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A Google news search returns 5,240 results for “Ferguslie Park” over the last 24 hours. As compared to 0 mentions in the previous 24 hours.
The media have, with an incredible level of unanimity, seized upon a Tory being elected to represent Ferguslie Park, “the most deprived area of Scotland”, as the leading evidence of a Tory resurgence into areas of Scotland “they could not previously venture into”. I have heard this recounted on every available broadcast platform this evening.
I have two bits of news for the unionist media. Firstly, Ferguslie Park is in Paisley. Most of you think it is in Glasgow. Secondly there is no ward called Ferguslie Park. There is a place called Ferguslie Park, and it is less than half of a ward called Paisley Northwest. Now here is the result of that stunning Tory super-victory amazing spectacular miraculous shocking earth-shattering mould-breaking Tory triumph in Paisley Northwest.
My, how the ground shook. In future years, everybody will recall just exactly where they were at the moment the Conservatives polled 13% in Paisley North West, when that vast uprising of 657 voters swept their candidate to victory on the 10th set of transfers into the fourth available slot in a multi-member constituency.
Now, this will come as a shock to some people. Paisley North West is not a dreadful slum, and contains some distinctly prosperous areas. Much of the ward looks like this.
Here are some statistics for the entire ward.
65% of households in Paisley North West are owner occupied
67% of the population of Paisley North West are employed, self employed or full time students
5.1% of the population of Paisley North West are unemployed
23% of the population of Paisley North West are pensioners
4.9% are housewives/husbands/carers or not in the labour force
In a local election poll with a low turnout, there is a disproportionately high turnout from pensioners and from the wealthier districts. Very few indeed of those measly 657 Tory votes came from the Ferguslie Park estate.
The real story is that in a ward with 65% owner-occupiers and 67% economically active, the Tories could still only manage a measly 13% of the vote. That the large majority of £350,000 owner occupiers do not vote Tory. The real story is that the SNP took 44% to the Tories 13%. But no, the march of Ruth’s 13%ers has apparently changed the course of history. As Tom Robinson once sang, “It’s there in the papers, must be the truth”.
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Two suspicious packages that were found at Gower Park last week.
An item made of metal piping with protruding wires placed under the bowl of a public toilet is the latest in a string of suspicious items requiring bomb squad action in Hamilton.
In the last six months the Auckland-based bomb squad has been called in to deal with four suspicious items located in different public locations around the city.
Last Thursday the central city shopping mall was evacuated for almost four hours after a suspicious package was delivered to the ANZ Bank at Centre Place.
Bruce Mercer Auckland's Defence Force team set up a robot at Gower Park, Hamilton, where a suspicious package was found this morning.
The latest incident on Monday involved an unusual piece of metal piping police say was purposely made to look like an explosive device and placed in the toilet block at the park in Hamilton Lake area.
Hamilton police Senior Sergeant Neil Faulkner said police received a call from Hamilton City Council staff who found a suspicious item in the women's toilet about 8.30am Monday.
"It was described as being a pipe with wires coming out of it, placed underneath one of the toilet bowls in the women's toilet."
Police set up a 200 metre cordon around the toilet block on the Sandleigh Rd side of the park, below Waikato Hospital, and halted motorists and pedestrians entering via Hibiscus Ave.
Residents of about 10 houses in the cul-du-sac on Sandleigh Rd were told to stay inside their homes while the Auckland-based Defence Force team dealt with the item.
"It is the normal operating procedure when dealing with a suspicious package until the defence force have assessed it," said Faulkner.
"We make an assessment of the information that we have and decided to get the Defence Force to neutralise the item."
The bomb squad team arrived in a white van at the quiet park, lined with hospital workers' cars about 11am. About 20 minutes later a robot was deployed from the rear of the van into the building where the item was located in a small stall.
"They have tried to use the robot to go in there with cameras to take a look at the device and neutralise it if needed," said Faulkner.
"However, due to the close proximity of the walls and the cubicle they were unable to manoeuvre it sufficiently so they have done a manual approach."
One of the senior bomb squad members adorned in a specialist protective suit was sent into the cubicle to manually neutralise the item, said Faulkner.
"They are a specialist unit and luckily we had one of the main guys who was able to deal with it. They have a device that fires a water shot through it and blows it to pieces basically."
"We had a number of other contingencies here - fire and gas - in case something eventuated that was outside of our control."
Maddie Cambort was visiting friends on Sandleigh Rd when she heard a loud bang about 12.15pm.
"It was really, really loud, sounded like a gunshot wound. The glass shook a little."
Faulkner said the item, which was being investigated by Waikato CIB, had been purposely made to look suspicious.
"It was made to look like an IED - Improvised Explosive Device - but initial thoughts from the Defence Force are that it probably is not going to cause any danger to the public as it was."
Hamilton City Council Parks and Open Spaces Manager Sally Sheedy said the toilet blocks were open from 7.30am to 7.30pm daily. Outside of those hours only authorised council staff had access.
The item had likely been placed in the toilet sometime between Sunday morning and Monday, said Faulkner.
"It was there this morning, so it could have been anytime between when it was cleaned [Sunday] and when the doors were locked last night."
The bomb squad had recently used the robot to destroy a suspicious bag that had been found abandoned in the Hamilton IRD building on Bryce St. Police later tracked down the owner of the small blue bag left in the foyer who said she had forgotten she left it there.
Back in December the bomb squad were again called in to deal with a suspicious item discovered outside Davies Medical Centre on Hukanui Rd.
University of Waikato political scientist Dr Colm McKeogh said there was a heightened sensitivity to security threats in today's climate.
"There's been two bomb scares in Hamilton, the IRD, which turned out to be innocuous and Centre Place and the one today is either a bomb scare or a threat. We don't know yet."
"Plus there's been the 1080 milk powder threat and the Lindt Café in Sydney..[which] brought it much closer to home the possibility that it could happen here."
The response from the Defence Force and police was sometimes inconvenient for residents, but warranted in all cases due to what was happening with the Islamic State and the recent domestic threats made to milk powder, he said.
"The Defence Force is more aware of bomb scares in New Zealand and there's good grounds. At the moment they have to take them seriously because of what's happening nationally and internationally."
"It's a safe place (Hamilton) but it takes only one incident to shatter that belief."
Police said all three recent events are being treated as unrelated and all items were assessed as not being dangerous. |
When we first caught wind of Sensic's head-tracking 3D Smart goggles a few days ago , we couldn't help but think of it as a Sony HMZ-T1 on Android-flavored steroids. We've just spent some time with the prototype here on the show floor playing a virtual demo that had us smashing buildings in a virtual world -- notably running entirely on the headset, thanks (in part) to its 1.2GHZ dual-core CPU. If you can't tell from the picture, the headset is absolutely massive. In-hand it's quiet hefty, but once it engulfed our noggin, we found that it was actually quiet well-balanced and comfortable, to the point that we almost forget that it was on our head -- almost. Notably, this proto is a "one size fits all" type deal rght now, so we did have to wrap a circle-scarf around our head to keep its 1280 x 1024 screens within our eyes view. Thankfully, our horn-rimmed glasses did fit inside with no issue.So, what's it like? An array of cameras on it's face scan the environment to react to your heads position and any movement you make. We were able to spin, tilt, walk around and even jump, with the virtual world on screen following suite -- all while looking like a confused and lost puppy to anyone passing by. We're told video refreshes at 60hz, but sadly, we were faced with stuttery visuals in our use. The unit is also capable of tracking hand movements, but we can't say we were able to make use of the privilege -- instead, a controller made up for the interim. Considering that Sensic's head-tracking 3D goggles do all of the above in a completely self-contained fashion, we can't help but think that there's lots of potential for the tech. The question remains, however, as to whether the experience and the hardware can be smoothed to bring the Minority Report -style of AR closer to a retail reality. Head on past the break for a video of us trying out Sensic's headset for ourselves-- trust us, you're in for a treat. |
The electronic currency Bitcoin works because of encryption and a blockchain -- a widely accessible, distributed record of everyone who has created, accessed or altered a given file. Bitcoin's blockchain tracks who has had each Bitcoin, verifies its authenticity, and so on.
This technology, however, has much broader applications. As governments move to release more data and documents online, verifying the authenticity of those files will become increasingly important. In the future, governments could use blockchains to track and verify the ownership of property records, banking records, securities or anything else posted on an open data platform.
Brian Forde, the director of the MIT Media Lab's Digital Currency Initiative, explores the concept in the video below.
By 2020, using blockchain technology might even become a best practice for the verification of public records online.
Makes sense, @digiphile. You could be right. — Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) August 31, 2015
"Property records, particularly in the developing world, are notoriously subject to hacking," Oliver Goodenough, a professor at Vermont Law School, observed in an interview. "Honduras got money to do an electronic record land registry, but when they were done, many key properties were held by relatives of people who set up the ledger. Now, a contract was awarded to a company in Texas to set up a blockchain-based property system."
That example and others are drawing attention in other contexts, from countries around the world. In the United States, the blockchain might be a way of validating voter records before and after elections, making entries perusable and insulating them from fraud. It might also be relevant to securities, adding a technological component that would make fraud by corrupt officials much harder.
Given how blockchain technology has matured in recent years, Goodenough says it's just going to require hard work to get it into use -- and he hopes that Vermont will be a leader in that area.
"This could give sunshine and make it very hard to screw the system," he told me. "The blockchain will not cook us breakfast, but it might tell us who cooked breakfast."
For more, watch Goodenough's talk earlier this year at Stanford (embedded below) on the state of legal technology:
Governments haven't been the biggest fans of Bitcoin, given the use of the cryptocurrency on the shadier parts of the Internet, including drug deals on the Deep Web. But at least one recognizes the potential of blockchains.
This summer, Vermont took a couple of step toward smart contracts, agreements that contain technology that automatically tracks versions and authors. On June 3, Peter Shumlin, the state's governor, signed an economic development act into law that commissioned a report on the opportunities and risks of using blockchain technology to validate public records and "electronic facts."
An amendment to the economic development bill submitted by state Sen. Becca Balint suggested that "blockchain technology shall be a recognized practice for the verification of a fact or record, and those facts or records established through a valid blockchain technology process shall have a presumption of validity for matters to be determined subject to, or in accordance with, the laws of the State of Vermont."
"This study will provide reasonable recognition for the blockchain as a way to establish facts, providing a rebuttable presumption that the fact was true," Goodenough, who drafted the amendment, told The Huffington Post. "We are just establishing legal recognition that this is a way of establishing evidence."
Goodenough, who directs the Center for Legal Innovation at the Vermont School of Law, has been researching the potential of smart contracts and automated securities that can automatically record who has accessed, changed or traded them. |
Everybody who likes pirates (and who doesn't like pirates?) has a pitch for the ideal game about them. We carry our imaginary game around with us, close to our rum-soaked hearts. It's got to be open world of course, because what's the point of the horizon if you can't have it brought to you? The romance of being a pirate is all about freedom.
It's also about stabbing people. There needs to be good stabbing, and pistol-shooting as well, and belting out a good “har har!” while you do it. You want swinging onto someone else's deck and swashbuckling away to be joyous. Blasting enemies from a distance with cannon fire is Pirating 101. Duelling with swords and also with sails, some kind of system for using the wind against opponents and lining up broadsides, more tactical than the wild to-and-fro of close combat.
Oh, and we'll also need a robust economic simulation, please. What's the point of killing people and stealing their stuff if that stuff can't be sold at port? That leads to profit, so there need to be ways of upgrading ships and buying whole new ones with those profits, as well as managing the crew. Maybe something abstract for the bulk of yer maties, but if the officers could be BioWare-style companions with their own dark secrets to uncover and loyalty missions to undertake that'd be swell.
Sounds perfect. Why doesn't it exist already?
Here's a game we can probably agree is a good one: Sid Meier's Pirates! It doesn't tick every box on that list but it's close. It encompasses a stretch of the Caribbean and Spanish Main so big you need turbo mode to cross it, there are ships full of Spanish gold to take (and Dutch gold, French gold, and English gold), and you can buy low and sell high profitably enough that you don't even need to turn to piracy if you're boring. On the other hand its dueling is pretty simplistic and depending which version you play there might be a divisive ballroom dancing minigame in there as well.
And, more to the point, it's a game from 1987. It's been remade since then, in 1993 and again in 2004, but it still has very little competition. If you want to get your pirate on with something newer you have to play Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and slog through all of the assassin bits so you can unlock the half of the game you actually want: boarding ships and listening to sea shanties. But as great as it is to hit rough water and hear the crew of the Jackdaw launch into “It's stormy weather boys, stormy weather/When the wind blows we're all together, boys,” Black Flag isn't going to let you profit from manipulating trade conditions. It's just not that kind of game.
The MMO Pirates Of The Burning Sea is that kind of game. Its player-driven economy is detailed enough that you can have your own plots of land producing resources like iron ore which you manufacture into nails before selling them to another player who owns a shipyard. It's also got a fine ship-to-ship combat system for getting the wind in your sails and opening fire on someone who has a hold full of nails if you'd rather be a straight-up buccaneer than a manufacturer who also occasionally pirates it up.
Being an MMO means Pirates Of The Burning Sea can use other players for those interactions, whether trading or risking crew and cargo sailing through the dangerous waters of the PVP zones. But online games bring their own problems. Board a ship and you'll find yourself staring at a cooldown bar of attack options straight out of World Of Warcraft, a far less thrilling prospect than its ship-to-ship combat. And even its sailing can be seriously hampered by lag, with your ship suddenly stalling then teleporting to a different position nudged up against an outcropping of land.
There are plenty of other games about pirates and Steam is full of cutthroat simulators, many of them products of Early Access. But just like Black Flag or Pirates Of The Burning Sea there's always something missing, something holding them back from fulfilling our hopes and living up to that dream pitch of being a truly well-rounded pirate. They may start with positive feedback from the most involved community members, but once more players get involved their ratings drop—Blood & Gold: Caribbean, Naval Action, Pixel Piracy, they're all trending down towards a 'mixed' rating in the harsh waters of Steam community reviews.
We're a judgmental bunch. I'd make a joke about pirate fans liking to make underwhelming games walk the plank, but then I'd get a bunch of judgmental comments about how walking the plank's unhistorical. We may like Monkey Island but we still want more than just a pirate costume draped on another genre. We see a ship and we get our hopes up, setting ourselves up for disappointment. Take a look at Sunless Sea, which isn't even about piracy though you can dabble in it. It's a game about story, as much a text adventure as a naval adventure, but there's still a cranky subset of its players upset by the fact its trade side is underdeveloped. Give us a ship and a set of ports and we want to start manipulating their economies for our benefit even in a game that's really about earning eerie stories rather than loot.
Why doesn't our ideal pirate game exist? Maybe it’s simply because we're asking too much. First on our list is “open world” but open-world games are expensive and inevitably troubled by bugs, even when the biggest studios are behind them. The licensed Pirates Of The Caribbean game made by Akella and published by Bethesda, as well as its unofficial sequels in the Age Of Pirates series, are perfect examples, where you're as likely to crash to desktop as into a warship. The first thing on our list of demands is almost impossible on its own, let alone once we start fussing over the rest.
Rare’s ambition for its upcoming online pirate game Sea of Thieves actually highlights why it’s so difficult to make a truly satisfying one. “Everyone’s got an idea of what pirates do,” design director Gregg Mayles told us at E3. “Everyone knows they go after treasure. You don’t need to be told how to sail a ship or climb to the crow’s nest and use a telescope.”
“Anything you expect to be able to do in a pirate game, we expect to make that dream come true for players,” added executive producer Joe Neate.
Other popular genres like sci-fi and fantasy settings certainly come with their own preconceptions, but they’re less clear-cut. Pirate games aren’t just about a place but about a specific kind of character and action. They’re a more codified fiction than “living in space” or “like the past but with wizards” and when we can’t swashbuckle across the seven seas just right and raid and trade and all the rest, it just doesn’t feel like real pirating.
I wish Rare all the luck in the world with Sea of Thieves. But rather than getting our hopes up and setting ourselves up for another disappointment (we don't talk about Risen 2: Dark Waters), maybe we should lower those expectations like we're lowering our sails, losing some speed but gaining some maneuverability so that we don't smash right into a bitter reef of our own making just like this metaphor has.
In the meantime, who's for another rousing chorus of 'The Fish In The Sea?' “It's stormy weather boys, stormy weather...” |
Image copyright AFP
Visitors have stayed away from major tourist attractions in the wake of recent terror attacks, according to the London Eye and Madame Tussauds owner.
Merlin Entertainments, which also runs the Legoland theme park, also warned that numbers could continue to fall.
Bosses said before the attacks foreign tourists had been flocking to the UK to take advantage of the weak pound.
The company's London Eye sits just next to Westminster Bridge - where the March attack took place.
Merlin said in a statement: "in the immediate aftermath of the Westminster attack on 22 March... the incident did result in a softer domestic, day-trip market.
"However, the subsequent attacks in Manchester and London over the past month have resulted in a further deterioration in domestic demand and, given the typical lag between holiday bookings and visitation, we are also cautious on trends in foreign visitation over the coming months".
Impact
In the aftermath of a terror attack, major attractions tend to not feel the impact for a few weeks or months because most foreign visitors tend to buy their tickets for Merlin sites such as Alton Towers or The London Dungeons, in advance.
Chief executive Nick Varney added: "The impact of recent terror attacks on our London attractions is unclear at this stage.
"What is clear however is that London has bounced back before, and will do again.
"London is very much open for business, welcoming visitors from the UK and from around the world to this exciting and vibrant city."
Investors heeded Merlin's warning, sending shares falling 2.8% to 489p.
Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, said: "Merlin had already warned in March when it released its 2016 full-year preliminary results that the threat of terror attacks had hit its UK business, citing events in Paris and Brussels as having an impact.
"This was before the Westminster attack on March 22nd, meaning the impact on the UK business is likely to be significantly greater in 2017 than it was last year."
Merlin has seen visitors shun its attractions after major incidents before.
In 2015, the company saw a significant drop in visitors to its Alton Towers theme park after several thrill seekers were badly injured on one of the rides.
Bosses will face tough questions from shareholders on Tuesday at the company's annual general meeting at Legoland, where they will also be told about the opening of Legoland Japan and new sites across the US. |
Bloodborne “Total Game Volume” is Bigger Than Demon Souls, Claims Producer
(Editor’s note: the interviewee was originally listed as Director Hidetaka Miyazaki, as that was the name on the interview schedule, among other circumstantial communication oddities. That aside, here is the interview with Mr. Yamagiwa)
Did you find From Software’s previous games — Dark Souls and Demon Souls — long enough for the genre it’s in? If so, you’ll be glad to know Bloodborne will be even bigger in scope.
Continuing our interview with Bloodborne Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa at TGS, we asked him how many hours of gameplay are they expecting from a typical Bloodborne playthrough, and here’s the good news he relayed:
Just like Demon’s Souls, it really depends on the player’s skill. It’s hard to say. But we can say that the total game volume is bigger than Demon’s Souls.
While Miyazaki didn’t give out any specific duration of time, the fact that the total game volume is bigger should be welcome news for fans, right?
In another part of the chat, Miyazaki commented on why Bloodborne is a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
Are you concerned at all regarding Bloodborne’s length or should it not matter provided the gameplay is solid? |
- Two ex-cons tried to use the Polk County Sheriff's office to scam a local business, but it didn't work.
When Marco Sullivan was arrested in Lakeland on an outstanding warrant from Orange County, he didn't want his employer to know, so he asked his girlfriend, Martisha Wilson to try and cover it up for him.
At first, she told his boss that he had the flu and would be back in a few days. But after Sullivan went to court, he realized he was going to be behind bars longer than he thought. So he hatched a plan.
He told Wilson to download a Polk Sheriff's Office letterhead. Sullivan told her to write a letter saying that he was on a special mission with the ATF Division of the Polk Sheriff's Office.
But the letter had red flags from beginning to end.
"There is one thing for sure," said Polk Sheriff Grady Judd. "We'll never use Martisha as a secretary at the sheriff's office."
The letter was written entirely in capital letters. Then there were the spelling mistakes.
"He'll be on the unit for 6 months or less," Judd read from the letter. "Do (sic) to the severity of the case, I am not able to enclosed (sic), E-N-C-L-O-S-E-D, no farther (sic), F-A-R-T-H-E-R, information," Judd read, spelling out some of the misspelled words.
Judd also pointed out the Polk Sheriff's Office doesn't have an ATF Division and the signature on the letter was Mike Singleton. There is no person employed at the sheriff's office by that name.
When someone at Reddy read the letter, they knew something was wrong, called investigators.
Sullivan remains in custody. Detectives have yet to locate Wilson. There is a Polk County warrant for her arrest for criminal use of personal identification. She is believed to be in the Orlando area and is described as 5-foot-4 and 150 pounds. The Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with information on her whereabouts to contact them at 863-298-6200. |
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Professor Joan Goodman, the director of the Teach for America program at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the philosophy behind *no excuses* charter schools, and the price paid by students who attend them.
EduShyster: You’re the author of an article called Charter Management Organizations and the Regulated Environment: Is It Worth the Price? that’s the single best overview of *no excuses* charter schools that I’ve seen. Talk a little about the research you’ve been doing.
Joan Goodman: I began to focus on charter schools when the first Mastery Charter School was started in Philadelphia. These were supposed to be experimental schools which would have a variety of new approaches and they’d get rid of bureaucracy and we’d see all kinds of novel approaches to children. But particularly in terms of the charter management organizations they haven’t provided much variety—they’re all strikingly similar to one another. These schools have a very clear philosophy about what they’re trying to do, how they’re trying to do it, what they think is necessary, who they read, who their leaders are. And they’re explicit in describing it. The combination of the uniformity across these different schools and their explicitness about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it makes it easier to get hold of this movement than it is with say, public schools in a city or a school district where there’s so much variety and there isn’t a single philosophy.
ES: With the exception of KIPP, which has allowed Mathematica to study its admission policies and test results, these schools haven’t been receptive to academic studies. How did you manage to study them?
Goodman: I’m the academic director of our Teach for America program at UPenn and our TFA students are teachers in these schools. So I can go in to look at what our students and their teachers are doing, and then students tell me a lot about what’s going on. I have also done a good bit of visiting. The charters are hospitable to that. A lot of this is anecdotal, and much is based on what the schools have written, which is public. My work is investigative, I think, more than formal research. But you’re right—it takes a huge effort to try to get into these schools for any systematic research. They don’t welcome outsiders to study them. And they have a point. What academics do when they go in is criticize, and you can see why they might not like that. I think they’ll let just about anybody in for a visit. But to go in and have the schools really cooperate with an investigator, that’s a whole lot harder. What are the day-to-day processes that are happening in the classroom? How do teachers feel about these processes? How much range of behavior is there? It would be great to be able to investigate these sorts of questions, but the schools wouldn’t welcome that.
ES: Minority children in urban areas are increasingly being educated at schools run by the types of charter management organizations you study, yet I find that people know little if anything about the way these schools view the world.
Goodman: These schools start with the belief that there’s no reason for the large academic gaps that exist between poor minority students and more privileged children. They argue that if we just used better methods, demanded more, had higher expectations, enforced these higher expectations through very rigorous and uniform teaching methods and a very uniform and scripted curriculum geared to being successful on high-stakes tests, we can minimize or even eradicate these large gaps, high rates of drop outs and the academic failures of these children. To reach these objectives, these schools have developed very elaborate behavioral regimes that they insist all children follow, starting in kindergarten. Submission, obedience, and self-control are very large values. They want kids to submit. You can’t really do this kind of instruction if you don’t have very submissive children who are capable of high levels of inhibition and do whatever they’re told.
ES: Time seems to be an essential component too—the idea that not a second can be wasted. I’m reminded of this video about *speedy transitions* for kindergarteners at a New Jersey charter school.
Goodman: In order to maximize academic accomplishment, no time can be wasted and anything that’s not academically targeted, that’s not geared to what the students have to know, is time wasted. So there is almost no opportunity for play, for relaxation, very little time for extra-curricular activities. The day is jammed with academics, especially math and reading because that’s what gets tested. The view of time and strict discipline are related, by the way; in order to get these kids to attend over very long hours—they have extended days and extended weeks—you have to be tough with the kids, really severe. They want these kids to understand that when authority speaks you have to follow because that’s basic to learning. So they don’t have the notion of learning that more progressive educators have, that learning is a very active enterprise and that children have to be very participatory and thinking and speaking and discussing and sharing and having initiative. That’s not their view of learning. It’s too variable across teachers, the objectives are too non-specific, and time is wasted.
ES: The *broken windows* theory is well known when it comes to policing, but as you write, these charter management organizations apply that theory to schools. Explain.
Goodman: These schools believe that behaviors that you might not think are directly related to academic learning can have a domino effect if left unaddressed. Getting up from your chair to go to the bathroom without explicit permission, for example, or not having your hands folded on your desk, or not looking at the teacher every minute, or not having your feet firmly planted on each side of the center of the desk are problematic behaviors. Because if you don’t conform to these rules then you are going to precipitate the next domino and the next domino. It’s going to have a cascading effect on your behavior and pretty soon you’re going to be very disruptive. If you get up to sharpen your pencil, maybe you’re going to throw your pencil at someone. Or if you get up and get something out of your backpack that you forgot, maybe you’re going to elbow another student on your way back to your seat, or make eye contact with them and divert them from looking at the teacher. Any one of these little behaviors they see as leading to the next behavior. Before you know it there will be bedlam.
ES: Does the emphasis on discipline diminish as kids get older?
Goodman: Well yes—as kids learn and adapt to this regime there’s less time spent on discipline. It takes a while for the kids to adapt to this because it’s so out of their experience. The older kids are still getting merits and demerits all the way through high school, though. In some schools they wear these lanyards that get marked, and when they accumulate a certain number of demerits things happen to them. By 12th grade, the kids are almost giving the demerits to themselves, they’re so accustomed by this point. You might think that if this is still going on in 12th grade, then the kids can’t have internalized all of this very well, but they do get used to it. They do adapt.
ES: One of the questions you ask is whether there are legitimate limits to the power exercised by schools over children.
Goodman: That’s a big question. What rights do children have that are similar to the rights of adults? Can you search them? Can you control what they say and don’t say at all times? Do they have any freedom of speech rights? Do they have any freedom to bring something to school if they want to? More than that, do they have any rights at all against oppressive punishment? Students in these schools have to go to a certain chair and sit there for a certain length of time, all at the teacher’s discretion, and sometimes they have to go repeatedly to this isolated chair with their back to the class. They may be deprived of recess if that’s granted. They have to go to detention and stay after school. They have to write things 100 times. In some of the schools, there’s a good bit of shaming: they have to wear different colored shirts, they can’t talk, they have to sit on a lower bench than other children. And it’s deliberate shaming of the kids. No one is allowed to talk to them. And what offense have they done to merit this kind of punishment? They haven’t done their homework or they’ve come in late, perhaps repeatedly. They haven’t done anything violent. There has been no adjudication. The teachers or the school norms say that this is appropriate. So what are the limits of what a teacher can do to a child?
ES: You expected that students in these kinds of schools would consider the rules oppressive, but in your study The Quest for Compliance in Schools: Unforeseen Consequences, you found that the students had come to believe that they didn’t deserve more freedom.
Goodman: One thing about these atmospheres is that they’re very uniform. Everybody is on board—you don’t have variability from teacher to teacher or class to class. The atmosphere is totalizing. And the children tend to model themselves after this authority. It has that effect on kids, that they identify with the rules of the regime and their identity becomes *a kid in this school who conforms to these rules.* Now some of the students, of course, don’t conform to the rules, and I think that if you get the kids later in life it’s much harder. But if you get them early, you develop their sense of self that accords with those of the authority. The adults know everything, they know nothing. Here’s what’s good, here’s what’s right. You’ll be successful and happy if you take on these characteristics. Without these rules you’ll be bad or impulsive and you’ll destroy your future. You may not be having fun but you’re doing what’s important. We know best. And the kids come to believe that. As the social psychologists have shown, in totalizing environments, that’s often the result. They call it “identification with the oppressor.” Here oppressor should be changed to authority. There is very, very strong authority in these schools. The teachers are novice teachers, so they get molded too. I don’t think you could take highly experienced teachers—20 years of running a classroom—and put them into these schools and have the same kind of experience. It’s a really interesting study to see how both the teachers and the kids get acculturated.
ES: I think it’s important to point out that you also have some very positive things to say about these schools—you’re not just a straight-up hater.
Goodman: Not at all. I’m certainly not a hater. I think the basic idea of order, of developing habits—you walk into class, you put your things away, you sit down, you take out your book, teacher says good morning, shakes hands, you look at her—some of the habits they’re cultivating will be helpful to kids. And certainly the prohibition on violence makes for a safe community. The problem is that the approach is unbalanced. I think a certain amount of routine, habit forming, strictness, limiting certain behavior is good—but I would always be working towards reducing that. Once you’ve established a safe environment, for example, why not loosen up on the behavior regulations? If I were running one of these schools I would feel that *OK—I have to do this* but I would always be working towards turning over more authority to the kids. That would be my goal all of the time. Let the kids be responsible for their behavior. Have more group work, more student councils, more kids in charge of their own lives.
Joan Goodman is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education University of Pennsylvania and a former school psychologist. Her article, Charter Management Organizations and the Regulated Environment: Is It Worth the Price?, appeared in the February 2013 issue of Educational Researcher.
Send tips and comments to [email protected]. |
According to a number of reports, much-maligned Philadelphia Eagles cornerbacks Roc Carmichael and Curtis Marsh have been released. Both Marsh and Carmichael struggled majorly in the team's preseason games. It's far from a surprise to see they were cut.
Marsh is a former third round pick from the Eagles' dreadful 2011 NFL Draft class. Carmichael spent time on the Houston Texans practice squad last year before being signed away by the Eagles.
With Marsh and Carmichael gone, the Eagles cornerback position now comes into focus. The five remaining cornerbacks include: Cary Williams, Bradley Fletcher, Nolan Carroll II, Brandon Boykin, and Jaylen Watkins. Williams and Fletcher are the returning 2013 starters on the outside. Boykin is one of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL on the inside. Carroll II projects to be the team's dime cornerback and also could push Fletcher for a starting job still. Watkins is a rookie fourth round pick with the versatility to also play safety. It appears Watkins will serve as Boykin's backup for the time being. |
The Florida Gators were the last team to win back to back NCAA Tournaments in 2006 and 2007. There were three NBA lottery picks from that team, Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer. All three of those players were part of the 2004 signing class along with Taurean Green. They were all roommates during their three year stay in Gainesville and the best of friends. They became known around the state as the “04’s”, perhaps a take-off of Michigan’s “Fab Five” of the early 1990s.
Al three of the front court players from that team were chosen in the lottery, two of them Noah and Horford, are still with the teams that picked them. Brewer was picked by the Minnesota Timberwolves and has bounced around a bit with stops in New York and Dallas before finding a home with the Denver Nuggets. Noah was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and is still one of their best players. He played in this season’s NBA All-Star Game, nearly recording a double double in just a few minutes in that game. Horford has also been to the All-Star game and is one of the best players for the Atlanta Hawks who drafted him.
All three of these players have panned out, which the odds were probably against. But the odds have never gotten the best of these three before. In 2004, the Kentucky Wildcats incoming class was rated over Florida’s, and it wasn’t even really close. In 205, these four players helped the Gators win their first ever SEC Tournament over Kentucky in the championship game, even though their roles were limited behind David Lee, Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh.
In 2006, Florida began the season unranked. But with the emergence of Noah, Brewer and Horford along with Green and his back court mate, sharpshooter Lee Humphrey, the Gators got off to a 22-0 start. They went into the SEC Tournament as one of a handful of teams that had a shot to win it, but they won their second in a row, beating the South Carolina Gamecocks in the Final. They then went to the NCAA Tournament as a number three seed and went all the way to school’s first national championship. Noah was a sure #1 pick as he was named the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.
Coach Billy Donovan got his “Big Four” together after the tournament and told them they had a chance to do something special in repeating as national champs. Noah’s first reaction, understandably, was “I’m about to go get PAID!” But Brewer talked his mates into returning to school to go for the repeat.
They made their announcement at the championship celebration, sending the Gator crowd into a frenzy, but putting a target on their backs. At times, the target was huge as teams gave them their best shots. But when the post season came around, these gators ripped through the competition for their third straight SEC Tournament championship and second straight national championship. Then it was on to the NBA.
This is their sixth season in the NBA and it is safe to say that all three have made their marks on the game. All three are participating in this year’s playoffs and playing a major role for their teams.
Noah averaged 12 points and 11 rebounds per game for the Bulls. He was the second leading rebounder and fourth leading scorer on the team.
Horford averaged 14 points and six rebounds per game for the Hawks. He was their third leading scorer.
Brewer averaged nearly 15 points per game for the Nuggets in what has been his first real shot to contribute in the NBA. The Nuggets up-tempo style fits his game perfectly.
So it is safe to say that the Gator Boys are Still Hot. Altogether there are at least eight former Gator players in the playoffs with the Spurs Matt Bonner, the Warriors David Lee (who is now out with an injured hip), the Rockets Chandler Parsons, and the Heat’s Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem. There are probably not very many schools with that many contributing to playoff teams. The trio of Brewer, Horford and Noah will always be linked as the most revered of Gator greats. |
Sans crazy arcade installation
It's been a real joy re-experiencing classic titles from Sega's past. With the recent releases of Outrun and Fantasy Zone II bringing back some serious nostalgia trips, the folks at Sega have still got plenty of 3D remasters in store. Though the spring phase of Sega's 3D Classics series is drawing to a close, there's still one more title in the wings, and that's the return of the underrated and super enjoyable Thunder Blade.
Much like Outrun, the 3D release of Thunder Blade has seen some time on the market overseas, but the Western crowd is now finally going to get a taste of the action on May 14. Just before its debut, I got to experience a special hands-on look with the title, along with a quick chat with producer Yosuke Okunari. And we got to learn what was like porting this unique arcade shooter to the handheld.
Originally released in 1987, Thunder Blade brings players to the helm of a heavily armed attack helicopter as they battle waves of foes in tanks, jets, and battleships across a variety of locations. Much like the other Sega offerings of its time, the story is kept light in favor of offering accessible and fast arcade-style gameplay. You're the good guy, everyone else is bad -- shoot them. Though unlike most other shoot-'em-up titles, Thunder Blade features a unique take on perspective, as the action will transition from an overhead angle to the over-the-shoulder look similar to Space Harrier during key sections of the stage. This dynamic switch of perspective made it a welcome fit for the 3D remaster.
"We felt that this point of view was extremely well suited for a stereoscopic 3D conversion," said producer Yosuke Okunari. "When we went to actually build the game out in 3D, we found that it gained a very unique sense of actually being suspended in their air, and was even more impactful than the original game. This same thing happened with 3D Galaxy Force II, where by implementing stereoscopic 3D, the game's visual view point style transcended in to its final form, you could say."
Thunder Blade has made the transition quite well, and the new hardware has done wonders for the gameplay. The frame rate is rock solid, and the controls for the 3DS are super sharp and make controlling the attack chopper feel very accurate. The left stick controls movement and altitude, while both shoulder buttons control speed (increase and decrease). Though the 3DS is a far cry from the control scheme found on the original arcade release -- which featured a flight stick and a special chair that sought to emulate the cockpit of a helicopter -- I can safely say that 3D Thunder Blade is a fine port, and the action still kept me on my toes during the hectic battles.
Much like the other 3D Classic titles, Thunder Blade makes exquisite use out of the new 3D visuals and hardware. One of the most striking elements is its depth of view during altering perspectives, and the new 3D visuals do well to enhance the view and sense of movement during the action. Though the draw distances unfortunately haven't been improved, I was still quite impressed with how the visuals sharpened up. Interestingly enough, the transition to 3D meant having to design the new visuals around the new perspectives independently, and layering them on top of one another.
"For this version, we had to implement 3D separately for each of these three types of scenes," said the producer. "The boss stages were particularly difficult. The original game actually had preset depths. Even more so than some of the Genesis games, there were a number of situations where we wouldn't really have to worry about if we left them in 2D, suddenly [having] paradoxical situations when we put them into 3D."
"Thunder Blade has three types of gameplay for every stage. The first are scenes that are from the top-down, which allow you to fully appreciate and enjoy changing your helicopter’s altitude. The second are scenes that are 'over the shoulder,' which are reminiscent of After Burner II. The last are the boss battles, where you are not able to change your altitude but you are placed into a forced-scroll situation where you can control your speed and progression. There are no other games that allow you to experience these three types of gameplay all in a single game."
Though they were keen on keeping the 3D remaster as it was with the original title, they did implement some new features -- both out of necessity and the desire to include new content with the original game. As some areas didn't take to the new 3D visuals too well, such as shadows glitching out and boss battles resulting in odd bugs, they had to be cut in order to preserve the experience. But in order to make up for this, they implemented a stage that's brand new to the original Thunder Blade. Okunari stated that the new level will be consistent with the rest of the game and really offer an exciting finish.
"The new stage feels natural and uses the graphical style of the era, all while taking advantage of the stereoscopic 3D to deliver a scene where you flying into the center of a base, reminiscent of the final Death Star scene in Return of the Jedi. The boss has a really awesome background to it as well, so I encourage everyone to check it out."
Not only that, there's the new Arrange mode which is unlocked after completing the arcade mode. In Arrange Mode, players will control an alternate helicopter with different weapons and tackle stages that have some additions to them. While the the original arcade mode is exciting, the extra content goes above and beyond what I expected.
I was pretty damn pleased with how 3D Thunder Blade turned out. It helped to scratch that shooter itch I had after playing Space Harrier and After Burner, and Thunder Blade definitely holds its own. While the style and approach is a bit different, I still found it to be a welcome addition to the Classics series. And it's a fine 3D remaster, too. This title is a good one to close out the spring phase of the Classics series, and it'll definitely hold you over till the summer titles come a knocking.
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NEW YORK – Calgary Flames center Jiri Hudler, Colorado Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov and New York Rangers goaltender Cam Talbot have been named the NHL's "Three Stars" for the week ending March 8.
FIRST STAR – JIRI HUDLER, C, CALGARY FLAMES
Hudler paced the NHL with eight points and shared the League lead with four goals to help the Flames (36-25-5, 77 points) earn seven out of a possible eight standings points. He opened the week with 1-1—2, including the winning goal at 1:23 of overtime, in a 3-2 triumph over the Philadelphia Flyers March 3. Hudler followed that performance with 1-1—2 in a 4-3 shootout win over the Boston Bruins March 5. He then recorded 2-0—2, including the game-winning goal, in a 5-2 victory over the Detroit Red Wings March 6. Hudler closed the week with a pair of assists in a 5-4 shootout loss to the Ottawa Senators March 8. The 31-year-old Olomouc, Czech Republic, native has posted multiple points in four consecutive games for the first time in his career. He leads the Flames with 23-33—56 in 63 outings this season, including four game-winning goals (tied for second on the team).
SECOND STAR – SEMYON VARLAMOV, G, COLORADO AVALANCHE
Varlamov went 3-0-0 with a 0.69 goals-against average, .981 save percentage and one shutout to lead the Avalanche (30-25-11, 71 points) to three straight wins. He made 28 saves in a 3-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins March 4. Varlamov then stopped all 44 shots he faced in a 4-0 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets March 7 to record his 18th career shutout and fifth of the season, including three that have featured at least 40 saves (also Oct. 30 vs. NYI: 40 SV and Jan. 6 at CHI: 54 SV). He capped his performance with 29 saves in a 3-2 triumph over the Minnesota Wild March 8, extending his shutout streak to 124:19 – just 5:04 shy of his career high set March 1-6, 2012 (129:23). The 26-year-old Samara, Russia, native has appeared in 46 games this season (including 22 consecutive starts), compiling a 22-17-7 record with a 2.56 goals-against average and .921 save percentage.
THIRD STAR – CAM TALBOT, G, NEW YORK RANGERS
Talbot posted a 2-0-1 record with a 0.99 goals-against average, .965 save percentage and one shutout to backstop the Rangers (40-17-7, 87 points) to five out of a possible six standings points. He denied 25 shots in a 4-1 triumph over the Nashville Predators March 2. Talbot then made 29 saves in a 2-1 overtime loss to the Detroit Red Wings March 4. He capped the week by stopping all 29 shots he faced in a 1-0 overtime victory against the Chicago Blackhawks March 8, becoming the first Rangers goaltender to post a shutout in Chicago since Dec. 25, 1966 (Ed Giacomin). The 27-year-old Caledonia, Ont., native has appeared in 26 games this season, going 14-6-4 with a 2.33 goals-against average, .921 save percentage and five shutouts. That includes points in 12 of his last 13 decisions (9-1-3) as well as a 5-1-1 mark in his last seven appearances (1.69 GAA, .943 SV%, 2 SO). |
49ers: Michael Crabtree Runs for First Time by Eric Melendez
49ers: The Case Against Alex Smith by Eric Melendez
Part 3 of my Get to Know series of this year’s San Francisco 49ers draft picks, and we’ll look at rookie tight end Bear Pascoe.
Get to Know: Glen Coffee
Get to Know: Michael Crabtree
Bear Pascoe, Tight End
Born: February 23, 1986
Height: 6-5
Weight: 260 lbs.
High School: Granite Hills High School (Porterville, CA)
College: Fresno State University
College Receiving Stats YEAR TEAM REC
YDS
AVG
LNG
TD
FD
FUM
LOST
2005 FRES 5
34
6.8
12
0
0
0
0
2006 FRES 22
307
14.0
75
2
0
0
0
2007 FRES 45
553
12.3
44
4
0
0
0
2008 FRES 40
400
10.0
39
4
0
0
0
Tight end Bear Pascoe entered the NFL Draft after his senior year and was drafted in the sixth round with the 184th pick in 2009.
Best game in college:
September 8, 2007 vs. Texas A&M: 7 receptions for 70 yards with 3 touchdowns.
In the clutch:
2008 New Mexico Bowl vs. Colorado State: 3 receptions for 39 yards with 0 touchdowns.
2007 Humanitarian Bowl vs. Georgia Tech: 6 receptions for 72 yards with 0 touchdowns.
2006 Liberty Bowl vs. Tulsa: 2 receptions for 10 yards with 0 touchdowns.
Awards:
2003 East Yosemite League Offensive Player of the Year (High School) and 2003 All Area Team (Northern California).
All WAC Selection in 2007 and 2008.
Pascoe Facts:
Played quarterback in high school. Passed for 1,851 yards and 16 touchdowns in his senior year. In the last two years of high school he had just under 3,500 total yards along with 33 touchdowns.
Was recruited by Fresno State as a quarterback. Switched to tight end and redshirted his freshman year.
Full name is McKenna Sean Pascoe. Earned the nickname Bear as a kid because of his size. He weighed 10 pounds as a baby.
Is a champion team roper and cowboy down to the bone. He grew up on his family’s ranch in Porterville, CA which they still own today.
Majored in communication studies.
As a Niner:
Will back-up starting tight end Vernon Davis. He will be used mostly as a blocker and on special teams. He blocked six field goals in college which is a record. He has great catching abilities and will challenge Davis for playing time this year.
Will wear number 48.
As of June 10, 2009 he remains unsigned by the 49ers.
Highlights: |
But a month before the news conference, court documents show, Mr. Levison had already received a subpoena for Mr. Snowden’s encrypted e-mail account. The government was particularly interested in his e-mail metadata — with whom Mr. Snowden was communicating, when and from where. The order, from the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., required Mr. Levison to log Mr. Snowden’s account information and provide the F.B.I. with “technical assistance,” which agents told him meant handing over the private encryption keys, technically called SSL certificates, that unlock communications for all users, he said.
“It was the equivalent of asking Coca-Cola to hand over its secret formula,” Mr. Levison said.
By July, he said, he had 410,000 registered users. Similar services like Hushmail, a Canadian encrypted e-mail service, had lost users in 2007 after court documents revealed that the company had handed 12 CDs’ worth of decoded e-mails from three Hushmail accounts to American law enforcement officials through a mutual assistance treaty.
“The whole concept of the Internet was built on the idea that companies can keep their own keys,” Mr. Levison said. He told the agents that he would need their request for his encryption keys in writing.
A redacted version of that request, which was among the 23 documents that were unsealed, shows that the court issued an order July 16 for Lavabit’s encryption keys. Prosecutors said they had no intention of collecting any information on Lavabit’s 400,000 other customers. “There’s no agents looking through the 400,000 other bits of information, customers, whatever,” Jim Trump, one of the prosecutors, said at a closed Aug. 1 hearing.
But Mr. Levison said he spent much of the following day thinking of a compromise. He would log the target’s communications, unscramble them with the encryption keys and upload them to a government server once a day. The F.B.I. told him that was not enough. It needed his target’s communications “in real time,” he said.
“How as a small business do you hire the lawyers to appeal this and change public opinion to get the laws changed when Congress doesn’t even know what is going on?” Mr. Levison said.
When it was clear Mr. Levison had no choice but to comply, he devised a way to obey the order but make the government’s intrusion more arduous. On Aug 2, he infuriated agents by printing the encryption keys — long strings of seemingly random numbers — on paper in a font he believed would be hard to scan and turn into a usable digital format. Indeed, prosecutors described the file as “largely illegible.” |
AT&T owned Cricket Wireless has added two new smartphones to its prepaid lineup, the Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime and the Samsung Galaxy Amp 2. Both Samsung phones are 4G LTE capable and come with the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS. Cricket adds Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime for $149.99 online and in its stores while Amp 2 will be available for $99.99 from April 15, 2016, also online and in stores.
For quick info check the video.
The Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime is a larger handset of the two, featuring a 5-inch super AMOLED display. The phone comes with 5-megapixel camera with Quick Launch and HD videos and a front facing camera that can take selfies with simple hand gesture. The Amp Prime also features One-handed operation mode, Easy Mode for beginners with simpler interface and Ultra Power Savings Mode that extends phone’s standby time for up to 24 hours with just a 10% charge.
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The smaller of the two, the Samsung Galaxy Amp 2, is an entry-level, low-cost smartphone with Super AMOLED display 4.5-inches in size. The display features outdoor mode that enables users to see better in sunlight by increasing the screen brightness for 15 minutes.
Both Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime and Amp 2 will work with Cricket’s $40, $50 and $60 plans that include unlimited talk, text and data with first 2.5GB, 5GB and 10GB at 4G LTE speeds. The two pricier plans also come with unlimited international texting (SMS only) to 38 countries and unlimited calling, texting (text, picture and video messaging) and data roaming in Mexico and Canada. Customers who enroll in auto pay will receive a $5 monthly discount so they can get Cricket plans for $35, $45 and $55 per month.
Even though Cricket said that the Samsung Galaxy Amp Prime is available online and in stores, the phone hasn’t been listed on Cricket’s smartphone page yet.
Source: Cricket Wireless |
I plan to report only "bright" Supernova (above mag 17.5) on this page. Note that you are going to need a big telescope to find most of these things, for instance, a "Mag 14" SN probably won't be visible to the eye in anything less than a 10" telescope. A CCD, however, can often detect a Mag 14 object with a much smaller objective. Those SN which are easily findable by amateurs (above mag 14.0) will be in red .
The format is as follows:
Name of SN, Discovery reference (link if possible), Date which the supernova first appeared (Year/Month/Date format), Name of discoverers separated by a ";" (link to discovery site(s) if possible)
Name of galaxy (linked to a page describing this galaxy), RA and DEC of SN in J2000.0 coordinates (link to sky map of that area of the sky)
Directions to the SN from core of host galaxy, galaxy name (linked to a Photometry Reference image of that galaxy)
Magnitude of SN when LAST reported (link to the source of the last report) : date of report ("maximum brightness:date of maximum" or "rising" if that information is available), Type of SN if reported. [Spectrum if possible] (Any data which reference this SN (IAUCs; VSNET; past SNe))
Any special pages dedicated to observing this SN, or a link to a sub page if enough data warrants it.
If possible I will create an icon for every bright supernova. This icon will be black on a white background and mirror imaged left to right so that North is up and East is left. The exception being a color image, which will have he same orientation. All icons will be less than 100x100 pixels in size so that they load quickly. |
Since the last time Jon checked in on the increasingly sprawling Republican field for President, several more also-rans joined in: cherub Tennesse Williams character Lindsey Graham, frothy SEO disaster Rick Santorum, the forgotten George Pataki, and 19th century orientalist and cartoonishly evil corporate overlord Carly Fiorina. But one, in particular, Donald Trump, really gave the Daily Show host pause. After the Donald's smug, trolly face came on screen, Stewart paused, bit his fist and exclaimed, "No, no I've made up my mind… God, maybe I'll get a twitter account."
Let's hope so! In a GOP presidential race marked by increasingly goofy soundbites, The Daily Show would have no shortage of comedy gold in the coming months. Stewart even broke character for a brief moment as he looked genuinely shocked at neoconservative Lindsey Graham's casually racist assertion that Iranians are "liars". How can any comedian pass up week after week of rightwing softballs like these?
Watch the video below: |
Map of aerial combat in Korean War.
"MiG Alley" was the name given by United Nations (UN) pilots to the northwestern portion of North Korea, where the Yalu River empties into the Yellow Sea during the Korean War. It was the site of numerous dogfights between UN fighter pilots and their opponents from North Korea (including some unofficially crewed by Soviet airmen) and the People's Republic of China. Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 were the aircraft used during most of the conflict, and the area's nickname was derived from them. It was the site of the first large-scale jet-vs-jet air battles, with the North American F-86 Sabre.
History [ edit ]
1950 [ edit ]
The North Koreans began their war against South Korea on June 25, 1950 with small numbers of Soviet aircraft retained from the Second World War. These were flown by under-trained and inexperienced pilots. After the United States and its closest allies committed its air units to the UN, the North Korean People's Army Air Force (KPAAF) was rapidly depleted. For several months, propeller-engined bombers and fighters, like the B-29 and P-51 Mustang – and early jet fighters like the F-80 Shooting Star, F-84 Thunderjet and Grumman F9F Panther – flew the skies over Korea virtually unopposed.
During October, the major Communist powers – China and the Soviet Union – commenced unofficial military support of North Korea. The Soviets also committed to supply North Korea and China with its latest MiG-15 fighters, and to train Korean and Chinese pilots to fly them.[citation needed] China officially entered the war in support of North Korea on October 25, 1950. While its strength in ground forces initially overwhelmed UN forces, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) was, at the time, small and no better equipped than the KPAAF.
