences in a new book called “She’s Still There: Rescuing the Girl in You.” Finding Peace In Uncertainty: Chrystal Evans Hurst and Edie Sundby – Jesus Calling Podcast Episode 60 Chrystal Hurst: My name is Chrystal Hurst. I am the author of “She’s Still There,” and the co-author of “Kingdom Woman” and I write to encourage women in their spiritual walk. I am a wife and a mom of five. I am the daughter of Tony and Lois Evans, and my dad is a pastor and has been all of my life. I’ve been in the same church that he founded for 40 years. There are four of us total siblings, and we grew up in a great Christian home. Having had the opportunity to be a part of the development of the spiritual legacy that my family has, has of course impacted me. I definitely think that that has formed a great foundation for who I am today, and what I’m doing today, but a part of my experience and a part of my story, has everything to do with the choices that we each individually get to make about what we take on from our history in our upbringing, what we eschew, and how we learn to embrace the Lord in our own lives as individuals; how we choose to engage with Him in everyday life. Built in me, was the desire to succeed; straight A student. I did not really work hard to be a people pleaser. I just ended up pleasing people, because I just usually did what people wanted me to do. I just made the grade, and just showed up and did what I needed to do. I went to school aiming to major in marketing, and I took my first psychology class, that was a part of that degree plan and remembered thinking, “this is for the birds.” There’s all of these philosophies with how people work and how marketing should work. It was overwhelming to me and I went from marketing, a very subjective study to accounting; objective study. How Did I End Up Here? If you live life for any length of time, you realize there are a lot of things that are not easy answers for. You spend so much time trying to fit them into a construct. One of the things I have learned to do–I wouldn’t say well but I’ve certainly a lot better at it than I used to be–is what it means to live with loose ends and to be comfortable that everything in life won’t be tied. To learn what it really means to have faith–faith not in something that always fits in a box, because God can’t fit in a box. …I looked in the mirror and thought, “OK, how did I end up here?” People assume that I was a preacher’s kid who couldn’t wait to get loose and do my own thing and I really wasn’t like that at all. I was always a good girl and I liked being a good girl. But what I always say is; Adam and Eve in the garden had the best parent ever, but he gave them the best gift ever, which is choice; and that’s the same gift we all have. Sometimes we make good ones and sometimes we don’t. I made choices in college. I was in love, and this was a guy who had been a family friend. I mean, this is not like some random person I ran into in college, it was somebody I’ve probably known since we were 14, and we ended up going to the same college and things happened. So I did end up pregnant at 19, which was one of the first moments where I remember thinking, “whose life am I living?” This does not even mesh in the least with what I anticipated from my life. I didn’t grow up around a lot of teenage pregnancy, not my friends—you know a lot of times it’s societal or its cultural—nope, not my story, not my family situation; everybody’s married. But I looked in the mirror and thought, “OK, how did I end up here?” There was a huge cognitive dissonance in my life, because of this reality that was totally juxtaposed against my expectation. When you are alone, when you feel alone, when you feel isolated, when you feel ashamed, when you feel guilt, when you feel bad–in that place; that place where it’s a little dark, and you’re a little farther away from everybody else or at least it feels that way–that is a place where you can get to know God in a completely different way, than you can when everything’s right side up. So I searched the scripture during that time in a different way. I cried out to Him in a different way. I begged Him in a different way. He really was the closest Person to me because I felt so far away from everyone else. So, because I experienced a deep love from Him of me during that time, that is, and still continues to be, my deep theological truth that I really want to convey to people in all different circumstances of life–caused by themselves, or caused by other people, or just life–that regardless of where you are, God really, really does– He really, really loves you. There’s Always A Next Thing It took me a minute to realize how I was getting through it because people would say, “you know, you seem to bounce back from that teenage pregnancy.” Then I hated my job in my 20’s, “and you seem to bounce back and find out how to do something you loved.” Then I got married, and then I had babies and I thought that that’s what I wanted. And I did. But when I was changing diapers and making chicken for dinner again, I was like you know, whew… “and you seem to bounce back and you know you seem to still remember what it is that you love to do.” Then I gained weight and then lost it, “you seemed to bounce back.” So what I have realized is, there’s a theme in my life of bouncing back. My husband has some challenges; some health challenges. He’s given me permission to say; seven years ago he had a stroke and that set off a string of circumstances in our life. Even from that people go, “it just seems like you’re doing so much and you’re handling it all well,” and so the theme of my life has been bouncing back. What I realized is there are certain things that have always happened. One of those things is that I keep choosing to believe that God has a plan. My mother used to speak that verse over me when I was a teenager. I remember hearing Jeremiah 29:11, and “okay, mom yep, yep, yep.” But that was seared in my conscience and subconscious. So it kept coming back to me. There’s got to be a plan here somewhere. This is not adding up. There’s got to be a plan. I kept looking for it. Then when I realized that I kept looking for it the same way I would write down, “OK, what am I good at. What has God given me? What does He put in me? My abilities, my strengths, my weaknesses, my skills, my passions, my personality.” I said; “what do I think He wants me to do now?” I kept searching for the gift of me. The third thing is that I kept looking around me. What are the experiences that I have? The opportunities that I have? Whether they were caused by me, or just good or bad; what is in front of me? Every time I look for what He says about me that’s true, what He’s put in me that’s a gift, the experiences and opportunities that I have in front of me. There’s always a next thing. There’s always something to do. Building Foundations With Jesus Calling Narrator: As Chrystal began to see and live out God’s plan unfolding in her life, even during the uncertain times, she began to want to share her experiences and encourage others that they too could find peace in the uncertainty. She talks about how she draws strength from God’s Word and from her devotional time with Jesus Calling, and how she developed the foundation for writing her own book, “She’s Still There”. Chrystal: The longer I live and the more I choose to obey God for what I read in His Word the “knower” that He gave me naturally, and that is heightened by the presence of the Holy Spirit in my soul, I know a lot of people read the devotional and may read the verses there, but I take the verses and I open up my Bible and I read that verse in my Bible and many times read verses before and after for a little context, and then I write my own Jesus Calling. I think it scratches a deep ache that we all feel, that we want the God of the Universe to speak to us. What is He actually saying to me in my situation in life? I love that it’s simple because it gives room for me to do my own work. I started reading it before I actually went back and read the beginning–the introduction, the instructions–where she says, “this is what I gained from spending a lot of time talking to God, and what I want for you is not just to read this. Yeah, read it, but I want you to do this for yourself. I love that the heart of the author is not just to say “here are my devotionals shared with you,” but “here’s what I did, and here’s what I want you to do too.” I think it scratches a deep ache that we all feel, that we want the God of the Universe to speak to us. So many people, including myself at certain times, struggle to know if they can speak with God or is He’s really going to reach out to me. It’s Him in words, you know, to a degree. I get better and better at knowing. As I walk in that, peace comes, because I know that I’m where God wants me to be and when I’m not sure, I’ve learned to experience peace in the waiting, and in the uncertainty, and in talking to God and telling Him where I need him to make up the difference because I don’t know. Reach For The Next Rung Even in the “not sure,” I still know that God holds the unknown in his hand. His plans are not thwarted, even when we screw up, because we don’t have every decision made cold turkey, right on time, every time. He, in His providence, can hit a moving target with a crooked stick. My dad said, when I got pregnant, he said, “you know you’re still going to be able to climb the ladder, you’re just going to have to climb with a backpack.” So in my head, there’s always the next rung. I can’t figure out how I get to the top. Can figure out how I reach for the next rung. And so what I tried to do in “She’s Still There” is to write about the practical reach–what does that mean? How do you do it? How do you keep believing and not let go? How do you resist the urge to fall into mediocrity or accepting that your expectations will never come to pass? How do you keep fighting for your life and honoring the life God has given you? So in a real practical way, I just think, there’s always a reach. I tried to describe in a very practical way what that looks like. The next thing is I started a blog, because I just missed writing and hearing my own voice. When I was in my late 30’s, I picked up a bunch of weight. The next thing was, “girl lose it–go out for a walk.” You can do that when your husband’s at home and your kids are asleep. You can do something. And so there’s always something in what I felt was so many people because they’re reaching for the tap of the wrong they are the top of the ladder. They forget that there’s a next rung. There’s a next step if I can just refocus myself, and refocus others on the one thing they can do to move forward. Laying It All Before The Lord We have a choice, when life turns out differently than what we expected. We can dig our heels in the ground and be angry, or bitter, or de-railed, or we can learn to flow with it a little bit. Life is life. It’s life. None of us, none of us are 100 percent living the life we expected to live. Not one person. And if they say that, then they haven’t lived long enough. Because life is life, but we can learn. It’s kind of what we were saying earlier about living with loose ends. You learn to live with an open hand, and to say “I can choose to dig in, and grab hold and develop calluses, because I have a calloused heart maybe. I can develop bruises because it’s physically painful for me to think about what I wanted that I didn’t get. We can develop dislocations because holding on to what we wanted so tightly dislocates us from Who we’re with, where we are, or what we thought we wanted. When you hold on tight, the only thing that’s damaged long term, is you. So what you have to do is say, “you know what? Here are the things I can control. Here are the things I cannot,” or I should say, “here are the things I think I can control. And here are the things I know I cannot.” With all of it lay it before the Lord. It takes coming to the cross to a whole other level. Because it changes what you bring to the cross. So many of us; we bring certain things that we’re willing to lay at His feet. But if you live long enough and choose to open your hand, you bring more with you to the foot of the cross, because you’ve learned to trust that He can handle it better than you. Now, in just a real practical sense, I literally have to talk to myself, is it okay to say that? I literally have to say; I literally have to say–out loud sometimes to myself–“girl let it go. Let it go!” I have to remind myself of what really matters. God’s Unique Purpose For Your Life Most of the time where expectations mess us up, is how we react to them. We can have the expectations, or feel a loss for not meeting them, but we react in a way, and how is what messes us up. It’s how we talk to the people we love. It’s how we speak to ourselves and how we look in the mirror, it’s how we speak about our lives. It’s how we choose, or don’t choose, to keep trying It’s how we respond to the shift in expectations that determines what happens next. Chuck Swindoll said, “10 percent in life, what happens in life, is what actually happened to you. The other 90 percent is your attitude about what happens to you. While we may not be able to choose what comes to us in life–a lot of it we can, but a lot of it we cannot–we always get to choose how we react to what happens to us in life. Inspiration will die on the vine, but something that is deeply planted can move and grow slowly bit by bit over time. I still get messages from people, and it’s been humbling to hear how the book is impacting them. The main thing that I’m hearing them say is; that they’ve decided not to give up, or to stop living as if they have given up and that I’ve given them hope of that one thing. When I hear people saying, “you know what, I’ve got to call that person and make amends,” Oh, I’m overjoyed. When I hear them say that they never thought that they could go back to school, but in the next couple of months they’re going to call and get some applications done, or log on and start working on their financial aid. Oh, that makes my heart sing. Inspiration will die on the vine, but something that is deeply planted can move and grow slowly bit by bit over time. So that’s what I’m hearing. The takeaway is; you believe that you are valuable, that your life as a one of a kind beautifully unique event, and then what is the action step that you will take to honor the life that God has uniquely given to you? Narrator: To find out more about Chyrstal Evans Hurst’s new book “She’s Still There: Rescuing the Girl in You” visit ChrystalEvansHurst.com. We’ll be back with more of the Jesus Calling podcast after this brief message from Audible. As a special offering to you, the listeners of The Jesus Calling Podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service. Find your favorite Sarah Young titles, including Jesus Calling and Jesus Always in an audiobook version and get it for free by trying audible.com. Check out a small sample of the Jesus Calling audiobook, featured at the end of this podcast. To download an entire free audiobook today, go to audibletrial.com/JesusCalling. Again, that’s audibletrial.com/JesusCalling for your full, free audiobook. Now, on to the second half of our program. Edie Sundby: A Choice To Get Moving Narrator: Our next guest has an incredible story of survival. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Edie Sundby was given three months to live. Fear and worry about her family were her first reactions, but a strong desire to live and move prevailed. While enduring over 79 rounds of chemo, plus radical liver and lung surgeries, she decided to walk 1600 miles along the California Mission Trail and during that time she got closer to God, and learned to trust Him for her life. Edie: My name is Edie Littlefield Sundby. When I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and given less than 1 percent chance of survival, I had two choices. I could go home and I could prepare to die, or I could get moving. I decided to embark on a once in a lifetime faith journey, and became the first person in history to walk the sixteen hundred mile El Camino Real Mission Trail. I grew up on a cotton farm in Oklahoma. My folks were probably the most authentically real Christians that I have had the pleasure of knowing in my entire life. They walked their faith, they lived their faith, they breathed their faith. They were their faith. So in times of drought, when things were not going well, they never seemed to mind. Daddy would work a little harder and mother would use a little less. We would always get by and they always put their faith in the Lord. They knew there would be times of plenty, and there would be times of struggle, because that’s just how life is. It was wonderful growing up on a farm. I would get on our Daddy’s old plow horse, Old Nelly, and all of us would ride around, and scare the chickens, and the cows, and we would pretend to be cowboys. So, I grew up wild and free in the prairie wind dreaming of being a ballerina one day, and then the next daydreaming of being a cowboy. What You Can Do By The Grace Of God I was raised with a wholesome feeling that anything is possible. In fact where there’s a will, God will provide a way, especially if the will is of honest, and honorable intent and you’re passionate. My mother was a person of enormous faith and was a beacon of light to me, and I knew because she instilled in all of us; that whatever we wanted to do, with the grace of God, we could do it. At a very early age I wanted to see the world and I would dream about seeing the world. When I was 15, I, through the Rotary Club, became an exchange student to go to Australia. So I spent my sophomore my junior year in high school in Australia. I didn’t have the money for the ticket to get out there, but the community backed us up. I knew I wanted to go to college. The way to make money for college, I discovered, was by selling Bibles door to door–the Southwestern Company out of Nashville, Tennessee–and that probably was the most empowering experience of my life. I learned that you had to be as enthusiastic at the last door at the end of the day as you were at the first, because that last door deserves that same kind of attention, or respect as the first person you talk to. Success Beginnings And A Promising Career I grew up dreaming up big things and then I went to the University of Oklahoma. I paid my way, I also worked as a janitor. I worked in the Philosophy Department on a philosophy journal as a proofreader. I did all of these things to pay for my college education. My senior year in college, I had an opportunity to interview with IBM, and they were looking for people like me who were enthusiastic, self-motivated people who enjoyed sales. I always enjoyed sales because it’s a meritocracy. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what sex you are. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. It doesn’t matter anything about you–as long as you can connect with people and you can understand what people need, and what people want, and you can present a solution to what they need and what they want. I rose up through those sales ranks of IBM and I had an opportunity to be a vice president of Pacific Telesis in San Francisco, where I had an organization of five hundred people reporting to me and my organization. I was an area vice president of marketing. So all of those wonderful career things happened just one step at a time. I met my husband at IBM. His folks were very, very strong Christians, very devout Lutherans who lived their faith, just like my folks who were devout Baptists lived their faith. So we had instantly a lot in common, and we didn’t know each other that long before we got married. We have now been married 42 years. When Life Throws You Curveballs, Keep Moving We are never prepared for illness. We’re never prepared for catastrophe. It never happens at a convenient time. I, like so many people, I was finished with my child raising years and my children were on their way to college. It was their first year at college and I was looking forward to getting back into the work world in a big way. I was looking forward to having them complete their education, get their first jobs, get married have their children, the script to the normal life, if there is such thing as a normal life. Of course things come at you, and curveballs hit. The curveball that hit me was stage 4 cancer. It was in eight different organs, and I was given three months to live. My life virtually turned immediately upside down and backwards. I knew I would do what it would take to be alive, because if you want to stand up to cancer, you have to have something to hold on to. I grabbed a hold of what I could. I knew that I had to keep moving. For example, I fought hard for five and a half years. It kept coming back, because that’s what cancer does. I was missing 60 percent of my liver and I lost 10 inches of my colon, a couple inches of my stomach. The cancer came back again–it came back in my lungs. I lost my right lung. But through all of this, I kept moving and I wanted to live so badly that the chemotherapy–I had 79 treatments of chemotherapy–I would even put rocks in my pockets at weigh-in to get higher doses of chemotherapy, because chemotherapy was the only chance that I had at surviving cancer. That’s how much I wanted to live. I kept walking. I kept doing things within my control. The disease was not within my control, but there were certain things I could do. Walking was one of the things I could do. Less than six months after I lost my right lung to cancer, I felt–because I’d fought for five and a half years through all the chemo through the radical surgeries, through death really, many times in emergency rooms, many times in intensive care units–when I lost my right lung, and we got it, after five and a half years, I was so grateful to be alive. I was so thankful to be alive and I’d walked all during this five-and-a-half years, and I wanted to just heal and I had learned that walking is healing. So I yearned to walk the old California Mission Trail. Walking The California Mission Trail I needed to heal physically. I needed to heal emotionally, and I needed to heal spiritually. The old mission trail in California starts in San Diego and it ends north of San Francisco, 800 miles. I started this walk of thanksgiving, of gratitude to the 21 old missions that line this old mission trail. At each of these missions, I would stop, I would light a prayer candle, I would say a prayer. The Franciscan missionary or parish priest would say a prayer with me, a healing prayer. I walked with family. I walked with friends. I walked alone. But I always walked with God. It took me less than two months. It took me 55 days to walk 800 miles. I walked on average 15 miles a day with one lung and when I got to the end, there in Sonoma, I did not want to stop walking. When the cancer came back again two years later in 2015, I knew I needed to finish my mission walk. So I went down to Loredo, and with the help of cowboys: 20 vaqueros, Mexican cowboys, and about 30 or 40 pack mules, and saddle mules, made my way through the Sierras in the Sonoran Desert of Mexico following this old mission trail, another 800 miles in two months to the border. Sixteen hundred miles sounds like a long ways; it is a long ways, but it’s really from mission to mission. There were 18 of these old Jesuit and Franciscan missions in Mexico, and there’s 21 in California. So there were 39 missions. That was my destination was to get to a mission. It wasn’t 1600 miles, it was thirty-nine missions and the love that I received in each of these and the sense of adventure to get to the next mission. It was the sense of excitement of 200 years ago; of walking. Of getting to a place of food, and water, and shelter, and prayer, and blessings and that’s how they opened their arms to me. Grace In, Cancer Out You know, walking is healing. As I walked this 1600 miles, I healed in different ways. My body healed; my body healed from losing my lung. There were mountains to climb and some days I felt like I would pass out. I couldn’t get enough breath into my lung, my remaining lung. But I found that if I just kept on walking, that my lung capacity–my available lung capacity–would expand it, would grow, which is how we heal. I found that toenails would turn black and fall off, but they would heal. Blisters would heal and aches and pains would all heal. I felt the same way emotionally. God told Job, “pour out thy overflowings.” Those overflowings, those emotional overflowings for me; it was fear. It was terror. It was despair. It was all of those things that happen to us in life when we have no control. When we pour out those overflowings of emotions, that allows grace to flow in. And as I walked, my prayer became, “grace in, cancer out,” with each breath, there was “Grace in,” and each out breath “cancer out.” A thousand steps became a thousand prayers. The prayer I’ve always had is, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. Lord Jesus have mercy on me,” and that’s always instantly given me peace. “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me;” to trust in that mercy, and to have faith in it, and to hold on to it, and to hear it and to hear Jesus calling and to follow Jesus. What Sarah has done with Jesus Calling is opened our hearts to Jesus “calling,” and you know, wherever our heart is our feet will follow. So, in walking a pilgrimage of the old Mission trail, I found that as my heart was following joy, gratitude, thanksgiving, God; it was following Jesus. That’s where my heart was and my feet followed, and that’s why I did not want to stop walking. God Is Whispering “All Is Well” Narrator: Edie’s walk to healing was a true testament of faith, courage and the power of hope. Edie wrote about her journey in her book “The Mission Walker.” Edie: There was a time to reflect on the story, and that’s basically what the book was, it was reflection; not just on the walk, the 1600 mile walk, it was a reflection on dealing with that universal experience of confronting mortality. I end the book with the three words; “All is well.” God, I