While the Soviet Union never officially entered the war, on 1 November 1950, the 64th Fighter Aviation Corps (64 IAK) of the Soviet Air Forces was attached to the PLAAF, under the 1st United Air Army. That same day, Soviet-piloted MiG-15s began operating over North Korea and the first clashes between MiG-15s and US aircraft occurred, when eight aircraft from the Soviet Air Forces intercepted about 15 United States Air Force P-51 Mustangs flying a ground support mission. First Lieutenant Fiodor Chizh shot down and killed Mustang pilot Aaron Abercrombie.[1] Later in the day, the first air combat between jets occurred, when three MiG-15s attacked about 10 USAF F-80s. While First Lieutenant Frank Van Sickle, in a F-80C, was killed, US records suggest that he was shot down by AA fire. First Lieutenant Semyon F. Khominich (referred to as Jominich in some sources) – was credited with a kill by the Soviet authorities.[2] On November 9, 1950, a MiG-15 was destroyed in combat for the first time, when Lieutenant Commander William T. Amen of the US Navy, in a F9F-2B Panther, shot down and killed Captain Mikhail F. Grachev.[1]
In response to the deployment of MiG-15s, the UN's P-51 squadrons began to convert to jet fighters. In the case of the USAF, this was the F-86 Sabre.
49-1223. This aircraft served with the 335th F-I Squadron, 4th F-IW in Korea. It was shot down by MiGs near Wonsan on February 3, 1952; the pilot ejected. F-86A-5-NA Sabre. This aircraft served with the 335th F-I Squadron, 4th F-IW in Korea. It was shot down by MiGs near Wonsan on February 3, 1952; the pilot ejected.
UN Command standing orders forbade pilots from crossing the Chinese border. On December 17, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce H. Hinton led a finger-four formation of Sabres from the 336th Fighter Squadron on a patrol, a 485-mile (780 km) round trip, along the Yalu River, in an attempt to draw the MiG pilots into combat. The Sabre pilots stayed below 475 mph (765 km/h), to create the impression on radar screens that the Sabres were a slower aircraft. The slower speed and two 120-US-gallon (450 l; 100 imp gal) drop tanks on each F-86 also provided maximum air time. Forty minutes after take-off the Sabres were approaching the Yalu at 32,000 feet (9,800 m). Four MiGs were spotted 7,000 feet (2,100 m) below the Sabres and about to pass beneath them. The Americans jettisoned their drop tanks and as the MiGs passed below, the Sabres turned to the left and dived down at the Soviet fighters. When the MiG pilots realized that their adversaries were not older jets that they could be easily extend away from, they broke formation and headed for the border. Hinton caught up to the leader's wingman, Major Yakov Efromeenko, and fired 1,500 rounds of .50 caliber bullets. Smoke belched from its jet pipe and flames enveloped the tail section. After Efromeenko ejected, the MiG crashed about 10 miles (16 km) south of the Yalu.[3]
On the morning of December 22, a Sabre was destroyed by a MiG-15 pilot for the first time. Captain Lawrence V. Bach's F-86 was hit in the wing root by cannon fire from an unknown MiG pilot and Bach was captured after ejecting. That afternoon, eight Sabres from the USAF 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing (4th F-IW), operating out of a forward base at K-14 Kimpo (Gimpo), attacked an estimated 15 MiGs at 30,000 feet (9,100 m) and pursued some to the Yalu, claiming six without loss.
On January 1, 1951 a Communist offensive drove UN forces out of the Kimpo area; K-14 was overrun and the 4th F-IW was withdrawn to Japan.[4] In March 1951, the first two Sabre squadrons, from the 4th F-IW, returned to Korea, just in time to meet a new build-up of Communist air strength designed to secure air superiority over northwest Korea, in a prelude to a major ground offensive.[4]
While the Australian government had attempted to order the F-86, to replace Mustangs operated in Korea by No. 77 Squadron RAAF, McDonnell-Douglas was required to prioritize re-equipping the USAF. The British Gloster Meteor F.8 was the only viable alternative. 77 Squadron on begin converting to Meteors in Japan during April 1951.
USAF pilots nicknamed April 12, 1951 "Black Thursday", after 30 MiG-15s attacked three squadrons of B-29 bombers (36 planes) escorted by approximately 100 F-80s and F-84s. The MiGs were fast enough to engage the B-29s and extend away from their escorts. Three B-29s were shot down and seven more were damaged, with no casualties on the communist side.[5] Following this, USAF bomber sorties over Korea were halted for approximately three months. Bomber commanders were forced to discontinue daylight raids, and changed to night missions by small formations.
In the first five months of 1951 the 4th F-IW flew 3,550 sorties and claimed 22 victories. No F-86 Sabres were shot down by MiGs, although a number were lost due to accidents.[6]
On July 10, 1951 truce talks between North Korean and UN representatives opened at Kaesong. The ground forces were virtually stalemated at the 38th parallel, but in the air the two squadrons of the 4th F-IW were flying the only Sabres in the theatre.[7] Some intelligence source estimated that 500 MiGs were being operated by the 1st United Air Army.[8]
Although 77 Squadron RAAF had previously operated in Korea as a ground-attack unit, many of its pilots were veterans of World War II fighter units and it was expected that the Gloster Meteor would allow it to return to its previous role of interception. With 22 Meteors, 77 Squadron was attached to the USAF's 4th F-IW at Kimpo at the end of July.[9][10] For a few weeks, MiG-15 pilots scrutinized the performance of the Meteors and used their superior speed to avoid engaging the Meteors.[11][12] The first Meteor fatalities occurred on 22 August, when two aircraft collided in mid-air as they returned to Kimpo after a sweep.[11][13]
Meteor and MiG-15s pilots engaged each other for the first time on 25 August, without either side scoring hits. Four days later, eight Meteors and 16 Sabres fought 12 MiGs; one Australian ejected after his aircraft was shot down, and a second Meteor was damaged. The following week, a Meteor suffered severe damage in a dogfight with MiGs.[14][15] As a result of these losses, senior RAAF commanders decided to focus on escort and air defense sorties.
[16] No. 77 Squadron pilots and their Meteors at Kunsan, South Korea, June 1954.
Flight Lieutenant R. L. "Smoky" Dawson registered No. 77 Squadron's first jet combat claim when he damaged a MiG during an escort mission near Anju, North Korea, on 26 September 1951.[13][17] On 27 October, Flying Officer Les Reading was credited with damaging another MiG while covering B-29s over Sinanju; it was subsequently confirmed as having been destroyed, making it the squadron's first MiG "kill".[18][19] The squadron was awarded the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation for "exceptionally meritorious service & heroism" on 1 November.[20][21]
On 1 December 1951, over Sunchon, at least 20 Soviet-piloted MiGs from the 176th Guards Fighter Air Regiment (176 GvIAP) attacked a formation of 14 Meteors. Both sides apparently overestimated the scale of the battle and the damage inflicted to their opponents: while three Meteors were lost, Soviet pilots claimed nine Meteors destroyed; Australian pilots claimed one MiG shot down and another damaged, from a formation of at least forty MiGs, while Russian sources suggest that all of the MiGs returned to base and less than 25 MiGs were available to 176 GvIAP at the time.[22][23]
The F86-As and F86Es of the 4th F-IW were now getting decidedly battle-worn and it was decided that the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing (51st F-IW) was able to commence operations from Suwon on December 1 under Colonel Francis S. "Gabby" Gabreski.[24] Nonetheless, the 4th F-IW claimed 13 MiGs in air battles on December 13.[25]
On 26 December 1951, the RAAF reassigned 77 Squadron to ground attack sorties,[26][27] a role it would pursue until the end of the war. Its pilots continued to encounter MiGs and claimed two more victories over them, both in the Pyongyang area, on 4 and 8 May 1952.[28][29]
By August 1952, the tide of battle above "MIG Alley" had turned in favor of the United Nations. During that month 63 MiGs were shot down for the loss of only nine Sabres. An important reason for the increasing superiority of UN air power was the new F86-F, which had been issued to two squadrons of the 51st Wing in June and July and began reaching the 4th Wing in September. This Sabre development had a more powerful J47 engine developing 5,910 lbf (26,300 N) thrust, wing shackles for 200-US-gallon (760 l; 170 imp gal) drop tanks (raising the combat radius to 463 miles or 745 kilometres) and a simplified A4 radar gun sight that was more efficient than the MkXVIII gyro sight used on most of the F86-As and easier to maintain than the rather unreliable A1CM radar sight fitted to late F86-As and Es.[30]
One Meteor was shot down and another damaged by MiGs following a ground-attack mission on 2 October 1952.[31][32] No. 77 Squadron was credited with downing its last MiG southeast of Pyongyang on 27 March 1953.[33]
A special fighter-bomber variant of the F86-F arrived in Korea during January 1953 – the F86-F-30 with dual stores mountings under each wing. This Sabre could carry either a 120-US-gallon (450 l; 100 imp gal) drop tank or a 1,000-pound (450 kg) bomb on the inner fittings, together with a 200-US-gallon (760 l; 170 imp gal) drop tank on each of the outboard points. The new fighter-bombers were issued to the 18th Fighter Bomber Wing, which included 2 Squadron, South African Air Force (previously a P-51 unit). In February the 8th Fighter Bomber Wing began to replace its F-80s with Sabre fighter-bombers.[30]
On July 27, 1953 the ceasefire came into effect. By that time there were 297 Sabres in Korea facing an estimated 950 Sino-Korean MiGs. During the conflict the F-86 pilots claimed to have destroyed 792 MiGs in air-to-air combat for a loss of 78 Sabres — a phenomenal 10 to 1 kills-to-losses ratio. On September the defection of a MiG-15 pilot (with his aircraft) enabled US pilots to assess their erstwhile opponent at first hand. The MiG that Lieutenant No Kum-sok flew into Kimpo on September 21 was one of the later MiG-15SDs.[34]
Soviet role [ edit ]
Gun camera strip showing Soviet MiG-15 over Korea, April 1953.
According to Budiansky, "In late March 1951, the 1st RSM (1st Radio Squadron, Mobile), still operating in Japan, picked up Russian ground controllers in voice communication with Soviet MiG fighter aircraft operating over North Korea. This became an "intelligence windfall", because "Soviet doctrine called for tight control of fighters by stations on the ground tracking the location of friendly and enemy aircraft on radar throughout the battle." These radio intercepts gave additional warning beyond the range of radar. This breakthrough in signals intelligence, centralized at a single USAFSS facility in Seoul, meant real-time listening of Russian controllers and fighters and the subsequent passing of information to U.S. pilots. "An analysis of ground control traffic in June 1952 concluded that more than 90 percent of MiGs engaged in air operations over North Korea were being flown by Russians."[35]
The Soviet Union kept the participation of their aircrews in the Korean War secret for many years, though it was widely suspected by UN forces. Soviet aircraft were adorned with North Korean or Chinese markings and pilots wore either North Korean uniforms or civilian clothes, to disguise their origins. For radio communication, they were given cards with common Korean words for various flying terms spelled out phonetically in Cyrillic characters.[36] These subterfuges did not long survive the fury of air-to-air combat, however, and pilots were soon heard communicating in Russian.
Soviet MiG-15 regiments were based on Chinese fields in Manchuria, where, according to existing UN rules of engagement, they could not be attacked. Many Soviet regiments underwent preliminary training at Soviet bases in the neighboring Soviet Maritime Military District. Soviet air defense troops also began to arrive along the Yalu, setting up radar installations, ground control centers, searchlights and large numbers of anti-aircraft guns to deter any attacks on the Chinese airfields.
While UN pilots chafed at the restrictions imposed on attacking the MiG's Chinese airfields, it wasn't known until many years later that the MiG pilots themselves operated under tight restrictions. To preserve the impression that Soviet pilots were not fighting in Korea, they were prohibited from flying over non-Communist-controlled territory or within 30 to 50 miles (50–80 km) of the Allied front lines. One Soviet pilot who was shot down in UN-controlled territory shot himself with his pistol rather than be taken captive. Another pilot who bailed out into the Yellow Sea was strafed to prevent him from being captured. Soviet pilots were not allowed to pursue UN aircraft over the UN-controlled Yellow Sea.[37]
In spite of the restrictions, many US pilots took advantage of a "hot pursuit" exception to flying over China to pursue MiGs across the Yalu River. Later, "hot pursuit" became active MiG hunting over Manchuria, with US pilots maintaining a "code of silence" about the patrols. Flight leaders chose wingmen who would keep quiet, and many rolls of incriminating gun camera footage "mysteriously" disappeared.[37][better source needed]
The UN conducted Operation Moolah to entice Communist pilots, especially Soviet pilots, to defect to South Korea with a MiG-15.[citation needed] The operation was intended to gain an analysis of the MiG-15's flight performance, as well as serve a psychological purpose undermining the Soviet pilots.
With the end of the Cold War Soviet participation in the Korean war became widely recognized as pilots who participated in the conflict revealed their role.[36]
Aftermath [ edit ]
MiG-15s curving in to attack USAF B-29s , 1951.
The MiG Alley battles produced many fighter aces. The top aces were Russian. Nikolay Sutyagin claimed 21 kills, including nine F-86s, one F-84 and one Gloster Meteor in less than seven months. His first kill was the F-86A of Robert H. Laier on 19 June 1951 (listed by the Americans as missing in action), and his last was on 11 January 1952, when he shot down and killed Thiel M. Reeves, who was flying an F-86E (Reeves is also listed as MIA). Other famous Soviet aces include Yevgeni G. Pepelyayev, who was credited with 19 kills, and Lev Kirilovich Shchukin, who was credited with 17 kills, despite being shot down twice himself.
The top UN ace of the war, Capt. Joseph C. McConnell, claimed 16 MiGs, including three on one day. His story featured in a film called The McConnell Story, starring Alan Ladd and June Allyson.[38] The second-highest-scoring UN ace, Maj. James Jabara, was the first UN jet-vs.-jet ace. Another ace, Frederick C. "Boots" Blesse, claimed nine MiG-15s in his F-86 Sabre[39] and later wrote No Guts, No Glory, a manual of air fighter combat that is still studied today.[37] James P. Hagerstrom claimed 8.5 kills. George Andrew Davis, Jr. became one of the first members of the new U.S. Air Force to receive the Medal of Honor after being killed while leading his section of two F-86s against 12 MiG-15s when he was trying to shoot them all down.
The newly established People's Liberation Army Air Force of China also emerged seven aces. Among them, Jiang Daoping has shot down the U.S. top ace Joseph C. McConnell. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Chief of Staff of the USAF, stated that the PLAAF had become a major air power.[40]
Over thirty Sabre pilots were claimed to have been shot down behind enemy lines and their fate has never been definitively established. Surviving pilots, captured and later repatriated after the armistice, reported being interrogated by Koreans, Russians, and Chinese. For years after the Korean War ended in 1953, rumours persisted of pilots held captive by the Soviets.[41]
A number of computer video games based on the combat in MiG Alley have been produced, amongst them MiG Alley Ace, released by MicroProse in 1985.[42][43]
See also [ edit ]
List of Korean War flying aces
MiG Alley (video game) – flight simulation computer game based on the air combat in MiG Alley
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ] |
In 2005, MIT professor Richard Schrock won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing catalysts for a reaction that is widely used to produce pharmaceuticals, fuels and other synthetic chemicals. That reaction, known as olefin metathesis, involves breaking and making double bonds between carbon atoms to produce new types of carbon-carbon double bonds.
One limitation to the metathesis reaction is that it had not been possible to control the configuration of the olefin products, which can occur in one of two configurations. However, Schrock and his collaborator Amir Hoveyda at Boston College have now developed a catalyst that yields almost exclusively the more desirable configuration, known as cis.
In a paper appearing in the Nov. 3 issue of Nature, the researchers report using their new catalyst to generate the cis form of two natural compounds that have been of great interest to scientists because of their potential as cancer drugs. They expect that the catalyst, which contains tungsten, could also be useful for controlling the configuration of hundreds of other natural products, as well as new variants of those natural compounds.
“Sought by many investigators for almost two decades, this milestone achievement will be welcomed by the synthetic community as a major advance in organic synthesis,” says K.C. Nicolaou, a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute, who was not involved in this project.
Lead authors of the paper are Miao Yu, a graduate student in Hoveyda’s lab, and Chenbo Wang, a postdoc at Boston College. Oxford University researchers Andrew Kyle, Pavol Jakubec and Darren Dixon are also authors of the paper.
Making rings
In the Nature paper, the researchers focused on synthesizing macrocycles — compounds that contain large rings of nine or more atoms. Compounds of this type often have potent biological activity, making them useful as drugs, says Hoveyda, a professor of chemistry and the principal author of the paper, in whose laboratory the organic chemistry was carried out.
The researchers were able to synthesize two naturally occurring macrocycles, epothilone and nakadomarin. Epothilone, originally found in a soil-dwelling bacterium, blocks cancer cells from dividing by interfering with the cell skeleton; several variants of the compound are now in clinical trials for the treatment of cancer. Nakadomarin, first discovered in a marine sponge, has both anticancer and antimicrobial activity.
Both compounds can be made in about 16 chemical steps, the last of which is a metathesis closing of the ring through formation of a double bond between two carbon atoms.
Metathesis, whose mechanism was first proposed by Yves Chauvin in 1971, requires a catalyst — a special compound that consists of a metal atom attached to one or more organic structures known as ligands. In 1986, Schrock, now MIT’s Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry developed the first catalyst that could perform this reaction. Chauvin and Schrock shared the 2005 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Robert Grubbs, who later developed different catalysts for metathesis that contain ruthenium.
When each of the two carbon atoms in the double bond has another carbon atom attached to it, the attached carbons can point in the same direction (the cis configuration) or in opposite directions (the trans configuration).
The cis configuration is found in most naturally occurring compounds. Hoveyda speculates that the cis configuration might be better able to interact with biological structures such as cell receptors, or is better able to cross the cell membrane. Unfortunately, most metathesis reactions produce a mixture of cis and trans, with trans usually predominating (up to 80 percent). Mixtures of cis and trans products are very difficult to separate.
‘An efficient solution’
The team’s new catalyst steers the reaction toward predominantly the cis form due to the size and shape of one of the ligands attached to the metal in the catalyst. This ligand is so large and bulky that it prevents any carbon atoms attached to the intermediate in the reaction from pointing toward it, forcing them into a cis configuration. Using this catalyst, the researchers were able to generate the cis configuration of epothilone and nakadomarin more than 95 percent of the time.
“It turns out to be a surprisingly efficient solution, but nobody’s ever done it before,” Schrock says.
Another advantage of the tungsten catalyst is that tungsten is much more abundant than ruthenium, which is a precious metal used in other, more popular metathesis catalysts. Ruthenium’s worldwide annual production is only about 12 tons, and one kilogram costs about $10,000. In contrast, about 60,000 tons of tungsten are produced worldwide per year, at a cost of about $50 per kilogram.
Schrock and Hoveyda have started a company called XiMo to work with clients, particularly companies that synthesize drugs or other chemicals such as polymers, pesticides and fragrances, to develop new catalysts to make their production processes more efficient. |
Following the trade deadline there was much speculation and criticism over the moves, or lack thereof, of Peter Chiarelli. And in hindsight it was well deserved, as Andrez Meszaros and Corey Potter proved to be not enough on the backend—the duo rarely surpassed Matt Bartkowski on the depth chart, as Mezsaros appeared in four games, and Potter only one. Soon after the deadline, Bruins’ President Cam Neely revealed on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Felger and Mazz radio show that a deal was in the works, but ultimately fell through at the last minute.
"We were in on something else that we felt would have been good for us if it could’ve gotten accomplished, but it wasn’t entirely in our control in that regard… I think it may potentially have laid some groundwork for the future. But again, you have to have a dance partner… We had a deal in principle that was predicated on another team getting something done."
The Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinzawa wrote the following morning that the "deal in principle" was for the Canucks’ Alexander Edler, reporting that the deal was contingent on Ryan Kesler being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Had the trade gone through, the Bruins likely would’ve had to give up at least two high prospects (Bartkowski/Spooner/Khokhlachev), and likely a draft pick. Chiarelli noted that the negotiations weren’t a total loss, as he was able to "lay some groundwork", and that it would be revisited during the off-season. Flash-forward nearly three months to the day, and there’s one major variable PC may not have seen coming: former Bruins’ Assistant GM is now the general manager of the Vancouver Canucks, replacing Mike Gillis at the end of May. So what ripple effect does this have for the future of the Bruins blue line, you ask?
First off, let’s look at a couple major factors. We’ll start with Edler’s current contract.
SEASON AHL SALARY NHL SALARY P. BONUSES S. BONUS AAV CAP HIT 2013-14 $3,250,000 $3,250,000 $0 $1,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 2014-15 $4,250,000 $4,250,000 $0 $2,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 2015-16 $6,000,000 $6,000,000 $0 $3,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 2016-17 $6,000,000 $6,000,000 $0 $3,000,000 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 2017-18 $6,000,000 $6,000,000 $0 $0 $5,000,000 $5,000,000 2018-19 $4,500,000 $4,500,000 $0 $0 $5,000,000 $5,000,000
2013-14 was the first season of a six year, $30M deal for Alex Edler. The $5 million annual cap hit would put him second on the Bruins, in front of Johnny Boychuk and Dennis Seidenberg. It would also give him the longest term of any defenseman on the team by two years, with Zdeno Chara and Seidy both up at the end of the 2017-18 season. Edler just turned 28, younger than Johnny Boychuk and only about six months older than both Adam McQuaid and Kevan Miller. He would just be turning 33 at the end of the contract, giving you the prime of his career at a reasonable price.
Next, how about we take a look at his production in his seven full seasons in the NHL.
SEASON TEAM GP G A P +/- PIM PPG SHG GWG S S% 2007-08 CANUCKS 75 8 12 20 6 42 4 0 0 124 6.4 2008-09 CANUCKS 80 10 27 37 11 54 5 0 1 145 6.9 2009-10 CANUCKS 76 5 37 42 0 40 2 0 0 161 3.1 2010-11 CANUCKS 51 8 25 33 13 24 5 0 1 121 6.6 2011-12 CANUCKS 82 11 38 49 0 34 5 1 0 228 4.8 2012-13 CANUCKS 45 8 14 22 -5 37 5 0 0 113 7.1 2013-14 CANUCKS 63 7 15 22 -39 50 4 0 0 178 3.9 NHL TOTALS 494 58 170 228 -11 287 30 1 2 1,080 5.4
While Edler is statistically a career minus player, last year was clearly the anomaly. Following the trade of Roberto Luongo at the deadline, Edler had a plus rating in just two of his final 19 games played, a -14 rating over that same span. Not that being -25 prior to the trade was much better, but in a year where Vancouver finished third-worst in the West, it can be chalked up to a down year.
Offensively numbers were down as well, with his lowest PPG average since his rookie season. His primary points were down by shooting percentage was also at its lowest in four seasons. But his track record shows a different story. Among the four Canucks’ defenseman with 5000+ minutes played since 2008—the other three being Bieksa, Hamhuis, and Garrison—Edler has the best Corsi and Fenwick ratings both 5-on-5 and on the penalty kill, and is 2nd on the team on the man advantage. In comparison with the Bruins, he is right in line with Johnny Boychuk and Zdeno Chara, the B’s leading defenseman in the same categories over that time-span.
Even Strength:
# Player Name Team TOI G A FirstA Points Shots iFenwick60 iCorsi60 1 EDLER, ALEXANDER Vancouver 6457:21 19 69 29 88 568 7.879 11.856 2 BIEKSA, KEVIN Vancouver 6442:08 20 72 27 92 542 7.507 11.018
# Player Name Team TOI G A FirstA Points Shots iFenwick60 iCorsi60 1 BOYCHUK, JOHNNY Boston 5266:40 18 44 24 62 548 8.841 12.680 2 CHARA, ZDENO Boston 8067:27 28 96 49 124 764 7.832 11.864
Penalty Kill:
# Player Name Team TOI G A FirstA Points Shots iFenwick60 iCorsi60 1 EDLER, ALEXANDER Vancouver 781:45 1 0 0 1 21 1.919 2.072 2 HAMHUIS, DAN Vancouver 1243:50 1 3 3 4 24 7.507 1.495
# Player Name Team TOI G A FirstA Points Shots iFenwick60 iCorsi60 1 BOYCHUK, JOHNNY Boston 670:12 0 4 2 4 16 2.149 2.596 2 CHARA, ZDENO Boston 1233:56 1 7 4 8 40 2.431 2.577
[source: stats.hockeyanalysis.com]
All these numbers and figures probably have you thinking, "Yeah, we could use a young puck-moving defenseman with a good numbers." But here’s the thing...
You don’t want Alexander Edler on the Bruins.
First of all, Edler’s cap hit might be reasonable once the salary cap increases in a few years, but with Jarome Iginla’s cap penalty on the books for next season, the B’s are assumed to be docked around $4.5 million, bringing their projected 2014-15 salary cap down from $71M to $66.5M. Even with Savard’s money on LTIR, Edler would put the Bruins against the cap, forcing them to make significant moves (trades or contract buyouts) before signing their own free agents. His $5M cap hit is comparable to Keith Yandle, who would give you much more bang for your buck.
When seeking a puck-moving defenseman, don’t forget the embarrassment of blue line riches the Bruins currently have under their belt. Not only does Boston have Dougie Hamilton under contract as he steadily grows in all facets of the game, but they have Torey Krug and Matt Bartkowski in their RFA years. Assuming they give Krug a multi-year deal and sign Bart to a qualifying offer, that’ll give the big club eight defenseman. In the system, they have David Warsofsky, Zach Trotman, Joe Morrow, and the newly signed Linus Arnesson. While Arnesson is more of a lock-down defenseman, Morrow, Warsofsky and Trotman have an offensive skillset, as the three combined for 85 points in their collective 165 games played in the minors last season. Joe Morrow, who came over in the Tyler Seguin deal, is the most highly-touted prospect, while David Warsofsky—also currently an RFA—is the most NHL-ready, as he appeared in six games with the Boston during the regular season (1G, 1A, +1), and followed that up with a great showing in the Calder Cup Playoffs with 9 points in 12 games.
Regardless of the defensive prospects possibly ready to make the jump, the trade for Edler was rumored to cost the Bruins’ a couple highly valued forward prospects. Both Ryan Spooner and Alexander Khokhlachev were in the reported package headed to Vancouver. Koko led the P-Bruins in 2013-14 in points during the AHL regular season, and led the team with 9 goals in 12 games during the Calder Cup Playoffs. Spooner, who had 11 assists in 23 games with Boston, had the highest point-per-game percentage with Providence (.938) during the regular season, and led the team with 15 points in 12 playoff games. Either Khokhlachev or Spooner—or both—could be a welcome addition to the big club, giving a new look and added speed to the Bruins 3rd and 4th lines in 2014-15.
The main issue with the Edler trade isn’t the player himself. It’s the position and style. Between current D-men, both on the team and in the system, the Bruins have very good puck movers on their blue line; Zdeno Chara, Torey Krug, Dougie Hamilton and Johnny Boychuk all tallied more points than Edler. But aside from the strength of Kevan Miller, Dennis Seidenberg and Zdeno Chara, they have a slender defensive core. A skater heavy on the puck who has awareness in his own zone is a much bigger need. And Edler defensively isn’t enough to put the Bruins over the top. So if not Edler, who? Hint: Stay in the Canucks’ division.
Mark Giordano would be the ideal candidate, as he brings solid offensive touch while staying responsible in his zone. He led the Flames with a 12+ rating in 2013-14 despite the team goal differential being an abysmal -32. He’s skated alongside Jarome Iginla for five seasons, and both would be vying for their elusive first Stanley Cup. His presence would be welcomed both on and off the ice, as he could complement Johnny Boychuk or Dennis Seidenberg for a lock-down 2nd defensive pairing. Giordano has two years remaining on his contract at $4.02 million per year, so he’s cheaper than Edler, which could potentially lower the cost of the assets shipped out. In both zones, he’s more consistent, and his production has had a bigger upside than Edler’s over the last few seasons.
A. Edler M. Giordano
But enough of the armchair GM talk. What about Jim Benning? In all likelihood, Benning being in Vancouver hurts the chances of an Edler trade.
There are two logical reasons for this. First, from what Behind The B showed us last season, Jim Benning was a key voice in the Bruins’ front office in regards to the Tyler Seguin trade. Assuming this wasn’t a one-time occurrence, it seems that Benning was and had been heavily involved in trade negotiations alongside Chiarelli. Odds are he was a facilitator leading up to the deadline, and there’s a good chance that Benning wanted Edler on his team. Now that Jim has him, why give Edler up? Remember, the Canucks may have been sellers last season due to their record, but if they can get their goaltending situation figured out, there’s plenty of firepower in their arsenal to make them a playoff threat in the West next season. Dumping Edler would hurt that cause.
Secondly, a deal with his former team in his first season would require Benning to undoubtedly win the trade. Benning would be shipping out a Top 4 defenseman just one year after the Canucks signed him to a mutli-year contract, and therefore would have to make the return not only fair, but great. Otherwise he runs the risk of being accused of hooking up his old pals in Boston on the cheap. To make matters worse, Benning knows the prospects in the Bruins system, so he won’t be fooled by any throw-ins Peter Chiarelli might try to claim are diamonds in the rough. He’ll likely want the same package proposed in March, if not more.
If you are a Bruins fan that wanted Alexander Edler, then Jim Benning as the Canucks’ GM is bad news. But if you’re a Bruins fan that wants a better team next year, with many of their new, young talent intact, the "trade that never was" may just have been a blessing in disguise. Then again, you can’t deny those dance moves. |
by Brett Stevens on April 22, 2016
When the patient has no hope, we enter palliative care. Sedatives and painkillers abound. Food and water are withdrawn, to allow the body to exit with grace. When that moves too slowly, ever-increasing doses of morphine are administered. At some point, the soul flies away and the gasping corpse returns to the earth.
We are at that point with America (and come to think of it, Europe, too).
These were groups of people, but they were replaced by governments — by their own hands, I might add. The politicians offered benefits like merchants offer discounts, and We The People leapt for the freebie. Then they found out that the cost was the creation of a USSR-style permanent bureaucracy that determined who would succeed and who would fail on the basis of ideology.
America was designed around the idea that democracy could be constrained by rules on paper. If we cannot have the best leading us, we can plan for an average equal robot-citizen to take the role, and put enough rules in there to keep him from doing damage. Or could we? The history of America shows that this approach has failed.
It is time to put the dying beast out of its misery. Its purpose long ago destroyed, it survives from lack of anything else to do. But having no direction, it merely lingers in boredom and complaint to the point that it does not even fear death. This is not life; it is living death. Release it!
Government is not the nation. The nation is the nation: the people, their genetics, their culture and values. In saner times, we avoided government and had kings instead, people drawn from the nation who showed the best of its traits, and could lead it to excellence. But that hurt snowflake feelings: not everyone can be excellent.
It took them almost two centuries, but in 1968 the destroyers won. They did not want a nation. They wanted a jobs program with some kind of talking competition in which unexceptional people could become important just for destroying things and justifying it in creative ways.
At that point, America the organism died, and was replaced by Amerika the zombie-robot-ideology. Ever since that time, it has been miserable to live here. Jobs have replaced purpose, politics has replaced thinking, and a string of foreigners have replaced the people.
Mr. Trump, please do the right thing. Put this terminal patient to rest. Shoot it in the head. Declare a world war for transgender rights and ensure that the governments of USA and the EU perish in flames so that we do not have to watch the long slow decay to Brazil 2.0. Ruin government, so we can rebuild.
The remnant is out here. But they are paralyzed until the power falls. Burn it down, tear it down. Make America Go Away (MAGA). Send the EU to the fires of Hades. Smash all that is rotten and dead, and cover the earth in ash so something new can grow.
Anything is better than this.
Tags: america, collapse, decay, decline, donald trump, european union
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Another Fork? Bitcoin Gold Project Plans to Fork Bitcoin Next Month
After the hard fork on August 1 that produced Bitcoin Cash, many bitcoiners have been waiting for the possibility of a fork taking place this November with the Segwit2x plan. However, a lot of bitcoin proponents don’t know about another fork called “Bitcoin Gold” (BTG) that’s scheduled to take place on October 25th.
Also read: Japan’s Financial Authority to Begin Bitcoin Exchange Surveillance Next Month
Bitcoin Gold Plans to Fork Bitcoin and Change the Consensus Mechanism
Yes, you read that correctly bitcoin enthusiasts might see another hard fork this October that produces another token called Bitcoin Gold. The project first announced on Bitcointalk.org in July was created by Jack Liao, the founder of Lightning ASIC a mining firm based out of Hong Kong and an anonymous developer named “h4x3.” The forked protocol aims to change bitcoin’s consensus algorithm allowing users to mine the currency with graphic processing units (GPU) among other changes. According to the development team, Bitcoin Gold will use the Equihash algorithm used by the altcoin Zcash rather than bitcoin’s original SHA256.
“Bitcoin Gold implements the UAHF (User Activated Hard Fork) proposal to accept GPU mining,” explains the website archive. “Miners can choose the size of the blocks they want to mine, with a default of 1 MB. It includes replay and wipeout protection.”
For too long, Bitcoin has been held back by the centralized mining industry. GPU brings Bitcoin into the modern age with an exciting technological roadmap to enable massive on-chain scaling well into the future with decentralization.
Most Bitcoin Proponents Unaware of this Project
Even though it was announced back in July the news of the Bitcoin Gold fork is just starting to come around people’s radar. Some believe the announcement and the project’s website is a “troll attempt” to create confusion and dilute the power of the Bitcoin Cash fork and Segwit2x. The Bitcoin Gold protocol has available code on Github for review and has multiple social media accounts for Twitter, Facebook, and a Slack channel. Currently, there are over 250 members in the Bitcoin Gold Slack channel, and many of the visitors seem excited about the new fork. Even though the user-activated hard fork will take place on October 25 the full network launch is scheduled for November 1.
Evil ASIC Manufacturers
There is a lot of discussion happening on the team’s Slack channel and it seems the team has a lot of work to do if BTG developers hope to fork on October 25. For instance, at the moment there is no testnet for miners to test the protocol, reveals the BTG lead developer. “We are working on core protocol and will launch the testnet ASAP,” the BTG programmer reveals in a conversation on the team’s general chat Slack channel. “[Mining] profitability is determined by the price and mining difficulty, but the price is hard to predict,” he adds.
The developer also throws out a few opinions throughout the general chat channel about mining centralization. “ASIC leads to centralization — Evil ASIC manufacturers want to take up Bitcoin,” the BTG developer emphasizes. News.Bitcoin.com briefly spoke with Bitcoin Gold’s lead developer who calls himself “H4x3” over the team’s Slack channel about the project. “I can confirm the PoW will be changed to Equihash and the fork date is October 25,” explains the developer. We sent some questions to Jack Liao and H4x3 because the lead developer told us our questions were “too sensitive” to answer alone. The BTG team has not yet responded to our emailed questions.
Possible Reasons for a Very Unorganized and Confusing Fork Proposal
It’s likely that many bitcoin proponents are viewing the project as a joke or another method of “crypto-trolling.” There’s a lot of good reasons people believe its a prank because the project seems extremely unorganized for a hard fork slated for the end of October. Further, there is speculation from community members about the team’s intentions to change the bitcoin algorithm to conform with GPU miners. Jack Liao manufactures GPU miners that can mine the Zcash algorithm Equihash and speculators believe this is the primary reason to clone bitcoin and make it GPU compatible.
News.Bitcoin.com will be following the development of this story closely and will update this article if the BTG team responds to our questions.
What do you think about the proposed Bitcoin Gold hard fork allegedly scheduled for October 25? Do you think this project is trolling or a joke? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Images via Shutterstock, Twitter, and the Bitcoin Gold Slack channel.
Bitcoin News is growing fast. To reach our global audience, send us a news tip or submit a press release. Let’s work together to help inform the citizens of Earth (and beyond) about this new, important and amazing information network that is Bitcoin. |
InFocus today debuted the Kangaroo Notebook, a $299 laptop featuring a dock with an 11.6-inch HD screen and two interchangeable Kangaroo Mini PCs running Windows 10. The Kangaroo Notebook will be available for preorder on Newegg in mid-October.
When the Kangaroo debuted in October 2015, and its less portable big brother arrived in April 2016, we explained that the oxymoron “mobile desktop” really is the best way to describe the Kangaroos. They’re basically desktop PC towers shrunk down to the size of a phablet, sans screen.
The Kangaroo Notebook, however, doesn’t deserve the Kangaroo name at all. It doesn’t require connecting a mouse, a keyboard, or a monitor. It’s a fully functional laptop with a keyboard, Synaptics ClickPad, battery, webcam, ports, a microphone, and speakers.
InFocus envisions the Kangaroo Notebook being used by families that want to dedicate one module to financial and personal information while keeping another for apps, games, and movies. In other words, it’s for paranoid people who really don’t trust the idea of having separate accounts on the same PC.
“With Kangaroo Notebook, we put the power to create private, individualized computing experiences directly into the hands of our customers,” Ben Chu, head of Kangaroo sales, said in a statement. “The modular design of this new mobile computing bundle gives our customers a different level of flexibility and control over how they want to manage personal computing, particularly in the home.”
For reference, here are the full specs for the Kangaroo Notebook:
OS: Windows 10 64-bit Home edition
CPU: 1.44 GHz Intel Atom x5-Z8350
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
Memory: 2GB LPDDR3 RAM
Storage: 32GB eMMC
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11AC + a/b/g/n Intel
Expansion: microSD TF slot (256GB max)
Battery: 37Whr/5,000mAh
Dimensions: 288.9 x 196 x 19.9mm
Weight: 1.2kg
Power: 36W(12V~3A) AC Adapter
Notably missing is the fingerprint reader, which previous Kangaroos included. Instead, there is one slot for a Kangaroo Mini PC (though again, two ship in the box).
And that’s what really makes the Kangaroo Notebook unique: You can swap out the whole PC for another one. The pitch is around customization, privacy, and security. But frankly, we expect you’ll stick to using just one.
If you don’t have a monitor or TV to plug a Kangaroo into, the Kangaroo Notebook is for you. At $299, however, there are plenty of cheap Windows 10 laptops to choose from. |
Ahead of legal, adult-use sales kicking off next year, San Francisco has created a new office to serve as a hub for all things cannabis.
Approved at a meeting this week by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Office of Cannabis will handle license applications and fees for the city and county, field questions and complaints, interact with state-level regulators, and act as an information repository for the public. It’s set to open by the end of the year.
According San Francisco Chronicle reporter Rachel Swan, the ordinance creating the office passed on the same day as the municipal budget, which earmarks funds to get the office off the ground:
The city budget included $700,000 to fund three Office of Cannabis positions — a manager, a principal analyst and a management assistant — along with overhead, website development and public outreach. Mayor Ed Lee also set aside $665,227 this year for five new Department of Public Health employees who would help oversee permitting for medical cannabis dispensaries. The city currently has 39 permitted dispensaries and 28 pending applications.
During discussion of the ordinance, several of the supervisors raised concerns about race and gender equity in the cannabis industry, noting that the Bay Area has struggled to diversify its tech industry. In response, according to the meeting minutes, Supervisor Ahsha Safai moved to add language meant to promote inclusivity.
“The Office shall ensure that the perspectives of communities that historically have been disproportionately impacted by federal drug enforcement policies are included and considered in all policy decisions,” Safai’s amendment says. It’s not yet clear what that will look like from a practical standpoint.
Following debate and amendments, supervisors passed the ordinance unanimously. |
On Tuesday, January 27th I enjoyed a very candid conversation with Oakland Raiders Quarterback, Derek Carr. Below is a transcription of our 20 minute chat. I’d like to note, speaking with Derek, it was very obvious that this young man is the same guy talking to the national media after an NFL game, his local media after a Raider practice, or a guy on the phone in Seattle who writes for a blog about the Raiders.
Following is my interview with Carr about his rookie season, his offseason so far, and the future of the Raiders going forward.
Patrick: How has your offseason been going? What has been your focus?
Derek: Right now, its just letting my shoulder rest. I haven’t thrown a ball since the season, I’m trying to let that rest as much as possible. Coming off of my senior year of college, I had no rest. I went straight to training for the Senior Bowl, straight into the combine, straight into the workout, training camp and then the season.
I haven’t stopped throwing for way over a year now. I thought it was real important to rest that. I’ve been working out real hard, trying to get stronger right now. Working to maintain the conditioning level.
Patrick: Last season there were a couple close calls with some leg injuries, you were able to play through. Has your training been focused on preventative measures for that?
Derek: Oh yeah, a lot of rehab type stuff. Like you said, preventative. I just praise God that it wasn’t worse. It could have easily torn, or broke a bone you know. I just praise God that I wasn’t hurt that bad. I was banged up, but at least I could fight through it a little bit and keep playing. All except the London game.
Doing those kind of things in the offseason are important though, you want to make sure that your ligaments are strong, and all the parts of your body recover. Offseason is really important, especially when you have to go through a long season in the NFL.
PF: When you fight through an injury like that, many people believe that earns you the respect from the older players in the locker room. Did you notice anything to that effect?
DC: You know, I did. They all know you, but they don’t KNOW you yet. They don’t know what you really have deep down inside. When something goes wrong, or if you get banged up, how is he going to respond? All those things. You do your best to fight through those things. Sometimes there are things you can’t fight through. Like when I got my concussion against Detroit in the preseason. That’s something I couldn’t help. I tried to fight through it, but I couldn’t walk right. So I knew I was done for that game. (chuckles)
PF: That’ll close it down quickly.
DC: Ha. Oh, real quick. Especially when your left side isn’t working. But when its an ankle or a knee, if I think that I can play the next play, I’m going to do my best to play the next play. At times, it may have hurt us on 3rd downs, but I’m showing my teammates that I’m their guy and no matter what I’m going to be out there.
PF: From watching your post game interviews, and mid-week interviews last season. Seeing how you grew from week to week and learning from every experience you had. Did you catch the NFC Championship Game, and what were you able to learn by watching that come back performance?
DC: Oh absolutely! Not only do I play the game, but I’m the biggest football fan around. I love football, I love watching it, I love learning from it. I absolutely watched that game. Especially, I was watching my buddy, Davante Adams, who was playing in it, so I wanted to watch him, root for him.
Watching the game, you watch Russell play, and he does a lot of things in his life that I respect and that I like, and his kind of character, the way he handles thing; so I love rooting for him as well. You watch him, he goes off and throws 4 picks, the NFC Championship, it is in your home stadium, you feel like you are letting your everybody down, but he kept his head down, kept the faith and kept fighting, kept believing, kept leading his teammates.
Because games in the NFL are never over. That’s one thing that I learned, that game is never over. You keep playing. As I watch, you don’t have to do anything heroic you just have to do what you are taught. That’s exactly what he did on both of those touchdowns. He did what the coaches taught him. He checked the one pass play for the TD in overtime, he’s just doing what he was taught he wasn’t trying to do too much, and that’s something that I learned from it.
PF: Speaking of the “not over till it’s over” I was at the game you played in Seattle. Toward the end of that game, I was thinking the exact same thing.
DC: That’s another example. Seattle got that onside kick against Green Bay, if we get our on side kick, we get the ball and we are trying to drive to win it. That’s how close these games are.
“I hope I play here for the rest of my career.” – Derek Carr
PF: The wins everyone was hoping for last season, didn’t come along. But the young players on the team did great, obviously Khalil is up for Defensive Rookie of the Year. You had one of the most productive rookie seasons from a QB in the history of the NFL; With all that, what do you think you need to do, and the team needs to do to improve?
DC: For me, I want to go out and be more efficient. This past year I said I’m going to go out and play as hard as I can, just do everything I possibly can to win a football game, throw it wherever I need to, try to fit it into windows to help us win. Record wise we weren’t doing very well, so I tried putting it all on my shoulders. There as a spurt in the middle of the season where I was turning the ball over, and that was related to me trying to do too much. So, I said, “ya know what, I’m going to finish the season off thinking about my team, and thinking about not turning the ball over.”
That’s how I’ve played my whole life, but I was trying to prove something to people, and that’s not who I am. When I had that mindset, the team mindset, we went out and we won our last three games at home, against some really good football teams. That’s something I learned. No matter who you are in this league, you can’t do it on your own. There’s no doubt about it, I don’t care who it is, you cannot win a game on your own. When you try to, you’re going to screw it up for everyone else.
Also I learned, we’re actually starting something really good here. The record might not show it, but people who pay attention to us and who know the Raiders, like yourself, you understand what we’re doing and what we’re building. Its going to take time, but our mindset is, we are trying to be playing at this time next year. We think that we can do that, obviously we have to add some pieces and keep working, and hopefully we are going to get there.
PF: I remember at the beginning of the season, when they posted the schedule, a part of my heart sank, because I thought this was the hardest NFL schedule I’d ever seen. How do you think that schedule helped your development?
DC: You’re exactly right, we played 8 of the top 10 defenses this year. The others we played were right up there anyway, there just wasn’t room for them in the top 10. (chuckles) It was good. Coach Olson said, “you will probably never play a schedule like this again, and this could be the best experience you could ever have.” He’d never seen a schedule like this. Going through it as a rookie QB with a brand new team we are trying to build, I think those are things people over look with this team.
People don’t really necessarily pay attention to those things, and its sad. I know this league, and the only thing that matters is wins, so the fact that we can look back on it and say “hey, we did some pretty good things against some great defenses” that’s all good and well, but we know that all that matters is the wins. So we got to watch that film and try to push ourselves to be better next year knowing that in all honesty we played one of the best schedules you could ever play. We have a lot of confidence going forward, but that schedule was really good for us.
PF: Have you had a chance to meet any of the new staff yet?
DC: I did, I met them all. They are great. I think the Raider Nation is going to love them, honestly. I sat down, talked with them, I’m going to continue to meet with them. Its been great so far, they’ve been awesome.
PF: The offseason is full of rumors, one has been (offensive coordinator) Musgrave wanting to install a no huddle offense. What would you think about running a no huddle offense?
DC: I think it’d be awesome. It’s what I did in college. Getting up to the line of scrimmage, getting us in the right play, that’s what I’m used to. I have no problem doing that. It’s what the best players in the league do at the QB position, that’s what I want to do. The teams that are winning Super Bowls, those are the things those teams are doing. Getting to the line of scrimmage and putting it on the QB.
PF: Woodson is back! How great is that, and how much inspiration did he have on the locker room last year.
DC: He’s awesome. Just to watch a guy at his age run around playing like he’s 24 years old. No one questions him losing a step, no one questioned his ability to practice every day. The guy practiced every day. Played hard every single day, worked out every time. Never missed a meeting, never missed anything. He doesn’t know everything, but its pretty darn close. He knows a lot about this game, and watching him wanting to learn and get better, its an inspiration for us young guys. Its something we need, and we need to see.
Him (Woodson) coming back shows his confidence in this team, the guy doesn’t have to play football. He has no financial problems. He doesn’t need to win a SB, he has one. He has every reason to go home and enjoy his family, but the guy wants to play again and that says a lot about his confidence in this football team.
PF: Did you watch Marcel in the Pro Bowl?
DC: I caught some of it on TV. I heard he had a few good plays, I was actually taking care of my son. (chuckles) My wife was cooking dinner. I couldn’t be more happy for him, he’s the best fullback in the league.
PF: Marcel said before he left for the Pro Bowl that he was going to do a little recruiting for Free Agency while he was there. Have you done any of that? Reaching out to players, or putting a name in Reggie’s ear?
DC: Absolutely. I already started talking to some guys, recruiting some guys. Obviously I can’t say any names, but I have started. I’m doing my best to help this team win, if I can help I’m going to.
PF: One name who has been coming up as a possibility for the Raiders is, Julius Thomas from Denver. He was quoted saying he’d consider the Raiders a possibility because he grew up a Raider fan. He’s just waiting to see if the Raiders reach out to him. How much of an impact could he have on the offense?
DC: Having him would be amazing. Obviously, I’d love to play with him. I’d love to throw him the ball. His family are big time Raider fans. I know a lot about him, I think he’s a heck of a player and I think he would fit in with the group we already have. If we could add him, it would be great. We’ll see what happens, see what the front office wants to do. He’d be a great addition for our team.
PF: Julius said he’s a Raider fan, I’m starting to hear that more and more. Leonard Williams from USC is a Raider fan, Coach Del Rio grew up a Raider fan, even you grew up a Raider fan. Now that you’ve been in the organization for a full season, what do you think it is that draws players and coaches to the Raiders?
DC: I think it’s that Silver and Black honestly. It’s the emblem. The mystique of the Raiders. The fear people used to have when they’d play us, and the fear we started creating again. Especially on the defensive side of the football in that last stretch in December.
Once you get to know these fans, once you get around them, I can tell you I never want to play anywhere else. I hope I play here for the rest of my career. I love these fans, I love playing for Mr. Davis. God has been good to me, to allow me to play here, so I’m very thankful to be here. I think the fans are really what make it, the passion they have. No matter what we are doing, no matter how many wins or losses, to come running back on the field and hear the fans cheering for me. To come running out of tunnel and hear them go crazy even though we only have two (eventually three after the home finale) wins on the season. It’s really amazing, and I love them to death. |
Two people have been injured after an experimental flying car crashed into a tree Friday morning near a school in Vernon, B.C.
The aircraft clipped a fence behind Vernon's Ellison Elementary School, hit the tree and crashed a few metres from school property just before 9 a.m. PT.
Made by a Florida company, the flying car is a combination of a plane engine, propeller and parasail attached to a dune buggy.
RCMP spokesperson Gord Molendyk said there are indications the contraption had taken off from the airport in Vernon.
"It looked like it was on its approach," Molendyk said. "There was motor sound and people looked up and it got into trouble and came through the fence and into the trees here."
Molendyk said the pilot and his passenger had to be pulled from the tree. They suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospital. They have since been released.
No one was hurt on the ground, although children from the school were preparing on the nearby grounds for a track and field day.
It's believed Kelowna, B.C., resident Ray Siebring recently brought the fifth-ever flying car to Canada as a prototype and has been checking it out in a series of test flights across the Okanagan.