believe, is whispering to us, “all is well.” Whenever we’re going through the struggles, when we’re going through the suffering, when we’re going through the difficulties of life, God is whispering, “all is well, all is well.” I’d like to share one of my favorite passages if I could. Paul reminded us of many things, and you know, Paul suffered horrendously, horrendously in prison and the difficulties he encountered were just profound. But he never gave up faith; he never gave up. He never wavered. What is written in 2 Timothy 1:7 has stayed with me and the verse is: “for God gave us a spirit not of fear. But of power and love.” So whatever we fear–be it cancer, be it financial devastation, be it family estrangement, whatever that is–to confront the situation with love, and understanding, and compassion, as God sees us, because suffering is only temporary. Suffering, as Romans says, suffering leads to courage, courage leads to hope, and hope never ever disappoints. Hope. Never, ever give up hope. Narrator: To find out more about Edie Sundby and her book “The Mission Walker,” please visit themissionwalker.com. Narrator: Next time on the Jesus Calling podcast, we visit with Andrea Logan White, who is an actress, speaker, and writer of a new book called “ Perfecting Unfinished: Finding Beauty In The Midst of Brokenness” Andrea shares how about her life and the challenges of being a Christian in Hollywood: Andrea Logan White: You see these A-list actors. You see these beautiful blond girls with plastic surgery and on the outside they’re perfect, and so I’m like, “oh, this is what Hollywood is.” It’s perfection, and everybody’s beautiful, and perfect, and running around that they have this perfect life, and I kind of fell into that lifestyle. I had a good two years of really scary events that led me to hit rock bottom with drugs and men and partying and all that. Thankfully, God did not take my life, but I was close to it. I have had a journey of a little bit of craziness, a lot of sin, a lot of brokenness, and a lot of emptiness that led me to finding God. Narrator: Our featured passage from today comes from the May 26th entry of the Jesus Calling audiobook: In a world of unrelenting changes, I am the One who never changes. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Find in Me the stability for which you have yearned. I created a beautifully ordered world: one that reflected My perfection. Now, however, the world is under the bondage of sin and evil. Every person on the planet faces gaping jaws of uncertainty. The only antidote to this poisonous threat is drawing closer to Me. In My Presence you can face uncertainty with perfect Peace. Narrator: Hear more great stories about the impact Jesus Calling is having all over the world. Be sure to subscribe to the Jesus Calling podcast on iTunes. We value your reviews and comments so we can reach even more people with the message of Jesus Calling. And if you have your own story to share, we’d love to hear from you. Visit JesusCalling.com to share your story today.
Cristiano Ronaldo left the Montilivi pitch angry on Sunday after Real Madrid were beaten by Girona. The player didn't know how to deal with the loss and even refused to change shirts with the opposition players because he felt they had played dirty to win the game. The second captain of Pablo Machin's team, Alex Granell, explained on the show 'Fricandó Matiner' on RAC105 that Ronaldo declined to change shirts with him. "He said to me that he didn't want to because he hadn't like how we had managed the final minutes of the game," the Girona player said. "He told me I seemed like a good player, but that he wouldn't change shirts with me." �� El capità del @GironaFC, @A_Granell desvela la conversa amb @cristiano al final del partit a la gespa de Montilivi #FricandoMatiner pic.twitter.com/aBEXh9D2vU — Fricandó matiner (@fricandomatiner) October 31, 2017 Granell, who understood Ronaldo could be upset at losing to a newly promoted team, recognised that maybe Girona had wasted time. "I said to [Ronaldo] that what we had achieved was not a miracle, but it was a huge feat," he added. "We had the experience from other years, when we've played a little bit too correct." Granell is convinced that "if in other years we hadn't played so cleanly, maybe we would have been promoted to La Liga earlier."
Shares In 2009, during the “Obamacare” debate that was dominating the news, Atul Gawande wrote an article in the New Yorker that was widely praised and cited, including by president Obama himself. The article is a thought-provoking discussion of why some communities in the US have much higher health care costs than other regions. I took two main conclusions from the article. The first is the success of the Mayo model – organizing care as a team approach. The idea here is to pool optimal expertise in the care of each patient. Greater expertise leads to “more thinking and less testing,” as Gawande puts it. I agree with this. It takes expertise to be comfortable not doing a test. Often testing is ordered because a physician does not feel secure in their diagnostic assessment. The second main conclusion was the McAllen model, a town in Texas that has double the average Medicare costs per capita in the country. Gawande concluded that these increased costs are likely due to the culture of medical practice in the region, leading to greater unnecessary care and procedures. He wrote: The Medicare payment data provided the most detail. Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles. They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. And Medicare paid for five times as many home-nurse visits. The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine. Is that, however, a necessary conclusion from that data? The data support the conclusion that McAllen (the highest cost region) uses many more medical procedures than El Paso (the lowest cost region), but does that necessarily equate to “overuse” of medicine? Evidence does not support the conclusion that the population in McAllen is sicker than El Paso, but it is also possible that El Paso simply underdelivers care. This is a very important question as we grapple with the rising costs of health care. There are many possible sources for this rising cost, including: increased availability of expensive technology, the aging population, defensive medicine and tort costs, public health problems such as obesity, overuse of medical procedures, poor access to care leading to delayed treatment or inefficient treatment, and the use of ineffective or worthless treatments (i.e. just about everything considered CAM ). To make a significant difference and stem the rising tide of health care costs we probably have to address all of these issues. However, it is estimated that about half or more of the rise in health care costs are due to advances in medical technology, and that this technology offers reasonable value. The core problem of health care costs may simply be that we have the technology to deliver more care than we can afford to. Combined with an aging population and a culture of individualism that often demands the most aggressive care for every person, that explains a large piece of the rising cost. It is not clear what the potential for savings is from increased efficiency and avoiding unnecessary care (although obviously we need to work towards greater efficiency). Let’s get back to the question begged by Gawande – is the increased use of procedures in McAllen due to overuse? A recently published review of the literature does not support this conclusion. Keyhani et al performed a systematic review of the literature and came up with only five relevant articles comparing the overuse (not just use) of medical procedures in different regions. Here are the results: Five papers examined the relationship between geographic variations and overuse of healthcare services. One study in 2008 compared the appropriateness of coronary angiography (CA) for acute myocardial infarction in high-cost areas versus low cost areas in the Medicare population and found largely similar rates of inappropriateness (12.2% vs. 16.2%). A study in 2000 using national data concluded that overuse of CA explained little of the geographic variations in the use of this procedure in the Medicare program. An older study of Medicare patients found similar rates of inappropriate use of CA (15% to 17% vs. 18%), endoscopy (15% vs. 18% 19%), and carotid endarterectomy (29% vs. 30%) in low-use and high-use regions. A small area reanalysis of data from this study of 3 procedures found no evidence of a relationship between inappropriate use of procedures and volume in 23 adjacent counties of California. Another 2008 study found that inappropriate chemotherapy for stage I cancer was less common in low-cost areas compared with high-cost areas (3.1% vs. 6.3%). They make two conclusions from these results. One is that there is insufficient data to really answer this question definitively – only five studies. We therefore need to conduct further research into this important question. But, what evidence we do have does not support the conclusion that regional differences in utilization of medical procedures are due to overuse. Differences in overuse were slight and simply did not explain the disparity in health care use and costs in the regions compared. Their review suggests that Gawande’s assumption may not be warranted. It suggests, at the least, that the story is more complicated. Conclusion Like any complex issue the answer is probably “all of the above.” In other words – the problem of rising health care costs has many causes all of which need to be addressed if we are going to have a significant impact. We need to be realistic about the potential of addressing each contribution, however. It is tempting to blame the culture of medicine and overuse of procedures, because that is entirely fixable. I also completely agree with Gawande that optimizing health care to take maximal advantage of expertise and specialists is a good way to go. Specialty care is generally more cost effective. We probably, however, will have to face the uncomfortable truth that a major contribution to rising health care costs is that we simply have the technology to deliver more care, and people want this care. This leads to the further conclusion that one primary mechanism to constrain health care costs is to ration care – something no one wants to do, and for which there is little political incentive to address. For example, one obvious way to ration expensive health care is to limit futile end-of-life care. We currently lack an efficient mechanism to enforce rational decisions about the utility of very expensive care for individuals who are very likely at the end of their life due to a catastrophic illness or event. Most of the time the physicians and families get together and do make reasonable decisions, but sometimes this does not happen, and millions of dollars of futile health care can result. Any possibility of addressing this issue, however, was killed during the “Obamacare” debate by the dismissing of this issue as “death panels.” This very important issue then became politically untouchable. Another potential way to address the driving of health care costs by advancing technology is to adjust our research priorities. It is now reasonable to ask whether or not we should fund research that has the potential to make small incremental improvements in outcomes with expensive treatments or procedures. Perhaps we should give priority to research that has the potential of replacing an expensive treatment with a cheaper alternative, or prevent the need for the expensive intervention. Cost effectiveness is already a factor taken into consideration, but it can be given higher priority. Adjusting research, however, will take decades to have a significant impact. One conclusion, I think, is clear. Whatever the ultimate solutions turn out to be, our best chance of getting there is to follow the science and evidence. This not only applies to medical practice, but the meta questions about the strategic organization and deliver of health care itself.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts is fighting for political survival after Pauline Hanson averted an embarrassing defeat in the Senate by personally referring his "complex" dual citizenship case to the High Court. Despite insisting for weeks that Senator Roberts properly renounced his British citizenship before the last election, Senator Hanson moved the Senate motion after it became clear a Greens-led push against him would succeed. Richard Di Natale's motion had the support of Labor, the Nick Xenophon Team and other key crossbenchers. Senator Hanson's eleventh hour intervention ensured the motion passed without a potentially damaging debate. The referral caps a turbulent three weeks for Senator Roberts, who has been refusing to answer key questions about his citizenship history or produce documents that he says proves he is eligible to remain in the Senate. Section 44 of the constitution prohibits dual citizens from serving in Federal Parliament.
I’m pleased to announce that version 1.11.5 of Clozure Common Lisp is now available. This release brings the 1.11 branch up-to-date with current OS releases, and contains numerous bug fixes. The fasl file version has not changed, so there is no need to recompile all your code. With this release, CCL no longer relies on the old Subversion repository. Although the old Subversion repository will remain online for the foreseeable future, please be sure to look to GitHub for the most up-to-date versions of CCL. https://ccl.clozure.com/download.html contains the details of how to download a copy. Alternatively, you may go straight to the GitHub release page for 1.11.5. Development on Clozure CL has slowed greatly over the past couple of years, but now is the time to revitalize it. This release is an initial step in that direction. Please use https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/issues to report bugs or enhancement requests. Clozure Associates has long supported the development of CCL. But CCL is not now, nor has it ever been, Clozure Associates’ proprietary product. The project welcomes and needs contributions from its users. Thus, if you’d be interested in helping with CCL, by writing code, documentation, or by any other means, please let me (rme@acm.org) know how I can help you do that.
Tucker Carlson will replace Megyn Kelly during the 9 p.m. hour on Fox News. Just days after Kelly announced she was leaving the network after 12 years for a position at NBC News, news broke that Fox News is replacing “The Kelly File” with Carlson’s new show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Though he had taken over Greta Van Susteren’s slot at 7 p.m. EST, Carlson will now move to 9 p.m. EST. Since the show first aired in November, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has given the network a historic ratings boost. At least 3.7 million watched its debut. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson’s New Show Has Epic Ratings Premiere — Beats CNN And MSNBC Combined) “In less than two months, Tucker has taken cable news by storm with his spirited interviews and consistently strong performance,” Rupert Murdoch, the executive Chairman of 21st Century Fox and Fox News, said in a statement Thursday. “Viewers have overwhelmingly responded to the show and we look forward to him being a part of Fox News’ powerful primetime line-up.” Kelly’s last day at the network is Friday. More to come
Because of the scheme, customers were at risk of getting potentially tainted drugs, or getting drugs that were old and no longer had their required potency. (Photo11: Scharvik Getty Images/iStockphoto) NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Authorities have broken up a prescription drug "diversion" scheme operating out of Nashville that sold nearly $60 million in secondhand pills to pharmacies nationwide, pawning them off as new medicines fresh from the manufacturers. The scheme was allegedly operated through a company called Cumberland Distribution Inc., which ran drug warehouses in Nashville and was licensed by the state of Tennessee as a wholesale distributor of prescription drugs. But the drugs Cumberland resold — $58 million worth from 2006 to 2009 — were illegally obtained, the government alleged, often from buying unused prescriptions for pennies on the dollar compared with their original prices, from people on the street or in nursing homes. The drugs were then sorted and repackaged as new and sold to unsuspecting pharmacies, which passed them on to customers who came in to get prescriptions filled, according to the government's case. Because of the scheme, customers were at risk of getting potentially tainted drugs, or getting drugs that were old and no longer had their required potency. Among the recycled drugs that were sold as new were some used to treat HIV/AIDS, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Others included antipsychotic, anti-depression, acid reflux, blood pressure and diabetes medications. This week, Charles Jeffrey Edwards, 52, and his wife, Brenda Elise Edwards, 43, of Houston entered guilty pleas in U.S. District Court in Nashville and will be sentenced in November, according to court records and U.S. Attorney David Rivera. Brenda Edwards pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Her husband pleaded guilty to a single count each of mail fraud and money laundering. Mail fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine, while money laundering can bring up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. "Both defendants admitted that Cumberland Distribution purchased a portion of the prescription drugs it resold to pharmacies from individuals and entities that were not licensed to engage in the wholesale distribution of prescription drugs and … were acquired through various networks of 'diverters' who obtained (the) drugs from other unlawful sources," according to the plea deal. The case was initially investigated by the FDA, which raided the Nashville warehouses on May 14, 2009. According to the indictment, the defendants made more than $14 million in profits from the scheme over the three-year period. A third co-defendant, Jerrod Nichols Smith of Houston, who is charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and making a false statement, is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 7 in Nashville. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1lrAT0v
The fire hydrant. For decades, it has been feared by any New York City driver who dares to venture out without a tape measure. If your car comes within 15 feet of a hydrant, the next thing you know you may be at the tow pound, picking it up with a several hundred dollar bill. Ticketing and towing cars both serve a public service. Nevertheless, I was curious to see which hydrants in New York are responsible for the most tickets. If a particular address had a huge number of tickets, I suspected that something might be amiss. And with some help from NYC Open Data, I launched my so called “investigation”. And look what I stumbled upon. Meet the hydrant opposite 152 Forsyth St in Manhattan: Between August 15th and December 31st, cars here have been ticketed more than 84 times! Those fines add up to $9,660 or annualized more than $25,000 a year. And that is before towing fees. That is the highest revenue generating hydrant in all of New York City. But, and there is a huge but, I’m guessing that all of these cars were parked legally. Let me explain. If you look at these shots from Google Street View, there is what appears to be a protected bike lane between where all of these cars are parked and the hydrant: So that begs the question: can you legally park in front of a hydrant if there is a protected bike lane between you? Let’s ask the DOT: Designated Parking Space? Check. Sign Authorizing Parking? Check again. And yet on September 9th, two tickets were given here at 9:42 and 9:43 AM, one was given at 1:06PM, one was given at 3:42PM and one at 5:49PM. And that’s just one day. So what’s the deal? One theory is that technically, the lane behind the cars is not a protected bike lane. You would never know it by looking at it, but it is not painted and there are no markings. It is simply an empty space that people bike in. Should that matter? Probably not, but the NYPD might think otherwise. Unless this is a deliberate attempt to craft a “honeypot,” there should be clearer markings on the pavement to avoid this seemingly arbitrary ticketing. Why would you explicitly paint in a parking spot where it is illegal to park? But again, the NYPD may not have proper grounds for these tickets at all. And amazingly, the fun on Forsyth does not stop there. There is another hydrant, just down the block, opposite from 104 Forsyth: This is the the 4th most ticketed hydrant in all of NYC. 61 tickets in 4.5 months. Another 18 thousand dollars a year at this rate. What can we do about this? I’d like to see the DOT use this sort of data to identify hot spots that need better signage and street markings, or where enforcement might need to be changed. It may mean slightly less revenue for the city, but procedure fairness is a virtue. And wait a minute, what’s that on the Mini Cooper’s windshield on Google Street View? Sorry buddy. See you at the tow pound. Editors Note in response to some social media comments: For comparison purposes, please see this properly painted spot in the same situation, where the DOT has added stripes to mark the spot as illegal. Update with more recent data: Single Fire Hydrant Nets NYC $33,000 a Year, not just $25,000 Update June 2: Success: How NYC Open Data and Reddit Saved New Yorkers Over $55,000 a Year
RIP Al Feldstein - EC Comics and MAD editor Squa tront! Spa Fon! The great Al Feldstein, passed away today. Feldstein began working at EC comics, publishers of Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear in 1948. Soon he became editor of most of EC's titles. He typically wrote and illustrated a story in each title and drew many of the covers, a mind-bogglingly prolific output. Eventually he stopped doing the art for stories and stuck with editing, writing, and cover illustrations. According to Wikipedia, from "late 1950 through 1953, he edited and wrote stories for seven EC titles." I've always loved his signature, which features elongated horizontals on the F and the T, and an extended vertical on the N. After MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman got in a fight with publisher William Gaines over ownership of the comic and left EC in 1956, Gaines put Feldstein in charge of the humor magazine, where he remained as editor until 1985. Here's an excellent biography of Feldstein, which came out last year.