A release from the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) confirmed the flying car was "an American corporately registered I-Tech Maverick SP Powered Parachute" that had crashed.
The vehicle, known as "Maverick," uses a 100-metre runway to take off and flies under a parasail. But it also needs a 100-metre runway to make a safe landing.
According to the manufacturer's website, the car can travel at speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour on land and up to 65 kilometres per hour in the air. It costs at least $94,000 to purchase, according to the site.
The TSB is now investigating. |
YALTA, CRIMEA—In what is being called the worst environmental disaster in the region’s history, millions of policy proposals gushed into the Black Sea on Thursday after a Brookings Institution think tanker ran aground off the coast of Crimea. “Cleanup crews are working around the clock to contain this massive flood of position papers on economics and global development,” said Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott, adding that booms had been brought to the site to halt the spread of the nonpartisan research while skimmers had been deployed to collect the policy briefs from the ocean’s surface in hopes of preventing currents from dispersing them over a far greater area. “We’re doing our very best to limit the exposure of marine habitats to the analyses of sub-Saharan energy infrastructure, universal basic income, and automation in the labor market, but it could be months before we know the full extent of the damage.” Talbott went on to say that the Brookings Institution had already pledged $200 million toward cleanup efforts thanks to generous donations from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Hutchins Family Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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Taking RPG to the Next Level #SRPG
Greetings, Lords! This is Fantasy War Tactics Support Team.
The first to make a fine start of the relay weekend events will be
Weekend Coocoo Dungeon Open Event!
This will make a great use out of Devil’s Soul you lords will have received from Burning Week On-time Event J!
In fact, the Lost Island will be available on the next weekend and all three bosses from the island will make special appearances!
Do not miss these events starting from this weekend to claim additional items, gold, and rewards!
Please refer below for further details
On the first weekend, all Coocoo dungeons will be open!
▶ Event Period: 2016. 01. 23(Sat.) 5:00am – 01. 25(Mon.) 04:59am
▶ Event Information: All Nephthys dungeons (Flame Garden, Moonlight Garden, Underwater Garden) will all be open during the weekend.
▶ Event Note:
- If you do not see those dungeons open during the event period, please re-login to check again.
On the second weekend, The Lost Island Festival Event!
▶ Event Period: 2016. 01. 30(Sat.) 5:00am – 02. 01(Mon.) 04:59am
▶ Event Information: All the time travelers will make their appearance during the event period!
[Featured Boss : Muang, Chenny, Nirvana]
▶ Event Note
- Please re-login during the event period to play
Thank you, always. |
Featured image: The South Texas Project nuclear power facility in Bay City, Texas could be under extreme threat from historic flood waters, groups warned on Tuesday. (Photo: STP)
As record-breaking rainfall and unprecedented flooding continue to batter the greater Houston area and along the Gulf coast on Tuesday, energy watchdogs groups are warning of “a credible threat of a severe accident” at two nuclear reactors still operating at full capacity in nearby Bay City, Texas.
Three groups—Beyond Nuclear, South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, and the SEED Coalition—are calling for the immediate shutdown of the South Texas Project (STP) which sits behind an embankment they say could be overwhelmed by the raging flood waters and torrential rains caused by Hurricane Harvey.
“Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the STP operator have previously recognized a credible threat of a severe accident initiated by a breach of the embankment wall that surrounds the 7,000-acre reactor cooling water reservoir,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Beyond Nuclear’s Reactor Oversight Project, in a statement by the coalition on Tuesday.
The groups warn that as Harvey—which on Tuesday was declared the most intense rain event in U.S. history—continues to dump water on the area, a breach of the embankment wall surrounding the twin reactors would create “an external flood potentially impacting the electrical supply from the switchyard to the reactor safety systems.” In turn, the water has the potential to “cause high-energy electrical fires and other cascading events initiating a severe accident leading to core damage.” Even worse, they added, “any significant loss of cooling water inventory in the Main Cooling Reservoir would reduce cooling capacity to the still operating reactors that could result in a meltdown.”
With the nearby Colorado River already cresting at extremely high levels and flowing at 70 times the normal rate, Karen Hadden, director of SEED Coalition, warned that the continue rainfall might create flooding that could reach the reactors.
“There is plenty of reserve capacity on our electric grid,” she said, “so we don’t have to run the reactors in order to keep the lights on. With anticipated flooding of the Colorado River, the nuclear reactors should be shut down now to ensure safety.”
Last week, the STP operators said that safety for their workers and local residents was their top concern, but that they would keep the plant operating despite the approaching storm.
Susan Dancer, president of the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, said that as residents in Bay City—herself included—were being forced to leave their homes under mandatory evacuation orders, it makes no sense to keep the nuclear plant online.
“Our 911 system is down, no emergency services are available, and yet the nuclear reactors are still running. Where is the concern for employees and their families? Where is the concern for public safety? This is an outrageous and irresponsible decision,” declared Dancer. “This storm and flood is absolutely without precedent even before adding the possibility of a nuclear accident that could further imperil millions of people who are already battling for their lives.”
As Harvey hovers over the coastal region, heavy rains are expected to persist for days even as the storm system creeps toward to Louisiana in the east.
But no matter how remote the possibility, said Gunter,
“it’s simply prudent that the operator put this reactor into its safest condition, cold shutdown.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License |
The victims of the Bourke Street atrocity have received more than $2.2 million in compensation, new figures have revealed.
In January, a car ploughed into crowds at a Melbourne CBD shopping district, killing six people and wounding 37 more.
WorkSafe and Transport Accident Commission figures show just over $2.2 million has been given to the impacted families, reports The Age.
People pay tribute leaving flowers at a temporary memorial on Bourke Street Mall
Worksafe received claims for a total of $1.69 million from 70 people including families who lost loved ones and victims who suffered physical or mental harm.
Of the 70 victims, 14 did not need time off work and only needed to cover medical costs, 38 have returned to work, and 16 have been unable to go back to work.
Five victims are still suffering physical injuries and 11 are fighting mental health issues.
The TAC want sent 106 claims amounting to $578,926 for three of the deaths, 14 physical injuries and 89 mental injuries.
Claims were used to cover counselling, dependency benefits and reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses stemming from hospital stays.
More than 1000 people called the Victorian Emergency Helpline in the aftermath of the attack, many for mental health issues.
The victims of the atrocity (pictured: one at the scene) have received more than $2.2 million in compensation
A significant number of WorkSafe and the TAC victims were injured in the incident.
Following the tragedy, the government set up a fund to provide financial support to assist the families most affected and to complement compensation.
An Independent Panel was established to guide decisions about the fund.
Witnesses and those affected are encouraged to seek help from the Victim Support Line 1800 819 817 |
For years, the antique had been on a rickety support on a sideboard of Wendy Jones's home without anyone suspecting it was of such high value.
Mrs Jones only took it to the show because her husband was taking some books.
But she was startled when the 22-inch oval-shaped plate turned out to be the most valuable to have appeared on the BBC programme in its 30-year history.
The plate was commissioned by the Prussian East India Company for King Frederick II, who set up the company in 1750.
It was made from hard paste porcelain and decorated with the alms of the Hohenzollern family, the order of the black eagle, and the Maltese Cross.
The plate was made between 1750 and 1755, and there are pieces of the service in museums across the world.
Mrs Jones said: "The plate actually belongs to my son because he was left it by his grandmother.
"He didn't have room for it in his London home so I had it.
"One day it fell off the stand and crashed onto the sideboard but luckily it wasn't damaged.”
As she left the house to go to the show in Aberglasney, Wales, she grabbed the plate and put it in a single Tesco's carrier bag. They can easily split,” she said.
"When I heard how much it might be worth I was shocked.
"On the way to the show the plate was on the back seat of the car, but on the way home I kept hold of it all the way.”
She added: "We are not sure where the plate came from but my son's paternal grandmother did marry into a German family.
"And the plate was made for the King of Prussia, so that's possibly how it ended up in our family.”
John Axford, from Woolley and Wallis auction house in Salisbury, Wilts, who valued the plate, said: "It is a fantastic piece of a very rare Royal service.” |
Received on 24.12.17:
We are social activists and friends of Dmitry Polienko and we are starting a New Year campaign of solidarity with the Belarusian prisoner of conscience! Please send a postcard with some words of support to Dmitry!
You can also post a photo of your postcard on social media and use the hashtag: #Free_Polienko
It should be recalled that in October 2016, Dmitry Polienko was sentenced to 2 years suspended prison sentence for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a ‘Critical Mass’ cycling demonstration in Minsk. This Spring Dmitry was arrested again: the court overturned the suspended sentence and sent him to serve the sentence in Babrujsk prison colony.
Let’s not wait for miracles! Let’s be a society that helps miracles come true!
Write to Dmitry:
Paliyenka Dzmitry
Sikorskaha 1, PK-2, a.9
Babrujsk, Belarus
213800 |
And, perhaps most importantly, he shows he thinks you’re stupid in the many ways he protects President Donald Trump from accountability. On Monday night, during a CNN-moderated town hall event in Wisconsin, he offered the following justification for opposing a congressional resolution that would censure Trump for coddling white supremacists:
I will not support that. I think that would be—that would be so counterproductive. If we descend this issue into some partisan hack-fest, into some bickering against each other, and demean it down to some political food fight, what good does that do to unify this country?
Ryan, who was recently gearing up for years’ worth of partisan investigations of President Hillary Clinton, says censuring Trump for coddling Nazis would be too partisan for his taste. What he hopes you’ll overlook is his own power to determine what is partisan and what is not. If a censure resolution passed the House overwhelmingly—reflecting a broad rejection of Trump’s comments after the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia—it wouldn’t be partisan. What makes censuring Trump “partisan” is Ryan’s view that Trump doesn’t deserve it.
But Trump does deserve it. Not only does he deserve it on a basic and obvious moral level, but he deserves it because significant, symbolic rebukes to white supremacy are effective means of driving it back into the discredited silence where it belongs. Ryan is fortunate, in a way, that the events in Charlottesville, and Trump’s response to them, occurred amid a lengthy congressional recess, with Republican elected officials scattered across the country rather than gathered in Washington, D.C. That is the one thing insulating Ryan and his party from answering for their apparent determination to see Trump clear of the political consequences of siding with neo-Nazis. But the winners who will benefit from Ryan’s good fortune aren’t Republicans in Congress or in the White House—they are the racists who will take note when the censure resolution fails.
This isn’t theoretical. White supremacists were pretty happy with Trump’s initial response to Charlottesville, undeterred by his second, and absolutely thrilled with the unhinged defense of Nazi marchers he offered on the third go.
By contrast, after upwards of 10,000 peaceful counterprotesters dwarfed a dismal gathering of white supremacists in Boston over the weekend, the anti-Muslim group ACT canceled scores of “America First” rallies scheduled for Saturday, September 9. |
Category 5 cable, commonly referred to as Cat 5, is a twisted pair cable for computer networks. Since 2001, the variant commonly in use is the Category 5e specification (Cat 5e). The cable standard provides performance of up to 100 MHz and is suitable for most varieties of Ethernet over twisted pair up to 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet). Cat 5 is also used to carry other signals such as telephony and video.
This cable is commonly connected using punch-down blocks and modular connectors. Most Category 5 cables are unshielded, relying on the balanced line twisted pair design and differential signaling for noise rejection.
Cable standard [ edit ]
The specification for category 5 cable was defined in ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A, with clarification in TSB-95.[1] These documents specify performance characteristics and test requirements for frequencies up to 100 MHz.
The cable is available in both stranded and solid conductor forms. The stranded form is more flexible and withstands more bending without breaking. Patch cables are stranded. Permanent wiring used in structured cabling is solid-core. The category and type of cable can be identified by the printing on the jacket.[2]
Termination [ edit ]
TIA/EIA-568-B.1-2001 T568A Wiring Pin Pair Wire Color 1 3 1 white/green 2 3 2 green 3 2 1 white/orange 4 1 2 blue 5 1 1 white/blue 6 2 2 orange 7 4 1 white/brown 8 4 2 brown TIA/EIA-568-B.1-2001 T568B Wiring[3] Pin Pair Wire Color 1 2 1 white/orange 2 2 2 orange 3 3 1 white/green 4 1 2 blue 5 1 1 white/blue 6 3 2 green 7 4 1 white/brown 8 4 2 brown A Cat 5e Wall outlet showing the two wiring schemes: A for T568A , B for T568B Category 5 patch cable in T568B wiring
Cable types, connector types and cabling topologies are defined by TIA/EIA-568-B. Nearly always, 8P8C modular connectors (often referred to incorrectly as RJ45 connectors[5][6]) are used for connecting category 5 cable. The cable is terminated in either the T568A scheme or the T568B scheme. The two schemes work equally well and may be mixed in an installation so long as the same scheme is used on both ends of each cable.
Variants [ edit ]
The category 5e specification improves upon the category 5 specification by revising and introducing new specifications to further mitigate the amount of crosstalk.[7] The bandwidth (100 MHz) and physical construction are the same between the two,[8] and most Cat 5 cables actually meet Cat 5e specifications, though they are not specifically certified as such.[9] The category 5 was deprecated in 2001 and superseded by the category 5e specification.[10]
Applications [ edit ]
Category 5 cable is used in structured cabling for computer networks such as Ethernet over twisted pair. The cable standard provides performance of up to 100 MHz and is suitable for 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX (Fast Ethernet), and 1000BASE-T (Gigabit Ethernet). 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX Ethernet connections require two wire pairs. 1000BASE-T Ethernet connections require four wire pairs. Through the use of power over Ethernet (PoE), power can be carried over the cable in addition to Ethernet data.
Cat 5 is also used to carry other signals such as telephony and video.[11] In some cases, multiple signals can be carried on a single cable; Cat 5 can carry two conventional telephone lines as well as 100BASE-TX in a single cable.[12][13][14][15][16] The USOC/RJ-61 wiring standard may be used in multi-line telephone connections. Various schemes exist for transporting both analog and digital video over the cable. HDBaseT (10.2 Gbit/s) is one such scheme.[17]
Characteristics [ edit ]
The use of balanced lines helps preserve a high signal-to-noise ratio despite interference from both external sources and crosstalk from other pairs.
Insulation [ edit ]
Outer insulation is typically polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or low smoke zero halogen (LSOH).[citation needed]
Example materials used as insulation in the cable[24] Acronym Material PE Polyethylene FP Foamed polyethylene FEP Fluorinated ethylene propylene FFEP Foamed fluorinated ethylene propylene AD/PE Air dielectric/polyethylene LSZH or LS0H Low smoke, zero halogen LSFZH or LSF0H Low smoke and fume, zero halogen
Bending radius [ edit ]
Most Category 5 cables can be bent at any radius exceeding approximately four times the outside diameter of the cable.[25][26]
Maximum cable segment length [ edit ]
The maximum length for a cable segment is 100 m per TIA/EIA 568-5-A.[27] If longer runs are required, the use of active hardware such as a repeater or switch is necessary.[28][29] The specifications for 10BASE-T networking specify a 100-meter length between active devices.[30] This allows for 90 meters of solid-core permanent wiring, two connectors and two stranded patch cables of 5 meters, one at each end.[31]
Conductors [ edit ]
Since 1995, solid-conductor UTP cables for backbone cabling is required to be no thicker than 22 American Wire Gauge (AWG) and no thinner than 24 AWG, or 26 AWG for shorter-distance cabling. This standard has been retained with the 2009 revision of ANSI TIA/EIA 568.[32]
Although cable assemblies containing 4 pairs are common, category 5 is not limited to 4 pairs. Backbone applications involve using up to 100 pairs.[33]
Individual twist lengths [ edit ]
The distance per twist is commonly referred to as pitch. Each of the four pairs in a Cat 5 cable has differing precise pitch to minimize crosstalk between the pairs. The pitch of the twisted pairs is not specified in the standard. Measurements on one sample of Cat 5 cable yielded the following results.[34]
Pair color [cm] per turn Turns per [m] Blue 1.38 72 Green 1.53 65 Orange 1.78 56 Brown 1.94 52
Since the pitch of the various colors is not specified in the standard, pitch can vary according to manufacturer and should be measured for the batch being used if cable is being used in non-Ethernet situation where pitch might be critical.
Environmental ratings [ edit ]
United States and Canada fire certifications[35] Class Phrase Description Standards LSZH Communications low-smoke zero halogen NES‑711, NES‑713, MIL‑C‑24643, UL 1685 CMP Communications plenum Insulated with fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) and polyethylene (PE) and jacketed with low-smoke polyvinyl chloride (PVC), due to better flame test ratings. CSA FT6[36] or NFPA 262 (UL 910) CMR Communications riser Insulated with high-density polyolefin and jacketed with low-smoke polyvinyl chloride (PVC). UL 1666 CMG Communications general purpose CSA FT4 CM Communications Insulated with high-density polyolefin, but not jacketed with PVC and therefore is the lowest of the three in flame resistance. UL 1685 (UL 1581, Sec. 1160) Vertical-Tray CMX Communications residential UL 1581, Sec. 1080 (VW-1) CMH CSA FT1
Some cables are "UV-rated" or "UV-stable" meaning they can be exposed to outdoor UV radiation without significant destruction.[citation needed]
Plenum-rated cables are slower to burn and produce less smoke than cables using a mantle of materials like PVC. Plenum-rated cables may be installed in plenum spaces where PVC is not allowed.[37]
Shielded cables (FTP or STP) are useful for environments where proximity to RF equipment may introduce electromagnetic interference, and can also be used where eavesdropping likelihood should be minimized.
Comparison with later standards [ edit ]
The Category 6 specification improves upon the Category 5e specification by extending frequency response and further reducing crosstalk. The improved performance of Cat 6 provides 250 MHz bandwidth and supports 10GBASE-T (10-Gigabit Ethernet) for distances up to 55 meters.[10] Category 6A cable provides 500 MHz bandwidth and supports 10GBASE-T for distances up to 100 meters. Both variants are backwards compatible with Category 5 and 5e cables.
Notes [ edit ]
^ Z 0 = R + j ω L G + j ω C {\displaystyle Z_{0}={\sqrt {\frac {R+j\omega L}{G+j\omega C}}}} f R L = R 2 π L {\displaystyle f_{RL}={\frac {R}{2\pi L}}} f G C = G 2 π C {\displaystyle f_{GC}={\frac {G}{2\pi C}}} f R L > f G C {\displaystyle f_{RL}>f_{GC}} corner frequency (or break frequency) is defined as f R L {\displaystyle f_{RL}} f R L {\displaystyle f_{RL}} Z 0 = L C {\displaystyle Z_{0}={\sqrt {\frac {L}{C}}}} [20] The characteristic impedance of a transmission line is given by. There are two important transition frequencies related this equation:and. Typically we haveand the(or) is defined asbecause at frequencies greater thanthe familiar "lossless" relationfor characteristic impedance holds true to excellent approximation. Unfortunately neither of the terms corner frequency nor break frequency are consistently used in the literature. Most often these frequencies are not given any special name, and the topic itself is glossed over in most modern texts. |
Columbus Crew SC today announced that it has loaned defender Kalen Ryden to the Austin Aztex of the USL. The rookie becomes the first Black & Gold player to be loaned to Austin, which was previously announced as Crew SC’s new USL affiliate ahead of the 2015 campaign. Crew SC retains the option to recall Ryden at any point while on loan.
“Our partnership with the Aztex is a strong opportunity for players to gain valuable match experience while continuing to develop,” said Crew SC Sporting Director and Head Coach Gregg Berhalter. “We are certain Kalen will be in good hands with the coaching staff in Austin, led by Paul Dalglish, as they get their season underway on Saturday.”
Ryden appeared in five contests during Crew SC’s preseason, helping the club keep clean sheets against Austin (February 15), London United (February 18) and the Costa Rica Under-23s (February 21).
In college, the defender made 28 appearances (27 starts) over two seasons at Midwestern State. The Mustangs recorded a shutout in 13 of his starts. Ryden led the school to consecutive NCAA Division II postseason appearances, earning NSCAA All-South Central Region First Team honors in 2014. Previously, he spent two seasons at Oral Roberts University.
Ryden was selected in the Fourth Round (69th overall) of the 2015 MLS SuperDraft on January 20. He signed with Crew SC on March 2.
The Aztex begin the 2015 USL season on March 28 against Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC. A complete Aztex schedule can be found at AustinAztex.com.
TRANSACTION: Columbus Crew SC loans defender Kalen Ryden to the Austin Aztex (USL) on March 26, 2015. Crew SC retains the option to recall Ryden at any point while on loan. |
Stefan Johansen remained coy on his Celtic future following the appointment of Brendan Rodgers.
With just 12-months remaining on his deal, the club could cash in on the midfielder signed in January 2014 from Stromsgodset by Neil Lennon to make way for new players.
Several German teams are thought to be interested in the midfielder, who has underperformed for the Hoops this season.
As quoted by Norwegian outlet Nettavisen, he said:
We’ve been negotiating for a while, but I haven’t signed anything yet. We’ll see if it happens or not. I completely trust that my agent does what is best for me. I have a year left on my contract with Celtic and I will focus on it.
His two assists against Malmo in a crucial playoff tie were quickly forgotten about as he put in under par performances time and time again.
This season he has made 37 appearances, scoring four goals and assisting on eight occasions – with his last league goal coming on Flag Day against Ross County.
The 25-year-old also spoke about the recent appointment of Rodgers, who replaced his fellow Norwegian Ronny Deila.
He has coached big clubs like Liverpool and Swansea. I think he will be a good match for Celtic , and the football he stands for is also suitable for the club.
Johansen was given time off to recover after he admitted to suffering from a back injury, but he still hasn’t quite reached the standards he set last year when he scored 10 goals and added 13 assists and received the SFA Player of the Year Award.
It remains to be seen who Rodgers will want to keep this summer and beyond, and with his contract up next summer, it will quickly become clear whether Johansen features in his future plans.
Should Celtic sell Stefan Johansen this summer? |
What an amazing time to be a rich person in Miami-Dade. The market just keeps providing you guys with luxury things that us poorer people couldn't even imagine actually existed. Things like condos for your cars. No, not condos to actually live in and park your car nearby like the under-construction Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach. A condo that is literally just a nice place to store your collection of luxury automobiles.
The new project to do just that is called the Gables Auto Vault and it will be located at 3851 Bird Road. It's currently a vacant lot but is blocks away from a few high-end luxury car dealerships, including the Collection. It's a collaboration between CFH Group and developer Sheldon Lowe, and just received a $19.5 million loan for construction.
Gables Auto Vault: a car condo for your luxury car. $500K to $2 mill. via @trdmiami https://t.co/DtgKU8pMzE pic.twitter.com/GWaeeTuZap — SFDB (@sfdb) March 2, 2016 |
A Peek At Other Computer Technicians Workbenches #4
Keeping with what has almost become a Technibble tradition, its time again to take a peek at the Technibble forum members workbenches. Its a great way for technicians to get inspiration for your own setups, see how others are doing it and for the owners to show off a little.
We are now up to Workbenches #4 and if you missed them, you can check out our previous “Peek at Technicians Workbenches” posts here (1, 2, 3).
Here is “A Peek at Other Computer Technicians Workbenches #4”:
PBComputer
Here are three pictures of our workshop. The images have not being stages or have I tried to tidy up for the pictures.
A lot of the “stock” will be hopefully gone this week, once it’s being put on eBay.
gunslinger
Its not much, but it gets the job done
Maniaman
Here’s an update now that my room is pretty well 95% finished. Fully functional now. Only thing left to do is put up a couple more shelves, and get electricity to the wall to the left in the first pic. Until then it’s still a great space for things like laptop disassembly.
Computers under the counter are waiting to be parted out/pieced together into used computers.
Center island with two tech machines, a server, and a collection of usb drives with various tools on them. By far the messiest right now, I need to clean it up again.
ComputerPro
Were moving into a new building across the street from our current location. LOT of work ahead! Were thinking of reversing our theme colors for this one (Walls green with black trim) and Blue used as accent color. Currently its the exact opposite. We’ll be tripling our space (there’s more offices, storage area in back not shown in pics).
Right now its VERY bland being plain white. Compared to our loud colors anyway lol. Here are a few photos of the new building.
‘putertutor
This is my own little dark and dank corner of the world. This is in my basement, and I had a fluorescent bulb go out on me this morning, so its not always so depressing looking in there. I am in the process of building a 20″ long bench to the right of the wooden door in the pic. I’ll probably convert the space my bench is in now to shelving, get all the machines of the floor.
Eventually, I’ll stud out the walls, sheet rock them and make it a proper looking shop. Eventually…
PS: That red cup is a pen/pencil holder, not a drink.
gamesta400
Here are the pics of my shop inside my home. My house was zoned business so I build this shop inside the front door and put a 5 foot sign in the front yard.
gikstar
The skylights work great for us, no need to turn on the lights during the day time.
I have added about 20 more computers sitting in the racks and under the work benches now. I seem to be constantly purchasing more and more stuff… just can’t seem to pass up a good Craigslist deal. Just today I purchased 2 – Dell 22″ monitors (P2210t’s) for $60 each and a Dell 2007 Ultrasharp for $15 (which replaces the one we just sold today).
We have room to expand if we need to (have an empty bedroom). That one monster of a tech bench I had in storage for about 3 years since we didn’t have a place big enough to put it up (a free item that I found on Craigslist along with a full size server rack).
stidham
Here is my work at home area.
BillMoney
My “workshop” down in the basement
TechLady
Here’s my workshop in the garage. Those book shelves used to go all the way down to the floor and all the way across the wall…wasn’t easy letting go but we now have an awful lot of credit at the used bookstore down the street.
The left half is more for laptops, the right half more for desktops.
Sewed the curtains myself :)
16k_zx81
Left pic – my spot, right pic – bob’s spot, bottom pic – spare bench, shared, for work overflow.
PR Tech
Here is a Google virtual tour link of my shop. Fun things to see… 3 Chronic Cellars posters (Dead Nuts, The Unteachables & Purple Paradise) in the tech bench area and the wall clock in the reception area. I had the tech benches custom made by a local cabinet maker. I use raceways to hide the cabling.
Special thanks to everyone who shared pictures of their workbenches with us!
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BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) and T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) have kissed and made up. A little more than a year after BlackBerry cut sales ties with T-Mobile amid a dispute over T-Mobile promoting the iPhone over BlackBerry's phones, T-Mobile is now going to start selling the BlackBerry Classic smartphone.
BlackBerry Classic
Notably, the rapprochement between the carrier and the smartphone maker comes as T-Mobile is ramping up its efforts to gain market share in the enterprise market with new business plans. Getting T-Mobile back on board will also give BlackBerry a new possible revenue stream.
The Classic will be available beginning May 13 at T-Mobile.com and in participating T-Mobile stores beginning May 15 for $0 down, with equipment installment plan payments of $18.33 per month for 24 months. Customers can also purchase the Classic for $439.92 at full retail price.
The Classic is not BlackBerry's newest phone (that would be the touchscreen Leap) but it is one of BlackBerry's flagship products, and with its Qwerty keyboard it will likely appeal to business users. Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T) started selling the Classic in February.
In a statement, the companies said they "showed they're two companies in the business of listening to their customers."
"People who love BlackBerry smartphones and want to use one on America's fastest nationwide 4G LTE network now have that choice," T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in a statement. "Bringing BlackBerry into our device line-up now also stokes Un-carrier 9.0, which is all about bringing the Un-carrier revolution to business."
"BlackBerry is proud to partner with T-Mobile once again to offer the world's most secure and reliable mobile products and services that encourage productivity--whether they are individual users making the most of their day with the BlackBerry Classic, or an enterprise seeking to manage thousands of devices," BlackBerry CEO John Chen added. "Together with T-Mobile, we hope to deliver highly differentiated solutions that appeal to our mutual users: the power professionals who depend on their smartphones to get things done and make things happen."
The burying of the hatchet comes less than two months after T-Mobile launched new plans aimed at business customers with a simplified rate structure in an effort to take away business from Verizon and AT&T. Although BlackBerry has seen its market share dwindle in recent years, many government workers and those in the legal, finance and medical professions still use BlackBerry phones. Selling the Classic could be a way for T-Mobile to step up its presence in the enterprise and small-and-medium-business markets.
BlackBerry's decision last year to essentially cut sales ties with T-Mobile came after a public spat between the two companies over T-Mobile's decision to promote the iPhone as an alternative to its BlackBerry customers.
For more:
- see this release
- see this SlashGear article
Related Articles:
Analysts: T-Mobile's business plans could appeal to small businesses but not big enterprises
T-Mobile aims to steal business customers from Verizon, AT&T with cheaper, simpler pricing
T-Mobile offers $100 credit to BlackBerry customers after companies break up
BlackBerry to cut sales ties with T-Mobile
Report: 94% of T-Mobile BlackBerry customers who traded in phones switched to another platform
T-Mobile to offer BlackBerry users $250 in credit to upgrade to new Z10, Q10
BlackBerry CEO Chen slams T-Mobile for enticing BB users to switch to iPhone |
Confusion has surrounded the debate over Alberta's Bill 6, as the NDP government continues to push forward legislation aimed at making farm work safer and bringing the province's labour laws more in line with the rest of Canada.
Farmers and ranchers see the proposed law as a threat to their businesses and ways of life, however, and they have not been shy about saying so.
The often emotional debate has been heightened by the recent deaths of a 10-year-old boy who was killed driving a forklift on a farm near Killam, Alta., and three sisters who suffocated in canola seed near Withrow, Alta.
In the face of a protest involving more than 1,000 people outside the Alberta Legislature, Labour Minster Lori Sigurdson admitted the government "could have done a better job in communicating."
She and other ministers then pledged to personally attend town halls and public meetings around the province to offer more clarity about the bill.
Still, many questions remain.
Here, we do our best to answer five of the most common ones, and compare Alberta's proposed regulations to those in our neighbouring provinces:
1. Will workers compensation be mandatory for all farm workers, including family members?
According to the current wording of the bill, yes, but that could change.
"If you are operating a for-profit farming operation … you must cover any unpaid workers, including family members and children, performing work on your farm," the Workers Compensation Board (WCB) of Alberta states in its explanation of Bill 6.
Farm operators would be asked to provide a "value of service" for the work unpaid labourers perform, the board explains.
Sigurdson, however, later suggested that would be amended in a new version of the bill, which would include an "explicit" exemption for families working on farms.
The province later clarified in a press release that "WCB coverage would be required only for paid employees, with an option for farmers to extend coverage to unpaid workers like family members, neighbours and friends."
In Manitoba, workers compensation coverage was made mandatory for farm labourers in 2009, but family members were exempted from that change.
2. How much will WCB coverage cost?
Workers compensation premiums, which must be paid by employers, range depending on the risk of injury associated with the type of work being performed.
Alberta is proposing rates ranging from $1.70 per $100 of insurable earnings for things like greenhouse work up to $2.25 for grain farming and $2.97 for workplaces involving large animals, including beef producers, feed lots, livestock auctions and horse stables.
In British Columbia, by comparison, the rates are more expensive.
At the low end, orchard and vineyard work in B.C. comes with WCB rates of $1.73 per $100 of insurable earnings, but at the high end, the rate for grain farming stands at $4.87 and ranching at $5.65.
3. How dangerous are farms?
Alberta averages about 17 farm fatalities each year, including three deaths of children, based on data collected by the provincial government since 1985.
Most of those deaths in recent years are due to machine runovers or rollovers, although not all were work-related.
By contrast, there are an average of 13 people killed on Saskatchewan farms each year, most involving machinery.
About 14 per cent of serious farm-related injuries in Saskatchewan involve youth.
4. What about occupational health and safety?
Unlike other provinces, farm workers in Alberta are currently exempt from occupational health and safety laws and have no right to refuse unsafe work.
That also means data on work-related injuries and deaths are considered incomplete in Alberta, because currently all accidents don't need to be reported, and investigations aren't routinely launched.
In Saskatchewan, by contrast, employers are required to provide safe working environments and must ensure their workers know they have the right to refuse what they perceive to be unsafe work.
Alberta's occupational health and safety exemption for farms and ranches would change under Bill 6, with standards applying "when a farm employs one or more paid employees at any time of the year," according to a government press release.
5. Will kids and neighbours still be able to help out on family farms?
That's been a particularly unclear point, according to Stephen Vandervalk, vice-president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers in Alberta, who has been watching the legislation closely.
If Bill 6 is passed and indeed takes effect on Jan. 1, Vandervalk says farmers and ranchers aren't sure if neighbours could casually pitch in with cow branding or if children younger than 16 could help or even accompany their parents if they're working long hours.
Premier Rachel Notley, however, later pledged that kids living on family farms "will continue to be able to work on the farm as they always have."
"And they will continue to be educated on the farm through 4H programs as they always have," the premier said, speaking to reporters via conference call from Paris, where she was attending the COP21 climate change summit.
In Saskatchewan, there are exceptions to occupational health and safety rules that allow kids to help out on family farms, but children are prohibited from tasks like operating motorized farm equipment and handling dangerous chemicals.
No such prohibitions on kids operating motorized farm equipment currently exist in Alberta.
There have been cases in Saskatchewan of confusion, however, where parents have run afoul of labour laws for having their kids take on particular tasks on the family farm. |
It is not just torture hearings on the training table this morning, there is a plateful of AIG/Bankster/Bailout fun on tap too. At 10:00 am EST, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on “AIG: Where is the Taxpayer Money Going?”.
In advance of the big hearing, David Cho and Brady Dennis in the Washington Post have a significant article out this morning confirming what any sane mind has thought all along, namely that the government and the Fed were way deeper in the muck of the AIG bonuses, and knew full well about the issue, long before they have admitted:
Documents show that senior officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York received details about the bonuses more than five months before the firestorm erupted and were deeply engaged with AIG as well as outside lawyers, auditors and public relations firms about the potential controversy. But the New York Fed did not raise the alarm with the Obama administration until the end of February. Timothy F. Geithner, who became Treasury secretary early this year, was the head of the New York Fed when it became aware of the bonus details. But his name is not among those of senior New York Fed officials mentioned in the summaries of phone calls, correspondence and other documents obtained by The Washington Post. Those documents also illuminate who in the government, beyond the New York Fed, knew what about the bonuses at AIG’s most troubled unit, and when.
…
By Sept. 29, the bonus matter first appeared on the radar of the New York Fed, which was designated as the primary contact for AIG, documents show. Senior officials from the New York Fed met with AIG officials to discuss the compensation plans in place at Financial Products, whose risky derivative contracts had brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse. AIG e-mailed officials at the New York Fed copies of the company’s compensation plans, which detailed bonuses and retention payments, including those at Financial Products, documents show. The issue arose in scores of meetings and conference calls over the ensuing months. AIG also disclosed its retention programs in public filings.
Weeeeeeee! Another shocking instance of gambling going on at the casino. Or not. Actually, when we first learned of the Semtex laden AIG Retention Contracts there were immediate questions as to how it could be that the Fed and the rest of government had no idea of the explosive potential. Now that we know they knew, it sure is hilarious that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in mid-March 2009, tried to devise a laughably bogus plan to fix the very same problem he apparently full bore ignored in October 2008 at the previous job where he was supposedly the smartest kid in the room.
Of course, it wasn’t just the New York Fed, and their purportedly detached head, that have completely misrepresented their depth of knowledge of the pending AIG Bonus Scandal. Congress did too (and they also attempted an inane hasty fix to the problem they had long known of):
Key members of Congress began investigating the payments as long ago as October and, beginning in January, repeatedly warned the Treasury about the matter.
…
The spark that would grow into a political firestorm began in October when lawmakers began to request documents about the compensation at Financial Products. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) in particular latched on to the issue. By January, AIG was feeling heat from lawyers at the House Financial Services Committee, and from the offices of Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.) and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), who one staff member noted in an e-mail to AIG was "very upset about these payments." Kanjorski has said that around this time his staff began calling the Treasury about the issue and sending letters, but communication was hindered by the transition between administrations.
Note that both the Fed and Congress folks were jabbering at the Administration, both that of Bush and Obama, on this long before either Administration has fessed up to. Another shocker. There are a lot more specific facts and discussion in the Washington Post article, and it is worth a full read. In fairness, it is certainly not like we didn’t suspect such duplicitous complicity out of these officials, but the starkness of it sure brings the fury of the initial Bonus Babies Scandal revelation right back to the front burner. And just in time for today’s hearing. Go figure.
Now, back to the hearing, the official press announcement describes it as follows:
At 10:00 a.m., Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa will offer their respective opening statements and then Chairman Towns will swear in the C.E.O. of AIG, Mr. Edward M. Liddy, at approximately 10:15 a.m. Mr. Liddy will then offer his opening statement followed by questions from the Committee members. At the conclusion of Members’ questions for Mr. Liddy, Chairman Towns will swear in the second panel of witnesses [comprised of AIG Trustees and a professor] and proceed with their opening statements, followed by Members’ questions. The hearing will be broadcast in-house on channel 32 and available on the Committee webcast at 10:00 a.m.
The prepared testimony/statement of AIG Chief Ed Liddy is here and the AIG Trustees here.
If you are interested in high finance, and torture is not your cup of tea, tune in and turn on. Of course, that is not to say that the slow rot coming out of Tim Geithner, Congress and the AIG saga isn’t torture, it most certainly is. |
The District of Columbia and D.C. United announced on Wednesday that the District has filed for eminent domain to acquire full control of the site of United’s proposed stadium in the Buzzard Point neighborhood of Southwest Washington.
The club and the District jointly released the following statement to announce the measure, which – if completed – would clear United to begin construction on their long-awaited soccer-specific stadium.
“The District of Columbia and D.C. United are moving forward on a soccer stadium that will transform a neighborhood on the banks of the Anacostia and generate hundreds of new jobs for District residents," the statement reads. "We have created the best deal for the District, its residents, D.C. United and its fans."
Per terms of a deal signed between the District and United in June, the D.C. government had a Wednesday deadline to acquire all of the land at the proposed stadium site. They had obtained all but two acres of land at the site prior to Wednesday, but couldn't agree to a price to buy the final piece of land from a local developer, forcing Mayor Muriel Bowser's government to file for eminent domain. |
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Vesa Vihavainen is worried. Merivaara, his Finnish-based hospital bed-making business, is struggling - just like the economy that Finns once held up to debt-laden Greeks as a model of what national thrift can achieve.
People stand near the gate of the Nokia factory in Salo, January 17, 2013. REUTERS/Roni Lehti/Lehtikuva
Weak sales mean Merivaara has had to lay off staff as Finland fails to find an exit from a two-year recession. That spiral of lost jobs and income is also wrecking the country’s cherished reputation for sound public finances.
Finland’s school-masterly advice, prominent in a chorus of northern European criticism when euro zone debtors asked for bailouts, may come back to haunt its policymakers as they struggle to agree on reforms from taxes to pensions.
While southern Europe starts to win back investors after years of donor-imposed job losses and welfare cuts, Finnish welfare costs and taxes have risen as jobs are lost. Government levies as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) have jumped to a European Union high, piling costs onto the private sector.
Finnish exports, investments and retail sales are all tumbling and firms are putting out profit warnings.
“The Finnish economy has drifted into the same reference group with Italy and France,” the EU’s top economic official Olli Rehn said, referring to the two big euro zone economies whose finances linger outside the bloc’s fiscal limits.
“We have no time to lose,” said Rehn, a Finn, last month.
But with parliamentary elections in a year’s time and Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen due to step down next month, serious cost cutting looks unlikely for now.
“We would need a brave government to implement the needed reforms,” Danske Bank economist Pasi Kuoppamaki said.
But the chance of that happening decreased further on Friday, when social democrats replaced their leader, Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen, with union boss Antti Rinne, who has advocated state take a bigger role in the economy.
And with the opposition talking mainly about small cuts to welfare and incremental changes, elections are unlikely to produce anything beyond policy fine-tuning.
Finland’s GDP is still about 5 percent below its 2007 level, a bigger lag than the euro zone average and well below its main export competitors, Sweden and Germany.
The economy shrank 1.4 percent last year, and on Monday, the European Commission forecast it to grow 0.2 percent this year and 1.0 percent next - the second-weakest in the euro zone on both counts, beating only bailed-out Cyprus.
Netherlands, another debt-crisis hardliner, also has seen economy contract, but its struggles are smaller than Finland’s and has returned to export-led growth.
In the euro zone, only Malta and Estonia are less competitive than Finland on pricing. Companies such as Merivaara produce less, but labor costs have not fallen nearly as much.
While Finnish leaders are worried, about half the deficit trimming has been achieved by raising taxes. Government revenue as a share of GDP rose to 56.3 percent this year, the highest in the EU and more than 10 percentage points above the EU average.
“The question is: How can Finland finance a public sector of this size, and the answer is: ‘It really can’t, at least if it wants the economy to grow’,” Nordea analyst Jan von Gerich said.
ERODING COMPETITIVENESS
Merivaara’s sales of hospital beds and surgical tables show rising domestic costs coupled with the strong euro are increasingly hampering exports, which go mainly to Scandinavia and Russia, where the economy has stagnated.
“Price competitiveness is getting tougher all the time,” Merivaara’s Vihavainen said. “Labor here is expensive, and we are far from markets, which adds to transportation costs.”
Besides, health care spending across the globe is being squeezed by cuts in public budgets - a cause Finland championed.
“Why would we listen to countries that are not taking care of their own public finances?” said its EU minister Alexander Stubb in 2011.
He could become prime minister next month.
Even after two years of recession, there are few empty storefronts. Unemployment has risen, but is still well below the EU average, which has made it easier to delay reforms.
Finland has kept its top triple-A credit rating, earned by reforms undertaken after a deep recession in the early 1990s. But its pristine fiscal reputation “is more the past than the present,” Pimco portfolio manager Andrew Bosomworth said.
Foreigners hold 90 percent of its sovereign debt, and Finland may find its cost of borrowing drifting higher as debt investors look more closely at its current performance.
“When investors think next time whether they should buy more or reduce Finland’s weight (in their portfolios), it may be that they’ll act differently,” Nordea’s von Gerich said.
LOST RECIPE FOR GROWTH
Finland, with 5.5 million people, has lost about 100,000 industrial jobs in 10 years. Phonemaker Nokia’s woes have grabbed global headlines, but traditional Finnish strongholds of machinery and paper sectors are shedding jobs too.
In a February report to government, economists Bengt Holmstrom, Sixten Korkman and Matti Pohjola called the current crisis “to some extent even worse” than that of the early 1990s, when unemployment rates were close to 20 percent.
“Productivity growth has stopped in a never-before-seen manner and there is a lack of ideas to speed it up. The recipe for growth has been lost,” they said.
Finns must shrink their welfare state and, put simply, work harder, they said. The OECD has just given a similar message.
In Finland, Sweden serves as a yardstick for almost anything, and Finland has fallen well behind. Sweden has rebounded from the financial crisis well and its economy is expected to grow about 3 percent this year and next.
Mobile games have often been touted as a Finnish success story, with global hits including Clash of Clans and Angry Birds. But the sector employs only about 2,000 people at home.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Finland also lags on reform: Sweden has cut taxes and brought the welfare state to an affordable level.
With many Finnish export-goods makers training their workers to perform highly specialized tasks, they have sought to keep the staff employed. Now lay-off notices are more frequent, and with capacity use at less than four-fifths, even an export upswing is unlikely to mean more hiring or investments.
“There is no positive news for Finland in any scenario, at least not in the near future,” Nordea’s von Gerich said. |
Brian Snyder / Reuters - Susan Walsh / AP
You’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts; that political dictum was coined by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, because he was no fun. Well, good news, folks! Now you can have your own facts! Even better, when it comes to campaign polls you don’t like, you can now have your own numbers!
The concept / conspiracy theory that election polling this year is “skewed” toward oversampling Democratic voters–meaning they give falsely strong results for Obama–has, through social media and the Drudge Report, reached full-on Internet meme status. (Go on Twitter after any major poll release, search for “Obama poll” or “Romney poll” and watch your screen fill with disgruntled amateur statisticians muttering about “D +9 sampling.”) And now the polling conspiracists have their own website, UnSkewedPolls.com, which essentially takes existing polls and changes the numbers so that Mitt Romney is winning them.
Well, there’s more to it than that—not a lot more, but more. The idea behind UnSkewedPolls.com is that there should be a far greater ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the electorate today than voters are telling pollsters that there is. The site takes data from major public polls, opens them up, and recalculates the percentages based on these much-more-GOP-friendly assumptions. In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls this morning, as I write this, Barack Obama leads by 3.7%. In the world of UnSkewedPolls.com, Romney is currently up by 7.8%. Click, tap–hello, landslide!
People more astute politically or accomplished at statistics than I can better detail the problems with this approach. (To take just one example, even if you accept this site’s premise, it’s applying the same recalculating method to polls with different methodologies—peeling oranges like apples.) But the mere fact that this mindset has developed, has quickly spread and has become the current weapon of choice for mau-mauing election coverage on behalf of an aggrieved party says something about how hospitable political culture has become to conspiracies.
Certainly polls can be wrong. They can be wrong en masse. (I won’t, however, cite exit-polling foulups like those in 2000 and 2004; those are a different type of survey than pre-election polling.) They can even, conceivably, be wrong en masse in the same direction. And it’s absolutely true that certain pollsters can have a “house effect” that tends more Republican or Democrat–which is exactly why sites like RealClearPolitics average out all the polls, and stat gurus like the brilliant Nate Silver account for the leans of various pollsters in their forecasts.
But consider what the “polls are biased” meme asks us to believe. That dozens of national and local polls are deliberately skewing their results to find a greater proportion of Democratic voters than there are. (Not only that, but the private campaign polling that Republicans themselves say bodes poorly for Romney is also biased for Obama!) And/or: voters themselves are—from guilt? political correctness? peer pressure?—reporting themselves as identifying Democratic more than they actually do. Evidently they didn’t do this in 2008, at the apex of Obama-mania–else the pre-election polling would have shown Obama with a 20% blowout lead–but they’re in the tank now, in concert–all of them.
Independent polling firms. Educational institutions. Local media. National media. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News—that’s right, Rupert Murdoch’s media properties are in there lifting away to give Obama a second term! What’s more, they’re all knowingly, erroneously reporting results that not only can be, but by definition will be, refuted by vote returns. Media outlets that rely on polls for credibility, pollsters that rely on accuracy for their very businesses’ existence–they’re ready to blow it all in a few weeks just to give Obama four more years.
Except—aha!—there is of course a way around this argument. Suppose by some chance the results of these “skewed” polls prove right on election day. How do we know that the skewing didn’t influence the result? That a drumbeat of positive polls for Obama didn’t brainwash voters into jumping the bandwagon, dry up campaign donations, depress Republican turnout? You call it an accurate poll? I call it a self-fulfilling prophecy! The game is rigged, my friend!
That’s why this sort of thinking is so popular, why it spreads so easily and why, apparently, no one in America will ever again believe that they fairly lost a hotly contested major election. This kind of bias charge is not just a willful single belief—it’s a totalizing mindset, in which any proof to the contrary can be jiu-jitsued into proof that the conspiracy is working.
Whatever Moynihan once said, the way it works now, you don’t need to have your own opinions or your own facts. As long as you have your own all-encompassing theory of mass brainwashing, the opinions and facts that you want will supply themselves.
[Update] Here, my standard disclosure: I voted for Obama in ’08 and plan to do so again in ’12. To paraphrase Walter Mondale: most people who write about politics have voting preferences—the difference is they won’t tell you theirs and I just did. To read my fuller thoughts on political writing and disclosure, click here. |
A GUNMAN has opened fire at a busy market in Trelleborg, Sweden.
Four people have been taken to hospital as a result of the incident which happened Thursday night local time, around 8am AEDT.
Police say the attack is not being investigated as terrorism. However it appears to be the latest in a string of violent gang-related incidents that have beset the Swedish nation.
Trelleborg is the southermost town in Sweden and has become known for gang violence. The shooting happened in the centre of the city.
Police said two of the injured were hurt during a shooting and that a total of four people were taken to the hospital late Thursday.
The Express quoted a Swedish policespokesman as saying: “We have received several reports of a shooting in Trelleborg.”
“When we arrived at the scene, several people with gunshot injuries were found.
“We are blocking certain areas and will conduct an investigation.
“I do not have any more information at this time. But we are at the scene and investigating.”
According to initial reports people were shot at multiple locations.
One witness told The Express: “There were many shots. We saw someone running outside. It’s packed with police cars in the street.”
Another said: “I was at home at my computer when I heard a loud bang.”
People have been advised to avoid the area which has been cordoned off.
Police say a K-9 unit is searching for weapons and officers are interviewing witnesses. No suspects are in custody.
Trelleborg is a Swedish port town located 33 km south of Malmo and 64km southeast of Copenhagen, Denmark. |
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Last December the same conservative activists who persuaded the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act challenged the historic principle of “one, person, one vote.” They asked the Court to require states to draw districts based on eligible or registered voters, as opposed to total population, which had been the standard for more than 50 years. If that happened, millions of people, including children and non-citizens, would have been denied political representation. Districts would have become older, whiter, more conservative and more favorable to Republicans. Ad Policy
Today the Supreme Court rejected that challenge, upholding “one person, one vote” in a unanimous 8-0 decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision, saying that all people are entitled to equal representation under the law. “It remains beyond doubt that the principle of representational equality figured prominently in the decision to count people, whether or not they qualify as voters,” she wrote. (Justices Thomas and Alito concurred with the judgment but did not agree with its reasoning.)
Here’s the key part of her argument:
Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have long followed. As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible to vote. Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates and in receiving constituent services. By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total-population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation. LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
This is a major victory for voting rights, and a huge crisis averted. If states had been required to use current voting-age population instead of total population as the metric for drawing districts, as I previously reported, a staggering 55 percent of Latinos—those who are under 18 or non-citizens—would not have been counted, as well as 45 percent of Asian Americans and 30 percent of African Americans.
Yet this is still in many ways a bittersweet victory, given that the 2016 election is the first in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. We’re seeing the clear impact of that decision this year, with five-hour lines in Arizona, voters turned away from the polls by North Carolina’s voter-ID law, and 300,000 registered voters who could be disenfranchised in Wisconsin tomorrow.