Now, over the past few months, you've probably have noticed that a lot of tweets and share links are starting to include these images in them that are actually quotes from a website, so you might find something that you want to share and highlight and send to your followers, that is something that is hard to do on Twitter especially because of the 140 character limit, so they've gotten around this by generating images that look like screenshots from the mobile app, and then they embded them in the tweets, and this is something Medium especially has started doing, which is an awesome way to share around that limitation as well as just capturing the context. For example, I had highlighted these four words, but that entire paragraph might be useful for you if you want to get a context of where that came from. This is interesting and something I wanted to talk about how you could go build this into your application on your own site. I wanted to talk about building this from scratch, but as it turns out, producthunt has cloned this feature from Medium, so they've released their own microservice called ShareMeow. If you know any of the guys there, their character definitely comes across and the naming here, so this is an awesome little service, it's a simple little Sinatra app that you can install and it really doesn't have too many dependencies given what it's doing, so it's giving a basic render, so you render this html and CSS and then you're going to take a screenshot of that basically and save that and return that to the requester which would be your websites share code. If you scroll down to the README section, you can see an example of how producthunt uses that. They actually allow you to share comments in image format, and also, they optionally have this highlight as well, just as Medium does, and this is all a regular CSS and html document, it's just rendered on it's own in the browser, and then converted into a screenshot. This little service supports custom fonts, cachable images, and it also does authentication, so this is something that you don't want to get DDOS's by a bunch of users playing with that. The way that that works is that we encode the parameters, and use that as the authentication mechanism, so you'll pass over these two parameters, the encoded params and the encoded h mac digest, and then that will be used to decode the string, which will be a very long url potentially, and then that will return a jpeg image back to your application. This is a service that you'll need to run separately from your rails application, it's a Sinatra app, as a microservice, so that means you can either deploy this to Heroku or run it on your server on your own domain or subdomain, and then just reference that as the domain when you're asking for an image. You basically just define this along with a secret when you run this service, and then your other rails application can talk to it, and they've built a ruby client to make that easier. Really this just creates the url for you so it takes the template and the options and then goes ahead and embeds the encoded parameters into the url. Really when you use their client for this, you're going to be generating urls, and then when those are accessed, it will talk to the ShareMeow microservice, which will do the image generation and return the image. I've got a simple little rails application here with comments, and we're able to add new comments, and we're able to make this share link actually functional, and that is what we're going to do right now, so let's dive into the code. I've cloned the ShareMeow repository to my laptop, and let's open up the code to take a look at this. This is a regular old Sinatra app, which I know I haven't talked about much, but Sinatra is effectively just a really lightweight version of a web framework. Something like rails but just super duper simple, and you can add in only the functionality you need, and because this service only generates images, there really isn't much to it. For example, you can see that there's a routes file, in app instead of config, and that just delegates to the Base route section. This is going to say: Let's set all the html views inside the app views folder. We're going to enable static files, set login on and that's really it. There's another route in here that will use the digest authorization which is the encoded params in the hmac digest that we talked about, and this is just going to verify that those are correct, that your application and the service are using the same secret keys, and then it's going to generate that image with the params that you sent, and that's really all the Sinatra app is. It's just going to delegate to the ShareMeow image, which is going to simply look for one of these templates, and the associated CSS file, and then render that. How do you go about running this service? It's really simple, it's a Sinatra app, so you can just call rackup like you would do with rails if you weren't using the rails command, so rails, anytime you see a config.ru, that's a rackup file, and that is rack's way of saying: This is a web application that we're going to have, so just run rackup to start that. With this one we have to set that secret key, and so we have to say SHARE_MEOW_SECRET_KEY=1 rackup and then we can run rackup . This will start our Puma server, and then start the ShareMeow service on port 9292. If we open our browser to localhost:9292, you're going to see that ShareMeow is running, but it doesn't really do anything. That's because we have to access those custom urls, and those urls to generate images require a bunch of parameters, so it's going to be easiest if we go back here, and we grab that ruby gem to make that work. You could do all of this stuff in regular old ruby, requiring those libraries and then generating a url and then replacing this with localhost:9292, but we're going to do that using the ShareMeow ruby gem, so let's go ahead and add this to our gemfile in our example share application, so we'll go ahead and do that, and then we'll configure the ShareMeow library in order to reference localhost:9292 and then we'll use the same secret key that we set here in the command line, which is going to just simply be the number one. In production, you're going to want to use a really long string here, in development you can go with whatever you want, so long as you share the same key on your rails application and ShareMeow's Sinatra application. Opening up the Gemfile in our rails application, I'm just going to paste in the ShareMeow client into the gemfile, and we're going to edit the config/initializers/sharemeow.rb file. Really in here, all you just need to do is paste in their config and change the url to localhost:9292, and your secret key to match. I would recommend you not hardcoding this, because you're going to change this in development and production possibly staging, and so on. So it would be probably a good idea to either run different instances of ShareMeow on development than your production one, or you could opt to run all the same one, but that's your call. If you would like to run different versions of ShareMeow for development and production, you can change this to config . base_url = Rails . application . secrets . share_meow_url config . secret_key = '1' Then you could open up secrets.yml development : secret_key_base : #Long_number_here share_meow_url : 'http://localhost:9292' I highly recommend you do the same thing for your secret key, and I'm just going to the same thing for your secret key and I'm just going to undo all of this for the example though, and I'm just going to hardcode those accordingly. You'll need to make sure that you leave your ShareMeow server running, and it's going to be in a separate tab in your terminal, so you'll other have this other rack up thing running, and that's just going to be necessary for you to generate those images. That's just how microservices work, you'll have multiple servers running for each of those microservices. Now that we have that, we need to start generating the parameters for the url here, and to go about learning how we can go do that, we can open up ShareMeow and take a look at what's available. If we look in the app/image_template folder, you're going to see there are three files. The base, which gives some default helpers to your templates, and then there's a comment in hello_world.rb templates. These are example templates, and we're going to use those in our application, but just know that you can go create your own and edit these accordingly, so you can tell it to use different erb templates, different CSS stylesheets and the list of allowed options can be defined as well. You'll see that this one, the hello world is really simple, and it's going to generate a or the subject, it will add emojis anywhere that are necessary, and that is going to generate a different image than the hello world one. These are going to be specified based upon this class name from inside your rails app. If we look back at the client, you'll see that they have an example here, and let's copy that into our rails app, just to see how we can render the hello world template. Hopping over to our rails application, we want to add a share link down here like I showed you before, and that's going to render out this comment in an image. All we really have to do is go down here and add a regular old link_to and we'll just call it app/views/comments/_comments.html.erb <%= link_to "Share" , ShareMeowClient . image_url ( template : 'HelloWorld' , options : { message : 'Hi' }) %> We're going to use the "Hello World" template, and we're going to pass in the options that are required for that, and that's the only thing that's required, is the message and actually, to do a better example here, we can change this to an image tag, and then we'll be able to embed it on the page and you'll be able to see it, and you'll notice that ti takes a second to render, and that's because you are rendering your rails application the image is being requested, it goes over to those microservice, the microservice takes the parameters, parses them, generates the image, returns the image and then finally you'll see it show up on the page, but that will take some time because it's doing quite a bit of work. The recommended thing here of course is to make sure that these images are behind a CDN so that every time that you generate one of these images, you only generate it one time, and it gets cached and everybody can view the cached version so your microservice isn't getting overburdened with work, because it's definitely going to be quite a bit of work, so here is the "Hello World" one, and it's working just as we would expect. Now we want the text to match, so if we change "Hi" in the message for comment.body , you can reference any oof the variables you would like in the rails app, and voila, we have sent over the text from this comment into the hello world template. One cool thing too, is that while we might be sending over plain text right now, you could send over the simple formatted version of that, and that will generate simple formatted html and we'll send that over and it will actually embed the html version as well. This is really nifty, and we can send over custom html into the image generator and it will go ahead and do that for us. Not too much work to set that up, you just pretty much run a server, you share a key between them, configure rails app to help generate links, and you're basically done. That's really just generating the hello world template, so if we were to change this template to the comment template that we were looking at just now, you will notice that it has a lot more of allowed options, so if we were to go refresh this page, you're going to see that image is broken, and the reason for that is because when you go back to the log from the ShareMeow microservice, you're going to see that there's some errors. Anytime that your microservice doesn't get the right parameters, it's going to crash. The reason for this crash is because we didn't pass in the correct parameters and the code was expecting not a nil but a string, so that was the problem there. We need to make sure that we take all of these-- we'll pass that in as options, and then each one of these needs to be set to something, so we'll do comment.body app/views/comments/_comments.html.erb <%= link_to "Share" , ShareMeowClient . image_url ( template : 'HelloWorld' , options : { content : comment . body , name : comment . user . email , user_id : comment . user . id , subject_name : "Comment" , min_height : 400 }) %> If we refresh this page, we'll see that we do get a image posted here. Now it's not completely correct because the avatar here is coming from producthunt's other service, and you can see how that works by going back into ShareMeow's code, and then looking at the views, comment.erb and this is actually where the template is rendered. This is very similar to rails templates, but you'll notice we're accessing the options variable, and that is because we're not using rails, you're not accessing instance variables like add options or @min_height or anything like that, you are just passing in the options hash and you have to access each of these values there. When I passed in the user id, this is actually pulling a user id from their other service, so you will need to go and edit all the html inside these app/views yourself in order to customize how that works. Here we have that full freedom to do whatever we like, so for this obviously, we don't want to be using the producthunt's avatars, so we could either get rid of this url and replace it with our own, so maybe we have, let's change it and say: options[:gravatar_url] and we can go do that. Let's change our comment class and change user id to gravatar url, and then we can go back to our code here and we can say gravatar_url: gravatar I've already installed the gem called gravatar_image_tag. If you're not familiar with that, it's super duper useful, gravatar is a service to take email addresses and get images avatar's back, and it has these awesome little helpers that will help generate those urls. If you take gravatar image url as the method, and you pass in an email address, you can then send over a gravatar image and then you could render this and if everything went correctly, and it looks like it has some url there, but it's not correctly being passed over. If we want to debug tihs and figure out how we can customize this and make sure that it's all working correctly you can actually just simply output your options values right into the image, and because this is generating it every single time you refresh the page and it's not caching it, you'll be able to see the output in the image. We might need to do an inspect