Imagine if protecting voting rights were the norm, rather than the exception, before the Supreme Court. That’s why the future of the Court is the most important issue facing the country in 2016 and beyond.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article may have implied that the Court’s decision barred voter-eligible apportionment. In fact, though Justice Ginsburg’s opinion strongly endorsed total population apportionment as a “well-functioning approach” that “promotes equitable and effective representation,” the Court explicitly declined to “resolve” the question of whether states may use voter-eligible apportionment. While Justices Alito and Thomas concurred with the judgment, they disagreed with the opinion. The article has been updated to clarify these points. |
Friday, July 7th I began my new series “A Different Approach” with the post about injecting resources into the experience editor. After I made my that post live, I continued my research and I became increasingly unhappy with my solution described. There is a better solution that solves my issue and that solution is somewhere in this post! 😮
Click here to skip the details of what led to this post.
Click here to skip everything and go straight to my solution.
Click here to watch the companion vlog to this post. It explains the code in more detail.
Flashback to June 30th
Issue:
It all began with another oddly themed post. In that post, I described a situation where a client wasn’t 100% satisfied with their EE experience. They were concerned with the vagueness of how some of the fields and made a valid request. The client asked if we could add helpful descriptions to the fields prior to them initializing the field’s chrome which obviously contains the Field Name and Help Text (if any).
Solution:
I decided to use my Editor Enhancement Toolkit module. First, I created a new rule action that ties a field to the helpful information. Next, I created a processor that’s patched into the RenderField pipeline. The processor is simple. It processes the rules and if the rule’s conditions pass, the new rule action populates a variable with the helpful information. The variable is then wrapped in HTML markup and prepended the default markup that renders the field’s chrome.
Issue That Arose from That Solution:
Since both inline-styling and customizing existing Sitecore files i.e. the webedit.css are frowned upon, I needed to find a way to inject the stylesheet into the EE. I attempted to implement a solution using “PageExtenders” that I found on blogs by Pavel Veller, Mike Reynolds and Kamruz Jaman, but I failed.
Kamruz Jaman, the always helpful Sitecore superhero saved me from wasting a lot of time troubleshooting and told me: “Since SC8.1 or so, the ribbon changed and was put into its own iframe. Previously it was part of the same page so using the page extenders meant it would affect both the content and the ribbon.”
Update July 13th: I figured out how to get the PageExtender working, I explain it in the “My Solution” section. Kamruz also figured out a way to get it functional and informed me of this a little bit ago.
Let’s head back to the future… er… present, July 13th, 2017
What I Hope to Achieve
I want to figure out a way to implement my solution that is more flexible than hard coding the Stylesheet’s file in code and it must not involve any customizations to Sitecore items and files. Normally I would give a lecture on how customizing Sitecore items or files creates upgrade headaches, but rumor has it Speak UI is becoming extinct. Which means this post will probably lose all relevance in about 2 months. Let’s live for today and continue the quest to find a better solution to the issue. I am going to blog as I try to figure this out. Hopefully I figure this out quickly so the post doesn’t become insanely long.
Potential Solution : GetPageStylesheets Pipeline & Speak Items
I was digging through the decompiled assemblies, I can across something interesting in the Sitecore.Speak.Client assembly. It was the processors that are used in the GetPageStylesheets pipeline. There are two important templates that are used by the code in processors. They are:
Page-Stylesheet-File : This item allows you to select a single stylesheet from the file system to include in your app.
: This item allows you to select a single stylesheet from the file system to include in your app. Page-Stylesheet-Folder: This item allows you to select a single folder from the file system. That folder should contain only stylesheets, but it doesn’t matter. The code will render out all the stylesheets that are in the selected folder, ignoring any other file type.
The items based on either template need to be created under the PageSettings item for the everything to work correctly.
Going back to the code, the GetFileNames processor was the first to catch my eye. The code gets the PageSettings item and then it’s passed to the StylesheetCollection for processing. The ProcessItem method in the StylesheetCollection loops the children of the PageSettings item and performs two checks:
If the child item’s template is the Page-Stylesheet-File : The stylesheet’s path that is defined on the item is added to args.FileNames collection.
: The stylesheet’s path that is defined on the item is added to args.FileNames collection. If the child item’s template is the Page-Stylesheet-Folder: The StylesheetCollection gets the path to the folder defined on the item and loops through the folder’s files. If the file is a stylesheet, the file path is added to the args.FileNames collection. If the file is a different type, it is ignored. It appears that it also processes any sub-directories as well.
The end to this madness is relatively straightforward. The extension method: PageStylesheets located in the static class: SitecoreHelperExtensions is where all the magic happens. In this method, the GetPageStylesheetsArgs are set and then the getPageStylesheet pipeline is fired. The processors do their thing, finally BuildStylesheets has its moment to shine. It processes the args.FileNames collection. Looping thru the collection, it constructs the link tag for each stylesheet and sets the final value to args.HtmlString. The PageStylesheets returns the HtmlString and called on the PageCode view and rendered.
Cool pipeline. I am glad I learned more about its functionality. I need to keep it in mind when I resume my custom Speak App.
I was curious if anyone else blogged about this and of course someone did. August 25, 2015 Mark Servais posted: SPEAKing Aloud: Changing CSS. Great post. I wish I had searched for this a couple hours ago, it would have saved me some time.
Unfortunately, this potential solution was a bust. The search continues.
Potential Solution: A PageExtender, a Control and Pipeline Processors
Every rendering on the Ribbon item renders in the Ribbon… makes sense. I mentioned that so we can cross off all solutions that involve custom views being placed on the Ribbon item. This also means we should stop considering the PageCode in hopes of finding a solution.
We know that the page code controls everything on the Ribbon which lives in an iframe. If you go to a content page in the Experience Editor and inspect the page’s source, you’ll notice other code and markup. Interesting, I wonder what is controlling all that. Let’s explore that more.
After searching for some unique words found in the source such as “scClientSettings”, I was led the ScriptResources.cs and the GetClientSettings extension method. Next, I needed to find what was calling this method. After a quick search, I found two files, WebEditRibbon.cs and RibbonWebControl.cs.
WebEditRibbon:
This is used in three of the PageExtenders: DebuggerExtender, PreviewExtender and WebEditPageExtender. However, there is a red flag… the WebEditRibbon is marked as Obsolete. I’m going to slowing back away from the WebEditRibbon and pretend I didn’t see it.
RibbonPageExtender:
This is located in the Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Speak.Ribbon assembly. It’s related to the PageExtenders. When the RibbonPageExtender code runs, it fires the getExperienceEditorRibbon pipeline and the processor AddWebEditRibbon.
AddWebEditRibbon:
That processor created a new RibbonWebControl, sets a property. That object is then assigned to the args.Control.
RibbonWebControl:
There is a lot to this, but the part I’m interested in is the DoRender method. That method is writing out some of the stylesheets and other items seen in the page’s source. Cool.
I think I have seen enough. I have an idea that just may solve my issue while achieving my goals of flexibility and Laissez-faire Sitecore items and files.
My Solution
After researching the code in the previous section, I decided to mimic a few things from that approach. I was going to cover rendering out both the Stylesheets and JavaScript but time is short. I am sacrificing the JavaScript code and code refactoring.
I created a new PageExtender called “InjectAssetsPageExtender”.
When the Insert runs, it fires off a custom pipeline called “renderPageArgs” located on line 15, The first processor in this pipeline is GetStylesheets.
GetStylesheets:
I borrowed the “sources” node section from a processor located around line 95 in the 001.Sitecore.Speak.Important.config. , I get the folder paths of the stylesheets from the config:
I also borrowed some of the code from the GetFileNames processor located in the Sitecore.Speak.Client assembly, that is used in the GetPageScripts pipeline. After making a lot of quick edits, the code for GetStylesheets looks like:
The method AddSource gets the values from the config. Path = path of the Stylesheet, deep = process subfolders, add additional stylesheets to the collection and pattern, this allows what file type are permitted to be added to the FilePaths collection. Next, it loops through the folder(s) defined in the config above, and adds the stylesheet paths to the FilePaths collection. After the method finishes, we assign the FilePaths list to args.FilePaths. Next up, AssignPageAssetsToControl.
AssignPageAssetsToControl:
If I had included the JavaScript functionality in this post, this file would have a larger role. Currently, it has one purpose and that is to instantiate a new RenderAssetsControl and assign the FilePaths list to the StylesheetList.
RenderAssetsControl:
Next we head back to the InjectAssetsPageExtender.
InjectAssetsPageExtender:
Line 16 calls AddControlToPage and passes in the args that now contains a valid, populated RenderAssetsControl control which is then added to the page using the “webedit” placeholder.
The Configuration for this in its entirety looks like:
If everything is set up correctly, you should be able to locate your CSS files by viewing the page’s source. This is what my source looks like:
Other Files
The Processor:
The Args
Since my first post covering this topic, Kamruz Jaman and I have discussed the PageExtenders and a few other things. Initially he informed me that PageExtenders no longer affect the Experience Editor since the Ribbon was moved into an iframe.
I was excited that I was able to get a PageExtender to render outside the Ribbon and I needed to share. I opened Slack and messaged JammyKam my good news. If you know Kamruz, you can probably guess what he said. He figured out how to get the PageExtenders to work as well! 🎉 It’s like Christmas in July🎄. Kamruz showed me how he finally got it to work and it was different from my code.
If you’re curious what Kamruz’s solution is, you can read about it here. It’s a great post.
I am relieved I figured out a decent solution that met the requirements I set for myself. The code is more flexible than it had been and additional code can be added that would increase the flexibility. I had more planned, but I’m not sure if I want to spend more time on something that may become obsolete when SItecore 9 is released.
Click here to watch the companion vlog explaining the code in greater detail.
I hope you found this post informative. Thanks for reading. |
My intention is to unify the weapon damage and armor ratings across all installed mods. This way you can add any new item and it will be balanced.The increase in damage and armor ratings is in correlation with the weight of an item. Items made of iron weight about half as much as dragonbone items and all the other materials are somewhere in between.Everything is optional and adjustable to let the user create a custom experience of the game.- change the base damage values for bow, onehanded and twohanded skill weapons- critical damage will be half normal damage (vanilla style)- change the base armor values for light and heavy skill armor- optional change robes and hoods clothing to light armor- optional make robes and hoods craftable- change material weights and therefore the resulting damage/armor rating- how much of each material is in an item can be adjusted, but has good default values- add a Boost to certain precious materials to make them more powerful- this is an optional setting to override the weights with random values (roleplaying purpose)- Weight = MatWeight*Parts- BoostValue = MatWeight*Boost- Armor = Min+Weight+BoostValue+-Randomnon-body armor will be 1/3 of body armor rating- Damage = Min+((Weight+BoostValue)*Speed)+-Random- Crit Damage = Damage/2- it runs for me without or with 200+ active mods- the min values should be greater than the random change, otherwise you might end up with a weapon of 0 damage or armor with 0 armor rating- click to install via Mod ManagerNMM:- run "Data"\SkyProc Patches\ArmoWeapUnizer\ArmoWeapUnizer.jar"MO:- activate the mod- open the "Data" tab and navigate to "SkyProc Patches/ArmoWeapUnizer"- right click on "ArmoWeapUnizer.jar" and choose "add as Executable"- run the patcher from the dropdown menuBOTH:- once the patch is ready, activate ArmoWeapUnizer.esp in NMM or MO as usual- deactivate ArmoWeapUnizer.esp- it does not run in SUM, please run it as a standalone Skyproccer- some robes/hoods appear as craftables in the list without values, they do not produce anything and are bogus or leftover armors from mods or the base game- very rarely either the armor or weapons thread may stop and the data is missing from the patch in the end, just rerun the patcher if this happens- Immersive Armors and Immersive Weapons introduces custom materials covered in this mod- Warmonger Armory works out of the box- Heavy Armory - New Weapons works out of the box- CCO introduces custom materials covered in this mod- WAFR introduces custom materials covered in this mod- you can add your own custom materials to the materials.ini file for compatibility- you can add your own keywords to the armor patch exclusion and/or the robes/hoods exclusion ini for compatibility*- get a materials.ini going that is close to vanilla values Wintermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim - comes with a lot of very fancy enchantments that can all be disenchanted and learned Xtended Loot - does enchant nearly every single item in the game, making crafting and disenchanting obsolete (disenchantment not possible)*every keyword in keywordsarmor.ini is inherited into keywordsrobes.ini. At the moment only IA-Keywords are additional in the robes ini, because the mod lets you change ingame the robes and hoods to light armor---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWUJvTyl-m4 :) |
A note about listicles: So we know a lot of people hate listicles and associate them with cheap, low-quality, traffic-driving, link-bait articles. But here’s the thing—a list is a great format for an article, and a format I was using on my old blog almost 10 years ago. In fact, my first listicle, 19 Things I Don’t Understand, was published in August of 2005, a year before Buzzfeed was even founded. Then, over the last few years, I watched in horror as one of my favorite formats decided to prostitute itself all over the internet as the default format for lazy articles. Anyway the point is, A) I was doing listicles before they were cool, and B) A list headline doesn’t mean it can’t be a high-quality article, so C) Wait But Why will make a listicle when it’s the best format for that post, and don’t be mad at us cause it’s not what it looks like.
__________
When you’re a kid, or in high school, or in college, you don’t really work too hard on your friend situation. Friends just kind of happen.
For a bunch of years, you’re in a certain life your parents chose for you, and so are other people, and none of you have that much on your plates, so friendships inevitably form. Then in college, you’re in the perfect friend-making environment, one that hits all three ingredients sociologists consider necessary for close friendships to develop: “proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other.” More friendships happen.
Maybe they’re the right friends, maybe they’re not really, but you don’t put that much thought into any of it—you’re more of a passive observer.
Once student life ends, the people in your life start to shake themselves into more distinct tiers. Something like this:
At the top of your life mountain, in the green zone, you have your Tier 1 friends—those who feel like brothers and sisters. These are the people closest to you, those you call first when something important happens, those you love even when they suck, who make speeches at your wedding, whose best and worst sides you know through and through, and whose relationship with you is eternal—even if you go months or years without hanging out, nothing has changed when you find yourself together again. Unfortunately, depending on how things went down in your youth, Tier 1 can also contain your worst enemies, the people who can ruin your day with one subtle jab that only they could word so brilliantly hurtfully, the people you feel a burning resentment for, or jealousy of, or competition with. Tier 1 is high stakes.
Below, in the yellow zone, are your Tier 2 friends—your Pretty Good friends. Pretty Good friends are a much calmer situation than your brothers and sisters on Tier 1. You might be invited to their wedding, but you won’t have any responsibilities once you’re there. If you live in the same city, you might see them every month or two for dinner and have a great time when you do, but if one of you moves, you might not speak for the next year or two. And if something huge happens in their life, there’s a good chance you’ll hear it first from someone else.
Towards the bottom of the mountain in the orange zone, you have your Tier 3 friends—your Not Really friends. You might grab a one-on-one drink with one of them when you move to their city, but then it surprises neither of you when five years pass and drink #2 is still yet to happen. Your relationship tends to exist mostly as part of a bigger group or through the occasional Facebook like, and it doesn’t even really stress you out when you hear that one of them made $5 million last year. You may also try to sleep with one of these people at any given time.
The lowest part of Tier 3 begins to blend indistinguishably into your large group of acquaintances (the pink zone)—those people you’d stop and talk to if you saw them on the street or would maybe email for professional purposes, but whom you’d never hang out with one-on-one. When you hear that something bad happens to one of these people, you pretend to be sad but you don’t actually care.
Finally, acquaintances gradually blend into the endless world of strangers.
And depending on who you are and how things shook out in those first 25 years, the way your particular mountain looks will vary.
For example, there’s Walled-Off Wally:
And Phony Phoebe, who tries to be everyone’s best friend and ends up with a lot of people mad at her:
Even Unabomber Ulysses has a mountain:
Whatever your particular mountain looks like, eventually the blur of your youth is behind you, the dust has settled, and there you are living your life—when one day, usually around your mid or late 20s, it hits you:
It’s not that easy to make friends anymore.
Sure, you’ll make new friends in the future—at work, through your spouse, through your kids—but you won’t get to that Tier 1 brothers level, or even to Tier 2, with very many of them, because people who meet as adults don’t tend to get through the 100+ long, lazy hangouts needed to reach a bond of that strength. As time goes on, you start to realize that the 20-year frenzy of not-especially-thought-through haphazard friend-making you just did was the critical process of you making most of your lifelong friends.
And since you matched up with most of them A) by circumstance, and B) before you really knew yourself yet, the result is that your Tier 1 and Tier 2 friends—those closest to you—fall in a very scattered way on what I’ll call the Does This Friendship Make Sense graph:
So who are all those close friends in the three non-ideal quadrants?
As time goes on, most of us tend to have fewer friends in Quadrants 2-4, because A) people mature, and B) people have more self-respect and higher standards for what they’ll deal with as they get older. But the fact is, friendships made in the formative years often stick, whether they’re ideal or not, leaving most of us with a portion of our Tier 1 and Tier 2 friendships that just don’t make that much sense. We’ll get to the great, Quadrant 1 friendships later in the post, but in order to treat those relationships properly, we need to take a thorough look at the odd ones first. Here are 10 common ones—
1) The Non-Question-Asking Friend
You’ll be having a good day. You’ll be having a bad day. You’ll be happy at work. You’ll quit your job. You’ll fall in love. You’ll catch your new love cheating on you and murder them both in an act of incredible passion. And it doesn’t matter, because none of it will be discussed with The Non-Question-Asking Friend, who never, ever, ever asks you anything about your life. This friend can be explained in one of three ways:
1) He’s extremely self-absorbed and only wants to talk about himself
2) He avoids getting close to people and doesn’t want to talk about either you or himself or anything personal, just third-party topics
3) He thinks you’re insufferably self-absorbed and knows if he asks you about your life, you’ll talk his ear off about it
Giving you the benefit of the doubt here, we’re left with two possibilities. Possibility #1 isn’t fun at all and this person should not be allowed space on Tier 1. The green part of the mountain is sacred territory, and super self-absorbed people shouldn’t be permitted to set foot up there. Put him on Tier 2 and just be happy you’re not dating him.
Possibility #2 is a pretty dark situation for your friend, but it can actually be fun for you. I have a friend who I’ve hung out with one-on-one about four times in the last year, and he has no idea Wait But Why exists. I’ve known him for 14 years and I’m not sure he knows if I have siblings or not. But I actually enjoy the shit out of this friend—sure, there’s a limit on how close we’ll ever be, but without ever spending time talking about our lives, we actually end up in a lot of fun, interesting conversations.
2) The Friend in the Group You Can’t Be Alone With Under Any Circumstances
In almost every group of friends, there’s one pair who can’t ever be alone together. It’s not that they dislike each other—they might get along great—it’s just that they have no individual friendship with each other whatsoever. This leaves both of them petrified of the lumbering elephant that appears in the room anytime they’re alone together. They’re way too on top of shit to ever end up in the car alone together if a group is going somewhere in multiple cars, but there are smaller dangers afoot—like being the first two to arrive at a restaurant or being in a group of three when the third member goes to the bathroom.
The thing is, sometimes it’s not even that these people couldn’t have an individual friendship—it’s just that they don’t, and neither one has the guts to try to make that leap when things have gone on for so long as is.
3) The Non-Character-Breaking Friend You Have to be “On” With
This is a friend who’s terrified of having an earnest interaction, and as such, your friendship with him is always in some kind of skit—you always have to be on when you’re interacting.
Sometimes the skit is that you both burst out laughing at everything constantly. He can only exist with you in “This is so fucking hilarious it’s too much!” mode, so you have to be in some kind of joke-telling or sarcastic mode yourself at all times or he’ll become socially horrified.
Another version of this is the “always and only ironic” friend, who you really bum out if you ever break that social shell and say something earnest. This type of person hates earnest people because someone being earnest dares him to come out from under his ironic safety blanket and let the sun touch his face, and no fucking thanks.
A third example is the “You’re great, I’m great, ugh why is everyone else so terrible and not great like us” friend. Of course, she doesn’t really think you’re perfectly great at all—if she were with someone else, you’d be one of the voodoo dolls on the table to be dissected and scoffed at. The key here is that the two of you must be on a team at all times while interacting. The only comfortable mode for this person is bonding with you by building a little pedestal for you both to stand on while you criticize everyone else. You can either play along and everything will go smoothly, even though you’ll both despise yourselves and each other the whole time, or you can commit the ultimate sin and have the integrity to disagree with the friend or defend a non-present party the friend criticizes. Doing this will shatter the fragile team vibe and make the friend recoil and say something quietly like, “Hm…yeah…I guess.” The friend now respects you for the first time and will also criticize you extra hard next time she’s playing her pedestal game with a different friend.
What these all have in common is the friend has tall walls up, at least toward you, and so she builds a little skit for you two to hang out in to make sure any authentic connection can be avoided. Sometimes that person only does this out of her own social anxiety and can become a great, authentic friend if you can just stomp through the ice. Other times, the person is just hopelessly scared and closed off and there’s no hope and you have to get out.
In any case, I can’t stand these interactions and am in a full panic the entire time they’re happening.
4) The Double-Obligated Friendship
Think of a friend you get together with from time to time, which usually happens after a long and lackluster email or text exchange during which you just can’t find a time that works for both of you—and you’re never really happy when these plans are being made and not really psyched when you wake up and it’s finally on your schedule for that day.
Maybe you’re aware that you don’t want to be friends with that person, or maybe you’re delusional about it—but what you’re most likely not aware of is that they probably don’t want to see you either.
There are lopsided situations where one person is far more interested in hanging out than the other (we’ll get to those later), but in the case we’re talking about here, both parties often think it’s a lopsided situation without realizing that the other person actually feels the same way—that’s why it takes so long to schedule a time. When someone’s excited about something, they figure out how to get it into their schedule—when they’re not, they figure out ways to push it farther into the future.
Sometimes you don’t think hard enough about it to even realize you don’t like being friends with the person, and other times you really like the idea or the aesthetic of being friends with that particular person—being friends with them is part of your Story. But even in cases where you’re perfectly lucid about your feelings—since neither of you knows the other feels the same way and neither has the guts to just cut things off or move it down a tier, this friendship usually just continues along for eternity.
5) The Half Marriage
Somewhere in your life, you’re probably part of a friendship that would be a marriage if only the other person weren’t very, very, extremely not interested in that happening. 1 for 2 on yes votes—just one vote away—so close.
You might be on either side of this—and either way it’s one of the least healthy parts of your life. Fun!
If you’re on the if only side of things, probably the right move is to get your fucking shit together? Ya know? This friendship is one long, continuous rejection of you as a human being, and you’re just wallowing there in your yearning like a sobbing little seal. Plus, duh, if you gather your self-respect and move on with your life, it’ll raise their perception of your value and they might actually become interested in you.
If you’re on the oh yeah definitely not side of the situation, here’s what’s happening—there’s this suffering human in the world, and you know they’re suffering, and you fucking love it, because it gives your little ego a succulent sponge bath every time you hang out with them. You enjoy it so much you probably even lead them on intentionally, don’t you—you make sure to keep just enough ambiguity in the situation that their bleeding heart continues to lather your ego from head to toe at your whim.
Both of you—go do something else.
6) The Historical Friend
A Historical Friend is someone you became friends with in the first place because you met when you were little and stayed friends through the years, even though you’re a very weird match. Most old friends fall somewhat into this category, but a true Historical Friend is someone you absolutely would not be friends with if you met them today.
You’re not especially pleased with who they are, and they feel the same way about you. You’re not each other’s type one bit. Unfortunately, you’re also extremely close friends from when you were four, and you’re both just a part of each other’s situation forever, sorry.
7) The Non-Parallel Life Paths Friendship
Throughout childhood and much of young adulthood, most people your age are in the same life stage as you are. But when it comes to advancing into full adulthood, people do so at widely varying paces, which leads to certain friends suddenly having totally different existences from one another.
Anyone within three years of 30 has a bunch of these going on. It’s just a weird time for everyone. Some people have become Future 52-year-olds, while others are super into being Previous 21-year-olds. At some point, things will start to meld together again, but being 30-ish is the friendship equivalent of a kid going through an awkward pubescent stage.
There are darker, more permanent Non-Parallel Life Path situations. Like when Person A starts to become a person who rejects material wealth, partially because she genuinely feels that pursuing an artistic path matters more and partially because she needs a defense mechanism against feeling envious of richer people, and Person B’s path makes her scoff at people who pursue creative paths, partially because she genuinely thinks expressing yourself is an inherently narcissistic venture and partially because she needs a defense mechanism against feeling regretful that she never pursued her creative dreams—these two will have problems. They may still like each other, but they can’t be as close as they used to be—each of their lives is a bit of a middle finger at the other’s choices, and that’s just awkward for everyone. It’s not always that bad—but to survive an Off-Line Life Situation, friends need to be really different people who don’t at all want the same things out of life.
This friendship is a distant cousin of The Morally Off-Line Friendship—
8) The Frenemy
The Frenemy roots very hard against you. And I’m not talking about the friends that will feel a little twinge of pleasure when they hear your big break didn’t pan out after all or that your relationship is in bad shape. I’m not even talking about someone who secretly roots against you when they’re not doing so well at some area of life and it hurts them to see you do better. Those are bad emotions, but they can exist in people who are still good friends.
I’m talking about a real Frenemy—someone who really wants bad things for you. Because you’re you.
You and the Frenemy usually go way back, have a very deep friendship, and the trouble probably started a long time ago.
There’s a lot of complex psychology going on in these situations that I don’t fully understand, but my hunch is that a Frenemy’s resentment is rooted in his own pain, or his own shortcomings, or his own regret—and for some reason, your existence stings them in these places hard.
A little less dark but no less harmful is a bully situation where a friend sees some weakness or vulnerability in you and she enjoys prodding you there either for sadistic reasons or to prop herself up.
A Frenemy knows how to hurt you better than anyone because you’re deeply similar in some way and she knows how you’re wired, and she’ll do whatever she can to bring you down any chance she gets, often in such a subtle way it’s hard to see that it’s happening.
Whatever the reason, if you have a Frenemy in your life, kick her toxic ass off your mountain, or at least kick her down the mountain—just get her off of Tier 1. A Frenemy has about a tenth of the power to hurt you from Tier 2 as she does from Tier 1.
9) The Facebook Celebrity Friend
This person isn’t a celebrity to anyone other than you, you creep. You know exactly who I’m talking about—there are a small handful of people whose Facebook page you’re uncomfortably well-acquainted with, and those people have no idea that this is happening. On the plus side, there are people out there you haven’t spoken to in seven years who know all about the new thing you’re trying with your hair, since it goes both ways.
This is a rare Tier 3 friend, or even an acquaintance, who qualifies as an odd friendship, because you found a way to make it unhealthy even though you’re not actually friends. Well done.
10) The Lopsided Friendship
There are a lot of ways a friendship can be lopsided.
Someone can be higher on their friend’s mountain than vice versa.
Someone can want to spend more time with a friend than vice versa.
One member can consistently do 90% of the listening and only 10% of the talking, and in situations where most of the talking is about life problems, what’s happening is a one-sided therapy situation, with a badly off-balance give-and-take ratio, and that’s not much of a friendship—it’s someone using someone else.
And then there’s the lopsided power friendship. Of course, this is a hideous quality in many not-great couples, but it’s also a prominent feature of plenty of friendships.
A near 50/50 friendship is ideal, but anything out to 65/35 is fine and can often be attributed to two different styles of personality. It’s when the number gap gets even wider that something less healthy is going on—something that doesn’t reflect very well on either party.
There are some obvious ways to assess the nature of a friendship’s power dynamic—does one person cut in and interrupt the other person while they’re talking far more than the other way around? Is one person’s opinion or preference just kind of understood to carry more weight than the other’s? Is one person allowed to be more of a dick to the other than vice versa?
Another interesting litmus test is what I call the “mood determiner test.” This comes into play when two friends get together but they’re in very different moods—the idea is, whose mood “wins” and determines the mood of the hangout. If Person A is in a bad mood, Person B is in a good mood, and Person B reacts by being timid and respectful of Person A’s mood, leaving the vibe down there until Person A snaps out of it on her own—but when the moods are reversed, Person B quickly disregards her own bad mood and acts more cheerful to match Person A’s happy mood—and this is how it always goes—then Person A is in a serious power position.
Not All Friendships Are Grim…
In the Does This Friendship Make Sense graph above, the friendships we just discussed are all in Quandrants 2, 3, or 4—i.e. they’re all a bit unenjoyable, unhealthy, or both. That’s why this has been depressing. On the bright side, there’s also Quadrant 1—all the friendships that do make sense.
No friendship is perfect, but those in Quadrant 1 are doing what friendships are supposed to do—they’re making the lives of both parties better. And when a friendship is both in Quadrant 1 of the graph and on Tier 1 of your mountain—that friendship is a rock in your life.
Rock friendships don’t just make us happy—they’re the thing (along with rock family and romantic relationships) that makes us happy. Investing serious time and energy into those is a no-brainer long term life strategy.
But in the case of most people over 25—at least in New York—I think A) not enough time is carved out as dedicated friend time, and B) the time that is carved out is spread too thin, and too evenly, among the Tier 1 and Tier 2 friendships in all four quadrants. I’m definitely guilty of this myself.
There’s something I call the Perpetual Catch-Up Trap. When you haven’t seen a good friend in a long time, the first order of business is a big catch-up—you want to know what’s going on in their career, with their girlfriend, with their family, etc., and they want to catch up on your life. In theory, once this happens, you can go back to just hanging out, shooting the shit, and actually being in the friendship. The problem is, when you don’t make enough time for good friends, seeing them only for a meal and not that often—you end up spending each get-together catching up, and you never actually get to just enjoy the friendship or get far past the surface. That’s the Perpetual Catch-Up Trap, and I find myself falling into it with way too many of the rocks in my life.
So I think there are two orders of business:
1) Think about your friendships, figure out which ones aren’t in Quadrant 1, and demote them down the mountain. I’m not suggesting you stop being friends with those people—you still love them and feel loyal to them, and old friends are critical to hold onto—but if the friendships aren’t that healthy or enjoyable, they don’t really deserve to be in your Tier 1, and you probably shouldn’t be in theirs. Most importantly, doing this clears up time to…
2) Dedicate even more time to the Quadrant 1, Tier 1 rocks in your life. If you’re in your mid-20s or older, your current rocks are probably the only ones you’ll ever have. Your rock friendships don’t warrant 2x the time you give to your other friends—they warrant 5 or 10x. And keep in mind that seeing one of them for an hour-long meal isn’t really enough—your rocks deserve serious, dedicated time so you can stay close. So go make plans with them.
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If you liked this, check out:
How to Pick Your Life Partner
10 Types of 30-Year-Old Single Guys
Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
The Great Perils of Social Interaction |
Here are a few questions you won’t hear asked of the parade of Israeli officials crossing US television screens during the current crisis in Gaza:
What would you do if a foreign country was occupying your land?
What does it mean that Israeli cabinet ministers deny Palestine’s right to exist?
What should we make of a prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who as opposition leader in the 1990s addressed a rally under a banner reading “Death to Arafat” a year after the Palestinian leader signed a peace accord with Israel?
These are contentious questions, to be sure, and with complicated answers. But they are relevant to understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. They also parallel the issues routinely raised by American journalists with Palestinian officials, pressing to consider how the US would react if it were under rocket fire from Mexico, to explain why Hamas won’t recognise Israel and to repudiate Palestinian anti-Semitism.
But it’s a feature of much mainstream journalism in the US, not just an issue of coverage during the last three weeks of the Gaza crisis, that while one set of questions gets asked all the time, the other is heard hardly at all.
In years of reporting from and about Israel, I’ve followed the frequently robust debate in its press about whether Netanyahu really wants a peace deal, about the growing power of right-wing members inside the Israeli cabinet opposed to a Palestinian state, about the creeping air of permanence to the occupation.
So it has been all the more striking to discover a far narrower discourse in Washington and the notoriously pro-Israel mainstream media in the US at a time when difficult questions are more important than ever. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and a crop of foreign leaders have ratcheted up warnings that the door for the two-state solution is closing, in no small part because of Israel’s actions. But still the difficult questions go unasked.
Take Netanyahu’s appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. The host, Bob Schieffer, permitted the Israeli leader to make a lengthy case for the his military’s ground attack, guiding him along with one sympathetic question after another. Finally, after describing Netanyahu’s position as “very understandable”, Schieffer asked about dead Palestinian civilians – but only to wonder if they presented a public relations problem in “the battle for world opinion”.
As if Schieffer’s position wasn’t already blindingly clear, he went on to quote former prime minister Golda Meir’s line that Israelis can never forgive Arabs “for forcing us to kill their children”.
As way of balance, CBS followed with a short clip of an interview by Charlie Rose with the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, who was pressed on his willingness to recognise Israel.
There has been fine reporting from on the ground in Gaza by courageous American journalists who have laid bare the price being paid by ordinary Palestinians. That, in turn, has prompted some stiff questioning in American TV studios of Israeli officials about the scale of civilian deaths and shelling of schools and hospitals. Some pro-Israel American pundits admit to have becoming “less pro-Israel”.
But the broader framework of how the conflict is presented in the US is more troubling.
‘We have a media scandal that we need to expose,’ says Rula Jebreal. Still via CNN
Former MSNBC contributor Rula Jebreal drew widespread attention to the media divide when she condemned NBC News on air, on MSNBC, for pulling its only Arab-American correspondent, Ayman Mohyeldin, out of Gaza, only to reinstate him because of the backlash. “We are disgustingly biased on this issue,” she said.
She has a point.
An analysis by Punditfact of CNN coverage during the first two weeks of the latest Gaza crisis showed that appearances by Israeli officials outnumbered Palestinian officials by more than four-to-one. There were substantially more interviews with what Punditfact called Palestinian “laymen”, but they included the relatives of a Palestinian-American beaten by Israeli soldiers that offered little insight into the bigger picture.
All appearances by Palestinian officials were outnumbered by interviews with a single man: Israel’s former ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, whom CNN hired as a Middle East analyst earlier this year. The network presents Oren as a kind of neutral interpreter, when just a few months ago he was vigorously defending Israel on behalf of Netanyahu’s government. His limited value as an analyst was swiftly exposed by his assertion that Hamas was trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinian children as possible as part of a media strategy.
The number of guests booked or sources quoted has never been balanced on this issue in the mainstream American press, but more important is the nature of interviews and the broader coverage when Israel and Palestine are not thrust into the news by a fresh surge in violence.
At one extreme is Fox News, where last week Sean Hannity shouted down a Palestinian guest, Yousef Munayyer, because he would not condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation, then proceeded to terminate the interview.
Munayyer, director of the Jerusalem Fund in Washington, has appeared repeatedly on CNN where he is treated more respectfully. But he told me he is frequently brought on to answer accusations from the Israeli side, rather than explain the Palestinian perspective in the way that Israeli officials and commentators are allowed to lay out their case.
“Most of the time I go on it is to be put on the defensive, in response to a conversation that’s framed around Israel’s security concerns first and foremost,” Munayyer said.
Palestinians should face difficult questions about recognition of Israel, about Hamas’s policies and actions, about how peace would work in practice.
But on the other side, I’ve rarely seen a major channel match that kind of routine close questioning of Israeli officials about the position of a government packed with ministers hostile to a Palestinian state, who advocate annexation of much of the occupied territories and who propose second-class citizenship for Arabs.
Israel’s preferred representatives in the US media – Oren, plus the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, and Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev – all project the country as a liberal democracy, an unwilling occupier that is thirsting for peace.
But that does not fit with the views of leading politicians back in Israel. Naftali Bennett, the economy minister and leader of the most powerful political party on the right, has said: “I will do everything in my power to make sure [the Palestinians] never get a state.”
Danny Danon, the increasingly powerful chairman of the central committee of Netanyahu’s Likud party, openly opposes a Palestinian state and has said the prime minister doesn’t believe in it either. “I want the majority of the land with the minimum amount of Palestinians,” Danon, whom Netanyahu just fired as deputy defense minister for being critical of opposition to a ceasefire, told me last year.
And Israel’s ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, wants a good chunk of Israel’s Arab population stripped of citizenship.
Perhaps none of these men will get what they want. But they hold important levers of power, and good journalism would seem to demand that probing questions get asked about where Israel is headed under such leadership.
That kind of piercing American journalism can be found, mostly in foreign-policy journals and long magazine articles, such as David Remnick’s insightful report in the New Yorker last year on the rising political power of Jewish settlers. But much of the press demonstrates a frightening lack of inquiry, and if the mainstream media won’t do it, others are increasingly willing to do it for them.
It’s no secret that younger Americans do not rely on the nightly news, cable networks or printed newspapers for information in the way many older people do. The internet has opened access to foreign news media, which often has a different take in Israel, and has opened up a stream of links to to first-hand accounts as well as writing by analysts and activists who offer insights and information wilfully ignored by the Bob Schieffers and Sean Hannitys of the world.
There is evidence of a shift in public opinion, mostly generational: a Pew poll this month showed falling support for Israel among younger Americans. Over 65s backed the Jewish state by 60% to just 9% support for the Palestinians. Among young adults, aged 18-29, just 44% were behind Israel with backing for the Palestinians rising to 22%.
As opinion shifts, it will be harder to go on presenting just one side of the story.
• This article was amended on 1 August 2014. An earlier version said Netanyahu had addressed rallies in the 1990s under a banner reading “Death to Arabs”. That has been corrected to say that Netanyahu addressed a rally under a banner reading “Death to Arafat” a year after the Palestinian leader signed a peace accord with Israel.
• Comments on this article are set to remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight (UK time) |
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Gazan authorities on Wednesday issued notices to restaurants and hotels in the Strip banning establishments from throwing New Years Eve celebrations, a Gaza police spokesperson said.
Ayman al-Butneiji told Ma'an the notices were issued because New Years Eve celebrations, in the eyes of the Hamas-run Gazan government, "contradict" Islam, and "are mainly an imitation of the west.”
He also highlighted the "pains and sacrifices" that come with living in Gaza due to Israel's "imposed siege" on the Strip.
Palestinian culture encourages communities to refrain from having celebrations during times of death or upheaval.
In Bethlehem, Christmas celebrations were toned-down significantly out of respect for the more than 120 Palestinian families who have lost loved ones since the start this year's upheaval in October.
Since the start of October, municipalities across the occupied West Bank have also asked bars and restaurants to refrain from having large parties or celebrations out of respect for the seriousness of the current political situation. |
Commencement May 18, 2003
Honorary Degree: Religious Studies
Conferred on Bernard J. Cooke
Candidate presented by: Philip Rossi, S.J., Professor and Chair of Theology
Bernard J. Cooke, internationally recognized theologian and educator, has been a pioneer in shaping Catholic theological education in colleges and universities for more than forty years. Joining the Marquette faculty in 1957, he soon instituted an undergraduate theology major and revised the curriculum for master of arts students.
Generations of Marquette students remember him for his indefatigable energy, his enlightening closed circuit television lectures for undergraduates, his "Cooke Book" of notes for graduates, his passion for justice and his dedication to the improvement of general education throughout the university. He received Marquette's Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in 1964.
His most lasting accomplishment at Marquette was the inauguration of the Ph.D. program in Theology in 1963. Marquette was the first institution in the nation to offer doctoral level training to Catholic laypeople in preparation for careers of theological scholarship and teaching. Dr. Cooke's enduring legacy are the three hundred graduates of Marquette's doctoral program who have taught in college and university classrooms throughout North America, produced significant theological scholarship, and served as leaders in the academy and in the church.
As a theological scholar, Dr. Cooke has published major works on the sacraments and on ministry in the Catholic Church. After leaving the Marquette faculty in 1968, he lectured in many countries, worked extensively in programs for lay ministry formation, and has held faculty positions at the University of Windsor and the University of Calgary in Canada and at the College of the Holy Cross here in the United States, where he held the title of Loyola Professor of Theology. His books, articles, courses and lectures have been for many people throughout the world a rich source for theological reflection and inspiration.
Marquette University is proud to welcome Dr. Cooke home to Marquette and to acknowledge his gifts as an educator and scholar. Because of his many contributions to Marquette and his pioneering work for Catholic theological education in colleges and universities, Reverend President, I hereby recommend Bernard J. Cooke for the Marquette Degree of Doctor of Religious Studies, honoris causa. |
Kepler-80: Analysis of a Compact System
It’s been a week for unusual planetary systems, and I’ll cap it off with Kepler-80, a star about 1100 light years away that features five planets in extraordinarily tight orbits. Such systems are now being referred to as STIPs (Systems with Tightly-spaced Planets), a nod to our apparently imperishable drive to create acronyms. Whatever we call them, though, systems like these make us realize that our own Solar System’s configuration is but one possibility in a sea of other outcomes. Yesterday’s post on ‘warm Jupiters’ is yet another confirmation of the thought.
What we have in new work from Mariah MacDonald, Darin Ragozzine (Florida Institute of Technology) and colleagues is an analysis of transit timing variations (TTVs) of the planets around this star, all of which orbit inside 1/10 AU. Here the planets’ years are 1.0, 3.1, 4.6, 7.1 and 9.5 days, respectively, close enough that gravitational perturbations can create slight changes in transit times. Although the innermost planet has a very weak TTV signal, the other four show signals strong enough for the researchers to work out the masses of each.
Gravitational interactions that disturb a perfectly periodic sequence of transits are a valuable way of making mass estimates for planets small enough that radial velocity detections are difficult. Usefully, Kepler has measured hundreds of TTV signals allowing for such estimates. They’re particularly helpful in multiple-planet transiting systems because now we can use the combination of mass and planetary radius to produce density measurements.
The Kepler-80 planets are f, d, e, b, and c in order of period. The inferred masses for the four outer planets are roughly 6.75, 4.13, 6.93 and 6.74 Earth masses, but we learn that the two outermost planets are almost twice as large as the inner two. The researchers believe this is consistent with terrestrial compositions for d and e and extended, puffy atmospheres of hydrogen and helium for b and c. Here’s how the paper describes these worlds:
Although all four planets have very similar masses, planets d and e are terrestrial and planets b and c have ∼2% (by mass) H/He envelopes assuming Earth-like cores. Their orbits are similar and models suggest that photo-evaporation would have removed ∼1% H/He from all four planets. Though simulations suggest the system has been affected by planetary tides, we did not consider the effect of dissipation on the atmospheric history of the planets. It is unusual to have four well-measured densities in the same system and future comparative planetology may constrain the formation and evolution of their atmospheres.
Due to orbital resonances, the four outer planets are synchronized, returning to the same configuration every 27 days. The paper notes that Kepler-80’s planetary orbits are stable in the long-term as long as we assume orbital eccentricities below about 0.2 (the researchers point out that TTVs cannot reliably detect eccentricities for this system). Although the available Kepler data are not enough to reveal the evolution of the atmospheres on these planets, the researchers’ simulations show that the outer two planets could have migrated inward from original positions in the disk where accretion of hydrogen and helium would be more likely to occur.
Image: This animation shows the position of the five planets of Kepler-80 whenever the outer two planets (green and red) pass by one another, about every 27 days over the course of four years of observations by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Due to the rare synchronized nature of the system, the middle two planets (blue and purple) also return to almost exactly the same location. The innermost planet (yellow) is not synchronized and hence is found at a random location every 27 days. MacDonald et al. 2016 were able to show that this pattern indicates formation by “migration,” where the orbits shrink very slightly over time. The orbits are to scale with each other, but the planets are shown 50 times larger. The outer four planets are all about 4-6 times the mass of the Earth. The inner three planets (blue, purple, and yellow) appear rocky and the outer two planets (green and red) are likely rocky with a very puffy Hydrogen/Helium atmosphere. Credit: MacDonald/Ragozzine/FIT.
Improved mass and eccentricity estimates will fall to future space-based observatories. With its complex resonances and intriguing dynamical history, Kepler-80 should be a useful laboratory for studying planet formation. The Kepler mission has given us a wealth of information about how planetary systems can be built, and it’s clear that their formation and evolution will be the subject of study for decades. The systems we’ve looked at this week hint at what is possible as exoplanetary architectures continue to surprise us.
The paper is MacDonald et al., “A Dynamical Analysis of the Kepler-80 System of Five Transiting Planets,” accepted at The Astronomical Journal. A Florida Institute of Technology news release is available. |
Dropped on a frozen planet under suspicious circumstances, a group of marines struggles to discover the true objective of their mission. “Cold War” is set in the same universe as Adam Christopher’s novel The Burning Dark.
This novelette was acquired and edited for Tor.com by editor Paul Stevens.
“This is bullshit.”
First Sergeant Furusawa’s voice came back over the comms. “I don’t like your attitude, Marine.”
“Sorry,” said Anderson. “This is bullshit, Sergeant.”
The sergeant laughed. “Better.”
It was there again: the pulse, the tick; something echoing across the comms, weaving around in the empty space behind the voices. It sounded like interference, the rhythmic tap of something electrical shorting, but that was impossible.
Then the comms clicked off and Private Grec was left with nothing but the sound of the blood in her ears and the schtomp schtomp schtomp of seven pairs of boots wading through the snow.
Corporal Anderson was right, Grec thought. It was bullshit. Icy, covered-in-six-feet-of-snow, a hundred light years from anywhere bullshit.
What the Special Operations team had been doing here was a mystery—at least, a mystery to those who really needed to know, which at the current moment included Sergeant Furusawa and her two three-person fireteams trudging onwards from the drop zone. The planet had a name, a real one, according to the brief—Hrostar—but to the Fleet it was just Warworld 3663. A lump of ice, big enough for Earth-type gravity, but slightly too far out of its sun’s Goldilocks Zone to comfortably support much life worth writing home about. And since contact with the Spec Ops team had been lost five cycles ago, the Fleet war catalog had been updated, changing the planet’s entry to Warworld 3663Ω—Omega for “danger unspecified.” The Spec Ops team had apparently met that danger, and now Furusawa’s search and rescue ground team was here to find them.
Of course, Grec and the others—Anderson and Alonso in her team, Bowen, Palladio and Khouri in the Psi-team—all knew what “unspecified danger” really meant.
The Spiders were here.
Relentless, implacable, totally alien; the Spiders were a machine gestalt swarming across the galaxy, consuming—literally—whole planets, even stars. The eight-legged war machines ranged in size from just a few meters across to the giant Mother Spiders, as big as a moon, with legs long enough, powerful enough to crack the crust of a planet.
But if Warworld 3663Ω really was a mostly lifeless lump of rock, then there was no reason for the Spiders to have paid it any heed. The machines seemed only to target inhabited planets, preferably those under the control of the Fleet. The Spiders were less an enemy, more a plague, a contagion. And after decades of conflict, the Fleet were becoming more and more desperate as the Spiders kept coming, and coming, and—
Hey.
Grec snapped out of her thoughts, and smiled. As the SAR team walked on through the snow, Grec spun on her heel, keeping pace but walking backwards through the tracks of the marine in front. Psi-Marine Maryam Khouri was on rear point, Grec in the center of the line. Grec gave a thumbs-up and Khouri did the same, signaling that all was well, then Grec turned back around without missing a step. Behind the opaque visor of her helmet, she smiled to herself and focused with her mind, pushing the feeling out, hoping that Khouri, three places behind, would be able to sense it. Grec had no psi-ability, and the Psi-Marines weren’t supposed to communicate with the regular forces like that, officially. But it was common. Sometimes the quickest way to get a message across without anyone else knowing—enemy included—was to use your mind. On the long tour aboard the Union Starship Hit and Run, the two of them had worked at it, Maryam insisting that everyone, even Kat, had the power buried up there somewhere in their cerebrum. With a little effort, you could make yourself heard.
“Back to work, Marine.”
Grec glanced up. The Sergeant’s voice was loud and clear in her helmet—the private two-way channel—unlike the message Khouri had planted in Grec’s mind.
“Always at work, Sergeant.”
Grec dragged her legs through the snow. The others remained silent, as quiet as the frozen wasteland across which they marched, a peace disturbed only by the soft sound of the team pulling themselves forward.
How much farther they had to go was mystery number two. According to the briefing back on the U-Star, now orbiting somewhere far above them, the search area itself was small: a patch of ground not five klicks square, at the northern edge of which was a range of low hills. The drop zone, for some reason, was ten klicks further south, which meant they had to walk the rest of the way. Anderson had questioned this, but before the ship’s Commander had even opened his mouth to reply, Sergeant Furusawa had butted in, casting doubt on Anderson’s masculinity. The two fireteams had laughed and were dismissed, but Grec knew she wasn’t the only one who noticed the question had never gotten an answer.
And another thing. SAR was usually done in little one-man hotseats, small and agile U-Stars that could skim through a planet’s atmosphere, allowing a close ground scan with both the craft’s instruments and the pilot’s own senses. SAR on foot was a rare occurrence. And hell, if it was a Spec Ops team that had gone missing, why not send another damn Spec Ops team down after them? Sending a bunch of regular grunts and their Psi-Marine babysitters was surely the wrong decision and—
“We’re here.”
The line of marines stopped. “Here” was a featureless patch of snow, indistinguishable from the terrain they’d spent the last two hours slogging through. The marines fell out of line, each looking around, as if expecting to find a giant X emblazoned on the white ground. Grec turned slowly, eyes to the horizon. The sky was just a shade darker than the ground, but the heads-up display of her visor enhanced the view, throwing up a reference grid and picking out the difference with ease. Without the HUD, Grec thought, they’d be nearly blind.
She turned one-eighty and raised her hand, thumb skyward, signaling everything was A-OK and hunky-dory.
Then she took a step forward, her raised hand falling back to the plasma rifle clipped across her front.
Maryam?
“Where’s Khouri?” she asked.
The other marines all turned to face back the way they’d come. Sergeant Furusawa walked to the front, then turned, looking the group over, counting them up. Grec did the same.
Anderson, Alonso and herself. Palladio, Bowen, and Sergeant Furusawa.
Six marines.
Furusawa turned away and Grec moved to her side. Looking out, she could see nothing but a nearly featureless white expanse, the ground broken only by the half-meter deep trench the marines had carved in the snow as they walked.
The Sergeant took a step forward. “Psi-Corporal Khouri, what’s your twenty?”
There was no response. Khouri was gone.
They moved on after an hour. The two remaining Psi-Marines, Bowen and Palladio, had spent all of the intervening time trying to contact the missing third member of their fireteam, but without luck. Neither of them could reach out to her with their minds, unable to make contact or even sense her presence.