here to see, and it is probably because that value is nil, and so you'll see nil come out, that means that our value isn't being passed in correctly or something, so we have to check out what we've got here, so we've got gravatar url there, and our erb template has gravatar_url ther, and it's specified correctly, so then we can go back to our code again, and make sure that that gravatar url is specified correctly there, and then we could also print out on the page <%= gravatar . image_url ( comment . user . email ) %> And make sure that that is being done correctly in the rails app, so we have this, and then we pass it into the gravatar thing, and so if we did like .jpeg here, we should get that, but as you might have noticed, the file type seems to have been missing from that url. We need to go back and add our file type here, let's say filetype: png and then go back, remove that code and then refresh, and now we should see the avatar there but we don't, so that means that something is still missing that we're sending across there. One thing that you probably need to do is to restart your ShareMeow server anytime you make changes to those templates like that, and that' because there's new values that are being available in the class, and while the templates may get reloaded every single request, the parameters, the options that you pass over are not necessarily, so anytime you make changes to those you'll have to restart that, but that might also be something that we could fix in the ShareMeow development service, to work a little bit more like rails where it autoreloads the classes every time. Now you're seeing that we have an avatar, this is my gravatar up here, but now it's being loaded inside the producthunt's ShareMeow comment CSS like image and everything. So this is super duper cool, we're able to also pull in images and emojis and anything that we want, so basically, we're able to generate images with any sort of format we could possibly imagine. We just have to make sure that all of our code is available in the ShareMeow's servers. That is really all there is to it, we can go and edit some CSS, but this is pretty much as you would expect, you could change the colors, and maybe just say: Let's just make these links as blue or let's go back and say like: The color for the body should be blue, so if we were to refresh this, we should see the text has changed to the color blue. Now, if you're interested in building your own image templates, all you have to do is copy comment, that would probably be the best example to copy, and you can just create a new file with your own template there, and so you'll create your own CSS templates and view file and then you are off to the races. This will automatically get loaded in images templates when you create a new one, and you'll be able to pass in any of the options you would like over to that, and if you want to override or preparse some of those to the views, you can just set them simply by saying @options and the value or the key, and set the value to the parsed version of that. If you wanted to support markdown, you can use html pipeline or any of the markdown gems to automatically parse that and then send that out to your template in order to be rendered. That is that. Really there's not a whole lot to it, you don't have all the niceties of rails, but you don't need the niceties of rails because this is really intended to be really lightweight, super fast and if you throw this up on your own service, you'll be able to use it for any of your applications that want to take advantage of this and if look at the rest of the code it's really straightforward, the ShareMeow image that we were looking at before really just initializes the templates and then uses this image kit class in order to load up the stylesheets and then render an image, so it takes some options and then renders it out, and that's it. If you're interested in looking at that more, you can check out the image_kit gem, which we might talk about more in the future. This gem is pretty much super duper lightweight wrapper for image_kit, it just adds those urls in Sinatra into it in order to do the validations of the secret key and then do the rendering of your templates, so it's really organized and really easy to use. I think they did a super good job with this, the only thing I would like to see is I would love to see somebody make a way for you to test these out in the browser, and so maybe you have in development a way of seeing this before it gets rendered through an image a little bit faster or something. Not a huge need because it doesn't take very long to generate an image. That is ShareMeow and how to build image comments like you would see on Medium, and it's also a whirlwind introduction to microservices. They're all just a little applications like this gem, that don't do much but one specific thing, so I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you in the next one. Peace
The death of a Montreal woman last Thursday after her clothing became entangled in a subway escalator should have been a moment of sombre reflection on the fragility of human life. Instead, sensationalist francophone media coverage and the comments it unleashed online turned this tragic death into one of the darkest moments of racism and xenophobia in Quebec’s charter of values saga. Naima Rharouity, wife and mother of two, was wearing a hijab on the day of the incident. The Journal de Montréal, among others, capitalizing on heightened sensitivities towards the garb in the current charter debate reported with no verification that Naima had been strangled by her hijab. The Journal maintained the report even after police stated the cause of death was unknown. But wearing the hijab was all it took for Naima’s death to become fair game for online commentators who, fuelled by irresponsible media coverage, hurled statements such as “This is what you get for deciding to keep it on,” “Where was Allah?” and “One less terrorist in Montreal.” Mourners gather at a vigil for Naima Rharouity, who died last week in Montreal after her clothing became entangled in a subway escalator. ( Lillian Boctor ) How did this woman’s sad death become the target of so much hatred? The seemingly never-ending charter of values debate has ramped up xenophobia against Quebec’s religious minorities who would be banned from wearing religious symbols in the public service if the legislation passes. But one could never have imagined the debate would sink so low. If it was another woman commentators might have expressed regard for her family and concerns about subway safety. Naima’s death, however, was overshadowed by a crude obsession over whether it was an ordinary scarf or her hijab that had caught in the escalator treads. It seems there was less sympathy to spare if her hijab was to blame. The values of state secularism, religious neutrality, and equality between men and women have been forcefully extolled in the charter debate, but it is clear that the virtues of common decency and respectful discussion have fallen to the wayside. Quebec is seized with xenophobia. General consultations on the proposed ban that began in January have become an opportunity to purge one’s prejudices, with once-closeted discrimination toward religious minorities now everyday fare. Last month, the Quebec National Assembly heard testimony from the Pinault-Caron family who, discussing their travel in Morocco, described how frightened they were to see Muslims praying on all fours on carpets. People like this should not be welcome in Quebec, they argued. Line Chaloux, director of an immigrant’s centre, testified that Mormons should be expelled from Quebec if found proselytizing. Article Continued Below One would expect such bigoted testimony to be stopped in its tracks. Instead, elected representatives encourage this commentary, nodding along and asking follow-up questions to fan the flames. Minister of Democratic Institutions Bernard Drainville, who is charged with overseeing the hearings, has even banned the word racist, saying he will not accept any charges of racism during the proceedings. The government has decided to wilfully ignore the manifest xenophobia promulgated by some parties. But while the sort of outrageous testimony that has dominated the headlines has been by no means rare, it is not representative of the wider range of Quebec public opinion. Professors, universities and civil society organizations have provided strong testimony against the charter so far, with major unions and medical associations scheduled to speak against the ban this month. Last Thursday, the Quebec Employers Council, representing 75,000 employers in the province, delivered a significant blow to the proposed charter testifying that it would undermine Quebec’s economy, making it less attractive to investment and workers. The Quebec Bar Association, whose written submission rebuked the ban as unconstitutional, is scheduled to speak along with other public opinion heavyweights. Drainville’s response to Quebec’s leading business, legal, medical and education bodies speaking against the charter, however, is to dismiss them as elitist and intellectual fear-mongers, pitting them against the average Quebecer whose opinions, he says, are of greater concern. The Quebec government is legislating based on perceptions and anecdotes that peddle the politics of fear, not facts. And by absolving itself of the responsibility to ensure the charter is debated with a modicum of tolerance, the government has opened the floodgates to the kind of vitriolic commentary that followed Naima’s death. Like the faceless woman in a hijab featured in the charter-promoting government ads plastered across Montreal’s subway stations, in the moments following her death, Naima was stripped of her humanity and reduced to nothing more than the cloth over her hair. She was a victim not only of a tragic accident, but also, posthumously, of Quebec’s deteriorating social climate. As long as the public spectacle of minority-bashing continues unabated, she will not be the last. Humera Jabir is a law student at McGill University in Montreal. Read more about:
– The Houston Texans officially announced they have put J.J. Watt on the Injured Reserved list Wednesday morning. This announcement came hours after it was reported Watt had injured surgically repaired back again during the Texans game against the New England Patriots. Watt, the 3-time defensive player of the year, had surgery in July to repair a herniated disc in his back and missed all of training camp before returning for week 1. The Texans also officially announced they re-signed 12-year veteran Antonio Smith to take Watt’s place on the 53-man roster. Being put on IR means that the Texans have to wait at least six weeks to designate if Watt can return. Each team can allow one player to come off the IR each season. The Texans have not used their IR-designated to return list. Watt had 1.5 sacks and 8 combined tackles on the season.
London’s Metropolitan Police paid out £7.1 million on decifering 97 languages including the African dialects of Wolof, Yoruba and Oromo. Rural constabularies have also spent substantial sums on language services. Thames Valley Police’s bill for translators and interpreters has exceeded £1 million in each of the past three years. Forces in Kent, Norfolk and Lincolnshire have at times spent more than £400,000 a year on translation. The figures – obtained using the Freedom of Information Act - expose one of the hidden costs of years of high migration. They emerge after the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles deplored the use of translators by local authorities and said he wanted all people who live in Britain to speak English as their “first and predominant” language. Some constabularies are already spending as much public money on translating Romanian as they do Polish. Whereas Poles became eligible to work and live in the UK nine years ago, Romanians became entitled to do so from January next year. Police in Hertfordshire hired Romanian interpreters on 538 occassions during 2011. This was nearly 100 times more than the constabulary hired translators for Polish speakers. In 2011 Surrey Police spent £39,764 hiring Polish interpreters and a further £39,648 on Romanian interpreters. Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of the think tank MigrationWatch, said: “These are substantial sums that could be spent elsewhere especially in the present economic climate. “It is concerning that a number of Romanian are already coming to police attention in some areas despite the relatively small size of their community.” Greater Manchester Police spent £1.5million on translators between 2010 and 2012. The force said it will “usually engage with 72 languages” each year, including a range of dialects from the subcontinent such as Marathi, Telugu, Sylheti. Over three financial years between 2009 and 2012, Police in Cambridgeshire paid out £1.8million to translate languages such as the Philippine dialect of Tagalog, Jamaican Patois and Amharic, which is spoken in parts of Ethiopia. Suffolk Police’s spending on telephone translation services last year came in at £26,702 – 30 per cent over budget. The force also spent more than £200,000 on interpreters. The Telegraph received responses from 35 police authorities. Forces in Hampshire, Northumbria and South Wales refused to handover any details on their spending on interpreters and translators. In an interview with The Telegraph last week Mr Pickles attacked the routine use of translators and interpreters by local authorities. “It’s a complete waste of money and sends out all the wrong messages,” the Communities Secretary said. “It’s a badge of honour to some authorities to say the number of documents there are translating into different language. All we are doing by that is creating a culture of isolation.” Sussex police is currently advertising for PCSOs paid up to £20,020 a year who speak East European to work in the Arun district. Around 25,000 of the area’s 150,000 population are understood to have come from East Europe. Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: “Those who choose to live in Britain must make an effort to learn to speak English so that they are not burdening public services such as the police with these costs. “Taxpayers rightly expect police forces to spend their money on frontline officers to keep us safe rather than on translation costs.” Last week official figures showed that foreign workers account for more than half of the rise in employment in Britain over the past year. The Office for National Statistics also said that 112,000 people who were born in Bulgaria or Romania are now working in Britain – a 14 per cent rise on the same period in 2012.