And there was another problem.
“See?” said Anderson. “Bullshit. Bull. Shit.”
The comms—the regular communication channel between the marines, and between the marines and their starship in orbit—wasn’t working.
“Shut up and keep trying, Marine,” was all Furusawa said over the crackling emergency radio channel as she paced back and forth, scanning the surrounds, her HUD on maximum magnification and enhancement. Grec and the others watched the sergeant’s view displayed on their own HUDs, each studying the image, just in case someone missed something. Anderson—the communication specialist—worked on the failed comms link. They’d only discovered the fault when Furusawa had tried to contact the Hit and Run to report their situation and realized that nobody—not even the marines standing next to her—could hear her.
They’d been planetside three hours and were one marine down with basic systems failure. The operation had been screwy from the very start, and now Grec knew they were in even worse trouble.
She swallowed, focusing on the situation, pushing the fear over her partner’s fate out of her mind.
“We have to go back, Sergeant,” she said. She watched Furusawa continue her slow pace as she scanned the way they had come. Then the sergeant turned around, the opaque visor of her elliptical helmet reflecting Grec’s own.
“Our primary objective is to locate the missing Spec Ops team, Marine. We have our orders.”
Grec paused, then said “Sergeant,” her training kicking in even as every instinct screamed to her that something wasn’t right.
Palladio shouldered his rifle and came to attention in front of the sergeant. “Permission to track back to the drop zone to locate Khouri.”
“That’s a negative, Marine.”
Palladio nodded at Alonso, standing nearby. As Marine Gunner, his heavy-duty weapon was considerably larger than the rifles carried by the rest. “Alonso and I can go,” said Palladio. “Sweep the area, pick up Khouri and head back to the target zone.”
“Negative, Marine,” Furusawa repeated. “I’ve lost one Psi-Marine already, and I don’t want to lose another.”
“But, Khouri—”
“That’s enough.” The emergency radio buzzed as Furusawa’s voice punched across the channel. The back-up system was low quality and the interference was still there, even worse. A repeated pattern, almost electronic in nature. As the sergeant spoke even Anderson looked up from his position on the ground, where he was working on the computer interface built into the forearm of his combat armor, trying to get the regular comms back online.
Sergeant Furusawa looked over her remaining marines, then nodded. “We continue the SAR. If Khouri got lost in the snow we’ll pick her up on the way back. Grec, start the geophys scan. We’ll head north-north-east.”
Grec blinked as an orange icon appeared in her HUD: an open triangle, hard against the left of her vision. As she turned her head, the icon slid around until it was at the top. North-north-east, the direction marker shared from Furusawa’s HUD over the psi-fi net that linked each of the marines’ armor together.
“Move out,” said Furusawa, taking point, not waiting for the rest of them to fall into line. As they walked off, Grec turned again, wanting to signal with a raised thumb to Khouri, but it was Palladio at the rear now.
Grec dropped her arm, turned back to the front, and listened to the stiff crunch of snow underfoot.
They marched on.
You okay?
Grec swept the wand of the geophys scanner over the snow in front of her as she walked. To operate the device she’d shifted up to take point, but with the directional marker in her HUD, she knew where she was supposed to be leading the group. She squeezed the wand a little harder and increased the radius of her sweep. The readings from the scanner, relayed to the display on the inside of her visor, were a little weird, but she hadn’t really had a chance to calibrate everything to zero. Not after Khouri had—
Kat?
Grec frowned, her eyes flicking over the geophys readout. It was an important job and the Sergeant would be asking for a report very soon. Having Palladio send her messages with his mind—messages he knew she couldn’t respond to—was a distraction. She didn’t really know him that well, either. Not like Maryam. But at least Palladio wasn’t using the emergency radio. The back-up system didn’t have private channels. What one marine said, all would hear.
I was her friend, too.
Grec screwed her eyes tight and filled her mind with just one single thought.
SHUT UP!
She knew she couldn’t “talk” to the Psi-Marine, but maybe her annoyance would be enough for him to sense. At any rate, they marched on and Palladio’s voice didn’t enter her head again. Grec relaxed a little and returned her focus to the geophys scan, but after a while her mind wandered. Wandered to Maryam.
They’d been close, back on the Hit and Run. Tight friendships between regular marines and their psychic counterparts were common. Often, what started as friendship became something much more. Relationships like that were against regulations, but sometimes in deep, deep space, in the middle of the war, blind eyes were turned. Morale was low enough as it was and the Fleet commanders were unlikely to actively discourage anything that improved it, no matter which statute they broke.
The radio clicked on in Grec’s ear. The tapping sound of the interference was loud. As Grec watched, she saw the noise matched the pulse of the geophys readouts running along the bottom of her HUD.
“Geophys, Private.”
Grec cleared her throat and dragged her attention back to her task. As the team walked forward, Grec swept the wand back and forth again. The readings didn’t change. Nor did they make much sense.
“I’m not sure,” she said, trying to parse the data. She came to a stop. Furusawa appeared at her shoulder.
“I need a report, Private.”
Grec shook her head. “I need to recalibrate, Sarge. The scanner’s bugged.”
“What’s the reading?”
Grec clenched her jaw and focused on sharing the HUD data with her team leader. The psi-fi indicator in her visor flickered briefly as her combat suit made contact with the sergeant’s, and began streaming the data to its computer.
Sergeant Furusawa shifted her grip on her rifle as she waited. “When you’re ready, Private.”
“Data streaming, Sergeant.”
Furusawa’s helmet tilted to one side. Grec waited.
“Negative,” said the Sergeant. “Try re-linking.”
Grec closed her eyes this time. Each of the combat suits could be paired together in a low-level, short-range psychic field—psi-fi, a technology-based by-product of the research conducted by the Fleet’s Psi-Marine Corps. The psi-fi net of each suit did everything, from linking the computer buried in the armor backplate to the helmet’s HUD, connecting various tools like the geophys scanner to the suit’s systems and HUD, to sharing data streams between suits. All Grec had to do was concentrate just a little with her own mind. The suit’s computer did the rest, pairing its psi-fi router with the intended partner unit.
“Nothing,” said the sergeant. Grec opened her eyes and exhaled, and her whole HUD flickered. When it was stable again, the psi-fi indicator was flashing red.
“I have a computer issue,” she said. “Psi-fi just disconnected on me.”
“Me too.” Anderson came over the radio, his voice crushed by the interference.
Grec turned to her sergeant, who nodded, then turned to face the other marines.
“Everyone check their psi-fi net and reboot if necessary. Check in when you’re done.”
Grec let the geophys scanner drop on the tether connecting it to her belt, and flipped the long panel on her armor’s right forearm open. Inside the access panel was a small keyboard and set of sliding switches below a row of LEDs. Grec selected the correct switch for the psi-fi router, flicked it up and down quickly, then waited as the indicator in her HUD went dark, then came back on orange, then a second later changed to green. The others, already rebooted, began checking in.
Anderson. Alonso. Bowen. Palladio. Grec. Khouri. Furusawa.
Khouri.
Grec felt her heart thud in her chest. She spun around in the snow, as did the other five remaining members of the team. They were still one down.
“I heard her,” said Bowen, his helmet swiveling as he looked from the sergeant to the empty white expanse around them and back.
“So did I,” said Alonso. He slid his heavy rifle from his shoulder.
Anderson raised his rifle to the side of his helmet and tilted his head to look along the barrel, aiming back the way they had come. “The fuck is going on?” he asked no one in particular.
Palladio stepped up to Grec. She couldn’t see his face behind his opaque visor, and she knew that her face was likewise hidden, but she recognized his concern, not just for Khouri but for her. She gave a tiny nod. Palladio seemed to pause, then returned the gesture and turned to the sergeant.
“Sergeant, we need to go back,” he said. “Maryam got separated and lost, is all. Horizon blindness. Everything on this iceball is white on white. Won’t take any time to pick her up. She’ll have dug in, back along—”
Furusawa ignored him, and pointed at Anderson. “Shoulder your weapon, Marine. We move to the target.”
Palladio turned to Grec, then back to the sergeant. When his voice returned to the emergency radio he sounded breathless. The popping background sound seemed to swell with his temper.
“We have to go back for her—”
“That’s a negative.”
“But—”
Furusawa turned to the Psi-Marine. “If she’s lost she’ll have dug in, like you said. We’ll pick her up on the way back. March on, Marine. The primary objective takes priority.”
Anderson hissed over the radio and stomped through the snow, coming to a halt in front of Furusawa, his helmet just a few centimeters away from hers.
“What the hell’s the damn hurry?”
Furusawa actually took a step forward, until her visor knocked against Anderson’s.
“We’ve got our orders, Marine. March on.”
As Grec watched, she could see Anderson adjust his grip on his rifle, his finger inching around the trigger. He held it diagonally across his body, pressed close between him and the sergeant.
“What the hell kind of orders are we following anyway?” he asked. His voice was loud in Grec’s ears, the poor quality of the emergency radio channel distorting it strangely.
The HUD flashed in Grec’s visor. She raised the geophys wand and pointed it back the way they had come.
“You’re close to the line, Corporal,” said the sergeant.
Anderson huffed. “This is bullshit, Sergeant, and you know it—”
“That’s enough.” Out of the corner of her eye, Grec saw Furusawa turn around. Anderson laid a gauntlet on the sergeant’s shoulder. Psi-Marine Bowen, standing closest to the pair, moved up to Anderson, his voice punching across the argument.
“Hey! What’s got into you, Darwyn?”
The geophys readout in Grec’s visor was going crazy. She raised the wand higher.
“Sergeant!”
Furusawa moved over to her. Behind, Bowen was pressing a hand into Anderson’s chest. Anderson shook it off, but the heat appeared to have left him, for now, as the marines gathered around Grec.
Furusawa looked out across the snow plain. “What is that?”
“There’s something moving, something big.” Grec glanced at the wand, then moved it around in a wide sweep. “It’s underneath us.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
The ground shook. Alonso, standing at the back of the group, swore and swung his heavy weapon around, looking for something to aim at.
Grec tried to read the geophys data, but it was moving too fast. Then, as the group watched, the ground opened up a few hundred meters back along the trench they’d carved. The thick snow cover began to cave inwards as the trench unzipped into a wider tear that accelerated towards the marines at an alarming pace.
“The fuck?” Anderson voiced what Grec was thinking.
Grec lowered the wand. She felt the sting of adrenaline, like they’d walked into an ambush. She raised her rifle, as did all the rest.
Except Furusawa.
“Do not engage!”
Grec aimed at the moving ground. She could see the barrel of Alonso’s heavy gun light up in red as he prepared to fire. “Sergeant?” he asked.
The marines stood ready, poised. Grec swore and lowered her rifle a little, backing away. Whatever was under the snow would be on them in seconds.
When Furusawa gave the next order, the marines obeyed implicitly, Grec included.
“Run!”
“Ahead, ten o’clock.”
“Affirmative.”
“Move it!”
There was a burst of heavy rifle fire behind them. Grec didn’t turn, just ran in the direction indicated. Ahead, the flat, featureless snow plain began to rise into low hills, striations of dark rock showing through the ice. And at ten o’clock, a larger black shape: the entrance to a cave. They were sitting ducks in the open. Chances are they were sitting ducks under cover, as well, but the cave at least offered options. Grec took a chance and checked over her shoulder.
Alonso paused and fired again into the snow, the superheated plasma bolts throwing up as much ice and snow as the thing burrowing its way after them. At a run, the marines were faster, but in stopping to fire twice, Alonso was very close to their pursuer, the collapsing ground lapping at his boots before he turned tail and fled.
“Cease fire!” Furusawa’s order came over the emergency radio. She was in front and hadn’t stopped running.
The cave was close now. The snow beneath Grec’s boots became shallower, harder-packed. Their powered combat armor made the slog easier, but even so, they would be exhausted soon, pushing through at this pace. Grec only hoped the cave would keep them safe from whatever the hell it was under the snow.
The cave opening had a lip. Furusawa and Anderson jumped over it, then vanished into the blackness, their cries of surprise loud over the radio. Alonso, apparently happy to ignore the First Sergeant’s orders, shouted something about keeping them all covered, but Grec didn’t catch it all, the rhythmic buzzing on the channel so loud it cut out half of his words. She was close to the cave, the lip within reach. Psi-Marine Bowen jumped ahead of her, then she followed. Behind, Alonso had stopped again and rattled off another burst of heavy rifle fire.
The floor of the cave was half a meter lower than the entrance, an icy shelf that fell away at a smooth angle. As soon as she landed on the other side of the cave’s lip, Grec’s legs slipped out from under her. Her backplate cracked on the cave floor and she slid down the incline, into the tangle of marines piled at the back of the cave.
“Jesus, shit.” Anderson picked himself up, the First Sergeant helping him. Bowen and Palladio scrambled to their knees and crawled back to the cave entrance, quickly using the lip to rest their rifles as they took aim. Grec pushed herself onto her knees and turned on the ice, waiting for Alonso to come sliding in.
Nothing.
“Alonso, report,” the sergeant said over the radio. Her voice was swamped with interference. “Report please. Gunnery Sergeant, come in.”
Silence. The rumbling of the sundered ground had stopped, and Alonso’s heavy rifle hadn’t fired again. Bowen got to his feet while Palladio covered the entrance, and moved closer, his movements loud as his hard armor scraped against the walls of the cave. At the back, Grec reached out and touched the walls. While the floor seemed to be a solid block of ice, forming a more-or-less flat, sloping surface, the walls were different. They were dark and shiny, looking almost like graphite, but when she scraped the ceramic-metal plates of her gauntlet over the surface it left no mark.
“Freddy?” Bowen stepped up onto the cave’s lip, rifle in one hand, the butt hard against his armor as he balanced himself against the cave wall with his other hand. He called out again.
Grec glanced at the sergeant, who went to join Bowen. Grec followed.
Outside, the white snow plain of Warworld 3663Ω was still, featureless except for a wide trench, snow and ice piled in two great mounds on either side, stretching back two hundred meters. Grec’s HUD projected a grid over the landscape, mapped the disturbed ground and told her that the geographical feature stopped fifty meters from where she was standing.
First Sergeant Furusawa stepped over the lip of the cave, out into the open.
“Gunnery Sergeant Alonso, report please. Confirm your location.”
Silence.
“Alonso, do you copy? Come in, please.”
Anderson swore, then Grec’s HUD flickered briefly, and went off, and the world was plunged into total darkness.
Bowen took first watch, which just meant standing and pointing his rifle at the cave entrance. The others were gathered at the back wall, two heatsticks from an emergency kit providing warmth and a sickly yellow light. The odd substance of the cave walls seemed to be an exceptionally good conductor of heat, so Furusawa had leaned the snapped, chemical-filled rods against the back wall, trying to keep them off the ice floor in case they melted through. She was sitting next to the sticks, the dead helmet of her combat suit next to her.
As soon as the psi-fi in each suit had shut off completely, they’d had to remove their helmets. The ambient temperature inside the cave was warmer than out in the open—a balmy minus eighteen centigrade—and the heatsticks were beginning to take that up admirably, but in the meantime each marine had unplugged the padding lining of their helmets, the design allowing them to be worn as emergency headgear in just such conditions. Nearby, Anderson sat against the back wall, his helmet wedged between his knees as he worked on the electrical systems inside it with a pair of fine tools.Without a psi-fi network, the helmets couldn’t pair with the combat suit computers, rendering them useless. The suits still had power, that was no problem, but with the psi-fi off for so long, the computers in each had gone to sleep. Over the last two hours they’d tried reboots, switching suit power packs, everything. Nothing worked. Now Anderson was trying something else, seeing if he could boot his helmet separately into a developer mode that would allow him to investigate the glitch.
Anderson didn’t need silence to work, but Grec kept quiet, using the time to process their situation, figure out what the hell was going on and what the hell the First Sergeant was up to.
The others kept quiet too, no doubt feeling the same, thought Grec.
Then her thoughts were interrupted.
I’m sorry about Khouri.
Palladio again, inside Grec’s head. She drew her knees up to her chest, and watched the reflected glow of the heatsticks dance on the smooth wall of the cave.
I know you were close.
She closed her eyes, willed the Psi-Marine to shut up.
But look, she’s out there.
Grec held her breath.
We’ll find her, trust me. And then—
Grec pushed herself up from the cave floor, stepped towards Palladio, and pushed his chest. He slipped backwards on the smooth floor and hit it with a crack.
“Hey!”
“Shut the hell up!” Spittle flew from Grec’s mouth. “And get the fuck out of my head.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” asked Palladio from the floor.
Furusawa stood. “Kat, what is it?”
Grec sighed and waved at Palladio. His eyes were wide, his mouth in a surprised O.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” said Grec. She glanced around. The others were staring at her and the Psi-Marine on the ground. Grec shook her head, then went to join Bowen at the cave entrance. Bowen glanced sideways at her, nodded, then returned his attention to the darkening world outside.
Khouri was dead. She knew it. That voice—the one that had reported in after they’d rebooted their psi-fi the first time—it wasn’t her, she knew it. They’d all heard it, but she knew. It had been different. It was something else. Psi-Corporal Maryam Khouri wasn’t out there, waiting for rescue. The other Psi-Marines, Bowen and Palladio, hadn’t been able to find her with their minds, which meant one thing.
She was dead. And Alonso too. Eaten by the monster under the snow.
“Kat?”
Grec jumped. The First Sergeant was standing next to her. Furusawa glanced at Bowen, then turned away, indicating for Grec to follow.
“Are you okay?” asked Furusawa.
“I’m fine, Sergeant. No problem.” But Grec’s voice was small and quiet, and even as she spoke she knew that she wasn’t fine, not at all.
“I’m sorry about Psi-Corporal Khouri. I knew you were close.”
Grec felt the heat rise in her face. She had to hold it together. She was a Fleet Marine. She swallowed, and asked: “You think she’s dead? Alonso too?”
Furusawa chewed her lip, but didn’t speak. Grec leaned in closer.
“What the hell is going on, Sergeant?” she whispered. “Was Anderson right? Are you following a different set of orders?”
Furusawa raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I follow, Private,” she said, her voice still low but her tone suddenly formal.
“Because,” said Grec, “I’m starting to believe him. This S-A-R is bullshit, Sergeant.”
“Private Grec, I—”
“So what the fuck are we doing here?”
Grec met Furusawa’s eye. The sergeant seemed to be holding her breath.
Then Anderson called out from the back of the cave.
“Got it!”
Furusawa turned and walked away. Grec swore under her breath and followed.
Anderson held his tongue between his front teeth, grimacing as he made a delicate adjustment inside his helmet. He twisted one tool clockwise, and his face was lit from below by the familiar glow of the Fleet HUD. Grec knelt beside him and peered into the helmet, watching as the visor displayed scrolling pages of code as it went through a forced reboot.
Furusawa nodded and folded her arms. “Good work, Anderson. Fix the others, then we can get going.”
Grec’s jaw dropped. “Where the hell to? We need to get back to the drop zone and wait for extraction.”
“We can’t go back,” said Bowen from his position at the cave entrance. He indicated the pitch black outside with his rifle. “Not with that thing out there, whatever it is. Not at night.”
Grec waved him off. “With the suits back online the dark doesn’t matter. We’ll be able to see it before it sees us. We’re goddamn Fleet Marines, remember.”
Bowen shook his head. “It’s taken Khouri and Alonso already, remember?”
Grec stormed to the cave entrance and yanked on Bowen’s shoulder. “Yes, I do remember, you son of a—”
The cave was filled with a buzzing sound. It was sharp, loud, washed with static and echoed off the hard walls, floor, ceiling. Grec and the others look around in surprise, and saw Anderson squinting into his helmet, still on his knees. He twisted a tool, and the noise died as abruptly as it had started.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Anderson dropped his helmet to the cave floor.
Bowen looked at the others “What the hell was that?”
“Some kind of interference,” said Anderson. “Maybe deliberate jamming, I don’t know. It’s swamped the psi-fi. We’re still screwed.”
Furusawa crouched on the cave floor, and stared at the heatsticks.
“It was on the emergency radio too,” she said.
Grec nodded. “And the comms before that.”
Bowen and Palladio exchanged a look, then Palladio tapped his temple. “We heard it too.”
“Shit,” said Furusawa.
Grec moved to her pile of gear at the back of the cave and pulled out the geophys wand. She turned it on and the row of lights blinked on at once, then went out. A moment later, they began to pulse. There was no sound, but as Grec held the scanner up, the other marines gathered around, staring at the wand. The lights flashed to the same rhythm as the buzz from Anderson’s attempted repair. The comms specialist shook his head.
“That’s a hell of a jammer.”
Grec gave a thin smile. “Works though, doesn’t it? It’s knocked us out, totally. Left us helpless in a cave.” She looked up at the sergeant. “Do your mystery orders cover this?”
The two stared at each other for a moment. Out of the corner of her eye, Grec saw Bowen and Palladio exchange a worried look. Then, finally, Furusawa shook her head. She turned to Anderson.
“Break out the lightspeed field transmitter. We’ll contact the ship, get an evac. This isn’t part of the mission at all.”
“Fuck, finally,” said Anderson, before turning to his corner of the cave. He flipped his pack over and began pulling out the heavy-duty transmitter.
Grec stood and folded her arms. She nodded at the sergeant. “You going to tell us jarheads what these secret orders are?”
“No,” said Furusawa, then she raised her rifle and walked to the cave entrance, indicating to Bowen that she would take over the watch.
“Wake up.”
One side of Grec’s face was warm. She shifted, the sensation of her skin sticking to something hard and smooth helping to rouse her.
“Wake the fuck up.”
That, and Anderson whispering in her ear, his breath hot. She opened an eye and pushed herself more upright against the curved wall of the cave.
“Darwyn? What is it?”
Grec looked around. Palladio and Furusawa were asleep on the other side of the cave. A fresh pair of heatsticks had been snapped at some point and rested against the back wall, which had grown very warm indeed. Near the heatsticks, it looked as though the ice floor of the cave had melted a little, the dark of the rock below showing through.
Anderson stood back, and smiled. Grec watched him, then rubbed her face.
“They’re out there, see,” said the comms operator. He pointed to the cave entrance. “Alonso and Khouri. They’re fine. They’re just waiting for us to come out and join them. You coming or what?”
Grec blinked. It was still night outside. She felt groggy. The cave was stuffy, the heatsticks having done a fine job of keeping them from freezing to death.
Then she noticed the problem.
“Where’s Bowen?”
She pushed herself to her feet, and took a step towards the unguarded cave mouth. As she moved, Anderson stepped between her and the entrance.
Grec indicated the cave entrance with a nod. “Who’s on watch?” she asked. “You?”
Anderson closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “Don’t you get it, Kat?” he said. His smile vanished, replaced by an expression that was tight and angry, one that Grec didn’t like. Anderson took a step forward and Grec instinctively took a step back.
Then Anderson looked away and tilted his head, and the smile came back. He nodded. Grec felt ill. He was listening to something. But, surely, he wasn’t listening to—
“Yes,” said Anderson to the air, then he turned back to Grec. “It’s bullshit. Bull. Shit.”
“What is?”
Anderson waved his arms, indicating the cave, the sleeping marines. “This. All this. Bullshit. Search and rescue? Search for what, huh? Rescue who? Rescue fuck, is who. But it’s fine, it’s okay. I’m dealing with them.”
Grec shook her head, then went to wake the sergeant. Anderson had always been edgy, but he was cracking under the pressure. Grec wondered when his last Fleet evaluation had been. Surely he must have been due for a new one, one that would take him off active duty.
As she bent down, Grec noticed more of the floor had melted. More than that, it looked as though someone—Anderson, presumably—had been digging into the softening ice on the other side of the cave, revealing something black and long, part of the rock of the actual cave floor. There was something about it that made Grec curious. She moved closer to get a better look, but Anderson grabbed her arm and pulled her back around to face him.
“Get off,” she cried out, pulling away. Anderson’s grip was tight and as she struggled just got tighter.
“We’re going now, bitch,” Anderson said. He turned towards the cave entrance, pulling Grec after him.
“Stop.”
Anderson turned his head. Furusawa was crouched on the cave floor, a pistol in hand, aimed at the marine. Nearby, Palladio was awake, his eyes open and fixed on the scene, although he hadn’t moved from his position on the floor.
“Don’t you fucking get it?” Anderson let go of Grec, who scrambled back to the others. Anderson didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he pointed again to the cave entrance. “They want us out there, now. Come on! We have to go, now, or we’ll blow the whole mission.”
Grec glanced down at Palladio. The Psi-Marine slowly raised himself up. Anderson pointed at him.
“It’s their fault, you know?” he said. “They’re doing this. But I’m dealing with it.”
Furusawa kept the pistol level. “Dealing with what, Marine?”
Anderson waved his hand. “Them. Those fucking freaks.”
Palladio held his hands up. “Hey now, I don’t know what you think is going on, but—”
It’s okay, Kat.
The voice in Grec’s head was new, but familiar. The relief she felt was instantly swamped by something else: fear. Cold, vertiginous fear.
“Maryam?”
Come outside.
Grec looked at the others. They’d stopped fighting. They must have heard it as well. Palladio shook his head.
“It can’t be her, can it?”
Grec opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to find quite the right words. She wanted Khouri to be alive, to be out there somewhere on the snow plain, lost but dug in, knowing that all she had to do was stay put and conserve power and keep warm and the others would collect her later. The Fleet left no one behind, not now, not ever.
But . . .
Come outside.
A different voice. Furusawa flinched.
Gunnery Sergeant Alonso.
“Palladio,” called Furusawa. “Talk to them.” At the other end of her steady pistol, Anderson stood and smiled, his eyes closed.
Palladio crouched next to the sergeant.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” asked Grec.
“Because,” said Palladio, looking up. “Khouri is dead—I can’t sense her. And Alonso isn’t a Psi-Marine. It can’t be them.”
Come outside. Khouri’s voice again, echoing inside Grec’s head. Furusawa turned to her, her face pale.
“Don’t you get it?” said Anderson. He leapt forward, grabbing the pistol from the distracted Sergeant’s hand. She made a grab towards him, then backed off as she found herself covered by the marine. Anderson waved them all together, until the trio were backed against the rear of the cave.
“Anderson, come on,” said Furusawa.
Come outside, said the voice in Grec’s head that sounded like Alonso, but wasn’t.
“We’ve got to finish the mission,” said Anderson, rictus grin on his face, his free hand rubbing the side of his head.
“Darwyn, what are you doing?” asked Palladio, one hand reaching out to his teammate.
Come outside, Kat, said the voice in Grec’s head that wasn’t, couldn’t have been Khouri. When the voice spoke, there was a buzzing in the background. The weird interference; the jamming signal. And beneath that, other voices—two, three, four—voices that Grec didn’t recognize, all saying the same thing.
Come outside.
Anderson’s aim wavered, then he pulled the gun up and rubbed the heel of his hand into the other side of his head, stretching the skin around his face. His eyes were closed in pain.
“Make them stop,” he said. “Make them fucking stop.”
Furusawa nudged Grec with her elbow. Grec glanced sideways, met the sergeant’s eye, and nodded. She tensed herself, ready to rush forward with the sergeant to disarm and disable Anderson.
“Now,” said Furusawa. She powered forward. Grec went to move, but stopped. Furusawa came to a halt, the pistol in Anderson’s hand nearly touching her forehead.
“Make them stop,” said Anderson. His face was red, tears streaked down it. “Please, make them stop.”
Grec held out her hands. “Drop the gun, Darwyn. Come on.”
Anderson shook his head, then it drooped, his eyes closed, and he moaned in pain. Again the gun hand moved up as he rubbed his temple.
“You don’t get it, do you? Any of you?” he laughed, and pointed to the corner of the floor that he had dug out during the night. “We’re sleeping with the dead and you don’t even get it.”
Grec looked over at the hole. There was something there, under the ice. Not the floor of the cave, but…
“Give it up, Marine!” Furusawa ordered.
Then Anderson’s head snapped up. He smiled, nodded, looked at each of the other marines in turn.
Then he said “Yes, I give up,” put the pistol to the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.
They found Psi-Marine Bowen’s body just outside the cave entrance, a single plasma bolt wound on the back of his head. Anderson must have set his sidearm to silent and shot the Psi-Marine while he was watching the darkness outside.
Now Bowen’s body lay next to Anderson’s on one side of the cave. First Sergeant Furusawa, Psi-Corporal Palladio, and Private Grec stood around the hole in the ice floor near the opposite wall.
Grec had been right. Anderson had found something under the ice, where the heatsticks had begun to melt the cave floor.
A body. A Fleet Marine, although his armor was black rather than the standard blue and olive and had no visible insignia. The corpse was only exposed from the shoulders to head, the rest of him still locked beneath the ice. He was one of the Spec Ops team, had to be.
He wasn’t wearing his helmet. Instead, his bare head was crowned with a nest of what looked like melted metal, tangled strands of varying thickness webbed over his scalp, trailing down over most of his face. At random points, the metal strands poked into the marine’s skin, tiny spots of dark red leaking out around each entry point. It was hard to see under the ice, but it looked like there was more of the grey webbing wrapped around the rest of his body.
It was Grec who broke the silence. “What the hell happened to him?”
“The Spider got him,” said Furusawa.
Grec raised an eyebrow. She gestured at the body. “What, and stored the body on ice?”
“Wait . . .”
Grec and Furusawa turned to Palladio. The Psi-Marine had his eyes closed. Without opening them, he began pointing to the floor.
“There’re more. Four.” He opened his eyes, then knelt down and scraped at the floor. Here the ice was still frozen, but it was a little soft. Palladio managed to slough a few centimeters of frost off the surface, enough to see something else dark further below.
Another body. The Spec Ops team was here, in the cave. Under their feet.
Furusawa stood with her hands on her hips. “Can we get them out?”
Palladio tapped his temple. “Wait, wait . . . they’re dead. But . . . it’s weird, I can sense their brain activity. There’s not much there, but there’s . . . something. I don’t understand it.”
The sergeant pointed back at the partially uncovered body. “Looks like that webbing penetrates the skull. Could it be connected to the central nervous system?”
Grec shook her head. “For what?”
“That’s the question,” said Furusawa. She stood. “Can you operate the lightspeed transmitter, Private?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Good. Set it up. It’s time to get a ride home.”
It was nearly dawn, the abyssal blackness beyond the cave mouth softening to a pale blue.
“Try it again,” said Furusawa.
Grec nodded with a sigh, and shifted her position on the ground next to the lightspeed transmitter. The device was a rectangular panel, fifteen centimeters thick, with a handle along one side. The front was studded with big, bulky switches and knobs, designed to be easily operable by the armored gauntlets worn by a marine out on the field. The transmitter was most commonly used as a beacon, bringing in an airstrike, or marking a target for an orbital attack. Or, in emergencies, calling for rescue. The transmitter was more powerful than the comms units built into their combat suits, which were dead anyway.
Grec flicked a switch, opening the lightspeed link, and repeated the words she had spoken the first time around.
“Blizzard SAR alpha-three-six-six-three to U-Star Hit and Run. Respond please.”
She glanced up at the two marines standing over her, then held her breath. She knew what was coming next. She twisted the controls.
The rhythmic buzzing filled the cave. The same sound as on the comms, as on the emergency radio. The same signal picked up by Grec’s geophys scanner. The same sound heard by the Psi-Marines. The same sound heard in Grec’s head when the voices of the dead had “spoken.” And here it was on the lightspeed link, stronger than ever.
They were cut off, well and truly.
A thought occurred to Grec, something she had wondered about when they had first come into the cave. She looked up at the ceiling, then stood from the transmitter and walked over to the wall. She ran her gauntleted fingers across the surface—as she had noticed before, it was hard, glassy, a dark silver-grey. Maybe there was something in the cave itself that was interfering with everything . . . although that was impossible, as there were only a handful of alloys that could block a lightspeed signal . . .
“Oh God,” Grec whispered, her hand falling away from the wall.
Furusawa stiffened. “What is it?”
Grec reached toward the wall of the cave again, then yanked her hand back, as though expecting a shock. She turned to her sergeant.
“This isn’t a cave.”
“What do you mean?” asked Palladio from behind them.
Furusawa reached forward, running her own hand over the wall. Then she scratched at it with the metal tip of her gauntlet, and gasped.
“It’s made of herculanium.”
“How can a cave be made of herculanium?” asked Palladio, joining them at the wall.
“Because it’s not a cave,” said Grec. “It’s an eggshell. We’re standing inside a Spider egg.”
Grec held the geophys wand in one hand, her other tightly wrapped around the grip of her rifle, as she stood in the cave’s—in the eggshell’s—entrance. Without the automatic adjustments provided by her helmet, the snow plain was a brilliant white expanse of nothing in the morning light, bright enough to hurt. And without the HUD indicators, they would have to follow the trench back to the drop zone or get lost in the snow.
The trench that was carved not just by their own march, but by whatever was out there, hiding somewhere under the surface.
The Spider.
Grec wondered what it was doing here. Spiders hatched en mass in deep space; not planetside, not alone. Vast asteroid fields comprised entirely of hollow herculanium spheroids were carefully mapped by the Fleet, providing data on Spider population and spread. The hatcheries were also a boon for both the Fleet and private mining companies alike, enterprises which frequently clashed as they moved in to process the eggshells into more manageable herculanium ingots. The metal was something both sides of the war were in need of—the Spiders were made of it, as were the U-Stars of the Fleet.
Grec had seen Spider eggshells before—two specimens, one intact, another smaller example split in half, were held by the Fleet Academy on Earth for training. Grec remembered the workshop, being lectured about the Spider lifecycle as the tutor led them around the interior of the divided specimen, a hemisphere ten meters across. The Spider lifecycle was as mysterious as the gestalt’s very origins—how the mechanical, robotic machine creatures were somehow constructed in miniature on a Spider factory planet, billions of baby creatures packaged into eggs which were then scattered into space when the planet was deliberately shattered. The eggs drifted, the Spiders inside growing, building themselves into larger machines of war until they were ready to hatch.
An entire division of the Fleet was dedicated to studying this process, hoping to find some flaw, some secret which would enable the Fleet to get the upper hand in a war that was going poorly.
But a Spider egg on a planet? It was embedded in the side of the hills, making it mistakable for a natural cavern. It must have crashed, split open, disgorging an undeveloped Spider which, perhaps following a natural instinct, had found protection by burrowing into the snow. It must have been an accidental arrival, because Warworld 3663 was light years from anywhere, and uninhabited—of no interest to the Spiders, and, consequently, of no interest to the Fleet.
Except the Fleet had sent a Spec Ops team. A Spec Ops team that the Spider had caught, wrapped in web, and preserved under the ice floor of its old egg.
Grec lowered the geophys scanner and turned back to the others in the cave.
“They were here to get the Spider, weren’t they Sergeant?” she asked.
Furusawa said nothing. Palladio nodded. “And we are too, right? S-A-R wasn’t the mission. The Fleet wants the Spider.”
“And,” said Grec, “they’ll just keep sending teams in until they get it.”
“Or until they run of out marines.”
Grec nodded. “Like they ran out of Spec Ops. They’re too valuable. Better to send in regular marines, with Spec Ops to lead them.” She stepped down off the lip of the entrance and walked up to Furusawa. “Am I getting warmer, Sergeant?” She paused. “At the briefing, you spoke over Commander Weinberg. Is First Sergeant even your real rank?”
The geophys scanner bleated. Grec swore and checked the reading, then ran back to the cave entrance. Palladio followed.
“What is it?” he asked.
Grec pointed the scanner out into the open. The lights still pulsed with the interference from the cave, but the genuine data was too strong to be swamped completely.
“It’s moving again,” said Grec. “Shit.” She’d have to leave the questions for later.
“We go back to the drop zone, signal for evac.” Furusawa shouldered her rifle and picked up the lightspeed transmitter. “We’ll open a channel when we’re clear of the interference.”
Palladio stepped back into the cave. “We go out there, we get eaten.”
“Or we stay here and get added to the larder,” said Furusawa. She stopped at the entrance and handed the lightspeed transmitter to Grec, who took it in one hand. “Use the geophys,” said the sergeant. “We can watch it with the scanner, stay out of its way until we can get a signal up. Palladio can scramble the Spider’s sensors with his psi.”
“It takes more than one of us to jam a Spider,” said Palladio. “We’ll be dead before we reach the drop zone.”
Furusawa flicked the safety off her rifle and the end of the barrel flickered to red. She stepped up to the Psi-Marine. “Just do your job, Psi-Marine, and I’ll do mine.”
Grec pointed at the bodies of Bowen and Anderson at the back of the cave. “What about them? And the bodies under the ice? The Fleet doesn’t leave anyone behind, Sergeant.”
Furusawa smiled. Grec felt ill.
“You’re in the Spec Ops now, Marine. Different rules.” The smile dropped. “We travel parallel to the trench, but stay clear of it. Let’s go.”
They ran out onto the snow plain. Out of the herculanium interior of the cave-like eggshell, warmed all through the night by heatsticks, the change in temperature was like a slap in the face. Grec heard Palladio swear behind her even as her own breath caught in her throat, the freezing air threatening to choke her.
She stumbled onwards, the First Sergeant—or whatever her real rank was—ahead, plowing a path through the snow that got steadily deeper and deeper the farther they got from the hillside, until just a few meters later it was up to their knees. The augmented strength of the combat suits—the powered joints and motivators by design unaffected by the armor’s offline computer—lessened the effort required to run through the snow, but not by much. If they still had their helmets, Grec thought, and the psi-fi link between their minds and the suits, then the armor would have responded to the task. As it was, they made difficult and slow progress.
Then the geophys scanner buzzed in Grec’s hand. Movement, below them.
“We’ve got company,” Grec shouted over the crunching schwoosh as they moved through the snow.
From behind: “Incoming!”, and then three muffled thuds as Palladio opened fire with his plasma rifle. Grec turned to see the Psi-Marine shooting from the hip as a large area of the ground behind them began to bulge upwards, the snowy covering cracking and sliding apart in great slabs as the Spider stood up from its cover. Palladio swept his rifle up, spreading his shots up the shifting mound of snow. The pulse ammo sparked as it hit something, stripping away more of the ice and snow, revealing the machine rising up out of the ground.
Grec fumbled with her own rifle to fire, but with the geophys scanner and the transmitter in hand, she was slow. Before she had brought her weapon to bear, the sergeant grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backwards.
“Come on!”
Behind, Palladio had ceased fire and was running away from the Spider, which seemed to pause, perhaps getting its bearings.
It was silver grey, the same matte color as the herculanium of its egg. The machine’s body was spherical, perhaps ten meters across and formed from individual curved plates which slid and shifted as the thing moved. From between the plates, a red light shone—the light, Grec knew, of the solar plasma that boiled in the creature’s core, a power source held in check within a lattice of magnetic fields. Eight eyes—four large, four small—formed an optical array on the front of the body, surrounded by other stubby sensors and antennae of varying size and length, all made of something black and glassy.
Palladio stopped and turned, firing on the enemy machine again. His pulse fire skittered across the machine’s sensor array, but didn’t seem to have any effect.
“Scramble it!” Furusawa called out.
“Affirmative!”
Palladio stopped shooting and lowered his weapon. He stood still, and then after a moment the air was filled with the buzzing, clicking sound. This time it wasn’t just in Grec’s head. It was a real sound, reverberating over the snow plain.
Palladio collapsed onto his knees. “I . . . can’t do it. We’re not the only ones needing evac—it’s sending out its own distress call. The signal is swamping everything else.”
They were dead, Grec knew it. As if responding to her thoughts, the machine rose higher into the air, eight huge, curved, knife-like legs erupting from the snow, flexing, straightening as they lifted the Spider into the gray sky. Five meters. Ten meters. Twenty. Palladio toppled backwards.
Grec dropped the transmitter and leapt forward, reaching for the Psi-Marine laid out in the snow. She got close, nearly close enough to grab one arm and pull, only Furusawa was on her shoulders again. The Sergeant yanked backwards and the pair fell into the snow.
“Get off!” yelled Grec through a mouthful of snow. She jabbed an elbow backwards and was met with a cry from underneath her, then she pushed herself back to her knees. “Palladio!”
The Spider stood over the Psi-Marine, who lay, unmoving in the snow. The machine’s spherical body rotated backwards a few degrees, until a pyramidal structure on its belly was pointed at the Psi-Marine.
“No!” But Grec was helpless. Behind, she heard Furusawa unearthing herself from the snow.
The Spider’s mouth opened.
The heat was incredible, even from a distance, blasting out in a wide cone from the opening in the machine as its churning plasma core was exposed. Snow and ice vaporized in great clouds of steam around Palladio. He cried out and rolled over to escape the inferno, his face buried in his arms.
The Spider lowered its body down, the whole structure leaning forward on the four larger, scythe-like legs, as two of the smaller forward supports—more like articulated arms than legs—reached forward.
Grec scrambled in the snow until she had her plasma rifle back in her hands. She raised the sight to her eye and took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm, to make the shot. Their weapons had been useless against the herculanium shell of the machine creature, but there was an opportunity here to hit something far more vulnerable.
The furnace-like mouth of the Spider was angled down towards the ground, towards Palladio. Grec’s target was small, but relatively stationary. She opened fire, sending white tracer pulses towards it. The first couple impacted on the surface plates on the front of the Spider, but the next flew true, vanishing into the interior of the machine.
At the ends of the Spider’s arms, pincer claws opened, shut, opened, shut.
Grec’s shot had no effect. The Spider was unstoppable, even in this immature state. She heard Furusawa order her to run, but the roaring of the Spider’s distress call was deafening and Grec decided that she hadn’t heard her properly. She raised her rifle to her eye again, pressed her cheek against the side of the weapon. Perhaps she could take out the legs, or the arms—maybe the joints were fragile, more susceptible to plasma bolts—before the thing got Palladio.
She took aim, trying to track the movement of the creature’s arms, but she was too slow. The pincers grabbed Palladio by the legs, and he cried out as he was pulled backwards. Grec swore, fired, but too high—if she tried for the arm joints now she’d hit the Psi-Marine. Her shots tore up the front center of the machine, dragging a vertical line between the sensor array on the front, but as the impact flashes faded, she could see the shots hadn’t even scratched it.
The Spider was oblivious, apparently content with its catch, as it began to sink back into the snow, dragging Palladio with it. The machine’s legs folded in and then the body itself vanished below the ground. Palladio slid backwards, the pincers still around his legs, and then was gone. Soon there was nothing but a mountain of torn-up snow and ice, surrounded by a small lake of steaming melt water. Palladio and the Spider were gone.
Grec dropped her rifle, screamed at the sky, then looked over her shoulder. Furusawa had resumed their journey back to the drop zone.
Grec grabbed for the lightspeed transmitter, then pushed herself to her feet, using the rectangular box for leverage.
Then she trudged after the sergeant, and she kept the safety on her rifle off.
Furusawa had stopped, and was looking up at the gray sky like she expected the unbroken cloud layer to part and for salvation to descend from the heavens. Grec could see her body heaving with effort, her breath gathering in a cloud in front of her. Since the Spider had taken Palladio, their journey had been uninterrupted, the geophys scanner silent.
Furusawa turned around and Grec raised her plasma rifle. She had it aimed right between the sergeant’s eyes.
“You need to tell me about your orders,” said Grec. For her part, Furusawa didn’t react, she just regarded the marine with a smug expression. Grec ground her teeth and kept the rifle level. Perhaps that was to be expected. Spec Ops were different from the rest of the regular recruits, and the two divisions rarely mixed well.
“S-A-R, plain and simple,” said Furusawa. It was like she said it as a challenge, a dare for Grec to accept or reject.
Grec’s finger curled around the rifle’s trigger. Like Furusawa, she was hot from the run, but the air temperature was perilously low and she knew that out here in the open, without the protection of their helmets, they would freeze to death soon enough. If they weren’t evacuated.
If the Spider didn’t get them first.
“Fuck S-A-R.” Grec sniffed the frozen air. “Is the Fleet so desperate to capture a Spider in secret they’ll send down a ground team with a false briefing?”
Furusawa laughed. “The briefing was accurate. You just weren’t given the whole picture.”
Grec moved the rifle forward. “Try me.”
The sergeant rolled her lips, then pointed at the transmitter Grec had dumped in the snow.
“Get the transmitter set up so we can signal the Hit and Run.”
“Tell me what’s going on or we’ll wait here for the Spider to get us.”
“Private—”
Grec swung her rifle to one side and shot once into the snow, then returned her aim to Furusawa’s forehead.
The ground shook.
“I don’t think you should have done that,” said the Sergeant.
Grec looked around as the air was filled with the buzzing, chirping sound of the Spider distress call. The ground shook again and the snow behind them exploded in shower of white snow and blue ice. The Spider rose up from the ground, its scissor legs unfolding as it stood.
Beside Grec, Furusawa dropped to her knee and raised her rifle, taking aim. Grec knocked the barrel down.
“Wait!” she said, and pointed.
The Spider lowered one of its pincer arms to reveal Palladio, held upright in the machine’s other claw, the two pincers having been cupped together like a protective shell around the marine. From under the machine’s body, hot exhaust from its mouth blasted clouds of steam from the ground as it periodically opened and closed, opened and closed, like the thing was breathing.
The Spider stood, rocking slightly on its legs.
“Palladio?” Grec called out. “He’s alive!”
He was bloody, battered, and had one arm wrapped firmly around his middle. His eyes were closed, like he was concentrating.
“I managed to hack its psi as it pulled me under and got it to resurface, but your shot attracted it.” Palladio winced in obvious pain. “Quick. I can’t hold it for long.”
“He’s jammed it.” Furusawa lowered her weapon. “Good work, Marine.” She turned to Grec. “Signal the Hit and Run. We’re going to need a cargo hopper—I’ll give you the request code.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”
Furusawa ignored her and turned back to the machine. “You wanted to know what my orders were. You might well get the chance to find out.”
The Spider shuddered, and there was a change in the tone of its distress beacon. Atop the machine, Palladio shifted and gasped in pain.
“It’s a battery, Kat,” he called, his eyes still closed. “It’s using the lost team as a psychic battery to boost its distress beacon.”
“What?”
“That’s why it took Khouri. It figured out what she was, then came after the rest of us.” Palladio cried out in pain. “It’s trying to use me too . . . I can keep it jammed, but its drawing on the others back at the cave. It’ll break free before help arrives.”
The Spider shuddered again and one leg crept forward.
Palladio was right, Grec knew. It took whole fireteams of Psi-Marines to jam Spider networks. One Psi-Marine—one injured Psi-Marine—couldn’t last long. Not even against an immature Spider—one that was tapping into the extra psi-power provided by its victims stored under the ice.
As if on cue, Palladio gasped and the machine took another step forward.
Grec dropped to the snow. Maybe they had a chance, a slim one. She only hoped the Hit and Run was ready and waiting.
“No time,” said Palladio, shaking his head. His arm dropped from his middle, revealing cracked combat armor stained scarlet with blood, which trickled down over the optics of the Spider. “No time.”
The transmitter was ready. Grec looked up, saw the Sergeant raise her rifle.
The Sergeant fired, not at the Spider, but at Palladio. His body jerked as the plasma round hit him, then he slumped forward. Grec rushed toward Furusawa, taking the sergeant out in a tackle. They toppled sideways; as soon as Furusawa hit the ground, Grec pushed herself to her knees, wrenching the sergeant over on to her back, and pulled her gauntleted fist back for a punch.
The air was suddenly still, quiet. Grec looked up. The Spider’s beacon had shut down, and the machine itself dimmed, the red light shining from between the moving body plates fading. The mouth on the underside closed, and the Spider fell, its legs collapsing. Grec cried out in surprise and dived to the side, grabbing for Furusawa as she did so, but the Sergeant was heavy in her combat armor and as the Spider’s body collided with the ground, Grec was thrown into the air. She landed back in the snow, filling her mouth, nose, eyes. She coughed, gasped, tried to get herself upright. She slid again, and managed to roll over and look back.
The Spider had fallen clear of Furusawa, but the sergeant wasn’t moving. Grec crawled back to her, then saw the snow underneath the sergeant was quickly turning red. Embedded in the sergeant’s chest was a long, curved piece of metal, part of one of the Spider’s pincer claws. Furusawa’s eyes were open, and she stared at the sky, looking for the rescue that had never come.
She’d found Palladio’s body lying a few yards away, thrown clear from the falling Spider. She dragged him and the sergeant away from the wrecked Spider, which lay smoking in the slushy snow.
The sergeant had made the right decision. Grec knew this, even though she wasn’t sure she would have been able to do it herself. Despite being dragged under the snow and injured, Palladio had reached out with his mind to jam the Spider’s AI. The only way to prevent the Spider from burning out his mind and then killing Grec and the sergeant was to kill him. Suddenly breaking the psychic link—a link amplified by the minds of the dead marines the Spider was using as a battery—would send a shockwave back to the Spider, enough to fry its CPU. Furusawa had realized this and took the decision, one that would have saved her had Grec not intervened.
Had Grec not intervened.
She’d searched Furusawa’s body, found nothing out of the ordinary. No sealed orders, no secret ID card that revealed her true rank and identity. As far as the official record would go, she was just a First Sergeant in the Fleet Marine Corps. Killed in action, Warworld 3663. The Omega classification could be removed, at least.
Grec knelt in the snow and activated the transmitter. Now clear of interference from the Spider’s beacon, the transmitter’s signal light shone bright blue, and the device began to softly beep.
Fleet Marine Private Katarina Grec knelt in the snow. She thought of Alonso and Bowen and Palladio. She thought of Anderson, and of the secrets that had died with Furusawa.
She thought about the Fleet and how fucked up it was and how maybe she didn’t want to be part of it, not anymore.
She thought of Maryam Khouri and she looked up into the sky, and she waited for rescue.
“Cold War” copyright © 2014 by Seven Wonders Limited
Art copyright © 2014 by Victor Mosquera |
Nov 1, 2016; Brooklyn, NY, USA; New York Islanders left wing Andrew Ladd (16) is taken down as he plays the puck against the Tampa Bay Lightning during the second period at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The New York Islanders don’t reveal much information on player injuries. What little we do get is vague. For instance, GM Garth Snow casually dropped that Andrew Ladd was hurting for months, and that was the reason for his scratch. No mention of the specific ailment in his statement. No follow-up from the press.
I was watching the Islanders -Kings game this past Saturday night. Not so unusual for a New York Islanders blogger. Since I live in Los Angeles I was watching the King’s feed. And something amazing happened a few minutes into the game.
Jim Fox and Chris Cuthbert were doing the game. Cuthbert, filling in for Bob Miller, is fantastic. One of the best in my book. Though I admit to being partial to hearing a Canadian accent calling a game.
Anyway, early in the first Fox is discussing the New York Islanders scratches for the night and says the most amazing thing. “Andrew Ladd is out with a lower back injury. He first hurt his back during training camp and it hasn’t been right all year”
Uhh…Come Again?
What? Did you know that? Garth Snow finally mentioned a nagging injury last week but didn’t specify it at all.
Why didn’t the Islander’s own color guy, Butch Goring, ever gives this piece of info? He is not an employee of the Islanders. He shouldn’t fear the wrath of Garth… much.
Where was Arthur Staple on this? I think he does a great job, but if the info is out there for Jim Fox, how can Arthur not stumble upon it? When Staple gets unfairly dumped on for not being more critical he likes to answer that he is a reporter and not a columnist.
Well, if he is a reporter, than he needs to report.
I am sympathetic to the idea that a person’s medical records are private, and should not be divulged without permission. But there is an implicit sacrifice of privacy when you become a professional athlete. Your physical condition, as it might affect performance, is fair game.
I don’t want to know who has a hangnail, or premature hair loss (and that’s just the H’s).
What I want, and expect, is that the people who are empowered with the sacred (yeah, alright, that’s hyperbole) duty to ask the question and chase the answers. Staple and Cygalis aren’t expected to be Woodward and Bernstein.
I don’t expect them to meet a source in a dark underground parking garage. They don’t need three sources before they go to print. But did anyone even ask the question about Ladd’s injury?
Did they put any effort into finding an answer?
Or have years of a Kim Jung Snow style regime beaten them into intellectual submission on the injury disclosure issue?
But aye, here’s the rub. If this medical information is so closely held, how the hell did Fox get it?
I sent him an email to ask the question. No response yet. |
Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Image from Texas Tech
LUBBOCK, TX (NEWS RELEASE) - In 1984, Sankar Chatterjee – curator of paleontology for the Museum of Texas Tech University – and his student, Bryan Small, made an astounding discovery.
Working on Seymour Island in Antarctica, they uncovered the fossilized skull of an animal they’d never seen before. While it was obviously a plesiosaur – a Cretaceous-period marine reptile scientists first discovered in the early 1600s – this plesiosaur was unlike any previously found. They named the new species Morturneria and brought its skeleton back to the Museum of Texas Tech.
Now, 33 years later, Chatterjee and his team have made a new discovery about Morturneria, one that adds a whole new dimension to science’s understanding of plesiosaurs – and larger than that, to the understanding of evolution itself.
More than 65 million years ago, the Earth’s oceans were populated with many animals still found there today, like fish, krill and sharks. But one of the oceans’ biggest predators, the plesiosaurs, went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs on land.
“Often, plesiosaurs are called sea monsters,” said Chatterjee, a Horn Professor in the Department of Geosciences. “They were large – 50 feet long, superb swimmers and occupied the top of the marine food chain. Although dinosaurs are very familiar to everyone, during their days, the sea was ruled by these monster-like plesiosaurs. Like dinosaurs on land, they dominated the sea from Arctic to Antarctic waters. ”
Plesiosaurs had a broad, flat body and short tail, four long flippers they used to “fly” through the water, long necks and very sharp teeth.
“The teeth of most plesiosaurs are conical, stout, sharp, robust and ideal for stabbing and killing large animals,” Chatterjee said.
But as he wrote in his 1984 paper announcing Morturneria’s discovery, “the long, slender and delicate teeth may have formed a ‘trapping’ device that enabled (the animals) to feed on small fish and crustaceans that abound in the same deposits.”
This notation led an international team of Chilean, Argentinian and American paleontologists to take a closer look at Morturneria’s teeth.
“In our 1984 paper, we described the unusual teeth of Morturneria and their probable function,” he said. “However, our new international team, who had worked on plesiosaurs from many continents, found them fascinating and unique.”
Chatterjee and the team reconstructed Morturneria with a large, round head, a huge mouth and tiny teeth that point the wrong way. The teeth did not meet tip to tip as in all other plesiosaurs, but lay together in a battery that strained food particles from the water.
“When the jaw was closed, teeth from the upper and lower jaws formed a nice trap,” Chatterjee said. “Basically, the animal would swallow a school of krill, close the jaws to let the water out, but keep the krill inside for chewing and swallowing. With these kind of interdigitating delicate teeth, the animal could not tackle the large fish or shelled animals (called ammonites) that were the favorite foods of most plesiosaurs.”
The team’s finding, published in the new issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, is that Morturneria used a filter-feeding method. This feeding style is unknown in other marine reptiles but is found in today’s baleen whales. F. Robin O’Keefe of Marshall University was the article’s lead author.
The identification of Morturneria’s whale-like filter feeding is a startling case of convergent evolution between reptiles and mammals. Plesiosaurs and whales shared many of the intervening steps in the evolution of this feeding style and their extreme morphologies are similar despite arising from different ancestors.
Chatterjee stresses convergent evolution does not imply Morturneria was in any way related to today’s baleen whales; it just means they both evolved the same way.
“They had adopted similar lifestyle and feeding,” he said. “For example, birds and bats fly, but birds are now considered dinosaurs and bats are mammals. These superficial similarities of lifestyles and behavior are called ‘convergent evolution.’”
(News release from Texas Tech) |
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This (almost) daily post intends to follow up the activity changes of volcanoes all over the world.
This post is written by geologist Rodger Wilson who specializes in Volcano seismicity and Armand Vervaeck. Please feel free to tell us about new or changed activity if we haven't written about it. -
April 28, 2013 volcano activity
We start our daily overview with another great video from yesterday's Etna (Sicily, Italy) Paroxysm (short powerful eruption)
KVERT reported no significant changes in eruptive/seismic at the five active Kamchatkan volcanoes: Tolbachik, Sheveluch, Bezymianny, Kizimen, and Karymsky. Seismicity at Gorely volcano, which presently exhibits a high level of hydrothermal activity, remains at a moderate level.
Small shallow earthquakes continue in varying daily numbers at Iliamna volcano (Alaska Range) (station INE).
Several small earthquakes occurred at/near Mount Rainier (Cascade Range) (WA) (station RCS) and Mount Saint Helens (station VALT) today.
Seismic data from Colima volcano (Mexico) continue to be unavailable. The Colima volcanocam showed no obvious surface activity when viewed a few hours ago. Exhalations occurred at an average rate of nearly two events per hour at Popocatepetl volcano overnight. An exceptionally large outburst took place at the volcano earlier today and launched an ash-laden plume to over a kilometer in height above the cone. The Popo seismogram continues to show mainly low-level volcanic tremor occurring within/beneath the cone.
Volcanic tremor is high at Pacaya volcano (Guatemala) (station PCG) at this time, but surface activity has been relatively low. Small strombolian explosions, incandescent rockfalls from the snout of the newly extruded lava flow, and nearly continuous "locomotive sounds" characterize activity at Fuego volcano (station FG3) today. Small vulcanian explosions have recently increased from the Caliente dome at the Santiaguito Dome Complex (Santa Maria volcano ) (station STG3), some are visible on today's Santiaguito seismogram.
Volcanic tremor remains slightly elevated at San Cristobal volcano (Nicaragua) (station CRIN). Magnitudes of seismic events at Telica volcano (station TELN) have increased overnight, but their rate of occurrence has been only slightly above the "normal" high background level observed at the volcano. Volcanic tremor at Masaya volcano (station MASN) remains unstable, but has generally declined in amplitude over the past few days.
Higher-than-normal magnitude volcanic earthquakes continue at San Miguel volcano (El Salvador) (station VSM).
Local earthquakes and hydrothermal "noise" continue at Poas volcano (Costa Rica) (station POA2) today.
Seismicity remains unstable at Nevado Del Ruiz volcano (Colombia) (station OLLZ). Small earthquakes affect Sotara (station SOSO) and Cumbal (station MEVZ) volcanoes, and pulses of gas (and ash) emission tremor have recently appeared on seismograms at Galeras volcano (station CUVZ).
Eruptive activity has re-commenced at Tungurahua volcano (Ecuador) (station RETU) less than two days after we noted an increase in seismicity (see yesterday's report) at the volcano. Small earthquakes continue, though with reduced amplitudes today, at Cotopaxi volcano (station CO1V). Co-eruptive(?) seismicity has increased at Reventador volcano (station CONE) since yesterday.
Volcanic tremor continues its slow decline at White Island volcano (New Zealand), but surface hydrothermal activity remains strong there.
OMI satellite data have not been updated during the past few days (another victim of "The Sequester"?). Volcanic "hotspots" were identified in MODIS satellite images of Tolbachik, Fuego, Etna and Stromboli (Italy), and Batu Tara (eastern Java) volcanoes.
zTime goes here |
President Trump has demanded that the House of Representatives vote on the Republican health care bill Friday, even though he doesn’t have the votes lined up.
If the vote is taken and the bill goes down, it will be a tremendous political embarrassment to the new administration. But if this gambit works, it will be remembered as a bold legislative play that paid off — albeit in the service of a deeply flawed and extremely unpopular bill that may never get out of the Senate.
Whatever happens, it’s worth noting that this is a deeply unusual legislative strategy. The usual practice for big, controversial bills like this is for congressional leaders to ensure they have votes in hand — or at least really close to in hand — before actually taking the vote.
Then when leaders are confident they have or are close to getting juuust enough votes to get the bill through, they actually hold the vote. Nancy Pelosi, for one, was a master of this strategy during her speakership, which resulted in several very narrow House victories on top Obama agenda items in his first two years.
Why most leaders get the votes before taking the vote
This practice is the norm in part because it’s simply embarrassing for a leader and a president to bring up a bill and have it fail.
More broadly, though, it’s done because party leaders generally want to protect their party members, and particularly their members in swing districts, from casting tough votes unless it’s totally necessary.
Voting for an intensely controversial bill like the American Health Care Act is politically painful, particularly for members of Congress in vulnerable districts. These votes can be used against them in attack ads and hurt their reelection campaigns.
Still, if members of Congress take a tough vote and the bill becomes law, at least they’ve achieved something. The worst outcome for a leader, though, is if you force your members to take a tough vote and then the bill fails anyway. Then you’ve forced them to stick their necks out for no benefit, and made them more vulnerable to attacks in the next election.
This is exactly what happened in 1993 when House Democrats voted to pass Bill Clinton’s “BTU tax” on energy, a bill that died in the Senate. And even Pelosi let it happen once in 2009, when a fair number of Democrats in vulnerable districts voted for a cap-and-trade bill that, again, died in the Senate.
In both cases, many of those Democrats then lost their seats — and their party lost the House — in the next midterm election. (“Getting BTUed” briefly became a fairly common phrase on the Hill.) And both of those bills at least got through the House; casting a vote for an unpopular proposal that ends up failing in the House seems like even more pointless.
Savvy party leaders want to avoid that bad outcome, so they generally try to only hold a tough vote if they’re confident they can get the bill across the finish line, at least in their chamber.
Harvard professors David King and Richard Zeckhauser demonstrated this with a clever 2003 paper that shows that on controversial congressional votes, “small victories” are a far more common result than “small defeats.” That’s in large part because if leaders figure out advance that they’re headed to a narrow defeat on a vote, they preempt that outcome by not holding the vote at all (until they can line up more votes, at least).
But Trump isn’t a typical party leader
Trump, however, has demanded that the House vote on the AHCA even though he’s not sure if it can pass. He’s probably taking this approach for a few reasons.
First, Trump sees himself as a savvy negotiator and dealmaker willing to employ bold stratagems. Here, he sees himself as calling holdout conservatives’ bluff. (Maybe he’s right!)
The Trump playbook pic.twitter.com/FQBQJU9Mx0 — Brandon Wall (@Walldo) March 24, 2017
Second, as a businessman and Washington outsider, Trump has never actually governed before. As a result, he simply may not be all that familiar with legislative leaders’ dynamics on close votes. (A piece by Axios’s Jonathan Swan provided some evidence for this, claiming that congressional GOP leaders fear “the vote will collapse” if they don’t line up the votes in advance, while the White House is more optimistic.)
Third, Trump may not care all that much about trying to protect Republican members of Congress. He himself came up as an outsider in the party, and hardly any members of Congress endorsed him. He may naturally have little loyalty to the party as a result. (Though he may live to regret it if Republicans lose the House.)
Fourth, the president doesn’t seem to care all that much about health reform in particular. It wasn’t his top priority during the campaign, and people close to him are already leaking to the New York Times’s Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman that he regrets agreeing to put it ahead of tax reform on the agenda. If it fails, he may think, So what?
Finally, Trump is vindictive and legendarily holds on to grudges. Rather than try to make GOP members of Congress more comfortable, he may want to force them to take a clear stand for or against him — so, perhaps, he can retaliate against those who remain defiant. |
The first time Herb Hyman spoke with the rep from Starbucks, in 1991, the life of his small business flashed before his eyes. For three decades, Hyman’s handful of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf stores had been filling the caffeine needs of Los Angeles locals and the Hollywood elite: Johnny Carson had his own blend there; Jacques Cousteau arranged to have Hyman’s coffee care packages meet his ship at ports around the world; and Dirty Dozen leading man Lee Marvin often worked behind the counter with Hyman for fun. But when the word came down that the rising Seattle coffee juggernaut was plotting its raid on Los Angeles, Hyman feared his life’s work would be trampled underfoot. Starbucks even promised as much. “They just flat-out said, ‘If you don’t sell out to us, we’re going to surround your stores,’ ” Hyman recalled. “And lo and behold, that’s what happened—and it was the best thing that ever happened to us.”
Ever since Starbucks blanketed every functioning community in America with its cafes, the one effect of its expansion that has steamed people the most has been the widely assumed dying-off of mom and pop coffeehouses. Our cities once overflowed with charming independent coffee shops, the popular thinking goes, until the corporate steamroller known as Starbucks came through and crushed them all, perhaps tossing the victims a complimentary Alanis Morrisette CD to ease the psychic pain. In a world where Starbucks operates nearly 15,000 stores, with six new ones opening each day, isn’t this a reasonable assumption? How could momma and poppa coffee hope to survive? But Hyman didn’t misspeak—and neither did the dozens of other coffeehouse owners I’ve interviewed. Strange as it sounds, the best way to boost sales at your independently owned coffeehouse may just be to have Starbucks move in next-door.
That’s certainly how it worked out for Hyman. Soon after declining Starbucks’s buyout offer, Hyman received the expected news that the company was opening up next to one of his stores. But instead of panicking, he decided to call his friend Jim Stewart, founder of the Seattle’s Best Coffee chain, to find out what really happens when a Starbucks opens nearby. “You’re going to love it,” Stewart reported. “They’ll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar.” The prediction came true: Each new Starbucks store created a local buzz, drawing new converts to the latte-drinking fold. When the lines at Starbucks grew beyond the point of reason, these converts started venturing out—and, Look! There was another coffeehouse right next-door! Hyman’s new neighbor boosted his sales so much that he decided to turn the tactic around and start targeting Starbucks. “We bought a Chinese restaurant right next to one of their stores and converted it, and by God, it was doing $1 million a year right away,” he said.
Hyman isn’t the only one who has experienced this Starbucks reverse jinx. Orange County, Calif., coffeehouse owner Martin Diedrich started hyperventilating when he first heard a Starbucks was opening “within a stone’s throw” of his cafe, yet he reported similar results: “I didn’t suffer whatsoever. Ultimately I prospered, in no small part because of it.” Ward Barbee, the recently passed founder of the coffee trade magazine Fresh Cup, saw this happen scores of times. “Anyone who complains about having a Starbucks put in next to you is crazy,” he told me. “You want to welcome the manager, give them flowers. It should be the best news that any local coffeehouse ever had.”
Now, lest we get carried away with the happy civic results of Starbucks’ global expansion, I hasten to point out that the company isn’t exactly thrilled to have this effect on its local competitors’ sales. Starbucks is actually trying to be ruthless in its store placements; it wants those independents out of the way, and it frequently succeeds at displacing them through other means, such as buying a mom and pop’s lease or intimidating them into selling out. Beyond the frothy drinks and the touchy-feely decor, Starbucks runs on considerable competitive fire. Consider Tracy Cornell, a former Starbucks real-estate dealmaker who found and locked up a staggering 900 North American retail sites for the company in her decade-plus career. “It was sort of piranha-like,” Cornell told me of her work for Starbucks. “It was just talking to landlords, seeing who was behind on their rent. All I needed was an opening like that, where the landlord wanted out. I was looking for tenants who were weak.”
As much as independent coffeehouse owners generally enjoy having a Starbucks close at hand, most of them seem to have a story or two of someone from the company trying to undercut them. And occasionally a new Starbucks will hurt a mom and pop—even drive them out of business. For example, in 2006, cafe owner Penny Stafford filed a federal antitrust suit against the company, alleging a nearby Starbucks illegally sank her Bellevue, Wash., coffeehouse. Starbucks employees were passing out samples right outside her front door, Stafford claims, even though the company’s nearest outlet was over 300 feet away.
But closures like this have been the exception, not the rule. In its predatory store placement strategy, Starbucks has been about as lethal a killer as a fluffy bunny rabbit. Business for independently owned coffee shops has been nothing less than exceptional as of late. Here’s a statistic that might be surprising, given the omnipresence of the Starbucks empire: According to recent figures from the Specialty Coffee Association of America, 57 percent of the nation’s coffeehouses are still mom and pops. Just over the five-year period from 2000 to 2005—long after Starbucks supposedly obliterated indie cafes—the number of mom and pops grew 40 percent, from 9,800 to nearly 14,000 coffeehouses. (Starbucks, I might add, tripled in size over that same time period. Good times all around.) So much for the sharp decline in locally owned coffee shops. And prepare yourself for some bona fide solid investment advice: The failure rate for new coffeehouses is a mere 10 percent, according to the market research firm Mintel, which means the vast majority of cafes stay afloat no matter where Starbucks drops its stores. Compare that to the restaurant business, where failure is the norm.
So now that we know Starbucks isn’t slaughtering mom and pop, the thorny question remains: Why is Starbucks amplifying their business? It’s actually pretty simple. In contrast to so-called “downtown killers” like Home Depot or Wal-Mart, Starbucks doesn’t enjoy the kinds of competitive advantages that cut down its local rivals’ sales. Look at Wal-Mart. It offers lower prices and a wider array of goods than its small-town rivals, so it acts like a black hole on local consumers, sucking in virtually all of their business. Starbucks, on the other hand, is often more expensive than the local coffeehouse, and it offers a very limited menu; you’ll never see discounts or punch cards at Starbucks, nor will you see unique, localized fare (or—let’s be honest—fare that doesn’t make your tongue feel like it’s dying). In other words, a new Starbucks doesn’t prevent customers from visiting independents in the same way Wal-Mart does—especially since coffee addicts need a fix every day, yet they don’t always need to hit the same place for it. When Starbucks opens a store next to a mom and pop, it creates a sort of coffee nexus where people can go whenever they think “coffee.” Local consumers might have a formative experience with a Java Chip Frappuccino, but chances are they’ll branch out to the cheaper, less crowded, and often higher-quality independent cafe later on. So when Starbucks blitzed Omaha with six new stores in 2002, for instance, business at all coffeehouses in town immediately went up as much as 25 percent.
The key for independent coffeehouse owners who want to thrive with a Starbucks next-door is that they don’t try to imitate Starbucks. (As many failed coffee chains can attest, there’s no way to beat Starbucks at being Starbucks.) The locally owned cafes that offer their own unique spin on the coffeehouse experience—and, crucially, a quality brew—are the ones that give the Seattle behemoth fits. Serve an appetizing enough cappuccino, and you can even follow Hyman’s lead and take aim at almighty Starbucks, where automated espresso machines now pull consistently middling shots at the touch of a button—no employee craftsmanship required.
After all, if Starbucks can make a profit by putting its stores right across the street from each other, as it so often does, why couldn’t a unique, well-run mom and pop do even better next-door? And given America’s continuing thirst for exorbitantly priced gourmet coffee drinks, there’s a lot of cash out there for the taking. As coffee consultant Dan Cox explained, “You can’t do better than a cup of coffee for profit. It’s insanity. A cup of coffee costs 16 cents. Once you add in labor and overhead, you’re still charging a 400 percent markup—not bad! Where else can you do that?” Until Americans decide they need to pay four bucks a pop every morning for a custom-baked, designer-toast experience, probably nowhere. |
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The Vibroy Portable Vibration Speaker turns everyday objects into speakers. Stick it to boxes, empty food containers, furniture, your coffee cup. Vibroy's mini module can turn just about anything into a speaker and it's so small that you can slip it into your pocket and take it everywhere you go. Does it work with your device? Yes, it probably does! If you can plug in your earbuds or headphones into it, chances are it will work with the Vibroy. Now wherever you go, you can vibrate the music!
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The surfing section of this Jimmy Gopperth interview comes later. Considering the New Plymouth native is a professional rugby player, signed by Leinster to replace Jonathan Sexton (or is that to provide cover for Ian Madigan?) we felt it prudent to lead off with that area of expertise.
The Newcastle Falcons seems a peculiar club for a one-time All Black triallist to spend the last four years of his twenties playing the game he was born to run.
“I was just kind of sitting behind Dan Carter for ages,” said Gopperth, stalling in the dead ball area of Cill Dara RFC last Friday morning after signing his name roughly a thousand times.
“I had a young family and I saw the opportunity. I had a few mates in Newcastle at the time and coming overseas, there was a good atmosphere and it was so much more low key outside of rugby so you could enjoy it, enjoy life.
“I had a great four years there. The rugby was not that flash at times, but I adapted really well and had some great experiences.”
After 52 outings and 354 points for the Wellington Hurricanes (2005-08) and a a season with the Auckland Blues, how close was every Kiwi boy’s dream to becoming a reality?
“I got an All Black trial in 2005 and was always sniffing around. I played Junior All Blacks in 2006 and I was there or there abouts. When you have Dan Carter and Nick Evans floating around, for myself and Stephen Donald it was such a conveyor belt.
“I was playing good footy and enjoying myself but it is so hard to crack that black jersey, which is something all young New Zealanders wants to do. I was unfortunate, but I still played at a high level and have no regrets.”
Glint in his eye
Then Newcastle. Now here. There’s a glint in his eye as he delivers the next comment.
“I’m ready for the opportunity to come back into that environment again; to play for a team that is going to be contending for the Heineken Cup is even better. There is a huge buzz around the city, you can see it here today, and that tunes you in a little more. You can test yourself against the best players and the best players in the squad.”
Up at the other 22, Ian Madigan is still scribbling away alongside Luke Fitzgerald and a barely visible Brian O’Driscoll, the barrel of kids threatening to collapse in upon him.
Until, that is, his smiling face, reappears from underneath the wave of admirers.
We choose our next words carefully. Gopperth probably knows by now that he will be fielding the Madigan question from now until our next heat wave, circa 2016, when his contract runs dry.
“It is healthy for both of us. You want to go into a team where you have two, three, four guys pushing for one position because it brings the best out of everybody.
“If you just get it too easy and you know you’re number one you can let your form slip. This way we can be on each other’s heels and pushing each other. There are a couple of young guys who will be pushing us as well [by complete coincidence Cathal Marsh’s developing frame strolls past].
“Nobody wants to be a back-up, I’m just going to try and fit in as best I can with the systems and the environment and use my authority in the game and my experience and we’ll see how it goes. I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
They are similar enough players; squat and waspish with dazzling hand-eye co-ordination.
“With myself and Mads, I don’t think – to be fair to (Sexton) – we’re losing too much. We’re gaining enthusiasm with both of us. We will be biting at each other’s heels and that enthusiasm we might just blossom amongst the group.”
That’s enough rugby talk for August. Go to YouTube and the usual action clips of Gopperth can be found but it’s the eight minute, freeze-frame surfing montage, replete with slick tunes that’s really worth a look.
A friend has a place up in the Donegal seaside village of Rossnowlagh.
Wet suit
“Ah, I’ve just been trying to get my bearings,” said the man who seems happiest in a wet suit. “When my missus came over we went to the west coast and had a good weekend. It is just like New Zealand, literally, with all the winding roads and the water was nice and warm.
“Growing up in New Zealand the beach was on my back doorstep so I grew up in the sea. Having a good coastline here, even the east coast, we went diving, I found a few lobsters . . .”
The board and the flippers will be shelved as rugby takes over in the coming weeks and at 30 it’s a career opportunity he almost believed had passed him by.
“Once everything worked out that Jonny was leaving, Joe gave me a call to see my availability. I jumped straight away, as soon as Joe asked me, I just said yes.
“It is the biggest opportunity I could get, to come to a club such as Leinster . . . I couldn’t turn it down.” |
A New Jersey congressman wrote directly to Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta two months ago to seek details about the Dover Air Force Base mortuary’s practice of dumping troops’ cremated body parts in a landfill but says he never received a reply.
The congressman’s letter raises questions about when Panetta learned that the mortuary disposed of cremated portions of remains at the King George County, Va., landfill. Panetta has said he was unaware of the dumping before this week.
Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), acting on behalf of a constituent whose husband was killed in Iraq and was prepared for burial by the Dover mortuary, said he sent a letter to Panetta on Sept. 16 “seeking clear and definitive answers” about the mortuary’s landfill practices. Holt said he had raised the issue a few months earlier with the Pentagon’s legislative affairs office but was “frustrated by a failure” to get a full response.
Pentagon press secretary George Little said Friday that Panetta’s office had received Holt’s Sept. 16 correspondence and that staffers “have been working to collect the information required to answer the questions in the congressman’s letter. We will, of course, provide a thorough response as promptly as possible.”
Little said Panetta was first briefed on the issue Wednesday.
At a news conference Thursday, Panetta said he had been kept informed about a broader federal investigation into problems at the Dover mortuary but had been unaware of the landfill arrangements until The Washington Post reported on them the day before.
“I did not know that, frankly,” he said.
“I think that it happened back in the past,” added Panetta, who took office July 1. “I know they’ve changed that procedure now, but nevertheless it’s something we should look at.”
The Dover mortuary handles the remains of American troops killed overseas. The Air Force said that it ended the landfill dumping in 2008 and that the ashes are now buried at sea in ceremonies overseen by the Navy.
Air Force officials have said they dumped only cremated fragments or portions of body parts that were unable to be identified at first or were later recovered from the battlefield. Family members had authorized the military to dispose of those portions.
The Air Force said the body parts were cremated, then incinerated, and taken to the landfill by a military contractor. The manner of disposal was not disclosed to relatives of the troops.
In his letter to Panetta, Holt asked why the ashes were trucked to the landfill and not interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He also asked whether the human remains had been mixed with incinerated medical waste, and he sought information on which military contractors were responsible.
As of Friday, Holt said, he still had not received answers from Panetta’s office.
“I thought there would be some straightforward explanation that we could get fairly quickly,” Holt said in a telephone interview. “Evidently this has been harder for them to answer.”
Holt said he was acting on behalf of Gari-Lynn Smith, a constituent whose husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Scott R. Smith, was killed by a buried bomb in Iraq in 2006.
In 2007, Gari-Lynn Smith received her husband’s autopsy report and learned that some remains had not been found in time to include in his casket.
Over the next four years, she tried to find out what happened to those body parts. A Dover mortuary official notified her in April that they had been cremated and taken to the landfill.
Holt said the Pentagon’s legislative affairs staff confirmed to him in June that the landfill dumping had taken place between 2003 and 2008. Though they did not give details, they wrote to Holt that the practice ended as part of “a process improvement initiative and not the result of complaints or findings of non-compliance.”
In a statement, Holt disputed that assertion.
“It is now clear to me that real issues did and may still exist, complaints were made and non-compliance was an all too common occurrence at Dover,” he said.
In addition, Holt criticized the Pentagon for not informing him — at the time of his inquiries this summer — that the Air Force was simultaneously conducting a separate investigation into the Dover mortuary.
The results of that 18-month investigation were made public Tuesday, when federal investigators said they had documented “gross mismanagement” after whistleblowers complained about lost body parts, shoddy inventory controls and lax supervision.
Panetta has said he was fully briefed about the probe as soon as he took office in July. That investigation, however, did not examine the mortuary’s landfill-dumping.
The defense secretary appointed an independent panel Tuesday to review overall operations at the mortuary. The panel’s leader, former U.S. surgeon general Richard H. Carmona, quit Friday so he instead could run for the Senate. He is seeking an open seat from Arizona.
The Pentagon said Panetta would name a replacement to head the review panel. |
Artist's concept of astronauts in an Orion capsule helping direct robotic teleoperations on the moon's farside.
NASA is pressing forward on assessing the value of a "human-tended waypoint" near the far side of the moon — one that would embrace international partnerships as well as commercial and academic participation, SPACE.com has learned.
According to a Feb. 3 memo from William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, a team is being formed to develop a cohesive plan for exploring a spot in space known as the Earth-moon libration point 2 (EML-2).
Libration points, also known as Lagrangian points, are places in space where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other out, allowing spacecraft to essentially "park" there.
A pre-memo NASA appraisal of EML-2, which is near the lunar far side, has spotlighted this destination as the "leading option" for a near-term exploration capability. [Gallery: Visions of Deep-Space Station Missions]
EML-2 could serve as a gateway for capability-driven exploration of multiple destinations, such as near-lunar space, asteroids, the moon, the moons of Mars and, ultimately, Mars itself, according to NASA officials.
A capabilities-driven NASA architecture is one that should use the agency's planned heavy-lift rocket, known as the Space Launch System, and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle "as the foundational elements."
The Lagrange points for the Earth-moon system. NASA is evaluating an early mission with the Orion capsule placed at Earth-moon L2. Astronauts parked there could teleoperate robots on the lunar farside. (Image: © David A. Kring, LPI-JSC Center for Lunar Science and Exploration)
Cadence of compelling missions
The memo spells out six strategic principles to help enable exploration beyond low-Earth orbit:
Incorporating significant international participation that leverages current International Space Station partnerships.
U.S. commercial business opportunities to further enhance the space station logistics market with a goal of reducing costs and allowing for private sector innovation.
Multiuse or reusable in-space infrastructure that allows a capability to be developed and reused over time for a variety of exploration destinations.
The application of technologies for near-term applications while focusing research and development of new technologies to reduce costs, improve safety, and increase mission capture over the longer term.
Demonstrated affordability across the project life cycle.
Near-term mission opportunities with a well-defined cadence of compelling missions providing for an incremental buildup of capabilities to perform more complex missions over time.
Quiet zone
According to strategic space planners, an EML-2 waypoint could enable significant telerobotic science on the far side of the moon and could serve as a platform for solar and Earth scientific observation, radio astronomy and other science in the quiet zone behind the moon.
Furthermore, the waypoint could enable assembly and servicing of satellites and large telescopes, among a host of other uses.
If NASA succeeds in establishing an astronaut-tended EML-2 waypoint, it would represent the farthest humans have traveled from Earth to date, the memo points out.
Extended stays at EML-2 would provide advancements in life sciences and radiation-shielding for long-duration missions outside of the Van Allen radiation belts that protect Earth, scientists say.
Robotic roll-out of an antenna — part of a low-frequency array of radio antennas to observe the first stars in the early universe. (Image: © Joe Lazio/JPL )
Next step
Gerstenmaier noted that moving forward on international, commercial and academic partnerships will "require significant detailed development and integration."
Moreover, Gerstenmaier added, EML-2 "is a complex region of cis-lunar space that has certain advantages as an initial staging point for exploration, but may also have some disadvantages that must be well understood."
A NASA study team is assigned the task of developing near-term missions to EML-2 "as we continue to refine our understanding and implications of using this waypoint as part of the broader exploration capability development," the memo explains.
The study is targeted for completion by March 30, 2012.
A working group of International Space Station members — a meeting bringing together space agencies from around the world — is being held in Paris this week with NASA’s EML-2 strategy likely to be discussed with international partners.
Proving ground
Bullish on the promise of telerobotics exploration of the moon from EML-2 is Jack Burns, director of the Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research (LUNAR) Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. LUNAR is funded by the NASA Lunar Science Institute.
Burns and his team have been collaborating with Lockheed Martin (builder of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle) for more than a year to plan an early Orion mission that would go into a halo orbit of EML-2 above the lunar far side.
"This is extremely exciting from both the exploration and science sides," Burns told SPACE.com. "This mission concept seems to be really taking off now because it is unique and offers the prospects of doing something significant outside of low-Earth orbit within this decade."
In collaboration with Lockheed-Martin, the LUNAR Center is investigating human missions to EML-2 that could be a proving ground for future missions to deep space while also overseeing scientifically important investigations.
Astronauts at an in-space habitat near the moon could achieve near-telepresence, allowing greatly increased functionality of robots on the lunar surface compared to control from Earth. (Image: © Dan Lester, University of Texas)
Roadways on the moon?
In a LUNAR Center white paper provided to SPACE.com, researchers note that an EML-2 mission would have astronauts traveling 15 percent farther from Earth than did the Apollo astronauts, and spending almost three times longer in deep space. [Lunar Legacy: Apollo Moon Mission Photos]
Such missions would validate the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems for shorter durations, could demonstrate the high-speed re-entry capability needed for return to Earth from deep space, and could help scientists gauge astronauts’ radiation dose from cosmic rays and solar flares. Doing so would help verify that Orion provides sufficient radiation protection, as it is designed to do, researchers said.
On such missions, the white paper explains, Orion astronauts could teleoperate gear on the lunar far side. For instance, the moon-based robotic hardware could obtain samples from the geologically appealing far side — perhaps from the South Pole-Aitken basin, which is one of the largest, deepest and oldest craters in the solar system.
Also on a proposed lunar robotic agenda is deployment of a low-frequency array of radio antennas to observe the first stars in the early universe.
Among a number of research jobs, the LUNAR team has been investigating how modest equipment could be used to fuse lunar regolith into a concrete-like material, which could then be used for construction of large structures, without the expense of having to carry most of the material to the lunar surface.
The ability to fabricate hardened structures from lunar regolith could also foster on-the-spot creation of solar arrays, habitats, and radiation shielding and maybe, even roadways on the surface of the moon.
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of last year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. |
The federal government could save billions of dollars if it tackled the roots of poverty, according to a new report from a government advisory body.
The report from the National Council of Welfare urges the governing Tories to take a long-term "investment" approach to preventing poverty, rather than a short-term program spending approach.
It says the public cost of poverty is easily $25 billion a year, and climbing — all while the poverty rate does not improve.
Conservative Senator Hugh Segal says the new report uses hard numbers to link poverty to the cost of productivity, health care and the justice system. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)
"The costs and consequences of poverty are much larger than direct spending on social programs. We see the total costs when indirect and societal costs are taken into account," the report says.
The council has been able to look at the cost of poverty in a way that federal departments can't, said Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who has long been involved in poverty eradication.
Federal departments analyze poverty programs with a simple cost-benefit analysis, while the council report is able to look at "the cost of inertia, the cost of not doing anything," Segal said.
But the new report uses hard numbers to link poverty to the cost of productivity, health care and the justice system, he added.
"It's a very good way to encourage public debate and discussion."
Savings to be found at hospitals, prisons
The long-term preventive approach would eventually save taxpayers significant amounts in emergency health care, prisons, shelters and other social services that are used in floundering attempts to keep poverty under wraps, the report says.
There's a catch. Overhauling social supports would require up-front funding.
P.O.V. How should Canada deal with poverty? Have your say.
"An investment model is geared towards the longer term," says the report titled "The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty." "It may require larger initial resources and may take time, but there will be a far greater and more permanent pay-off."
While many an anti-poverty advocate has argued that reducing poverty would also reduce health-care costs, the council's report documents case after case of communities saving money by changing their approach.
A homeless person in Calgary, for example, can run up $42,000 a year in costs at emergency shelters. Putting that person in a prison or psychiatric hospital would cost about $120,000. But giving that person access to supportive housing and social services would cost between $13,000 and $18,000, the report says.
Similarly, about 20 per cent of health-care spending in Canada is attributed to socio-economic factors such as income, the report says, citing research from the Public Health Agency of Canada.
"Canadians are paying the most in the least productive areas, trying to fix costly problems linked to inequality, insecurity and poverty that are preventable," the report states.
The council recognizes there is a general public concern that spending money on the poor would come at a cost to other people and services.
But it argues that poverty reduction benefits society at large, and not just the poor.
Pressure on hospitals would be alleviated. The Canadian population would have higher levels of literacy and numeracy, benefiting the economy. And a healthier workforce would dramatically reduce companies' costs of absenteeism.
The council, tasked with advising the federal government on dealing with poverty, says Ottawa should start by setting out a long-term vision that identifies needed resources and sets up a way to measure success.
The recommendations are similar to those put forward by Canada Without Poverty. In its pre-budget submission, the national activists' group urges the federal government to set firm targets and timelines to reduce poverty, and work with all levels of government to that end.
Both groups warn that dealing with poverty is a far more efficient way to reduce crime than passing tough crime legislation that would hit the poor hard.
"People who face poverty combined with other factors such as addiction, mental illness and discrimination, and who are mixed with those inclined to inflict evil on these victims, equals crime," the pre-budget submission states.
But the federal government has repeatedly resisted calls for a national anti-poverty strategy, saying such issues are better dealt with by local and provincial levels of government.
And, indeed, most provincial governments are seized with designing new, long-term anti-poverty strategies. But they also argue that they have neither the scope nor the money to do it alone.
"It is still a hard sell. Poverty is a hard sell. It shouldn't be, because it costs everybody," said Liberal Senator Art Eggleton, who led a massive study on poverty two years ago, only to see it dismissed by the federal Tories.
"Our future prosperity may well depend on how we address our current level of poverty. I quite simply don't believe we can afford poverty any more."
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley will be less likely to ignore this anti-poverty report than others, added Segal. That's because it comes from a group of advisers chosen by the government for their apolitical work in the field.
"It should have greater impact," Segal said. |
The History of the English penny from 1485 to 1603 covers the period of the Tudor dynasty.
The Tudors (1485–1603) [ edit ]
Henry VII [ edit ]
Silver penny of Henry VII.
Henry Tudor, who reigned as King Henry VII between 1485 and 1509, had a rather tenuous claim on the throne, being the Lancastrian claimant via an illegitimate descendant of Edward III when all the more senior candidates had been killed off in the Wars of the Roses. He brought the wars to a conclusion with his 1485 victory at The Battle of Bosworth and subsequently consolidated this power through a variety of means, including his marriage to Elizabeth of York (which united the two warring dynasties.) Henry VII's reign was plagued by pretenders to the throne, whose existence was a result of the King's initially insecure grasp of power. Nevertheless, he was able to subdue each of these attempted usurpers without particular difficulty. The whole style of Henry's coinage marked a break with what had gone before — the king's bust becomes much more lifelike, and the shields on the reverse become much more detailed. Henry's first coinage is very like that of Henry V and VI, minted at London, Canterbury, Durham and York the inscription is one of a variety of HENRIC DI GRA REX ANG — Henry by the grace of God King of England. Soon, however, Henry introduced what is known as the Sovereign coinage, so-called because the king is depicted seated on a throne, while the reverse shows the royal shield over a cross. This issue is regarded as marking the division between the coins of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance in England. The Sovereign coinage was minted at London, Durham, and York, and inscribed with one of a variety of HENRICUS DI GRA REX ANG .
Henry VIII [ edit ]
Silver penny of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII (1509–1547) is one of England's more interesting monarchs, not just for having married six times, but numismatically too. Henry's first coinage, to 1526, resembled that of his father and still used his father's portrait. With higher bullion prices on the continent, the weight of the silver coins was reduced again. Pennies were minted at the London, Canterbury, and Durham mints. With the reformation starting in the 1530s, the principal effect as far as the coinage was concerned was the closure of the ecclesiastical mints of Canterbury, Durham and York — in future all mints would be Royal mints, under the control of the crown who would consequently get all the revenue. The second coinage, of 1526–1544 had a completely different inscription, H.D.G. ROSA SIE SPIA — Henry by the grace of God a rose without a thorn. At this time the pound standard for mintage was changed from the local Tower pound to the internationally known troy pound; therefore, the value of a pennyweight increased from 1.46 grams to 1.56 grams. The coins were minted at London, and the Canterbury, Durham and York ecclesiastical mints.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and the ratification of the First Act of Supremacy in 1534 resulted in a huge financial bonus for the king, but by 1544 Henry was running short of money, thanks partially to his own extravagant lifestyle and expenditure. Henry's solution was to drastically lower the fineness of the third coinage (1544–47) to only one-third silver and two-thirds copper. This was understandably not popular with the people, and it resulted in Henry acquiring the nickname "Old Coppernose" as the silver rubbed off the high-relief part of the coin design. By this time there were two mints in London, at the Tower and in Southwark, and both of them, together with mints in Bristol, Canterbury and York produced the debased coinage which bore the inscription H.D.G. ROSA SINE SPINA .
Edward VI [ edit ]
Silver penny of Edward VI.
The debased coinage caused rampant inflation, so when Henry died in 1547 he left behind a country with a sickly nine-year-old king, religious turmoil, and economic unrest. Moreover, the influx of silver and gold from Central and South America into Spain and thus to the rest of Europe was destabilising the price of bullion and making the situation worse.
Until 1551, what is known as the posthumous coinage was produced — these were coins which were exactly the same as Henry's last issue, but with a different portrait of him. Inflation over the last thirty years had made the penny much less important, and in fact for the next few reigns the most common coins would be shillings, sixpences, and groats. The reign of Edward VI though short (1547–1553) was numismatically important for seeing the introduction of new denominations — the silver crown, half crown, shilling, Sixpence, and Threepence — which were to survive until 1971, and which were a reflection of the increasing wealth of the country. The new coins were struck in good silver, with the aim of revitalising the economy. Edward VI's pennies however, were still struck in debased metal (except for one, possibly unique, coin) at the Tower, Southwark, Bristol and York, with the inscription E.D.G. ROSA SINE SPINA — Edward by the grace of God a rose without a thorn.
Mary I [ edit ]
Silver penny of Mary and Philip.
In 1553 Edward died and was succeeded — after the nine-day rule of Lady Jane Grey — by his older sister, the strongly Catholic Queen Mary. Pennies of her first year, bearing her head alone with the inscription M.D.G. ROSA SINE SPINA — Mary by the grace of God a rose without a thorn — are quite rare. In 1554 she married Philip, the Prince of Spain, and put his portrait on the coinage as well as her own. Both fine silver and base metal pennies of this reign were issued from the Tower mint, with the legend P Z M D G ROSA SINE SPINA — Philip and Mary by the grace of God a rose without a thorn.
Elizabeth I [ edit ]
Silver penny of Elizabeth I.
When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, England was an impoverished country, in religious turmoil, and with a coinage which was in a poor state after Henry VIII's debasement, since when little had been done to improve either the quantity or quality of the coins in circulation. The coinage system as a whole urgently needed reform, and Elizabeth boldly set about doing this. Throughout her reign large quantities of gold and silver coins of many denominations were produced (the gold and silver often being obtained by raiding Spanish shipping); of the silver denominations produced the shilling and sixpence were most important, but small denomination coins — groats, threepences, half-groats, three-halfpence, pennies, three-farthings, and halfpennies — were also struck and were very popular with merchants and small traders.
For the first time in England milled, or machine-produced, coins were produced by Eloye Mestrelle, an ex-employee of the Paris mint, between 1560 and 1572, but while the milled issue was fairly successful there was animosity towards Mestrelle by other employees of the Tower mint who feared for their jobs, which ultimately led to his dismissal. No milled pennies were produced, as they would probably have been too small to be mechanically produced by the equipment of the time. Also for the first time some of Elizabeth's coins were dated.
Elizabethan pennies are very small, and are often found creased or bent. The obverse bears the legend E D G ROSA SINE SPINA — Elizabeth by the grace of God a rose without a thorn — around a left-facing bust of the queen, while the reverse bears the legend CIVITAS LONDON — City of London. All pennies were minted at the Tower mint, in London.
References [ edit ] |
Now that Virtual Reality is becoming more mainstream you begin to see games that were previously meant for traditional 2D being resigned and ported over to VR systems. Personally I am EXTREMELY excited to see developers taking popular 2D games and bring them back to life in a fully 3D VR environment. Indie game ‘Please, Don’t Touch Anything’ (PDTA) originally released on March 26th, 2015 and was a HUGE hit for those who tried it out, leaving it with over 1000 positive reviews on Steam. This hidden gem will SOON be available on Oculus Home (MAY 19th) for the Oculus Rift ($14.99) and Gear VR! ($8.99).
The game has been developed by Escalation Studios and Four Quarters based in Texas in partnership with Oculus. Published by Bulkypix based in France.
***The remainder of the article may contain mild spoilers included in text, pictures, & video.
“over 1000 positive reviews”
When I first started the game I was immediately struggling to figure out my purpose as I had never previously played this game and I was not familiar with any of the objectives. I find it extremely satisfying when you have to slowly figure out things for yourself as opposed to being given too many hints and obvious paths to follow at the beginning of the game. Even so it wasn’t long before I was getting into the groove and creating plenty of chaos!
The developers of this game have done an amazing job at creating a seamless atmosphere that looks and feels like a legitimate work space all the while concealing the fact that almost each and every object is a potential clue that must be looked at, studied, and deciphered for it’s proper meaning within the puzzle. What I really love is the fact that you don’t WIN the game as much as you PLAY the game. It’s about doing things differently and making sure you troubleshoot properly. You could say this is a creative troubleshooting simulator set in a warped reality!
VR SPECIAL FEATURES! (escalation.com)
30+ mind-bending enigmas with Virtual Reality enhanced endings
Fully re-imagined 3D environment built specifically for Virtual Reality
Innovative interaction systems for investigating objects in the room
A newly-composed chiptune soundtrack with new tracks for VR
Don’t worry I didn’t forget about the video! Just in case the article wasn’t enough, I have a semi-playthrough ‘Let’s Play’ video available for you to watch! I worked hard on it so please take a look! I played the game for just about an hour an managed to get through about 6 of the 30+ endings!
Thanks a lot for checking out this article! I hope you found it interesting and informative! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments either below or on one of my social outlets! I really appreciate it. Also, if you think that you have something article worthy let me know! I love collaborating with the community! Thanks again!
If you’d like to see more in-game pictures click here! ***Mild Spoilers
VRGAMERDUDE PLAYS IN HIS GEAR VR!
UKRIFTER PLAYS WITH HIS CV1! |
I need some advice... I'm a 29 year old female, college graduate, and firmly situated in a great job. I've been dating my 29 year old boyfriend for a year and a half. I love him and I know he loves me. We have a great relationship, enjoy each other's company, and our families love us and emotionally support us. We both are adults with our own homes. We don't live together. We have friends and hobbies. We're both physically active and take care of our bodies. He gets me and loves me for who I am. He defends me and provides a listening ear when I need it. He also isn't afraid to call me out when I'm wrong. He's become one of my closest friends. I love him for all those things.
He started college later than most people and recently graduated. He has a decent job and is job hunting to find something better and more within his degree path. Like me, he has a solid family, great parents who've never been divorced and a sibling married with kids.
He talks about us in futuristic terms. "Our kids, our someday house, our dreams..." I believe he wants a future with me. However, whenever I bring up marriage he gets this "deer in headlights" look. He tells me the thought of marriage frightens and overwhelms him. Those conversation usually end with him frustrated and holding me while I cry. I wouldn't consider myself a clingy or overly emotional woman but when he says those things I get scared. I'm scared on some level of not being enough or unwanted, of being alone for the rest of my life, and of not spending the rest of my life with him. I've stopped bringing it up. I don't want to be a nag and I feel that I shouldn't have to be. Either he loves me and wants to spend his life with me or he doesn't.
I want to be married. I'm ready. I want a family one day. I want a family with him.
My question is this. How long do I wait for him to be ready? Honestly, I feel like the two year mark is the deal maker or breaker. But is that reasonable? I feel like I've been waiting for him... to graduate, to get settled, to become ready... do I keep waiting? I realize, "Love is patient." But how long does one remain patient?
I don't want to have a "you marry me or we're over" discussion. I'm not into ultimatums. But at the same time, I'm nearing my 30s and I do want a family one day. Waiting for years for him to "be ready" doesn't seem healthy.
Your thoughts? |
TORONTO — Bullets claimed two more lives early Sunday during a violent month in which the number of people killed by shootings in Toronto doubled compared to last January.
Two men are dead and three others suffered injuries in a Chinatown shooting at Spadina Avenue and Nassau Street around 3:15 a.m.
“Some sort of altercation occurred that prompted the shooting but we’re still early in the investigation,” said Toronto Police Det. Mike Carbone, who wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the killings were the result of gang-related violence.
“It’s difficult to say at this point, but that’s something we will explore,” he said.
I was lying in bed and heard six to eight gunshots and soon I heard a lot of sirens
In the 37 shooting incidents in Toronto in January, eight people were killed. Four died in shootings in January 2014.
In Sunday’s multiple shooting, one man was pronounced dead at the scene, while another died in hospital around 8:45 a.m. Their identities have not been released by police.
The stretch of Spadina between Dundas Street and College Street, home to many ethnic restaurants and small businesses, was closed most of the day for the investigation as police officers canvassed the area.
Officers did not release any information about suspects.
Mitchell Kingsley, who lives near the spot where the shooting took place, recalled hearing a series of shots.
“I was lying in bed and heard six to eight gunshots and soon I heard a lot of sirens,” Kingsley said. “It’s crazy. I don’t know if an altercation went wrong, but I don’t think I have to worry. I’m not the type of person to provoke someone.”