The Houston Dynamo have led Major League Soccer's efforts in donating at least $1 million to the American Red Cross' relief efforts after Hurricane Harvey. The Dynamo and their NWSL counterpart, the Houston Dash, are joining with MLS, its community outreach initiative MLS WORKS and other clubs to provide aid. "Our organization strongly believes in its responsibility to be a community leader in times of need," Dynamo and Dash owner Gabriel Brener said in a statement. "We are here to support people throughout the relief and recovery effort by initiating a number of efforts." MLS WORKS will also be coordinating league-wide efforts on informing fans on how to donate as well. New England Revolution owner Robert Kraft and Atlanta United owner Arthur Blank have both said they will match donations up to $1 million. "Houston is a city the New England Revolution and our fans have shared many competitive moments with -- most notably the 2006 and 2007 MLS Cups against the Houston Dynamo," Kraft said in a statement. "We are eager to provide our support and hope by matching donations we will encourage more people to give to help ease the recovery of our displaced neighbors. And we wish all of our friends at the Houston Dynamo and their fans the best during this time of need." The Dynamo postponed their home game against Sporting Kansas City last weekend as the storm was poised to affect the Houston area. The MLS team is training this week in Frisco, Texas, the home of rivals FC Dallas, while the Dash will play their NWSL game at Toyota Stadium on Sunday. The Dynamo's BBVA Compass Stadium has been turned into a donation center, and defender Dylan Remick helped volunteer this week before the team left for Frisco. He told the Houston Chronicle that two of his teammates could not get out of their homes in time to immediately join the team, but that all players were reported safe. J.J. Watt of the NFL's Houston Texans is also leading a fundraising campaign that has already raised over $14 million.
A U.S. ban on carrying laptops and tablets in the cabin of inbound international flights may be extended to European countries, including the UK. Any electronic device larger than a phone would have to be placed in hold baggage. The U.S. government currently applies the ban to flights from 10 airports, mostly Middle Eastern and North African. The measure was introduced last month, the Department of Homeland Security stating that it was in response to intelligence suggesting that terrorists planned to smuggle explosives inside consumer electronics items … NordVPN The Guardian reports that the Trump administration is ‘considering’ extending the ban to flights from Europe. British officials understand that their US counterparts are looking at extending the ban – which prevents any devices larger than a smartphone being taken as carry-on luggage – to flights from Europe. One Whitehall source suggested to the Guardian that although it was not certain that the ban would be extended to the UK, the US was considering doing so. The DHS neither confirmed nor denied the report. Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security, said: “We’ve said we will continue to evaluate the threat environment and make determinations based on that assessment, but we have not made any decisions on expanding the current restrictions against large electronic devices in aircraft cabins from selected airports.” Such a move would likely hit both business travel and tourism. For business travellers, being able to work during flights enables them to remain productive while travelling, while many tourists may prefer to choose a different destination to avoid entrusting valuable equipment to the vagaries of hold baggage. As the ban would also apply to American citizens returning home, it would likely also hit demand for U.S. travel to Europe. Photo: Lufthansa
NEW BRUNSWICK — Four Edison cops, including Michael Dotro, were indicted today on charges they conspired together to retaliate against a North Brunswick police officer who issued a drunk driving ticket to one of Dotro’s relatives. The grand jurors charged that Dotro, Victor Aravena, William Gesell and Brian Favretto, between Jan. 18, 2012, and May 1, 2012, conspired to retaliate against North Brunswick police Officer Dimitrious Katsoulis by accessing crime data illegally in order to obtain information about Katsoulis. They also performed surveillance on Katsoulis’s Edison residence and travel habits, according to the indictment. They are also charged with official misconduct. All four have been suspended without pay, a township spokesman said. It's the second time Aravena has been suspended without pay; Aravena won a court order to restore his pay in August. The indictments are the latest in a series of embarrassments for the department that serves the state's fifth-largest town. The department is beset with infighting, lawsuits and misbehavior in the ranks. Town officials recently had to revamp its entire hiring and promotions process for police officers. As the department tries to clean up its image, however, several criminal cases against its officers are in the works. Chief Thomas Bryan could not immediately be reached for comment. Dotro, of Manalapan, has become the most notable example of trouble within the ranks. He was previously charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to burn down his superior officer's house while his family slept inside. The superior officer had reportedly ordered Dotro to undergo a psychological evaluation after his 11th excessive force complaint. He is out on bail and has pleaded not guilty. In the latest indictments, Dotro is charged with separate counts of unlawful access of a computer system, official misconduct, and pattern of official misconduct. Gesell, of Edison, is charged with separate counts of official misconduct, and unlawful access of a computer system. Aravena, of Edison, is charged with separate counts of witness tampering, obstructing the administration of law, official misconduct and pattern of official misconduct. Aravena allegedly tried to get a fellow Edison police officer to alter a police report in May 2013. Dotro, Gesell and Aravena were all previously charged with the alleged retaliation scheme in March. The indictment represents the first charges against Favretto, a resident of Brick. According to Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey, the retaliation against the North Brunswick officer was planned, but never carried out. Captain Bruce Polkowitz, the president of the Superior Officers Association in Edison, vouched for Aravena, Gesell and Favretto. "My experience has always been that these three officers are good, hardworking police officers," Polkowitz said. "I'm very disappointed in these indictments. And unfortunately, I don’t have enough information at this time to make another comment." In a separate indictment, unsealed today, Dotro and his wife, Alyssa, are charged with conspiracy, criminal mischief, and official misconduct. Dotro separately is also charged in the same indictment with unlawful access to a computer system, unlawful disclosure of computer system data, two counts of prohibited devices, possession of an imitation firearm, two counts of official misconduct, conspiracy with an unnamed co-conspirator to distribute marijuana to Alycia Dotro, and pattern of official misconduct. The charges stem from incidents last year in which Dotro allegedly bought marijuana while in uniform, conspired to sell the drug, slashed a woman’s tires and illegally accessed the police department’s records database for personal use. Dotro and his wife are already facing charges stemming from the firebombing in May 2013 of Dotro’s superior’s home in Monroe Township. Dotro is charged with five counts of attempted murder, aggravated arson and other charges in an indictment that stems from the May 20, 2013 fire, which heavily damaged the home of Edison police Capt. Mark Anderko, who is now a deputy chief. Dotro, a 10-year-veteran, has been suspended since his arrest in May 2013 without pay and has been free on more than $2 million bail. His wife, Alyssa, was charged with hindering her husband’s apprehension by lying to investigators about him. All four are free on bail, which they must pay by their next court appearance on Nov. 7. Bail is $100,000 for Michael Dotro; $75,000 each for Alycia Dotro, Aravena and Gesell, and $50,000 for Favretto, the prosecutor's office said. NJ Advance Media reporter Brian Amaral contributed to this story. Sue Epstein may be reached at sepstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @susan_epstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Note from Composer It took me seven years to get my bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. By the time I graduated I was ready to eat Las Vegas. Tom Leslie asked me to write another piece for the group as I was leaving, and I thought it would be a blast to do something completely ridiculous. The players are called upon to scream in terror, dress like Elvises (Elvi), and play in about thirty different styles from mambo to cheesy lounge music. The audience follows a ‘script’ that I wrote simulating a campy, over the top Godzilla movie (is there any other kind?). I wrote the bulk of the piece while in my first year at Juilliard, and no kidding, I used to act out the script every morning devouring animal crackers, wreaking havoc all over the breakfast table. The ‘script’ was originally twice as long, and had an entire subplot devoted to a young scientist and his love interest. As I started to finish the piece, however, it didn’t seem that funny and that story (along with an extended Elvis tribute) ended up on the cutting room floor. The idea that this piece is being played all over the world in such serious concert venues is the single funniest thing I have ever heard. It has been played on the steps of the Capitol by the United States Marine Band, by the Scottish National Wind Symphony (they play in kilts, so help me God), and I have a video of a Japanese audience visibly confused and shaken by the whole experience. Can you imagine? I’m laughing my head off even as I write this! Godzilla Eats Las Vegas! was commissioned by the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Thomas G. Leslie, conductor, and received its premiere November 28th, 1996. The performers are encouraged to go crazy: wear showgirl costumes, Elvis costumes, act out scenes on stage, use video and lighting – anything to get a laugh. Here is the script that the audience follows while the piece is being performed: Part One FADE UP It is a Bright and Sunny day as the sequined curtain rises on tinsel town, and the excitement of a new day filled with the possibility of The Big Payoff is practically palpable. The band kicks off the show in high gear and all is well as we suddenly hear: CUT TO DESERT A lone shakuhachi flute usher the arrival of something really VERY bad. CUT BACK TO BAND A relaxed rhumba. showgirls blissfully jiggle. CUT TO MILITARY COMMAND CENTER (stock footage) Morse code signals the confirmation of approaching doom. CUT BACK TO BAND The players finish off their third set and head for the bar; outside we hear: SLOW ZOOM Oh no, oh no, oh no, it’s: CLOSE UP Godzilla! Glorious Godzilla! VARIOUS QUICK CUTS (stock footage) Godzilla destroys cars, screaming tourists, ect. CUT BACK TO BAND The band, quasi Greek Chorus, calls for Godzilla to Mambo. GODZILLA, FULL FRAME Godzilla mambos, casually crushing hysterical Vegans without missing a step. EXTREME CLOSE UP A tiny terrier barking bravely, then: CUT BACK TO GODZILLA Demolishing everything in his path… not even the doggie escapes! WIDE PAN As Godzilla heads down the strip, searching relentlessly for: CLOSE UP (stock footage) Frank Sinatra (Stomped!) CLOSE UP (stock footage) Wayne Newton (Stamped!) CLOSE UP (stock footage) Liberace (Stepped upon!) VARIOUS CUTS The Village Gods destroyed, Godzilla continues his carnage until the City of Sin is leveled! Part Two FADE UP A fearless army of Elvises (Elvi) appear in the distance, formation marching through the littered streets VARIOUS CLOSE UPS The Elvi attack, using bombers, missiles, ect. EXTREME CLOSE UP One wicked laugh from Godzilla and the Elvi scatter like mice! QUICK CUT (stock footage) The Sphinx sits outside The Luxor, looking seductive in a Mae West sort of way. CLOSE UP Godzilla takes one look and his eyes pop out of his head. QUICK CUTS The Sphinx (Sphinxtress?) seduces the Reptile, who instantly falls in love and begins to… WIDE SHOT …tango with her. SPLIT SCREEN As they dance, the Elvi slowly regroup and head for the: QUICK CUT (stock footage) Pirate ships at Treasure Island ACTION SEQUENCE (MONTAGE) The Elvi approach the dancing monster and launch a ferocious volley of cannonballs directly at him. QUICK CLOSE UPS The cannonballs find their mark, and Godzilla: WIDE SHOT Falls to the ground, annihilated. The Elvi are triumphant! CROSSFADE The lounge is open again, and the city of Las Vegas toasts the victory. The scene climaxes with: VARIOUS CUTS (stock footage) People happy, tearful, ect. Stock footage, stock music. SLOW FADE OUT AND FADE UP A dark, ominous, and very familiar sound… SLOW ZOOM Godzilla lives! Godzilla lives! Complete terror (possible sequel?). WIDE SHOT The Show is over. The End. FADE TO BLACK