Toronto’s eight gunfire victims in January: Jan 4: Joseph Petit, 17, is shot in front of his home in Danforth Village. He dies in hospital. No arrests. Jan. 19: Tevin James, 22, is shot in an Etobicoke apartment and dies three days later. Frederick Leon, 20, is charged with second-degree murder. Jan. 20: Alfredo Patriarca, 42, is found shot to death in a garage in Etobicoke. No arrests. Jan. 20: A gunman kills Alva Dixon, 70, and wounds a man in his 40s as they sit in a parked van in East Toronto. No arrests. Jan. 24: Adedotun Agunbiade, 28, is shot to death during a private party at a hair salon in a strip mall in Scarborough. No arrests. Jan. 29: Former Mafia boss Rocco Zito, 87, is gunned down in his home near Yorkdale Shopping Centre. His son-in-law, Domenico Scopelliti, 51, is charged with first-degree murder. Jan. 31: Two people are killed and three wounded outside a restaurant in Chinatown. |
Had marijuana become a problem for me, it would have been reflected in my job performance, and I would have been cut. I took my job seriously and would not have allowed that to happen. The point is, marijuana and excellence on the playing field are not mutually exclusive.
A good example is Josh Gordon, the Cleveland Browns wide receiver who led the league last year with 1,646 receiving yards, despite missing two games for testing positive for codeine (for a strep throat, he said). He was suspended again late last month for the entire season after testing positive for marijuana. (At least five others were also suspended last year and this year for marijuana, according to the magazine Mother Jones.)
Most players are tested once a year under the N.F.L.’s substance abuse policy, between April 20 and Aug. 9. But players who test positive for a banned drug are placed in the league’s substance abuse program, where the testing is more frequent. It is in this probationary program that players tend to falter.
Gordon had marijuana in his system. He broke the rules. I understand that. But this is a rule that absurdly equates marijuana with opiates, opioids and PCP. The N.F.L.’s threshold for disciplinary action for marijuana is 10 times higher than the one used by the International Olympic Committee.
Nearly 17,000 Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers in 2011, according to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These are the same pills I was handed in full bottles after an injury. The same pills that are ravaging our cities. The same ones that are creating a population of apathetic adults, pill-popping their way through the day and dead behind the eyes. The same ones that are leading high schoolers to heroin because the pills no longer get them high and are too expensive. Yeah, those. |
Wireless charging is hardly a ubiquitous feature in smartphones and tablets at this point. It's often optional—phones from certain carriers will have it, or you'll be able to add it to a phone using a special charging case. But if you pick a phone at random off the shelf, chances are good that it won't support wireless charging out of the box.
Google's most recent Nexus devices, on the other hand, have all included built-in support for the feature—the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and 2013 Nexus 7 all support wireless charging. While any charging pad that supports the Qi (pronounced "chee") standard will work with them, as of last week Google will sell you its own Nexus-branded charger to match. This is actually the second Nexus charger that Google has made, after the now-discontinued (and somewhat problematic) Nexus 4 wireless charger. Google sent us one of the new chargers, and we put it through its paces to see if it's worth the $50.
Unboxing
Recent Nexus phones and tablets have come in well thought out, understated blue boxes, and the Nexus wireless charger follows the trend. Lift the lid off the box and the charger will be sitting right there, staring you in the face.
The charger itself is a surprisingly small square that's 2.36 inches on each side and half an inch thick, but it's pretty dense—it weighs 3.7 ounces, not all that much less than the Nexus 5's 4.59 ounces. The glossy black top is unadorned save for a faint Nexus logo in the center, and the sides are a blank matte plastic except for the side with the micro USB port embedded in it.
On the underside, Google has applied some sticky but not-quite-adhesive material that plants the charger firmly to whatever surface you'd like, but it doesn't leave a residue when you pry it off. This material is not quite as sticky as tape, but it's grippy enough that it could hang out on the wall of my office for 15 or 20 seconds before falling on the floor (whoops). It should easily keep the charger from sliding around on your desk or bedside table, but if you move it around a lot you'll need to clean the dust and grit off it to keep it sticky.
You won't find a mention of the Qi standard anywhere on Google's product page, but that appears to be what the Nexus charger is using. It's listed as being compatible with the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and the 2013 Nexus 7, but it should also work fine with other Qi-enabled phones (or phones with Qi-compatible charging cases).
Once you've stuck the charger where you want it, you just need to set your phone or tablet on top of it to start charging. Magnets will pull the device into place and keep it there, so the device isn't in any danger of slipping off the charger or moving too much if you need to poke at it while it's charging. Centering the tablet on the charger can be a little tricky, but all three Nexus devices make a distinctive notification sound when charging wirelessly to tell you when you've done it correctly.
On the whole, the design of the charger is better thought out than the old Nexus 4 wireless charger. That device had an angled face (which made it difficult to impossible to use with anything larger than a phone) and used the same not quite adhesive material to hold the slippery Nexus phone to the charger. As we've noted, this material picks up dust and other detritus easily, and the dirtier it is the worse it is at sticking to things. The Nexus 4 charger had the more distinctive design, but the new charger is definitely more functional.
Power draw and charging speeds
This was my own first foray into wireless charging, so I was interested in seeing how much power the charger used compared to a standard wired charger plus how this affected charging speeds. Using an ever handy Kill-A-Watt meter, I measured power draw at the wall for both the wireless charger and a standard micro USB charger (these figures are for the adapter that shipped with the 2013 Nexus 7, but the figures for the one that comes with the Nexus 5 were about the same). These figures were each taken when the phone's battery was mostly empty and with the screens turned off (the numbers will generally go up when the screen is on and the device is in active use, and they'll fall as you near the end of a charge cycle).
Device Power draw (micro USB) Power draw (wireless charger) Nexus 5 6.6 Watts 6.0 Watts Nexus 7 (2013) 7.5 Watts 6.1 Watts
The Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 will both draw more power through a micro USB charger than the wireless charger, which is par for the course—wireless charging usually isn't as fast as charging through a cable. These differences in power draw are reflected in charge times. The Nexus 7 takes about two hours and 56 minutes to charge using its power adapter, but six hours and six minutes to charge using the wireless charger. The wireless charger draws about 25 percent less power, but it takes 100 percent more time to charge the tablet. Keep in mind that the convenience of wireless charging also takes longer and is less efficient.
Wireless charging is still a nice feature—it's a good box to check, but its exclusion wouldn't keep us away from an otherwise attractive phone or tablet. If your phone does support Qi, and you're in the market for a nice charger, you could do worse than Google's. Unlike its first try, the new Nexus Wireless Charger is unobtrusive, attractive, and functional. It's a little pricey at $50 (compared both to other charging pads and to the adapter that came with your phone), but it gets the job done. |
Monero (XMR), the privacy-centric cryptocurrency that was first released in 2014, is now definitely on the FBI’s radar. In late 2016, darknet markets AlphaBay and Oasis Markets began to accept Monero for payments. At a recent seminar session attended by a journalist from CoinDesk, Special Agent Joseph Battaglia of the FBI’s Cyber Division in New York City, told 150 people at Fordham University that the FBI was monitoring Monero, and was concerned criminals would use Monero for nefarious purposes. Special Agent Battaglia gave a “high-level” account of how the FBI’s Cyber Division conducts cryptocurrency investigations, during the event. The event was hosted by Fordham University and co-hosted by IBM and was attended by law students at the university, as well as by New York City Police detectives and IRS agents.
“There are obviously going to be issues if some of the more difficult to work with cryptocurrencies become popular. Monero is one that comes to mind, where its not very obvious what the transaction path is or what the actual value of the transaction is except to the end users,” Special Agent Battaglia said at the seminar. During 2016, the price of Monero soared from around $0.50 (USD) to over $12 (USD). Monero provides more privacy than Bitcoin, using the CryptoNote protocol which is based on one-time ring signatures and stealth addresses. Monero transactions cannot be traced, and is designed to prevent the identity of the sender and receiver of the cryptocurrency.
During a panel at the event, which featured IBM’s Vice President of Blockchain Business Development, Special Agent Battaglia described the FBI as a “reactionary organization” and said that the FBI’s Cyber Division is taking a wait-and-see approach with Monero. “We’re going to look at what catches on, and what becomes mainstream, and then we’re going to keep an eye on that, because usually not long after that is when you start to see some of the fraud and some of the more nefarious uses of that technology,” Battaglia said during the panel. Battaglia would not provide additional information about the FBI’s investigative techniques surrounding Monero, when asked after the event.
The FBI’s Cyber Division was founded in 2002, and according to Battaglia, the division splits it’s work equally between criminal matters and matters of national security. The Cyber Division is made up of squads located throughout the United States. Special Agent Battaglia explained that partnerships are made between the FBI’s Cyber Division and state police, the IRS, FinCEN, the Secret Service, and “detectives from all sorts of different law enforcement agencies.” At a keynote address, Special Agent Bataglia also mentioned how Monero is increasingly being used by ransomeware.
While Oasis has since gone offline, in an exit scam, AlphaBay continues to function and allow users to make deposits and withdrawals in both Bitcoin and Monero. AlphaBay began accepting Monero on September 1st, 2016. “Following the demand from the community, and considering the security features of Monero, we decided to add it to our marketplace,” a notice on AlphaBay said in August of 2016. |
From RationalWiki
Computing woo refers to a range of pseudoscientific practices and urban legends associated with computing, especially computer security.
Technical support [ edit ]
The world of technical support is a magical place. User[Who?] beliefs include:
Programming [ edit ]
Technicians and software developers many of whom consider themselves rational logical thinkers are not immune from all kinds of sloppy thinking and superstitions:
Heisenbugs , issues that never seem the same when you attempt to study them
, issues that never seem the same when you attempt to study them Cargo cult programming
It works on my machine: some programmers and IT have a tendency to assume that because code will run on one computer, that if it doesn't run on another one, that the other one is broken. It's usually the opposite. If you have code that runs on your personal computer but not on other machines, it is probably doing something dangerous that should cause segmentation faults or similar, but somehow is being allowed to do it. Alternatively, it may be set up in a way that is peculiar to the settings and file system on your machine.
Name, time, addresses, maps, gender misconceptions and more![4][please explain]
And among most people there is little conception what's involved in programming, to the point that the moviegoing public can accept the idea that a sufficiently good programmer can write a virus for a completely alien operating system, in a completely alien language, and have it work right the first time.[note 1]
BadBIOS [ edit ]
BadBIOS is firmware malware that was created by Ruiu ... in his head. Individuals like Ruiu are extremely concerned about malicious firmware from hackers and the NSA to the point of literal paranoia.
Origin [ edit ]
According to Ruiu (@dragosr on twitter), BadBIOS is a rootkit that can infect computers without bluetooth, ethernet, or Wi-Fi. Instead it can infect other computers by emitting "ultrasonic sound [...] from the device's loudspeakers". Computers nearby somehow pick up the sound via the speakers and thus get infected. Ruiu suspected his computers were infected with BadBIOS once his computers were acting strange.[5] Ruiu later provided data dumps of his BIOS only to have experts reveal it was normal data. Ruiu then countered stating that the malware probably erased itself whenever he tried to make a data dump.[6] While these claims are not outside the realm of science fiction, Ruiu has not provided a silver bullet, only speculation. Despite this, his reputation seems to be intact somehow.
Years later, Ruiu came to the conclusion that BadBIOS can also contaminate USB , through some way of knowing...[7]
The subreddit [ edit ]
Yep, /r/badBIOS/ is a subreddit for a malware that probably never existed! Unsurprisingly, it's inhabited by some users who think that one weird thing in a computer means infected malware. These people are generally paranoid, judging by the threads:
User thinks hackers infected his ... mp4 file because it got corrupted. [8] OP blatantly states they used a dirty electricity filter to evade hacking. Ironically, his means to evade being hacked is the reason why he thinks he got hacked — having poor connection to an external device can disconnect a device when it's not ready, resulting in corrupted file. [ citation needed ]
OP blatantly states they used a dirty electricity filter to evade hacking. Ironically, his means to evade being hacked is the reason why he thinks he got hacked — having poor connection to an external device can disconnect a device when it's not ready, resulting in corrupted file. A user claims that they're picking up ultrasonic sound ... must be badBIOS! [9] Ultrasonic sound is just high-frequency sound above the human hearing range. There are other (plausible) sources of such frequencies such as bats.
Ultrasonic sound is just high-frequency sound above the human hearing range. There are other (plausible) sources of such frequencies such as bats. "Neuroimaging tech will soon be able to decode our thoughts"[10] An example of just how paranoid this subreddit is.
Truth to it [ edit ]
Despite Ruiu's paranoia, there is truth to the madness:
Through an "internal NSA catalog", the NSA performs firmware attacks through backdoors thus confirming proof that such attacks do exist. Unlike BadBIOS, these attacks are actually detectable and actually have documentation; however, certain tools in the catalog require tools priced as high as 250,000$USD, something not to be wasted on the average Joe. Despite this discovery, it doesn't confirm Ruiu's brain fart that has no evidence. [11] [12] [13] [6]
In the paper Journal of Communication, Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz showed that BadBIOS is possible but only at 20 bps.[14]
Deep web [ edit ]
See the main article on this topic: Deep web
Cargo cult paranoid computer security practices are often advocated by naive internet denizens and trolls towards even more naive newcomers. High profile attacks aimed at Tor hidden services Operation Onymous as well as large attacks on users such as the FBI's legally dubious network investigation malware[15] has created an association of insecurity and surveillance associated with what is in fact one of the most secure and surveillance-resistant networks ever created.
Prospective explorers often ask if they should put tape over their webcam or use Tails in order to 'safely' explore the dark web. They will fixate on how technological configurations can secure their machines, but are entirely clueless about vectors such as password reuse, identity segregation or how to verify safety of file downloads.
Such common misconceptions stem from limited public understanding of threat modelling , privacy and practical computer security. As such, there is a massive market for bloggers and YouTube charlatans such as Takedownman and SomeOrdinaryGamers to offer off-the-shelf tips which increase the user's feeling of security.
Every day, an intrepid dark web explorer will read that the US Navy founded the initial creation of the Tor network and fancy themselves the next Edward Snowden by disseminating this information.[16]
Hackers and viruses [ edit ]
[17] Or maybe to keep their missiles from crashing into the Firmament. Russian Orthodox Leader Sprays Holy Water on Government Computers to Magically Stop WannaCry Attack.Or maybe to keep their missiles from crashing into the Firmament.
[citation NOT needed] Criminal hackers don't wear balaclavas except when it's cold or they are being ironic.
Due to the low understanding of what hackers do and how viruses and malware works, it has been a relatively accepted trope for someone to claim their account was hacked as a get-out-jail-free card in the event of certain drug-fuelled rants and dramas.[18]
Some computer users will attribute changes to their computer to malevolent forces in a method comparable to astrology when it comes to rationalising changing and intermittent issues.
Of course, in a video gaming context, anyone who is better than you is a hacker.
There is a small number of 'anti-updaters', an anti-vaccination movement-like contingent of people arguing against automatically updating applications due to the misplaced belief that significant numbers of people care to manually review and install all patches.[19][20] Patches and updates are generally good, except maybe if you're working with the CIA.[21] Yes, there are occasions where an update breaks something that was working before or causes other mischief, but by and large updates are something you want: they fix problems and improve the security of your system.
Cryptography [ edit ]
See the main article on this topic: Cryptography
Depending on who you ask, encryption can be anything from the largest piece of social good modern mathematics has ever produced or a dangerous weapon utilised by terrorists[22] and child abusers[22] in order to evade justice which must be carefully controlled.
In the early days of strong cryptography, the US government attempted to issue export bans, classifying the technology as akin of munitions.[23] While such bans were overturned in 1992, it wasn't until the rise of ubiquitous personal computing that governments would once again characterize mathematics as a dangerous tool.
The 2010s saw an increased call from politicians[Who?] around the world to backdoor common encryption software.[24] From the encrypted-by-default iPhone[25] through to bans on WhatsApp [26] in Brazil[27] and proposed and later withdrawn in the UK,[28] governments around the world remain convinced they can create a secure back door into software to counter criminals; however, it's not like backdoors are only exclusive to government agencies.
Said statements could be considered rhetoric to coerce tech giants deeper into mass surveillance programs, and less charitably as mathematical denialism from senior elected officials.
Monitoring your Internet usage [ edit ]
How much do your teachers, coworkers, employers, or other people really know about what you do online?
"The Internet" is really an inter-network, or a network of networks.[note 2] Your home Internet, the free WiFi at a coffee shop, your campus or work networks, etc. are all networks that talk to other networks. When you view a website, check your email, or chat with your friends, your computer achieves that by sending traffic from your network to someone else's, and routing it through every network in between.
Anyone with control of the network can try to figure out what kind of traffic you're sending, where it's going, and what's in it. The modern Internet is moving toward HTTPS by default, which is an attempt to make things more secure. If your browser reports that your connection is "secure" or "insecure", it's talking about HTTPS specifically. It doesn't mean that there's no chance that anyone can intercept what you're doing. By analogy, you're writing letters to a friend, and passing them through the hands of a series of strangers. By agreement, everyone has agreed not to tamper with the contents of the letter. HTTPS lets you seal the letter from (most) prying eyes, but does nothing to hide which friend you're mailing.
It's important to remember that there are good reasons for network administrators to monitor what goes into or out of their networks. If someone downloads and runs malware from an unsafe site, it puts the whole network at risk. If an employee does something illegal with their computers, their employer might be implicated. Few admins should have any kind of interest in spying on individual users, but every good admin has an interest in a safe and healthy network.
Email security [ edit ]
Who can read your email? Whoever provides you with email services, for starters. Microsoft read a blogger's Hotmail inbox in 2012, suspecting a software leak.[29] Ironically, around this same time, Microsoft was running the Scroogled ad campaign, attacking Gmail for using inbox contents to serve up targeted ads. It also defended its own right to read your mail.[30]
Email alternatives such as Slack might also expose even direct messages to your boss.[31]
Secure email and instant-messaging tools do exist, but no security system is absolute.
Web filtering [ edit ]
Web filtering is a magical solution to all the world's problems. Simply by stopping people (particularly children, but also library patrons) reaching the wrong website you can prevent sexual depravity bringing about the fall of modern civilisation, and prevent terrorism. Companies including Impero, Future Digital, and Securus sell "anti-radicalisation software" which prevents children reading about Islamist terrorism'.[32] According to online security company Akamai, British law requires schools and universities to consider the use of such software.[33] Whether Akamai is an unbiased source of legal advice is for you to judge.
The traditional use of such software is to block access to pornography online, but such filters are pathetically useless. A British newspaper report complained that one filter blocked searches for "sex education" but allowed explicit searches in Spanish; it concluded they provide false security and could be easily circumvented (as anybody who knows anything about children could tell you). More seriously, anti-porn filters may discourage children from talking to their parents and actually promote porn addiction: "Filters can also encourage secrecy, deception and shame – key conditions for nurturing dependency or even potential addiction."[34] Because the naughtiness is half the reason why porn is appealing.
Web filters also rarely if ever consider the blocking of pornography or jihadism to be their first priority. The majority of their efforts go to the blocking of websites offering alternative proxies and websites offering translation software. The former because it allows people to easily and perhaps even unintentionally bypass these filters and the latter because they often allow for diverse translations of the thing that people want to be censored and thus increase exponentially the work required to censor everything. Even more worrying is that some have them by default, meaning that no matter what you do, you won't be able to access Babelfish.[35]
You'll be glad to know that the best in the business who have a firm place in the international market are currently selling their software to dictatorships that want to avoid their citizens reading about any information that might potentially harm the way the government is perceived by its citizens. [36] On the plus side, since these governments are spending their time with censoring internet traffic and they will never be able to fully do so anyway, this is often accompanied with a more uncensored traditional press and television. However, one might still question why democratic governments support something that is partially marketed to dictators.
Misc [ edit ]
Things that are not computing woo [ edit ]
Whilst common computing misconceptions are numerous, often too many serious issues are written off[citation needed][Who?] as such including:
See Also [ edit ]
/r/itsaunixsystem on Reddit - dedicated making fun of Hollywood hacking
willusingtheprefixcybermakemelooklikeanidiot.com - You should always be cautious with the about mainstream media reporting of cyber-anything. If in doubt, be sure to check
Notes [ edit ]
↑ As seen for instance in Independence Day ↑ Hence the abbreviation of "Inter-net(work)". |
The National Institutes of Health is spending more than $400,000 sending text messages to Latino men to encourage them to exercise.
The University of California, San Diego is conducting the study, which is attempting to employ the “low-cost” strategy of using cell phones to reach Mexican-Americans.
“Mexican-American men report high rates of inactivity and related health conditions. The proposed study seeks to promote physical activity among this at-risk, understudied population by developing interactive and tailored text-messages to enhance a print-based physical activity intervention for Spanish- speaking [Mexican American] MA men,” a grant for the project said. “The proposed high-reach, low-cost strategy for increasing physical activity has great potential for adoption on a larger scale and thereby positively impacting public health and eliminating health disparities.”
Latino men “may have limited access to public health interventions promoting physical activity,” according to the project, and there is a “dearth of studies in this area.”
“To address these rising health disparities, effective interventions that leverage state-of-the-art technology, theory, and methods are needed for [Mexican-American] MA men,” the grant said.
The project is based on a preliminary study using “culturally and linguistically tailored” print campaigns to encourage Latino men to exercise.
Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon. |
Ukrainian journalist and political analyst Yuri Romanenko says it's time for Ukraine's Armed Forces to start a deliberate campaign of murdering Russian journalists in Donbass, for the purpose of attracting global media attention.
© AP Photo / Sergei Grits Heard Through Grapevine: Putin Turned Down Poroshenko’s Offer of Donbass
Recalling a recent meeting at Harvard University on his Facebook page , Romanenko noted that he recommended to his colleagues that Ukrainian army snipers suppress Russian coverage of the war in Donbass by deliberately targeting Russian journalists operating in the region.
The political analyst noted that as the conversation turned to the powerful role played by information warfare in the present conflict, speakers began lamenting about how Ukraine has been falling out of the American media space recently. It was then that Romanenko decided to "inject some new life into the debate."
"I know how to resolve the problem of waning attention and to bring media attention to a new level. The Ukrainian army must selectively and carefully eliminate Russian journalists covering the situation in Donbass. We need to direct Ukrainian army snipers to shoot people wearing PRESS helmets, making them priority targets," Romanenko wrote, recalling his comments before the Harvard audience.
"Since the media represent a destructive weapon and allow Russia to operate not only in the war zone, but across Ukraine, taking out several dozen journalists in the conflict zone will reduce the quality of the picture presented in the Russian media and, therefore, reduce the effectiveness of their propaganda."
© Photo : MoD of Ukraine Interpol-Wanted Extremist Appointed Advisor to Ukraine's Chief of Staff
The political analyst explained that such an action would quickly bring Ukraine back into the center of the American media's attention, noting that while on the one hand this would serve as "bad PR" for Ukraine, "all the same, PR is PR, and we must do everything possible not to fall out of the US media's focus in the context of [its] presidential campaign."
The analyst noted that his Harvard hosts rejected his proposal outright, noting that the deliberate murder of journalists is a violation of international law, to which, in Romanenko's recollection, the Ukrainian delegation "happily grinned."
© Sputnik / Anzhela Babenko Ukrainian Economy Suffers 15% Drop in GDP in First 100 Days of 2015
The analyst noted that when Russia repeatedly violated international law in relation to Ukraine, "you didn't seem too worried…so why should you be worried now? The intensification of the conflict, and bringing it to a new level, unable to be ignored by the US and Europe, serves as our magic wand."
Romanenko stated that following the meeting, "one man from the [Ukrainian] diaspora" told him "you are completely right; this is just the way to save Ukraine." |
Well, Mrs. Perkins mostly stays put, except when she takes the girls away on vacation. More mercurial is Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman), a married theatrical set designer who has adopted Tom as her protégé and appointed herself his muse. This makes her Max’s rival, and also the most interesting and unpredictable person in the movie, even though — or perhaps precisely because — it lacks the imagination to know quite what to do with her.
Instead, “Genius” sighs with palpable nostalgia for a supposed golden age of masculine artistic potency and paints the struggle for self-expression in familiar sentimental colors. For Tom, writing is the unbridled expression of the life force, something Mr. Law indicates by hollering and gesticulating and allowing a stray lock of hair to fall just so across his brow. Mr. Firth’s performance is equally broad, even though he’s supposed to be the more uptight partner in this bromance. He grimaces and sighs like a vaudeville Puritan.
But the actors can perhaps be forgiven, since they are continually pushed into scenes that seem designed to halt subtlety in its tracks. The most egregious of these — in which Tom drags Max to a sweaty nightclub in Harlem, pontificating on the spontaneous energies of jazz and boogieing with the working girls at the bar — adds a dash of racial condescension to the cocktail.
It’s dispiriting to see a movie about interesting real-life characters reduce them to clichés, making them less vivid, less fascinating, less charismatic than they must have been. (It’s also a bit disconcerting, though hardly surprising at this point, to see yet another movie with important figures in American history portrayed by British and Australian actors.) “Genius” is full of talk about art, life and greatness, but it’s only talk.
“Genius” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Cigarettes and other examples of old-fashioned naughtiness. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. |
Editor's Note: This has been cross-posted from the EnergyBlog at Energy.gov
As many of us hit the road to celebrate America's independence this upcoming 4th of July weekend, we must once again confront the reality of our country's economy, environment and security dependence on foreign oil.
On Wednesday, June 29th, at 2:00 pm ET, please join Dr. Arun Majumdar at Energy.gov for a frank, two-way discussion about the investments the federal government is making in innovative research and technology today that will move us off of foreign oil and toward the clean energy infrastructure of the future.
Watch the video invitation to the online chat with Dr. Arun Majumdar here.
The Energy Department is making critical investments to improve the technology and ramp-up the development and manufacturing of renewable energy sources, such as advanced biofuels, solar, wind and hydro power.
And as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), Dr. Majumdar oversees the Department of Energy's investments in high-risk, high-reward projects -- such as work to invent better batteries for electric vehicles, create smarter electric grid infrastructure, explore energy-efficient cooling of buildings, find new ways to create liquid fuels using microorganisms, and many more projects to accelerate the development and deployment of key energy technologies.
You can submit your questions about new energy innovations to Dr. Majumdar in advance of the event through email, Twitter or Facebook, by
Sending an email to [email protected];
Tweeting your question to @energy with the hashtag #energymatters; or
Leaving a question for Dr. Majumdar at http://www.facebook.com/energygov.
You’ll also be able to send him questions live during the event using the above methods, or by visiting energy.gov.
As Dr. Arun Majumdar says in his video, like past American generations have already done, this is our turn to change the world. We hope to see you online on Energy.gov on Wednesday the 29th at 2pm ET to discuss how. |
David Cameron today vowed that Britain will take 'thousands' more refugees as he promised to 'fulfil our moral responsibilities'.
The Prime Minister ordered a review of the country's policy on accepting asylum seekers from north Africa, and an announcement on details is expected within days.
The UK is unlikely to sign up to a Brussels plan which emerged today for 160,000 people to be dispersed across the European Union.
But Downing Street has been stung by criticism that Mr Cameron was 'shaming the country' with his refusal to increase the UK's commitment.
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David Cameron today sought to quell public outrage over the refugee crisis with a promise to 'fulfil our moral responsibilities'
Poll Should Britain agree to take more refugees? Yes No Should Britain agree to take more refugees? Yes 20099 votes
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Britain has opted out of UN and EU schemes that could mean accepting tens of thousands more asylum seekers, with the focus on spending aid money in the war torn countries from which people are fleeing.
Mr Cameron argues that opening the door to more refugees is not the answer to the crisis triggered by tens of thousands of people massing in Greece, Italy and Hungary.
But he signalled that senior ministers are now looking at options to increase the number of refugees able to resettle in Britain.
Mr Cameron said: 'We are taking thousands of refugees and we have always done that as a country – running our asylum system properly and giving a proper welcome to people and helping them when they come here.
'We keep it under review. We work with our partners. We are taking thousands of people and we will take thousands of people. What matters is when they come they get a proper welcome and we look after them.'
Public calls for the UK to offer more help has mounted after harrowing images emerged of five-year-old Galip Kurdi and his brother Aylan, 3, who drowned after their dinghy capsized while attempting to cross from Syria to the Greek island of Kos.
Mr Cameron said he was 'deeply moved' by the pictures but refused to spell out plans for an increased offer of more refugee places.
The Prime Minister told reporters: 'Anyone who saw those pictures overnight could not help but be moved and, as a father, I felt deeply moved by the sight of that young boy on a beach in Turkey.
'Britain is a moral nation and we will fulfil our moral responsibilities.
'I would say the people responsible for these terrible scenes we see the people most responsible are President Assad in Syria and the butchers of ISIL and the criminal gangs who are running this terrible trade in people.'
Mr Cameron's remarks were echoed by Chancellor George Osborne, who said Britain had already taken in 5,000 asylum seekers fleeing the war in Syria and would 'go on taking people'
It comes after Mr Cameron has come under pressure from within the Conservative party, as well as political opponents, church leaders and foreign leaders to do more.
Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said Mr Cameron was 'shaming the country' over the crisis. He told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: 'When people, human beings, see other human beings in distress, when we see pictures of young toddlers lying dead on a beach, then the natural human instinct is to help.
'David Cameron's natural instinct is to walk by on the other side and that's why he's shaming the country.'
Britain is a moral nation and we will fulfil our moral responsibilities Prime Minister David Cameron
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby today said the migrant emergency is a 'wicked crisis'.
He added: 'My heart is broken by the images and stories of men, women and children who have risked their lives to escape conflict, violence and persecution.
‘This is a hugely complex and wicked crisis that underlines our human frailty and the fragility of our political systems,’ he added. ‘We must respond with compassion.’
Labour's acting leader Harriet Harman said it was 'deplorable' that the government was 'putting its head in the sand and showing itself to be heartless and out of touch'.
'We are all proud of Britain's historical role of offering a sanctuary to those fleeing conflict and persecution,' she wrote in a letter to the PM.
'We are an outward-facing, generous-hearted nation, not one that turns inward and shirks its responsibilities. I know you will not want to be the Prime Minister of a Government that fails to offer sanctuary while our neighbours are stepping up to respond.
'I strongly support the Government's continued aid for the refugee camps in the region and agree with you that we need much tougher action against people trafficking, but it is clear now that we also have a moral duty to act to take in more of these people and help them to rebuild their lives.'
The human cost: One thousand miles away, a policeman on a Turkish beach had to gently recover the bodies of two brothers drowned as their family tried to make their way to the Greek island of Kos yesterday
Devastating: The two boys' mother also drowned in one of the most harrowing episodes of the migrant crisis
HOW UK'S ASYLUM SYSTEM WORKS It would be easy to think from some of the attacks in recent days that Britain refuses to accept any refugees. In fact, since early 2011 the UK has granted asylum to almost 5,000 Syrians. To claim asylum in the UK, a person has to be in the country. Last year some 32,344 adults and their dependants from around the world applied in 2014, the highest annual number since 2004. In the first quarter of 2015, the figure was 7,435. Genuine refugees are expected to seek asylum in the first safe country to arrive in. However, it can be difficult for people from the most dangerous parts of the world to reach the UK. Under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme, refugees can apply to be resettled in the UK by being transferred from Syria. A total of 216 people have been resettled under scheme so far.
Mr Cameron's remarks were echoed by Chancellor George Osborne, who said Britain had already taken in 5,000 asylum seekers fleeing the war in Syria and would 'go on taking people'. He added that Britain's closed-door refugee policy was 'under review'.
He said Britain would continue sending aid to the Middle East to help Syrian refugees trapped in camps.
He said: 'You have got to make sure the aid keeps coming – we put £1billion of overseas aid in to help these desperate people.'
But he added: 'Of course Britain has always been a home to real asylum seekers, genuine refugees. We have taken 5,000 people from the Syrian conflict.
'We will go on taking more and keep it under review. Britain has been playing a leading role and it will continue to do so.'
It came after Brussels drew up an emergency plan relocate 160,000 refugees across the EU. However, Britain has opted out of the scheme is not obliged to accept a single extra migrant.
Under the new scheme, migrants stranded in Italy, Greece and Hungary will be transferred to countries across the EU based on their population and economic wealth.
It will see Germany granting asylum to 35,000 refugees, France accepting 26,000 and Spain 16,000.
Even poverty-stricken Bulgaria and Romania will be expected to take thousands of families.
However, the UK – which refused to join the scheme when it was originally set up in May – will not have to take in any refugees despite being one of the largest and wealthiest countries in the EU.
If the UK were to take the same share as the rest of the EU it would be expected to grant asylum to around 17,000 refugees - or 11 per cent of the total number.
According to today's leaked EU document there are 54,000 asylum seekers in Hungary 39,600 in Italy, 66,400 in Greece.
Migrants board a train at Keleti Railway Station in Budapest today as plans emerged to relocate refugees across the EU
Around 2,000 migrants from Syria have been forced to sleep near the Keleti railway station in Budapest
PUBLIC PETITION FORCES DEBATE ON TAKING MORE REFUGEES More than 100,000 people have backed a petition calling for Britain to accept more refugees, triggering a debate in Parliament. At one point five people per second were backing the e-petition, urging the government to 'accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK'. The petition adds: 'There is a global refugee crisis. The UK is not offering proportional asylum in comparison with European counterparts. 'We can't allow refugees who have risked their lives to escape horrendous conflict and violence to be left living in dire, unsafe and inhumane conditions in Europe. We must help.' By 10.30am it had passed the 100,000 threshold for it to be considered for a debate in Parliament. Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham called for MPs to debate whether the UK should take in more refugees when Parliament returns next week. 'David Cameron cannot continue to turn his back on the crisis. It is time for him to show leadership and restore Britain's reputation as a country that has always provided refuge to the vulnerable,' he said.
Diplomatic pressure on Mr Cameron is grown in recent days, with Germany and Austria accusing the British PM of behaving like it is 'out of the club in this big task of sharing the burden'.
Some Conservative MPs, peers and donors today publicly called on Mr Cameron to offer sanctuary to 'not hundreds but thousands' of refugees.
Tory MP Jeremy Lefroy told MailOnline: 'We are talking about refugees, people fleeing for their lives. We should be doing more.
'We need to work with local communities up and down the country. The British people are very generous and which to provide help and support.'
The MP for Stafford said the UK government had already done more than any other European country to provide humanitarian help but it was 'not a question of either or', and refugees should be sent to parts of the country best able to support them.
YVETTE'S SELFIE BRIGADE Yvette Cooper has written to all MPs urging them to take a selfie proclaiming that they would welcome more refugees in Britain. The Labour leadership candidate made her move after rival Andy Burnham appeared to claim credit for being the first of the contenders to call for the UK to grant more Syrians asylum. In her letter, the shadow home secretary told MPs the situation ‘transcends’ party politics and the Labour leadership race. She added: ‘We are writing to you now to encourage you to ... take a selfie with a #refugeeswelcome banner and put it on Twitter and Facebook, encouraging others to do the same.’
David Burrowes, the Tory MP for Enfield, said Britain had taken a lead in providing a humanitarian and military response in north Africa but that had to be matched by a 'refuge response'.
'We have got a voluntary resettlement programme but at the moment it is in the numbers of the hundreds compared to other countries where it's thousands,' he told MailOnline.
'Part of the answer is we should not be taking hundreds as we are at the moment but thousands.
'We are open to criticism that we are not taking our fair share but also from our own point of view, I think it makes compassionate sense just to do more.'
Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and Malling, wrote on Twitter: 'I've spoken to many in West Kent who want us to do more and I agree with them. Our common humanity demands action at home and abroad.'
Nadhim Zahawi, MP for Stratford-on-Avon, added: 'We r nothing without compassion. Pic should make us all ashamed. We have failed in Syria. I am sorry little angel,RIP.'
Johnny Mercer, the Tory MP for Plymouth Moor View, told The Times: 'We have always led the world in looking after people who can't look after themselves.'
Tory MP Nicola Blackwood posted on Twitter: 'Britain has a proud history of giving sanctuary to those fleeing conflict & protecting the persecuted.
'We cannot be the generation that fails this test of humanity. We must do all we can.'
Fellow Conservative Chris Heaton Harris said the UK had 'always helped refugees fleeing war zones and we should now'.
EU leaders have drawn up a plan to relocate 160,000 refugees around the Continent – but Britain will remain exempt from taking any
Tory MP David Burrowes (left) said Britain had taken a lead in providing a humanitarian and military response in north Africa but that had to be matched by a 'refuge response'. Nadhim Zahawi, MP for Stratford-on-Avon, said Britain was 'nothing without compassion'
100 MIGRANT CHILDREN TAKEN INTO CARE IN KENT IN JUST A MONTH The number of migrant children entering Britain has continued to surge with 100 youngsters taken into care in Kent in just one month alone. Figures show that 720 unaccompanied children seeking asylum are being looked after by Kent County Council, up from 630 at the beginning of August. In comparison, the local authority was supporting around 220 unaccompanied asylum seeking children under the age of 18 in March last year, which rose to 369 in March of this year. The latest figures come after the council said last month it had no more foster beds available for children. The huge surge in the numbers of unaccompanied children seeking asylum comes amid this summer's turmoil in Calais, leaving Kent County Council with a multi-million pound funding gap in care costs.
However, other Tory MPs backed the Prime Minister's stance. Gary Streeter said: 'The reality is that taking more refugees is not going to solve the problem.
'What I am frustrated about is that collectively, whether it is the European Union or the UN or even the US, I don't think we are doing enough to tackle the root problem - we have got to stop people getting on the boats or the trains.'
Former Conservative International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said that the UK was providing an 'immense amount of humanitarian support' to countries such as Syria.
'Were Britain not providing that support, there would be yet more hundreds of thousands of people coming out of that part of the world'
He added that the UK had done 'more than the whole of the EU put together in terms of financial support'.
But Tory MP Andrew Percy said his constituents were not clamouring to accept more refugees, tweeting: ‘It is incredible comparing the media coverage of the migrant crisis with the emails I am receiving from constituents.’ Meanwhile, tension was also mounting across Europe as Brussels was accused of turning the Mediterranean into a ‘cemetery’ for refugees.
Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan accused EU states of being responsible for the death of every single victim of the crisis, saying: ‘European countries, which turned the Mediterranean Sea – the cradle of ancient civilisations – into a migrant cemetery are party to the crime that takes place when each refugee loses their life.’
Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, attacked Britain specifically for doing ‘much less’ than other countries to ease the crisis.
Last night, as the numbers crossing into Germany reached nearly 150 per hour, it asked Italy to impose identification checks at Brennero, on the border with Austria, to ease the flow.
An unprecedented surge of migrants has been trying to get to the country after Berlin last week began accepting asylum claims from Syrian refugees regardless of where they entered the EU.
It has caused chaos across eastern Europe as authorities have struggled to cope with the vast numbers who, as undocumented migrants, are theoretically barred from travelling across the EU. Figures released yesterday showed a record 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany last month.
Italian minister for European affairs Sandro Gozi suggested Mr Cameron risks losing support for his plans to curb benefits for migrants.
Mr Gozi told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It is clear that in front of this mess, in front of this particularly serious crisis, we would welcome that every country take on more responsibility.
'When it comes to the UK, the UK has a special status but if you have a special status you cannot seek to shape policy in which you don't want to participate.'
Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper has suggested that it should be possible to take some 10,000 people seeking asylum
JUNCKER'S REFUGEE RELOCATION SCHEME EXPLAINED EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker wants 160,000 refugees relocated across the continent European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is set to propose a big increase in the number of refugees EU countries are required to give refuge to. In July, Mr Juncker called on European leaders to agree to share 40,000 refugees who had successfully made it to Italy and Greece. EU leaders eventually agreed to relocate 32,000 asylum seekers across the continent – but only those from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea. The number of refugees per country was calculated based on population, economic wealth and unemployment rates. Mr Juncker now wants the asylum scheme to be expanded to help relocate 160,000 refugees from three countries - Greece, Italy and Hungary. The new proposals include a 'permanent relocation scheme' so arriving migrants are automatically shared out between EU states. However, the UK, Ireland and Denmark opted out of the scheme when it was first set up.
Peter Sutherland, the UN special representative on international migration, said while some countries were 'massively bearing the burden' of the migrant crisis, the UK was among those that 'can do more'.
Conservative donor Sir Mick Davis said Britain must not 'shut itself off' from modern crises.
Tory former foreign office minister Baroness Warsi told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We have to be prepared to share the burden.
'This is not about having an open door policy, this is about having quite a specific responsive policy in the areas for example that we have expertise (in).
'Unaccompanied minors, women fleeing from sexual violence, for example territories held by Isis.
'These are areas upon which we have both expertise and an international reputation and I think Britain has always been a generous, open, welcoming country and we must not allow a political climate of today to step away from that proud tradition.'
Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper has suggested that it should be possible to take some 10,000 people seeking asylum.
She said: 'It is heartbreaking what is happening on our continent. We cannot keep turning our backs on this. We can - and must - do more. If every area in the UK took just ten families, we could offer sanctuary to 10,000 refugees. Let's not look back with shame at our inaction.'
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the Government's refusal to take more than a few hundred refugees was 'morally wrong' and 'politically foolish' while Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: 'We must do more.'
Amid signs that EU leaders were losing control of the crisis, Germany was yesterday forced to ask Italy to impose identification checks at Brennero, on the border with Austria, sparking claims that free movement is on the brink of collapse. |
Huntington Beach Police breath testing patrons in local bars
Is the Huntington Beach Police breath testing patrons in local bars ? The Orange County Register had a news story about the Huntington Beach Police breath testing patrons in local bars as part of the “know your limit” program. Huntington Beach Police received a grant from the State of California Office of Traffic Safety in the amount of $435,226 for the program up to September, 2015, although Police in Huntington Beach said they will continue the program. Police Officers are paid to hang out in local bars, breath test patrons, and give out a silver sticker that reads “I Know My Limit.”
Of 55 cities comparable in size, with 100,001 to 250,000 residents, Huntington Beach was ranked No. 1 in the state in 2011 for alcohol-involved accidents. That year Huntington Beach saw 164 victims killed or injured. Further investigation showed that the majority of those accidents were from the following five local bars:
Baja Sharkeez: 16 accidents Hurricanes Bar and Grill: 5 accidents Marlin Bar and Grill: 5 accidents Huntington Beach Beer Company: 4 Black Bull Chop House: 4
Huntington Beach Police breath testing patrons in local bars
Huntington Beach might be the first to use this breath testing program, but they probably won’t be the last. Officers from the Anaheim Police Department and police agencies in Los Angeles County have joined Huntington Beach officers in downtown bars to test out the program for their cities.
The OC Register Article did state one troubling fact, however. It suggests that people could be arrested for not participating:
Bar patrons who are clearly intoxicated and refuse to participate in Know Your Limit can be arrested for being intoxicated in public, but are mostly encouraged to find a ride home.
Does that mean that if you refuse a breath test in one of the local bars (which is not illegal, as long as you are not being asked to leave), and an officer thinks you are drunk, (without a test to confirm), that you could be arrested based upon not participating in the voluntary test?
The program may also not be particularly effective however. The first city to use the program was Scottsdale, Arizona, where they instituted it in 2010, and then had a record year of drunk driving accidents in 2011.
Awareness to prevent DUIs is admirable, but it’s the driving that is the problem. Drinking is not illegal. If you know how to drink and how to avoid a DUI, you can avoid the intrusion from police demanding a test from you in a bar.
If you do know someone arrested for a Huntington Beach DUI, the best thing you can do is talk to an experienced Huntington Beach DUI lawyer. Call 949-682-5316 to get your free consultation today. |
For :iconsMachinesandMonsters:,here is the grand opening for the Dino Charge Megazord Para-Raptor formation..with copics. To be perfectly honest with ya guys,this show rocks!! Hehe. ^_^ Shelby is possibly my fave ranger in the team and is a perfect replacement for Amy from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger which is still better than freakin' Ninninger!! Well,that is for another time but hey,the characters in Dino Charge are likeable and Koda is possibly the show-stealer. Chase (oh man,he's got the same name as Chaser from Masked Rider Drive..T_T) is literally smooth as ice and Riley is starting to be like Souji. Hehey. Ivan the Gold Ranger is miles better than Utsusemimaru in my opinion and his antics are quite the treasure. Tyler is also a good character and at least the show isn't about him like a certain Mission Impossible trilogy before Ghost Protocol came along.The Dino Charge Megazord is possibly one of the most detailed Megazords in toku history and I only say that is because there is soooo much detail and rivets on the Zords even though they were like from millions of years. XD Hope PLEX comes up with something in the 40th Sentai. XD So yeah,the villain Sledge is also a competent villain and yes,he looks like a Bionicle and I like that. Bite me!There's nothing to say about the Kyoryujin Western other than it is a sharp shoot. What's more to say,this is a great show to watch if you think Ninninger was terrible,give Dino Charge a go. The Graphite Ranger has now been unlocked. |
Toward the end of 2006, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — "a national non-profit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and other professionals dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values" — charged the National Park Service with stalling on a promised review of a creationist book sold at the bookstores at Grand Canyon National Park. Although the park's bookstores are operated by a separate non-profit organization, the Grand Canyon Association, the National Park Service is responsible for approving the items that are sold there. In August 2003, the NPS approved the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View , edited by Tom Vail and published by Master Books, the publishing arm of the Institute for Creation Research. A Different View expounds a young-earth creationist view of the geology of the canyon, and proclaims, "all contributions have been peer-reviewed to ensure a consistent and biblical perspective." In his review of the book ( RNCSE 2004 Jan/Feb; 24 [1]: 33-6), the geologist Wilfred Elders described it as "'Exhibit A' of a new, slick strategy by biblical literalists to proselytize using a beautifully illustrated, multi-authored book about a spectacular and world-famous geological feature," adding, "Allowing the sale of this book within the National Park was unfortunate. In the minds of some buyers, this could imply NPS approval of young-earth creationists and their religious proselytizing."
After the sale of A Different View was approved, the superintendent of the park appealed to the NPS headquarters for "a review of the book in terms of its appropriateness," and the Chief of the Park Service's Geologic Resources Division recommended its removal, saying that it "does not use accurate, professional and scholarly knowledge; is not based on science but a specific religious doctrine; does not further the public's understanding of the Grand Canyon's existence; [and] does not further the mission of the National Park Service." Meanwhile, the sale of the book became a matter of public controversy (see RNCSE 2004 Jan/Feb; 24 [1]: 4-5). Elders's review appeared in Eos (the weekly newsletter of the American Geophysical Union); the presidents of the American Paleontological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the Association of American State Geologists, the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, the American Geological Institute, and the Geological Society of America signed a joint letter to the NPS, urging that A Different View be removed "from shelves where buyers are given the impression that the book is about earth science and its content endorsed by the National Park Service" (see RNCSE 2004 Jan/Feb; 24 [1]: 19); and stories about the controversy appeared in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times . A spokesperson for the NPS repeatedly assured the press and Congress that the promised review would be forthcoming.
In its December 28, 2006, press release, however, PEER charged, "Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park." Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, commented, "As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan ." In a December 28, 2006, letter, PEER urged the new director of NPS, Mary Bomar, to remove the book from sale at the park's bookstores and museums as well as to "[p]rovide training to the interpretive staff at Grand Canyon NP regarding how to answer questions from the public concerning the geologic age of the Canyon and related matters; and ... [a]pprove an updated version of the long-stalled pamphlet 'National Park Service Geologic Interpretive Programs: Distinguishing Science from Religion' for distribution to agency interpretive staff." It ought to be noted that PEER was not accusing the NPS of forbidding its interpretive staff to present the scientific facts about the canyon's age and geology. Unfortunately, careless wording in its press release suggested otherwise, and PEER's credibility suffered as a result, obscuring PEER's important charge that the NPS is not providing its staff with the resources it needs to present the scientific facts about the canyon's age of geology effectively, especially when faced with park visitors who have questions about, or even embrace, views that reject those facts on religious grounds.
Prompted by PEER's press release, the controversy over the sale of A Different View began to attract attention again in the media, with the Arizona Daily Sun (2007 Jan 4) offering a report in which a spokesperson for the NPS was quoted as saying, "We do not use the creationist text in our teaching, nor do we endorse its content. However, it is not our place to censor alternate beliefs." The Sacramento Bee (2007 Jan 4) suggested, in a forceful and cogent editorial entitled "Don't use parks to promote creationism," "A new year and a new National Park Service director mark an opportunity for change. Here's an easy one. Settle the 3-year-old controversy about a creationist account of the Grand Canyon." The editorial argued that "Mary Bomar, the new National Park Service director, should send a message that programs and materials in national parks present the best scientific evidence and don't endorse any particular religious beliefs," and concluded by urging Bomar to do so quickly:
Remove the book from sale from within the park; its proper place is for sale in private bookstores outside the public park. Equally important, finish the long-delayed pamphlet ... and distribute it to park rangers. The nation's public parks are not the place to promote religious theories about the formation and development of Earth.
A spokesperson for the NPS, David Barna, told The New York Times (2007 Jan 5) that there was no formal review of whether the bookstores ought to discontinue selling A Different View in part because of differences among the NPS's specialists. According to the Times , "When officials got together to discuss the book, the geologists and natural resource specialists would say, 'Get this book out of here,' Mr. Barna said. 'But the education and interpretation people would say: 'Wait a minute. If your science is so sound, the fact that there are differences of opinion should not scare you away.'" In a written statement, the Times reported, Barna "notes that Park Service management policies require reliance on 'the best scientific evidence available' and, as a result, rangers tell visitors that "the Colorado River basin has developed in the past 40 million years." But the Times also reported, "the guidelines also say that material available from concessionaires in national parks should adhere to the standards used to evaluate Park Service materials." PEER's executive director Jeff Ruch was quoted as contending that selling the book promoted fundamentalist Christian views: "This is government establishment of religion in a fairly fundamental way, if you pardon the pun."
Ronald Bailey, the science columnist for Reason , heard NCSE's executive director Eugenie C Scott speak about the controversy at the James Randi Educational Foundation's event The Amazing Meeting V, and promptly went to Grand Canyon National Park to see A Different View for himself. He reports, "As I was buying it, I asked the clerk what she thought about it. 'We're not allowed to say anything about it,' she said covering her mouth with her hand in the 'Speak No Evil' monkey fashion. 'Oh come on,' I cajoled, but the clerk refused any further comment. Later I went in search of it at the other south rim Park Service bookstore at Desert View. In this much smaller bookstore, Vail's slender Flood geology volume was mixed in among the other photo books. Again, I asked this clerk what she thought, and she smiled and replied, 'All I will say is that it's got some really beautiful photographs'" (2007 Jan 26; available on-line at http://reason.com/news/show/118334.html). Acknowledging that the NPS-overseen bookstores carry books that present and discuss the creation myths of Native Americans, Bailey nevertheless drew the crucial distinction: "unlike books on native creation myths, Vail insists that he is making scientific claims about how rock layers are laid down, fossils formed and the canyon carved."