Here at HumanGeo we do all sorts of interesting things with sentiment analysis and entity resolution. Before you get to have fun with that, though, you need to bring data into the system. One data source we've recently started working with is reddit. Compared to the walled gardens of Facebook and LinkedIn, reddit's API is as open as open can be; Everything is nice and RESTful, rate limits are sane, the developers are open to enhancement requests, and one can do quite a bit without needing to authenticate. The most common objects we collect from reddit are submissions (posts) and comments. A submission can either be a link, or a self post with a text body, and can have an arbitrary number of comments. Comments contain text, as well as references to parent nodes (if they're not root nodes in the comment tree). Pulling this data is as simple as GET http://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/new.json . (Protip: pretty much any view in reddit has a corresponding API endpoint that can be generated by appending '.json' to the URL.) With little effort a developer could hack together a quick 'n dirty reddit scraper. However, as additional features appear and collection-breadth grows, the quick 'n dirty scraper becomes more dirty than quick, and you discover bugs features that others utilizing the API have already encountered and possibly addressed. API wrappers help consolidate communal knowledge and best practices for the good of all. We considered several, and, being a Python shop, settled on PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper). With PRAW, getting a list of posts is pretty easy: import praw r = praw . Reddit ( user_agent = 'Hello world application.' ) for post in r . get_subreddit ( 'WashingtonDC' ) \ . get_hot ( limit = 5 ): print ( str ( post )) $ python parse_bot_2000.py 209 :: /r/WashingtonDC's Official Guide to the City! 29 :: What are some good/active meetups in DC that are easy to join? 17 :: So no more tailgating at the Nationals park anymore... 3 :: Anyone know of a juggling club in DC 2 :: The American Beer Classic: Yay or Nay? The Problem Now, let's try something a little more complicated. Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to capture all incoming comments to a subreddit. For each comment we should collect the author's username, the URL for the submission, a permalink to the comment, as well as its body. Here's what this looks like: import praw from datetime import datetime r = praw . Reddit ( user_agent = 'Subreddit Parse Bot 2000' ) def save_comment ( * args ): print ( datetime . now () . time (), args ) for comment in r . get_subreddit ( 'Python' ) \ . get_comments ( limit = 200 ): save_comment ( comment . permalink , comment . author . name , comment . body_html , comment . submission . url ) That was pretty easy. For the sake of this demo the save_comment method has been stubbed out, but anything can go there. If you run the snippet, you'll observe the following pattern: ... comment ... ... comment ... [WAIT FOR A FEW SECONDS] ... comment ... ... comment ... [WAIT FOR A FEW SECONDS] ... comment ... ... comment ... [WAIT FOR A FEW SECONDS] (repeating...) This process also seems to be taking longer than a normal HTTP request. As anyone working with large amounts of data should do, let's quantify this. Using the wonderful, indispensable iPython: In [ 1 ]: %% timeit requests . get ( 'http://www.reddit.com/r/python/comments.json?limit=200' ) .... : 1 loops , best of 3 : 136 ms per loop In [ 2 ]: %% timeit import praw r = praw . Reddit ( user_agent = 'Subreddit Parse Bot 2000' , cache_timeout = 0 ) for comment in r . get_subreddit ( 'Python' ) \ . get_comments ( limit = 200 ): print ( comment . permalink , comment . author . name , comment . body_html , comment . submission . url ) 1 loops , best of 3 : 6 min 43 s per loop Ouch. While this difference in run-times is fine for a one-off, contrived example, such inefficiency is disastrous when dealing with large volumes of data. What could be causing this behavior? Digging According to the PRAW documentation, Each API request to Reddit must be separated by a 2 second delay, as per the API rules. So to get the highest performance, the number of API calls must be kept as low as possible. PRAW uses lazy objects to only make API calls when/if the information is needed. Perhaps we're doing something that is triggering additional HTTP requests. Such behavior would explain the intermittent printing of comments to the output stream. Let's verify this hypothesis. To see the underlying requests, we can override PRAW's default log level: from datetime import datetime import logging import praw logging . basicConfig ( level = logging . DEBUG ) r = praw . Reddit ( user_agent = 'Subreddit Parse Bot 2000' ) def save_comment ( * args ): print ( datetime . now () . time (), args ) for comment in r . get_subreddit ( 'Python' ) \ . get_comments ( limit = 200 ): save_comment ( comment . author . name , comment . submission . url , comment . permalink , comment . body_html ) And what does the output look like? DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"PUT /check HTTP/1.1" 200 106 DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /comments/2ak14j.json HTTP/1.1" 200 888 .. comment .. DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /comments/2aies0.json HTTP/1.1" 200 2889 .. comment .. DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /comments/2aiier.json HTTP/1.1" 200 14809 .. comment .. DEBUG:requests.packages.urllib3.connectionpool:"GET /comments/2ajam1.json HTTP/1.1" 200 1091 .. comment .. .. comment .. .. comment .. Those intermittent requests for individual comments back up our claim. Now, let's see what's causing this. Prettifying the response JSON yields the following schema (edited for brevity): { 'kind' : 'Listing' , 'data' : { 'children' : [ { 'kind' : 't3' , 'data' :{ 'id' : '2alblh' , 'media' : null , 'score' : 0 , 'permalink' : '/r/Python/comments/2alblh/django_middleware_that_prints_query_stats_to/' , 'name' : 't3_2ajam1' , 'created' : 1405227385.0 , 'url' : 'http://imgur.com/QBSOAZB' , 'title' : 'Should I? why?' , } } ] } } Lets compare that to what we get when listing comments from the /python/comments endpoint: { 'kind' : 'Listing' , 'data' : { 'children' : [ { 'kind' : 't1' , 'data' :{ 'link_title' : 'Django middleware that prints query stats to stderr after each request. pip install django-querycount' , 'link_author' : 'mrrrgn' , 'author' : 'mrrrgn' , 'parent_id' : 't3_2alblh' , 'body' : 'Try django-devserver for query counts, displaying the full queries, profiling, reporting memory usage, etc. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-devserver' , 'link_id' : 't3_2alblh' , 'name' : 't1_ciwbo37' , 'link_url' : 'https://github.com/bradmontgomery/django-querycount' , } } ] } } Now we're getting somewhere - there are fields in the per-comment's response that aren't in the subreddit listing's. Of the four fields we're collecting, the submission URL and permalink properties are not returned by the subreddit comments endpoint. Accessing those causes a lazy evaluation to fire off additional requests. If we can infer these values from the data we already have, we can avoid having to waste time querying for each comment. Doing Work Submission URLs Submission URLs are a combination of the subreddit name, the post ID, and title. We can easily get the post ID fragment: post_id = comment . link_id . split ( '_' )[ 1 ] However, there is no title returned! Luckily, it turns out that it's not needed. subreddit = 'python' post_id = comment . link_id . split ( '_' )[ 1 ] url = 'http://reddit.com/r/{}/{}/' \ . format ( subreddit , post_id ) print ( url ) # A valid submission permalink! # OUTPUT: http://reddit.com/r/python/2alblh/ Great! This also gets us most of the way to constructing the second URL we need - a permalink to the comment. Comment Permalinks Maybe we can append the comment's ID to the end of the submission URL? sub_comments_url = 'http://reddit.com/r/python/comments/2alblh/' comment_id = comment . name . split ( '_' )[ 1 ] url = sub_comments_url + comment_id print ( url ) # OUTPUT: http://reddit.com/r/python/comments/2alblh/ciwbo37 Sadly, that URL doesn't work because reddit expects the submission's title to precede the ID. Referring to the subreddit comment's JSON object, we can see that the title is not returned. This is curious: why is the title important? They already have a globally unique ID for the post, and can display the post just fine without (as demonstrated by the code sample immediately preceding this). Perhaps reddit wanted to make it easier for users to identify a link and are just parsing a forward-slash delimited series of parameters. If we put the comment ID in the appropriate position, the URL should be valid. Let's give it a shot: sub_comments_url = 'http://reddit.com/r/python/comments/2alblh/' comment_id = comment . name . split ( '_' )[ 1 ] url = '{}-/{}' . format ( sub_comments_url , comment_id ) print ( url ) # OUTPUT: http://reddit.com/r/python/comments/2alblh/-/ciwbo37 Following that URL takes us to the comment! Victory Lap Let's see how much we've improved our execution time: %% timeit import praw r = praw . Reddit ( user_agent = 'Subreddit Parse Bot 2000' , cache_timeout = 0 ) for comment in r . get_subreddit ( 'Python' ) \ . get_comments ( limit = 200 ): print ( comment . author . name , comment . body_html , comment . id , comment . submission . id ) 1 loops , best of 3 : 3.57 s per loop Wow! 403 seconds to 3.6 seconds - a factor of 111. Deploying this improvement to production not only increased the volume of data we were able to process, but also provided the side benefit of reducing the number of 504 errors we encountered during reddit's peak hours. Remember, always be on the lookout for ways to improve your stack. A bunch of small wins can add up to something significant. [Does this sort of stuff interest you? Love hacking and learning new things? Good news - we're hiring!]

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