Title: Renewed Concern About Creationism at Grand Canyon National Park Author(s): Glenn Branch NCSE Deputy Director Volume: 27 Issue: 3–4 Year: 2007 Date: May–August Page(s): 15–16 |
Besides projecting directions and e-mails in front of your face, Google Glass can also measure biological signs like heart and breathing rates, according to new research. The work suggests a new way for wearable devices to track a person’s stress level and provide instant fitness feedback.
Researchers from MIT’s Media Lab and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing say that they can accurately ferret out this data by monitoring a Glass wearer’s head movements with the gyroscope, accelerometer, and camera built into Google Glass. A paper on the research will be presented at the MobiHealth conference in Athens, Greece, in November.
The project, called BioGlass, could lead to biometric-tracking apps for Google Glass. Looking beyond the controversial head-worn computer, researchers hope their work leads to less obtrusive sensors for self-monitoring via wearable devices.
BioGlass uses the Glass sensors and camera to track the wearer’s ballistocardiogram, or BCG, which is a mechanical signal measuring the tiny body movements that result from the heart pumping blood. BCG tracking has been around since the 1870s, but was hardly used for many years because it was tricky to track without special equipment (such as a frictionless table). More recently, though, research has shown that sensitive motion sensors for electronic devices can easily detect the BCG signal, and at least one company, Quanttus, is building a product that can do so at the wrist (see “This Fitness Wristband Wants to Play Doctor”).
In a study of 12 people, researchers were able to estimate heart and breathing rates nearly as accurately as they could with FDA-approved sensors for tracking the same signals. The results for heart-rate estimation were off by less than a beat per minute and respiration by less than a breath per minute, says Javier Hernandez, a graduate student in MIT’s Media Lab who coauthored the paper.
The researchers built an Android app that captured data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and front-facing camera of the Google Glass device; in order to get a range of physiological parameters, study participants wore it as they stood, sat, and lay motionless, and then again after riding an exercise bike. Researchers then isolated and extracted heart- and respiration-rate data from the accelerometer and gyroscope readings, and tracked motion in the video by noting pixel displacement over time. They then used this data to extract heart and respiration information.
The researchers are now working on several apps that would use this kind of data for practical purposes; Yin Li, a paper coauthor and graduate student at Georgia Tech, says they’re making an app that captures and analyzes the signals that were investigated in the study in real time (for the study, the signals were analyzed after the fact).
There are plenty of challenges ahead. The researchers still need to test their work with big motions, such as walking around, to see if they can get the same level of accuracy. And it may be difficult to convince people to wear Google Glass in the first place, let alone track their body’s signals with the device. At $1,500, the device is about 15 times more expensive than most fitness trackers, and its in-your-face style is polarizing.
But Rosalind Picard, a paper coauthor and MIT professor who heads the Media Lab’s affective computing research group, says that while the group’s work uses Google Glass, the method would work with any pair of glasses embedded with a camera and the right sensors.
“I would love for my glasses to give me a little quiet indication about my breathing so I can adjust it,” she says.
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Facebook has decided to turn over to congressional investigators copies of roughly 3,000 advertisements purchased by Russian-linked groups during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The company confirmed Thursday afternoon that it would release details associated with the advertisements, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlining other steps the company is taking to step up transparency for ads.
“We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election,” Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch said in a post.
“That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries — and we want to do our part.”
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Sen. Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Addressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win MORE (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been a leading critic of Facebook's handling of the probe into Russian activity on its platform, called the move a "necessary first step."
“Important & absolutely necessary first step. The American people deserve to know the truth about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,” Warner tweeted.
Zuckerberg said the release was only one of the steps the company is taking to make the platform less vulnerable for those looking to use it as a tool for election interference.
“We will continue our investigation into what happened on Facebook in this election. We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government,” Zuckerberg said during a Facebook Live.
Zuckerberg noted that the company would be expanding its analysis of election interference into other former Soviet countries — something that Warner has been pressing it to do. He also said that Facebook will push to make its political ads more transparent.
“Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads they're currently running to any audience on Facebook,” he said.
Facebook will also devote more resources to its security team and double the number of staff on its election integrity team, Zuckerberg said.
“I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” he said. “That’s not what we stand for.”
Facebook said its decision to turn over copies of the ads to Congress came after “an extensive legal and policy review," noting that federal law "places strict limitations on the disclosure of account information."
The company has previously cited federal privacy laws for its delay in releasing more information about the Russian-linked advertisements to congressional investigators.
Meanwhile, Facebook had given more details to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team for its probe of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and any Russian ties to President Trump's campaign.
Facebook did not mention releasing further details on the matter to the public, which some lawmakers have pushed for.
The social media company revealed earlier this month that Russian actors purchased $100,000 in political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, but has remained tight-lipped about additional details.
Facebook has been criticized by lawmakers for not revealing enough information about the extent of Russian activity on its platform to potentially influence the election.
“I question whether Facebook has put near the resources they need into getting us all the facts,” Warner told reporters last week.
Warner’s counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffTech takes heat as anti-vaxers go viral Demands grow for a public Mueller report Bharara: It would seem 'odd and unusual' if Mueller report isn't made public MORE (D-Calif.), had similarly called for more details on the ad buys.
Warner and Sen. Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Five tantalizing questions about Mueller’s investigation MORE (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence panel, say they plan to have Facebook, and potentially other companies, testify on the matter in the fall.
Twitter has also received scrutiny. A company spokesperson told The Hill on Thursday that it will meet with Senate Intelligence Committee staff over its inquiry of Russian interference in the 2016 race.
The spokesperson declined to comment on if it has found evidence of Russian influence on its platform.
Updated: 4:45 p.m. |
Gun-control advocates and their allies in the state legislature are gearing up for another battle in 2014 in hopes of making New Jersey gun restrictions, already among the toughest in the nation, even more stringent.
Last year, during a tumultuous legislative session following the murder of 20 children in a Newtown, Conn. elementary school, the legislature passed 22 new pieces of gun legislation. About a dozen became law, while the balance were struck down by the governor's veto pen. Advocates for more limits on guns say important legislation was left on the table.
TIMELINE: 2013 was a big year for gun legislation
It's those measures — in particular, a restriction on ammunition magazine size, a ban on .50-caliber rifles, stricter limits on children’s access to firearms and mandatory safety training for gun owners — that will be their focus in the coming year. "Our top priority is a 10-round limit on magazine size," said Bryan Miller, executive director of Heeding God's Call, a faith-based organization focused on preventing gun violence.
"Nobody needs a 15-round ammunition magazine unless they are a domestic terrorist or a gangster," Miller said. "We expect the legislative leadership to get behind this and the governor to see some sense."
In last year's session, the magazine restriction never made it to the governor's desk. Instead, it was the Senate and president Steve Sweeney who stood in its way. The state currently restricts clips to 15 rounds, a limit Sweeney described last year as "effective."
But Miller said he is confident the Senate president is on board with the 10-round limit this time around.
For the families of the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, the 10-round magazine has become a rallying cry.
"We do a lot of studying and research and we speak to gun owners and people all
over the political spectrum," said Mark Barden, advocacy director for Sandy Hook Promise whose son Daniel was among the children murdered. "We hear universally
for hunting, home protection and sport shooting that a 10 round magazine is
certainly plenty."
Barden said to back up the claim that the limit would save lives, you need only look to the number of shootings that are halted when the shooter stops to reload.
For their part, Second Amendment advocates say the magazine restriction is arbitrary and does nothing to prevent gun violence. What it does, gun advocates say, is limit only the firepower of those who follow the law.
"For the most part this is the same feel-good, do-nothing legislation that the New Jersey legislature is so fond of sponsoring," said Frank Fiamingo, president of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society. "As usual, the legislation targets the law-abiding gun owner who has purchased a gun legally and does not address the gangs and the career criminals who are committing the crimes."
Likewise the ban on .50 caliber rifles, a weapon gun advocates say is irrelevant to the discussion because it's used only by wealthy hobbyists and has never been used to commit a crime in the state.
Last year, Gov. Chris Christie himself advocated for its ban but later reversed course with a veto of the measure.
The governor hinted that the veto was punishment for Democratic overreach; however, gun-control advocates believe he also was pandering to a New Hampshire pro-guns group that urged its members to contact the Christie and warn him against signing various gun-control measures.
Miller said he's hoping the governor makes good on the ban this year.
"Both houses of the legislature and the governor himself supported the ban prior to passage and then, just to teach Democratic leaders a lesson, he vetoed it," Miller said. "Is this leadership? And who was he really talking to, the citizens of New Jersey or the right wing pro-gunners of New Hampshire."
Mandatory safety training was part of Sweeney's centerpiece bill, passed by both houses of the legislature last year but conditionally vetoed by the governor. The bill would have changed the way the state issues firearms licenses, made background checks instant and included private sales in the law. It also would have required proof of safety training prior to the issuance of a gun license. Training was among the elements altered by the governor's veto. After the conditional veto, Sweeney abandoned the measure.
"It's the most logical of the group," Miller said. "You need safety training to drive a car. Everybody who owns a gun should know how to store it and use it safely."
But Fiamingo said the devil is in the details. If the legislation is aimed at providing free common-sense training on gun storage and other safety factors, his group could back it. The problem, he said, is the parameters are always left out of the bill.
If it's true training and it's provided free, he could back it, Fiamingo said. But if it's just a financial barrier erected to make it harder to obtain a gun permit, he said, it's a non-starter.
Sweeney already has reintroduced the bill in the current session. Asked about specifics of this year's agenda, however, Sweeney issued only a broad comment.
"The governor vetoed common-sense gun-safety reforms, including legislation I sponsored that would have made New Jersey a national model on background checks," he said. "We will be examining these issues again during the new term."
As he was last year, Assemblyman Lou Greenwald is a strong advocate of gun-control measures, including the magazine restriction.
"I made a personal commitment to the families of Newtown that we would not stop fighting, no matter how long it takes until we get the magazine limit passed," Greenwald said. "In talking with the families, they will tell you, the single most important piece of legislation to stop this kind of insanity in the future is that magazine limit."
While gun-control supporters ask "Why not?" when it comes to the magazine-size limit, pro-gun advocates say that's the wrong question.
"The question is, what is the statistical evidence that shows that reducing the limit on a clip from 15 to 10 rounds will reduce gun crime?" Fiamingo said. "If this passes, are the Latin Kings or the Bloods or the Crips going to reduce their magazine capacity to 10 rounds?"
Despite objections from gun-rights groups, polls taken in the aftermath of Newtown showed nearly 60 percent of New Jersey residents favored stricter controls on guns, and a year later, public opinion remains on the side of gun control. And while the political climate in the state has changed significantly over the past year, it's too soon to tell if it will result in a sea change on gun control.
Christie, though he's fresh off a landslide reelection victory, is politically wounded. Once the frontrunner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, the dual scandals surrounding lane closures at the George Washington Bridge and Hurricane Sandy recovery funding in Hoboken have cast a pall — at least for now — over his viability as a national candidate. Whether that will mean he'll focus on a more Jersey-centric agenda or move more to the right remains to be seen.
Sweeney also faces an altered landscape. His own reelection in the 3rd Legislative District, where gun owners and sportsmen are commonplace, will no doubt allow him more freedom to navigate the issue. He has his own sights set on the governor's office, so he will likely adopt a more statewide focus on a host of issues, gun control being among the most obvious.
Barden and others plan to attend a press conference with the state's legislative leaders later this month in hopes of finishing what was started here last year.
NJ.com reporter S.P. Sullivan contributed to this report. |
Share. You're soaking in it! You're soaking in it!
The latest update for The Sims 4 adds pools and other pool-related activities to the game.
The Build mode used for home creation has been adapted to pools, which should help streamline the pool-building process.
In addition to being created in Build mode, pools can also be built diagonally and on rooftops. Windows can be added to pools to create infinity pools, wall height can be adjusted to make deeper or shallower pools, and a slew of new swimwear has been added to the game as well. The new line of swimwear can be perused in Create A Sim.
Having a pool means that Sims can just sit around the pool and enjoy all that owning a pool entails, from swimming, to relaxing pool side, to getting splashed by other Sims. It also means the return of death by drowning, which means Sims ghosts may express their displeasure for water, on account of it being the cause of their untimely simulated demise.
In addition to pools, there are a number of bug fixes including the tweaking of some performance issues and graphical oddities.
The Sims 4 launched at the beginning of September and help propel EA to huge earnings in the second quarter of its fiscal year.
Seth Macy is a freelance writer who just wants to be your friend. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy, and MyIGN at sethgmacy. |
Syria is almost completely cut off from the global Internet.
Several Internet monitoring companies reported Thursday that Syria suffered an almost complete Internet shutdown. This is the latest in a long series of Internet blackouts in the war-torn country.
The blackout started around 8:30 a.m. ET, according to Internet monitoring firm Renesys, which first spotted the outage. Renesys reported that 84 networks experienced an outage in Syria starting at 12:26 UTC, which is 95% of the routed networks in the country, the company wrote.
Internet in Syria almost entirely down at 12:26 UTC. Only Aleppo link to Turkey remains connected. pic.twitter.com/o6flIEbkVy — Renesys Corporation (@renesys) March 20, 2014
The disruption was then confirmed by other companies like Akamai, BGPmon, OpenDNS, and Google.
Near complete Internet disruption in #Syria detected by @Akamai traffic monitoring, starting at ~12:30pm UTC pic.twitter.com/MqGovceSHy — StateOfTheInternet (@akamai_soti) March 20, 2014
Country wide Internet outage in Syria starting at 12:25 UTC Only remaining network are the Aleppo, AS24814, prefixes pic.twitter.com/s74fStmBEz — BGPmon.net (@bgpmon) March 20, 2014
Looks like Syria is offline again. pic.twitter.com/F1eovuPjnE — Think Umbrella (@ThinkUmbrella) March 20, 2014
At this point, the source of the outage is still unclear. In the past, the government has often blamed technical issues — claims that experts meet with skepticism, arguing that the outages seem to coincide with important military operations or offensives, instead indicating that the government might purposely shut down the Internet. This is possible thanks to Syria's stranglehold over the country's single point of failure, the state-controlled Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, which controls the flow of the Internet in and outside of the country.
Doug Madory, a researcher at Renesys, said that only the link from Aleppo to Turkey remains working, something that "is consistent with outages over the past few months."
"Aleppo's outages occur independently from the country-wide blackouts," he added.
The last Internet blackout in Syria was reported Feb. 20, 2014.
UPDATE, 3.31 p.m. ET: The Internet has apparently been restored in Syria, after a blackout that lasted more than 7 hours, according to Renesys and Akamai.
Apparent restoration of #Syria Internet connectivity detected by @Akamai traffic monitoring at ~7:00pm UTC. pic.twitter.com/eQnRJvE1Ho — StateOfTheInternet (@akamai_soti) March 20, 2014
The outage was caused by "a breakdown in the optical fiber cable in Damascus Countryside," according to the Syrian government-owned news agency SANA.
Madory, the Renesys researcher, told Mashable that from the outside world, it's impossible to know for sure what caused the outage, and whether the government's explanation is accurate. But its explanation is plausible.
"If they have a single fiber line that connects Tartous with [Syrian Telecommunications Establishment]'s central office in Damascus and that was what was cut, then this is possible," he said. |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A man was arrested several months after he put six puppies in pillow cases, tied the pillow cases in a knot and dropped them into a culvert near a storm drain, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said.
Ernest Martin faces six counts of animal abandonment.
Martin, 39, was arrested Saturday, but the incident took place last September, police said.
According to the Sheriff's Office, a passerby noticed the pillow cases, and people then took out the puppies, which had been stolen from their owner.
JSO booking photo of Ernest Martin on surveillance image
EXTENDED VIDEO: Surveillance shows puppies stuffed into storm drains
A resident checked their surveillance video, and Martin was seen in it, stuffing the puppies into the culvert at the corner of Clyde Street and Van Buren Avenue, police said.
"It just breaks my heart to see someone hurting animals like that," said the person who recorded the surveillance video. "He throws them real high into the air and over the fence and they're hitting the ground. He came back outside with some pillow cases, grabbed the puppies up one by one, came out here to the drain and started shoving them into the drain."
The witness, who wished to not be identified, told News4Jax on Monday that when the man couldn't stuff all the puppies into one drain, he went to another one.
"When they started moving around, he was kicking them, trying to shove them back into the drain," the witness said.
Fortunately, all six puppies, which police said belonged to Martin's stepfather, survived the attack. News4Jax learned that one of the puppies now lives with the stepfather, and the others were given to family members.
Martin's mother, who asked to remain anonymous, said her son's actions were the result of schizophrenia.
"When he saw the dogs, he though they were little demons," she said. "He goes through little spasms, but he put them in there. He put them in the ditch."
Martin was booked into the Duval County Jail and ordered held on $90,000 bond.
Viewer warning: The videos, shown in this story, contain graphic details and images that may be considered disturbing to some people.
Copyright 2017 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved. |
Today I have a Do-It-Yourself guide on how to "dropkick" a Claymore Anti-Personnel mine for you guys. This is a technique I learned in Ranger Battalion and was able to use later on when I was in Special Forces. The term dropkick is of course just shorthand for a method of rigging the Claymore mine for a very fast employment when outnumbered and outgunned by the enemy. Also known as the "red vapor mist machine" in some circles, the Claymore mine is typically used to protect soldiers in static positions such as patrol bases, or used to initiate an ambush against enemy troops. The dropkick technique is different in that it is used by snipers, recce patrols, or other small SOF teams who are breaking contact with the enemy and attempting to escape and evade.
So here it is, the Claymore Mine that we all know and love. With a layer of plastic explosives lining the inside of the curve shaped mine, there are about 700 ball bearings laid into the explosives that fire forward at enemy troops as shrapnel. I'm out of the military now so this demonstration was done with an inert trainer rather than the real deal!
Step 1: Take inventory and test equipment. You will need everything you see above and a knife for this project. Use the test set to test the Claymore out on the range for functionality. Go through the entire process, EIB standards and everything. If you actually have to use a dropkicked Claymore in combat, you need it to work, so don't cut any corners here. Check the mine, wire, and clacker for serviceability and scrounge up some rubber bands; you'll see why in a minute.
Step 2: First we need to prepare the Claymore bag that the mine comes in. Directions on how to employ the mine are sewn into the cover of the bag. This is going to get in the way as we move forward, so do yourself a favor and cut or tear these out now.
Make your Claymore bag look like this and we are ready to move on to the next step.
Step 3: The Claymore bag is partitioned down the middle into two pouches, one for the Claymore mine and one for the wire with blasting cap, clacker, and test set. We need to cut down this partition so that we have one big pouch in the bag.
Once your Claymore bag looks like this you will be ready to go on to the next step.
Step 4: Extend the legs of the Claymore mine and put it in the bag to see where the legs poke into the bottom.
Use your knife to cut slits in the bottom of the bag and ensure that the legs of the mine can slide through.
Step 5: Back to the lid of the bag. Cut slits up both sides of the lid, three on each side. Make sure that they are equally spaced apart and don't go past the buttons.
Step 6: Take the rubber bands and loop them through the slits that you made in the cover, then loop the bands back on themselves, making a bite around the fabric of the lid. Do this for each of the six slits that you cut.
Step 6: This is where it gets a little tricky. Figure out how much length of the Claymore wire covers and surpasses the length of the lid. In my case, I can wrap the cord around my elbow and over my palm to make a spool, and that fits nicely for our purposes. This might require some experimentation on your part to get it right. You will need to make three separate wraps that will be locked into place with the rubber bands, so plan ahead.
Start stringing the Claymore wire back and forth. Once you get enough wraps, separating the wire equally into thirds, go ahead and lock the ends into the loops of the rubber bands. You may need to twist the rubber bands and loop them back around the wire a second time to make sure it's in there nice and snug.
This is what it should look like when you are done. During this process it is critical that you are careful with the blasting cap when doing this with a live mine. When I worked with live demo, I'd keep the cap inside the plastic spool that the wire comes on for safety purposes.
Step 7: Put the Claymore mine back in the bag, push the metal legs through the slits you cut in the bottom, and fold them down and out of the way for transportation.
Step 8: Arm the mine. Screw the blasting cap into the mine when appropriate. This depends on unit SOP, so if you Privates out there need to check with your Squad Leader before you Sua Sponte this! Army regs say that no charges or explosives can be primed with initiation systems until they are going to be used. Most SOF units these days are priming their charges on the FOB beforehand and rolling out to their targets. How your unit does is METT-T (situation) dependent.
Here is the finished product, you've dropkicked a claymore mine. The mine can now be carried by the sling or kept on an external pouch on a rucksack. When a small recce patrol makes contact and can't wait for air support, it's time to use this bad boy. Extend the claymore legs, stick it in the ground (THIS SIDE FACES ENEMY), pull however much wire you need to get you behind cover and concealment, run to cover, pop the shipping plugs, and attach the clacker. Once a pursuing enemy closes in on your position, you know what to do!
Writing up this DIY guide cost me some money; would you believe that a used Claymore trainer costs almost 200 dollars?! I think it was worth the trouble, but if you guys learned anything from this post, please help us out and make this DIY guide famous. Use the like button and share this with as many people as possible. Thanks guys.
Kit Up! contributor Jack Murphy is a former Ranger, Special Forces Soldier and is the author of the military thriller Reflexive Fire. |
With most of our games, our initial prototypes are made with simple shapes to get the gameplay working as soon as possible. With Don't Grind, the concept was so simple that we decided to set the project up properly right away. So we created the spritesheets and started building the scene as we worked on the gameplay.
Characters - Injecting life into inanimate objects
It's important with a game like Don't Grind to feel connected with what is going on. We really wanted to bring the characters to life but avoid the whole "grinding up cute cats and dogs", so we chose to use inanimate objects. There have been thousands of games where you put animals in blenders and stuff since way back in the early days of flash, and we didn't want to make one of those. |
Every new business wants to differentiate itself, to stand out from the crowd. It is a bit of a mystery, then, why so many websites for smaller cider companies proudly state that they are different because they don’t make sweet cider, unlike the big bad Big Players (you know who they are). So many cideries make this claim that it no longer seems to be much of a distinction. More to the point it does an incredible disservice to sweeter ciders, seeming to say that if it’s sweet it’s therefore bad, and implying that if it’s dry it is therefore good. As with most simplistic statements, this ain’t necessarily so.
First, when we talk about sweetness in cider, just what is it we’re talking about.
Sugar is the obvious answer, and how much of it is either left in the cider from the original juice or added back at some point post-fermentation either in the form of un-fermented juice or plain old table sugar. The amount of sugar in a finished cider can be reported in any of a number of ways – in grams of sugar per liter (which can also be expressed as a percentage), specific gravity, or degrees brix (often used in the wine world). There are any number of calculators and tables available that can convert these measurements from one to the other, so for the purposes of this discussion we’ll stick to grams per liter (g/L).
The good folks at the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) have tried to bring some order to the world of cider evaluation by setting some general boundaries for various categories of cider-based on sugar content.
Dry Medium-Dry* Medium Medium-Sweet Sweet g/L 0 – 4 4 – 9 9 – 20 20 – 40 >40 % 0 – 0.4 0.4 – 0.9 0.9 – 2.0 2.0 – 4.0 >4.0 SG 1.000 – 1.002 1.002 – 1.004 1.004 – 1.009 1.009 – 1.019 >1.019
(*aka semi-dry or off-dry)
To put this in perspective, regular Coca Cola® has a sugar content of 108 g/L, and freshly pressed apple juice will typically come in at 117 – 260 g/L.
Left to their own devices yeasts will most of the time keep eating up any sugar they find until there is nothing left, resulting in dry cider. But not always. The traditional production method for French ciders, for example, starves the yeasts of other essential nutrients so that they more or less give up before all the sugar has been consumed. The result is a naturally sweet often quite complex and wonderful cider. A similar process can be used in the making of ice cider, which starts with highly concentrated (by freezing and thawing) juice and results in a very sweet dessert cider (upwards of 165 g/L) that more often than not avoids being cloying by wrapping all that sugar around a sturdy backbone of bright acid.
Sugar content isn’t quite the last word on sweetness, though. Our brains can sometimes be fooled into thinking something is sweeter than the actual available sugars would suggest. The amount of acidity in a given cider will, for example, influence how sweet it tastes. A high acid cider that has a sugar content that would put it into the medium cider category may taste less sweet than a low acid cider having a sugar level in the medium-dry range, which is also why to many palates fresh apple juice will taste less sweet than a Coke®. Furthermore, because taste and smell are so closely intertwined a fruity aroma will also encourage us to taste a cider as sweeter than it is, while conversely an earthy aroma will make a cider be perceived as less sweet. (Genetics can play a role in sweetness perception, too.)
So why take issue with sweetness? For one thing, it’s an easy target. The most common complaint of people that don’t like cider is that it is too sweet. Generally this kind of statement suggests that the speaker hasn’t had the opportunity to try many ciders, and certainly the ciders offered by the Big Players are on the sweet end of the spectrum. What’s more, the Big Players muddy the waters by labeling some of their offerings as “dry” when on an objective basis they are anything but.
Take a couple of examples produced by some of the nationally distributed large brands. One “dry” cider has, according to the label, 7 grams of sugar in a 355 ml serving, which works out to 19.7 g/L of sugar, on the high side of medium. Another labeled as “dry pear” has a whopping 17 grams of sugar per 355 ml serving, coming in at an astonishing 48 g/L, so far from dry that it can’t even see it in it’s rear view mirror.
Why, one might ask, don’t the Big Players make actual dry ciders if, as one assumes from the marketing pitches of their smaller competitors, there is in fact a market for them? The easy answer is that while there are those that do prefer drier beverages, Americans as a whole seem to prefer their drinks sweet, particularly in an emerging category or market.
More to the point, it’s actually more challenging to make a decent tasting dry cider than a sweet one. With a truly dry cider there is nowhere to hide. It requires more attention to apple varieties and blends, and to production dynamics, in order to create something that isn’t just a complete thin and watery acid bomb. In addition, when you are starting with juice concentrates, which once a company is making cider at a certain scale is an absolute must, it is simply impossible to add back all of the subtle complexities inherent in fresh juice that get stripped out during the concentration process. Sugar can make this diminished character less obvious, although at some point all you can taste is the sugar itself rather than the harmonious flavor you’d get from actual juice.
Dry shouldn’t be the considered the ultimate goal. There are certainly as many uninteresting dry ciders on the market today as there are sweet ones, and more than a few that could be rescued by just a little more attention to balance. Complexity, proportion, nuance – those are the watchwords of a great cider regardless of where it sits on the sweetness scale.
There are a handful of cider companies (such as Seattle Cider Company and Redbyrd Orchard Cider) that have taken it upon themselves to add some sort of scale information on their label in an attempt to help consumers find their way through the fog. This sort of information along with the writings of thoughtful reviewers, those that work hard to describe a full range of a cider’s characteristics not just whether or not they liked it, can help to bring some clarity to an otherwise murky area.
Meanwhile, here’s hoping that the next time a new cider company’s marketing team sits down to describe what sets the company apart he/she/they work a little harder to find something a little more original to say. |
Talk about insult to injury. Judith Reese, Rockies fan and birthday girl celebrating her 69th, was not only forced to watch the Rockies get crushed by the San Francisco Giants, but also gets nailed in the head by a foul ball and carted out of the game in the fifth inning.
"My friend Kim and I have gone to opening day for years," Reese told 9News. And this year she was celebrating her birthday with great seats -- third row, behind the rail and down the third base line.
But in the fifth inning, the birthday celebrations came to a screeching halt when Rockies outfielder Michael Cuddyer hit a foul ball right along the third base line that went flying right into Reese's temple and knocked her out.
Cuddyer, who was making his Rockies debut at home, described the hit from what he saw from the field, "I saw the ball off my bat, saw the stands part ways and boom – saw it hit the head," CBS4 reported. "I hope (she) is all right and everything is well. It’s tough. That’s the scary part of this."
The game was delayed briefly as medical personnel attended to Reese who was carted off and eventually taken to Denver Health Medical Center where she was treated for a concussion and bruised head, according to 7News. Reese never did hear her birthday song at Coors Field that her friends arranged for her, but she has already been released by the hospital, is recovering and going to be okay.
"I want to thank the fans, the paramedics and the community for their instant support," Reese said in a statement released by Denver Health. |
Products used:
CG Honey Dew
Nano Skin Auto Scrub
Pinnacle Souveran Liquid Wax
Purple Power APC (diluted 5:1)
Mother’s Wheel & Tire Cleaner
Mother’s Tire Gloss
Lexol Leather Cleaner
Lexol Leather Conditioner
This vehicle was in a roll-over accident crushing all four doors, the roof and basically the whole car. The body shop did a excellent job bringing this car back to life. They still have some work to do but this is a long way from what it was.
This was the inside. Dust had been building up from sitting around a paint and body shop for months.
The exterior of the car was washed thoroughly, decontaminated and then sealed with Pinnacle Soveran.
The inside definitely needed the most attetion. There was dust in every crack and crevice. First all the top surface dirt had to be removed before we could start any real detail work. It took some time but the results were well worth it.
Lovely reflection. |
New alcohol advice published today reiterates that the recommended maximum intake weekly for male adults should fall from 21 to 14 units - barely enough to fill a bowl with electric soup*.
“To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis,” the UK government guidelines state (PDF).
The guidelines attracted widespread criticism after they were published in January.
The opinion of the UK’s Chief Health Jobsworth (official title: “Chief Medical Officer”) Dame Sally Davies is that there is “no safe level” of drinking.
Professor Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at Cambridge University, pointed out that the “no safe level” message contradicted the working group’s guiding principle that the public needed to be able to make an “informed choice”, not get scared into obedience. Eating a bacon sandwich, or watching an hour of TV, posed more long-term health risks than moderate alcohol consumption, he wrote. Graham Stringer MP pointed out the zero-alcohol advice would have a “perverse effect” - most people would simply ignore it.
For a Puritan, however, the thrill comes from denying another’s pleasure, and the Puritanism and the “no safe level” recommendation remains, albeit in different wording, and in specific relation to cancer:
The expert group was also clear that there are a number of serious diseases, including certain cancers, which can occur even when drinking within the weekly guideline. Whilst they judge the risks to be low, this means there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe in relation to some cancers.
However the following passage modulates a little:
This level of risk is comparable to those posed by other everyday activities that people understand are not completely safe, yet still undertake.
Alcohol industry trade body the Portman Group responded to the new guidelines by saying "it is regrettable that the guidelines still include a reference to the Guidelines Development Group's view that there is no safe level of drinking... Placed alongside low risk guidelines it will render the CMOs' advice confusing and contradictory for consumers."
Following the EU referendum the media remarked, with some dismay, how people “don’t trust experts”. But perhaps it depends on how self-interested, or "expert", the experts are perceived to be. The Times in May reported that “four key figures behind [the new recommendations] were closely associated with the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), a lobby group financed by the temperance movement.”
This wasn't news to Register readers - we wrote four years ago that the IAS is funded by something called the Alliance House Foundation. This was created in Manchester in 1852, and by 1853 rejoiced in the name “The United Kingdom Alliance to Procure the Total and Immediate Legislative Suppression of the Traffic in All Intoxicating Liquors”. It subsequently spawned better-known temperance groups. In turn, the largest funder of the AHF is the European Union. In 2008 it raised just £70 in donations from members of the public.
Perhaps one unexpected "Brexit Bonus" might be a diminution in killjoy lifestyle regulation. Which would be ironic, really. For years we were promised "continental drinking", the boozy Europeans offering a more liberal drinking culture than the uptight British. ®
*Bootnote
For younger readers. |
In addition to its new trio of GT factory drivers for 2017, Porsche has announced at its Night of Champions that it will send a factory squad to the 2017 FIA WEC to race in the GTE Pro class with its new 911 RSR.
“This is a significant boost for our motorsport involvement and underlines that we have chosen the right platform with the WEC,” said Michael Steiner, member of the executive board for research and development at Porsche AG.
The Porsche Motorsport GT team will campaign a pair of new 911 RSR in the top GTE class, after the brand was represented by just a sole Proton Competition-run 911 this season. The drivers confirmed so far are Michael Christensen, Frédéric Makowiecki and Richard Lietz.
Next season the GTE Pro class has been granted FIA World Championship status for the first time, with factory efforts from Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Ford all confirmed.
The mid-engined 2017 Porsche 911 RSR was fully officially unveiled last month by the brand, and shown off to the WEC paddock at the Bahrain season finale. |
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump is shrugging off contradictions with his own cabinet picks that have been on display during Senate hearings this week. “All my cabinet nominee are looking good and doing a great job. I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” Trump said over Twitter early Friday.
This Jan. 11 file photo shows U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York. Trump has shrugged off the strikingly divergent positions his cabinet picks have taken on a number of issues. ( TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP/GETTY IMAGES File Photo )
The comment comes after members of Trump’s future cabinet separated themselves from the president-elect on a series of issues, including Russia, torture and Muslim immigration. Partly as a result the nominees have gotten mostly gentle treatment from Senate Democrats who say they’ve found the cabinet choices more palatable than the future president himself. “As I meet members of the cabinet I’m puzzled because many of them sound reasonable,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “Far more reasonable than their president.”
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Sen. Jeff Sessions, picked for attorney general, said he’s against any outright ban on immigration by Muslims, in contrast to Trump’s one-time call to suspend admittance of Muslims. Secretary of State candidate Rex Tillerson affirmed U.S. commitments to NATO and took a relatively hard line on Russia, both in contrast to Trump — though Tillerson irked GOP Sen. Marco Rubio by refusing to label Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” And CIA pick Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, affirmed his opposition to torture and said he would refuse any Trump order to torture, adding he could not imagine Trump would give such a directive. Trump, while campaigning, suggested bringing back waterboarding and more. Tillerson’s nomination is in question in light of concerns from Rubio and others, but it looks like smooth sailing for Pompeo; retired Gen. James Mattis for Defence; and retired Gen. John Kelly for Homeland Security, among others. “Pompeo’s very popular, Mattis, Kelly — these are popular selections,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Sessions was denied confirmation once before by the Senate, but that was three decades ago for a federal judgeship. This time around the Alabaman is a sitting senator and was treated gently, for the most part, by his colleagues, even when Democrats brought up the racial issues that brought him down him last time around. There was potential for drama as Sen. Cory Booker, D-N. J., broke with Senate tradition to testify against his colleague, but it came on the second day of the hearing after Sessions had finished testifying, so he was not even in the room.
“The purpose of confirmation hearings is to examine the record and views of potential nominees and I think that’s what these hearings are doing,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “I think it’s likely that all of the cabinet nominees are going to be confirmed, I think the hearings have gone quite well this week.” The outings also lack drama due to Democrats’ decision while in the Senate majority to lower the vote threshold for cabinet nominees and others from 60 votes to 50, allowing Republicans to ensure approval as long as they can hold their 52-seat majority together.
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There could be fireworks yet to come because several of the most potentially explosive hearings are still pending, including for former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin for Treasury secretary. Democrats have set up a website to solicit stories from the thousands of people whose homes were foreclosed on by OneWest Bank while Mnuchin headed a group of investors who owned the bank. They hope to use Mnuchin’s nomination hearing to attack Trump’s populist appeal with working-class voters and cast themselves as defenders of the middle class. Also pending are hearings for Rep. Tom Price for Health and Human Services; Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a vocal denier of climate change science, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency; and fast-food executive Andrew Puzder to head the Labor Department. MORE ON THESTAR.COM 10 times Donald Trump’s cabinet picks directly disputed him
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U.S. Air Force F-15 and Russian Bear Bomber. Air Force photo
Russia Admits It Isn’t Ready to Fight Space Aliens
Fortunately America’s got a plan
David Axe Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 2, 2013
by DAVID AXE
A Russian space official just admitted that Moscow has no strategy for combating an invasion by galactic marauders. Lucky for Planet Earth, the United States does have a plan. And it counts on Russia and America fighting together.
Sergei Berezhnoy, on the staff of the Titov Space Control Center near Moscow, said that Russian air-defense officers “have not been tasked with preparing for the contingency of an alien attack,” according to Rianovosti.
“There are enough problems on Earth and in near-Earth space,” Berezhnoy added.
A team of scientists from America’s NASA Planetary Science Division have disagreed. “While humanity has not yet observed any extraterrestrial intelligence, contact with ETI remains possible,” Seth Baum, Jacob Haqq-Misra and Shawn Domagal-Goldman wrote in a 2011 paper.
The scientists conceded that extraterrestrials could be friendly or ambivalent—but we can’t be sure. “Contact with uncooperative ETI seems likely be harmful to humanity,” they warned.
The Pentagon isn’t taking any chances, if one U.S. military instructor is to be believed. Prof. Paul Springer, a history teacher at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College in Alabama, told an Australian TV program last year that Washington has plans for even the least likely military threats—including attackers from beyond the solar system. “We make all kinds of contingency and war plans,” Springer said.
But America’s interstellar war plan is surely pretty thin. After all, the Pentagon wouldn’t know anything about the attackers until the first laser bolt or disrupter blast or photon torpedo was fired and Earth forces were already in retreat.
In the event of an alien invasion, “the first thing you would need to try to do is preserve your forces,” Springer said. In other words, hide. After that, “learn as much about the enemy as possible.” Presumably with spy satellites, drones, electronic eavesdroppers and old-fashioned sneaking around.
The aliens, meanwhile, would probably target Earth’s communications networks and its most potent weapons, nukes, Springer said.
As the world’s leading military powers, America and Russia would be the biggest targets … and the leaders in the eventual counterattack. Combined, the two countries could field huge air, land, sea and space forces numbering thousands of warplanes, millions of soldiers, hundreds of ships and most of the world’s spacecraft.
Assuming Earth survives and wins, human society could be turned upside down. Springer said former rivals could become close allies, even unified. “Keep in mind many of the greatest civilizations in human history formed to counter a common enemy,” Springer pointed out.
Plan or no, Russia is bound to join America on the front lines in the First Alien War.
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There is one thing about Mark Zuckerberg that has never changed since he launched Facebook and became one of the youngest billionaires in the world: the grey T-shirt he wears every day.
The Facebook CEO shared a picture of his wardrobe and the two types of t-shirts he wears every day this week as he returned to work following his paternity leave.
His bland outfits may seem dull, but Zuckerberg has a legitimate reason for donning the same T-shirt every day. He claims dressing in the same way allows him to focus his energy on more important decisions at work.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
First day back after paternity leave. What should I wear? Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, 25 January 2016
The 31-year-old explained this during his first public question and answer session in 2014 when an audience member asked why his outfits never changed. “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community,” said Zuckerberg.
“I'm in this really lucky position, where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people. And I feel like I'm not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”
Considering Zuckerberg is worth an estimated $37.5 billion after launching Facebook from his room at Harvard University while still a teenager, it might be worth bearing his sartorial stance in mind.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
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In the same hotel where Alexander Graham Bell once demoed coast-to-coast telephone calls, Microsoft will announce plans for a new white space internet service on Tuesday. This ludicrous technology sends broadband internet wirelessly over the unused channels of the television spectrum. It’s also ingenious.
Understandably, you probably have some questions about this postmodern concept. If you were born before 1985, you might remember the days when TV signals floated through thin air, delivering episodes of Married With Children to homes across America without any wires. Those TV signals still exist, and in between the channels, there’s unused spectrum called white space. Enterprising scientists have figured out how to turn that white space into a sort of super wi-fi and broadcast internet service to a many miles-wide radius. What’s extra special is that, unlike wi-fi or cellular service, the stronger TV signal can penetrate buildings and other obstacles. This makes it ideal for rural areas, where conventional broadband service is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
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As Tuesday’s announcement makes clear, Microsoft scientists have been on the bleeding edge of white space research. The increasingly hip company intends to drop $10 billion to launch a new white space service in 12 states, including New York and Virginia, connecting an estimated two million Americans to the internet, The New York Times reports. This plan ought to please FCC chairman Ajit Pai, who’s made expanding high speed internet access a priority since he took the helm of the agency. Then again, many believe that Pai’s mission amounts to an empty promise, one that stands to line the pockets of big telecom companies instead of actually helping rural America. But that’s a whole ‘nother can of beans.
Exciting as it may sound, Microsoft’s new white space initiative does face some tricky challenges. Infrastructure is a big one. While white space internet service does utilize the very familiar TV spectrum, the ability to connect to the internet requires some special hardware. On the regional level, we’ll need to build special base stations, equip them with white space antennas, and supply them with electricity. (Solar power is an option for base stations that are off the electric grid.) On the local level, white space customers will need to access to special receivers that can turn the white space signal into something their computer understands, like wi-fi. All of this will cost money.
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Good news is Microsoft has a lot of money. It’s not yet clear how much the company will charge for the new service, but presumably, it will cover the expense of building the new base stations. Customers will have to buy the hardware for their homes at a sobering price of $1,000 or more, but Microsoft says these costs will come down to $200 per device by next year. That’s not nothing for a lot of rural Americans, and then they’ll have to pay for access — a fee that Microsoft says will be “price competitive” with regular old cable internet (again: not cheap).
But hey, progress matters. While this white space internet technology has been in development for years, Microsoft is set to become the first major company to bring it to the masses, and that might just mean others will follow. Far-future solutions for rural broadband access like Facebook’s laser-powered drones, Google’s silly balloons, or Elon Musk’s pie-in-the-sky satellites remain theoretical for the time being, while white space already works. And soon, it could be working in a middle-of-nowhere near you.
[New York Times] |
Paul Beeston denies that the Toronto Blue Jays are being held back by financial restraints from ownership.
During a guest appearance Friday on Brady & Walker on Sportsnet 590 The Fan, the Blue Jays president and CEO said Rogers Communications has been more than accommodating when they’ve needed to add salary, adding that the club’s payroll is going to increase for 2015.
“I’ll set the record straight. We’ve never gotten to Rogers and asked them for money for anything we haven’t got,” Beeston said. “They’ve been very, very generous with us when we took our salaries up from $90-million to $125-million. I think we’ll be up next year. There’s no question about that. They’ve been very supportive.”
Beeston also took issue with recent criticism directed at the Blue Jays’ inactivity at the trade deadline. Many, including right fielder Jose Bautista, expressed their disappointment that the Blue Jays didn’t add a player while the division rival New York Yankees added Brandon McCarthy, Chase Headley and Martin Prado.
But Beeston said the club’s lack of movement had nothing to do with money.
“When I hear last week that we didn’t make decisions because we didn’t have the money or there was a hockey contract, it’s just flat out wrong,” he explained. “It’s patently false. We’ve got what we need to do. If there wasn’t a trade that was made, it was because Alex (Anthopoulos) and the baseball people didn’t think they wanted to part with the players for what they’d get back.”
It has been a tough week for the Blue Jays, who have lost five of their past six games and saw third base Brett Lawrie return to the disabled list after just three innings of play Tuesday with an oblique injury.
“When we lose, all of a sudden it’s because of finances. It’s because we don’t have the money. That’s really not fair to Rogers,” said Beeston. “That’s because of decisions we made or because of injuries or the way we play. It’s nothing to do with the financial part of it.”
The Blue Jays enter play Friday with a 61-55 record. They are 5.0 games behind the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East and 0.5 games behind the Kansas City Royals in the wild card standings. |
At 3:00 p.m., [presiding] judge R. notified me that I had been appointed to assist with the execution. I feel repulsed, but I can't get out of it. I thought about it all afternoon. My role will consist of taking note of the prisoner's statements.
The execution scene from "La vie, la mort, l'amour" (Life, Love, Death), by Claude Lelouch (1969). "Life, Love, Death" was made before the abolition of capital punishment in France. The movie's central message is the inhumanity of the death penalty. (NB: The video's English subtitles are at times erroneous and misleading.)
Plot: François Toledo, a married businessman and father, falls head-over-heels in love with Janine, a work colleague. However, after three dates, he feels dishonored when he suffers from impotence. In frustration, he strangles three prostitutes before being arrested. He is tried and convicted, and sentenced to death...
The execution scene from "" (Life, Love, Death), by Claude Lelouch (1969). "" was made before the abolition of capital punishment in France. The movie's central message is the inhumanity of the death penalty. (NB:: François Toledo, a married businessman and father, falls head-over-heels in love with Janine, a work colleague. However, after three dates, he feels dishonored when he suffers from impotence. In frustration, he strangles three prostitutes before being arrested. He is tried and convicted, and sentenced to death...
At 7:00 p.m., I went to the cinema with B. and B. B., then we had something to eat at her place and watched a late-night movie until 1:00 a.m. I went home, I did some chores, then laid down on my bed. Mr. B. L. telephoned me at 3:15 a.m., as I requested. I got ready. A police car came to pick me up at 4:15 a.m. During the journey, no one said a word.We arrived at Marseilles' Baumettes prison. Everyone was there. The District Attorney (DA) [avocat général] arrived last. A large group formed. Twenty or thirty guards, the 'officials.' All along the path, brown blankets were spread on the ground to cover the sound of our footsteps. On the path, in three places, tables holding basins of water and towelsThe cell door was opened. I heard someone say that the prisoner was dozing, but not sleeping. He was made to 'get ready.' It took a long time, since he had an artificial leg and it had to be put on. We waited. No one spoke. I think this silence, and the apparent calmness of the prisoner, relieved those present. No one would have wanted to hear crying or protests. The group reformed itself, and we took the path back. The blankets on the ground had been pushed to the side slightly, and we were no longer trying to avoid making too much noise with our steps.The group stopped beside one of the tables. The prisoner was seated on a chair. His hands were locked behind his back with handcuffs. A guard gave him a filter cigarette. He started smoking without saying a word. He was young. Very dark hair, neatly styled. His face was rather handsome, with even features, but he was pallid and had dark circles under his eyes. He looked neither stupid nor brutish. Simply a handsome young man. He smoked, and complained immediately that his handcuffs were too tight. A guard approached and tried to loosen them. He complained again. At this moment, I noticed the executioner standing behind him, accompanied by two assistants. He was holding a cord.Originally, it was intended to replace the handcuffs with the cord, but in the end it was decided to just remove them, and the executioner said something horrible and tragic: 'See, you're free!' It sent a shiver down the spine... The prisoner continued to smoke his cigarette, which was nearly finished, and he was given another. His hands were free and he smoked slowly. I understood then that he was beginning to realize that it was all over - that he could not escape now - that his life would end here, and that the moments that he still had would last as long as that cigarette did.He requested his lawyers. Mr. P. and Mr. G. approached. He spoke to them as quietly as possible, because the executioner's two assistants were standing right by him, and it was as if they wanted to steal his last moments as a living man. He gave a piece of paper to Mr. P. who tore it at his request, and he gave an envelope to Mr. G. He spoke to them very little. There was one on either side of him and they did not speak to each other either. The wait continued. He requested the prison director and asked him a question about what would happen to his possessions.The second cigarette was finished. Quarter of an hour had already passed. A young and friendly guard approached with a bottle of rum and a glass. He asked the prisoner if he wanted a drink and poured him half a glass. The prisoner began to drink slowly. He understood then that his life would end when he had finished drinking. He spoke a little more with his lawyers. He called back the guard who gave him the rum and asked him to gather up the pieces of paper that Mr. P. had torn up and thrown to the ground. The guard bent down, picked up the pieces and gave them back to Mr. P., who put them in his pocket.It was at that moment that everything became confused. This man is going to die, he knows it; he knows that he can do nothing but delay the end by a few minutes. And he became almost like a child that will do anything to delay bedtime! A child who knows that he will be treated indulgently, and who makes use of it. The prisoner continued to drink his rum, slowly, in little sips. He called the Imam who came over and spoke to him in Arabic. He responded with a few words, also in Arabic.The glass was nearly empty and, in a last attempt, he requested another cigarette: aor a[unfiltered cigarettes made with strong, dark tobacco], because he didn't like the brand that he had been given. The request was made calmly, almost with dignity. But the executioner, who was becoming impatient, interrupted: "We've already been nice with him - very humane - we have to get this over and done with." In turn, the DA intervened to deny the cigarette, despite the prisoner repeating the request and adding very opportunely: "It will be the last." A sort of embarrassment came over the assistants. About twenty minutes had passed since the prisoner sat down on his chair. Twenty minutes, so long and yet so short.The request for this last cigarette brought back the reality, the 'identity' of the time which had just passed. We had been patient, we had stood waiting for twenty minutes while the prisoner, seated, expressed wishes which we immediately granted. We had allowed him to be the master of that time. It was his possession. Now, another reality was appearing. That time was being taken back from him. The last cigarette was denied, and to get it over and done with, he was hurried to finish his glass. He drank the last sip. Passed the glass to the guard. Immediately, one of the executioner's assistants took a pair of scissors from his shirt pocket and began to cut off the collar of the prisoner's blue shirt. The executioner signaled that the cut was not large enough. So, to simplify things, the assistant made two big cuts to the shoulders of the shirt and removed the entire shoulder section.Quickly (before the shirt collar was cut), his hands were tied behind his back with the cord. He was helped up. The guards opened a door in the corridor. The guillotine appeared, opposite the door. Almost without hesitating, I followed the guards who were pushing the prisoner and I entered the room (or, rather, a courtyard?) where the the 'machine' stood. Beside it was an open brown wicker basket. Everything went very quickly. His body was practically thrown down but, at that moment, I turned away. Not out of fear, but by a sort of instinctive and deep-rooted modesty (I can't find another word).I heard a dull sound. I turned round - blood, lots of blood, very red blood - the body had toppled into the basket. In a second, a life had been cut. The man who had spoken less than a minute earlier was nothing more than blue pyjamas in a basket. A guard took out a hose. The evidence of a crime needs to be erased quickly... I felt nauseous but I controlled myself. I had a feeling of cold indignation.We went into the office where the DA was childishly fussing around to prepare the official report. D. carefully verified every part. It's very important, the official report of an execution! At 5:10 a.m. I went home.I am writing these lines. It is 6:10 a.m.-- Monique Mabelly (Juge d'instruction) |